Inc - 78% Of You Are More Bullish About 2025

So it’s in the air.

Not everywhere, not at every start-up or scale-up. But in general, overall, a sense that SaaS is back. It’s not just AI, although that’s part of it. It’s not just the big run-up in many SaaS stocks recently, although that’s a big part of it.  It’s also data that suggests that for those that have seen a downturn, the bottom is behind us.

As you enjoy the Holidays, why not set yourself up for success to attend the biggest SaaS event of the year — SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 2025!

Grab your tickets now before prices go up Jan 4:

• Save 20% on 1-2 tickets, $200 savings
• Save 30% on 3+ or more tickets, $350 savings
• on each ticket!

But should you miss these holiday savings: 

• Startup tickets will be $1099 on Jan 4th
• Big Co & VC tickets will be $1299 on Jan 4th

This is your chance to hit your goals next year and experience the biggest SaaS event of the year. Not to mention, this will be 11th SaaStr Annual so we'll be adding even more new ways to network and get together, building off the success of the CEO + CRO, CMO, CCO and CFO summits we launched in 2024.    

I don’t think so.

I don’t know all the details, but what I can tell you is 95%+ of the VCs I know and work with do not want to replace the founder CEO ever. Only as a very last resort.

Yes, in the old days of tech, it was more common. But it all began to change with Facebook, and just accelerated since.  Almost all VCs want the founders to go the distance, if they are able and want to.

In fact, in 90% of SaaS IPOs, the founder CEO is still the CEO at IPO

Of all the investments I’ve made since 2013, in only 1 have the VCs “replaced” the CEO. And in that case, one, I opposed it (I didn’t have a vote). And two, it happened because the founders raised $100m+ and began to run out of money. That’s when it’s most common today. When a start-up raises a ton of capital, misses all the milestones, and is in danger of running out.

Still, bear in mind, the more you raise in venture capital, the more the stakes go up.  Raising $100m+ isn’t a game, and it can lead to conflicts where there isn’t alignment (or again, when the cash begins to run out).

So I caught up the other day with the CTO of a leading SaaS company with tens of thousands of customers, growing quickly. AI is all over their homepage and website and comms.

I asked him about a particular use case for AI, and his answer shocked me a bit: “Honestly, our AI is basically still in beta. It’s rolled out to about a tenth of the customers we plan to, and the uses cases are pretty simple today.”

This is a leader in SaaS. And I think this is true at many leaders. ZoomInfo has rocketed to $100m in AI Copilot already. But it mostly is enhancing the classic product, near as I can tell. The same with other leaders. Agentforce at Salesforce is Benioff’s #1 push — but it’s literally just getting started.

Let’s be clear: a lot of SaaS and B2B apps are still experimenting with AI. Or at least, in the beta phase.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Stripe

Join the internet economy conference. Stripe Sessions brings together the payments and financial technology community to share ideas that drive progress.

It’s been a great year for SaaStr videos and podcasts. We’re on the top 1% on Spotify overall and just added video there, and our YouTube has become a great stream of the best of the best in SaaS, Cloud and AI.

So to catch-up over the holidays, here are The Top 10 Videos of the Year:

#1. How To Perfectly Pitch Your Seed Stage Startup With Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel at SaaStr Annual

Here are our criteria for SaaStrFund.com:

• Are both the CEO and CTO insanely good? Better than I was as a founder?
• Are they committed to this market and journey for a decade or more? It takes being a bit crazy.
• Do they just really, really know their stuff?
• Is the early growth at least in top 10% range?

It’s a high bar, but if the founders don’t meet it, I’ve found there is a 0% chance of making enough money for a venture investment to work out.

It’s hard.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Prismatic

Read how Duro Labs increased integration adoption, reduced engineering time for integrations, and launched them 10x faster.

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