So there’s a quiet trend I’ve observed for a while but didn’t want to call a trend.  Didn’t want to see it as a new thing.  But I think it is.

It’s the founder CEO quitting.

Even after raising $20m, $50, $200m+ in venture capital.  Even with 100 of employees and 1000s of customers counting on them.

I guess it’s not totally new. This stuff is hard. And it’s even harder for folks running unicorns and close-to-unicorns that have seen growth slow radically.

But founder-CEOs are supposed to get going when it gets tough. To somehow, find a way to turn it around.

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So will AI eliminate the need for more sales reps?  Maybe. 

Maybe.  But not today at least ;)

66% of you are hiring even more reps in 2025 than 2024, and only 22% are slowing down sales hiring.

In 2024, 22% of you were hiring much faster than last year.

In 2024, that’s up to 31%.

Does SaaStr still matter?  I do think so, but it’s been 12 years of blogging and 10+ year of events and more. So you gotta ask yourself that question as the year winds down. 

It’s a tough question I think all of us should ask going into a New Year.

• Do your startup still matter?
• Does your app still matter?
• Is it still solving a problem, or problems, the market is truly demanding solutions to?
• And if so, are you still the #1 or #2 vendor in at least some segment of the market? 
• And are you gaining or losing market share?  Be honest.

You are lucky if your initial product still matters 5 years in. You have to radically improve it. And you are even luckier if your initial product is even relevant 10 years in. So much changes. The best have to radically evolve every 5 years, and totally reinvent themselves every decade.

What about SaaStr itself? When we started there was basically no great content on scaling B2B companies. All I had to do was write one blog post a day and one Quora answer, and magic happened. Now B2B content is everywhere. LinkedIn itself is an endless feed of B2B scaling content, in fact.  And there is great B2B content on 20VC, on Lenny’d pod, and so many other great places.

So 1-on-1 meetings with your team certainly seem to have gone out of fashion, at least on social media.

The great waste of time, many hard driven founders seem to be saying.

Jensen Huang of Nvidia has 30+ direct reports and apparently no 1-on-1s.   I get it.

But Nvidia was founded in 1993, is doing $140B in revenue a year, dominates its market, and has 29,600 employees.

See also, AirBnB.

When I first started off a first-time CEO, I had never really done 1-on-1s before when I was a VP and a Director before that. My CEOs did 1-on-1s … just not with me.

And I think I missed the point on why. Both of the CEOs I reported to didn’t need one with me.

As a first-time CEO, I started off doing 1-on-1s with all my VPs.  Then about a year in as a first-time CEO I saw a pattern.

This edition of the SaaStr Weekly is sponsored in part by G2

In today’s landscape, AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a business imperative.

Join C-suite execs, including SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin and GTM leaders, as they explore:

• Accelerating your growth with AI
• Exceeding buyer ROI and agility expectations
• Capitalizing on market trends to stay ahead of the competition 

After going virtual and hybrid during the 2021 era, and moving its HQ to Bozeman Montana when ex-CEO Frank Slootman moved there… and officially leaving the SF Bay (albeit keeping its office in San Mateo) in 2021 … Snowflake is quadrupling down on the SF Bay Area in 2025.

It’s taking over almost 800,000 square feet from Facebook in Menlo Park, the largest lease of the year, per the SF Chronicle.

You can build something great in B2B anywhere today.

But the SF Bay is back in force.

44% of VC funding for SaaS is there now, too.

Here are some rough rules:

• You want a VP of Everything (Sales, Marketing, Product, Eng) by about $5m ARR, and ideally, Sales and Marketing well before that. Not all at once, but you can benefit from all of them by then.
• You want to start adding CXOs around $15m-$20m ARR. The CFO is often the last, the CMO often the first “C” level officer.
• Now how does bootstrapping change this? Importantly: not that much in the end, although a lot at first.

Certainly, bootstrapping slows down how many VPs you can hire until and after $1m-$2m ARR.

You probably have to hire them one at a time, a bit slowly.  You may only be able to afford one VP at first, even at $2m-$3m ARR or so.  But after that, if you are growing 50%+ and have 100%+ NRR … you’ve built an engine.  Even if you don’t have quite as much fuel as if you’d raised venture capital.

So Twilio has been on a crazy rollercoaster journey since IPO. It started off with hyper growth, then had a Covid Boost, and then growth radically slowed thereafter.

And now? Growth at Twilio is re-accelerating again. And the stock is up a super impressive 51% this year! 

It’s not the Go-Go Days of years past, but Twilio is back. SaaS is back.

Pricing is more than just a number on a contract — when used thoughtfully, it can become a strategic tool for your SaaS product that can drive product adoption, customer satisfaction, and business growth.

At this year’s SaaStr Annual AI Summit, Akshay Sharma, Head of Pricing and Monetization at Miro, chats with a panel of experts, including Janie Lee, Head of Product at Loom, Alison Harmon, Head of Growth at OpenAI, and Carsten Holm, VP of Pricing and Monetization at Splunk, about their nuanced approach to pricing and monetization.

• SaaStr 778: How to Leverage Pricing and Packaging to Drive Growth, Revenue, and Profit with Miro, Loom, OpenAI, and Splunk

• SaaStr 777: The Rise of Vertical SaaS: Achieving 110% NRR from SMBs with Mangomint's CEO

• SaaStr 776: How to Successfully Bring AI Products to Market at Scale with GitHub’s CRO Elizabeth Pemmerl

Listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcasts

Once you've built a business to $10m-$20m, you know how to do it again. Power of Second Time Founder.

But turns out, that doesn't make it even 1% easier. Not really.

Power of First Time Founder.

To win in Vertical SaaS:

- Can you charge at least $10k a year?

- Can you add enough value to hit 110%+ NRR?

- Can you get to 60% market share?

If so, in many markets, likely can get to nine figures

in ARR ... even if market seems small-ish

© SaaStr 2024

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