So there’s a lot of talk in B2B and AI about the per-seat model being dead.  That per outcome pricing and other AI pricing models will kill it.

Well maybe.  But it doesn’t seem so … yet:

• Open AI itself still gets most of its revenue from per-seat pricing!
• HubSpot and other leaders are doubling down on per-seat pricing.
• The majority of Shopify revenue is from payments and merchant services, not even software.  Same with Toast.

We held a SaaStr Annual executive de-brief to share some of the last Annual data and trends we saw across all 100+ sponsors and 10,000 attendees of last  SaaStr Annual. A lot of this proprietary data is I think too good not to share, and maybe help even give you a gauge on where at least some of your compatriots in B2B trended for an event at this scale.

It’s not too late to sponsor SaaStr Annual 2025 — May 13-15 in SF Bay — but it’s getting close to too late! 

So there’s an uncomfortable truth that VCs don’t discuss outloud that often, but everyone has sort of accepted. Everyone resisted in 2022 and into 2023, but by 2024 they began to capitulate.

That a lot of unicorns that hit $1B+ valuations in 2020-2021 … probably aren’t really unicorns anymore.

How many? Over 60% haven’t raised funding since 2021 and likely never achieved the scale to do so, or have seen growth slow.

David Frankel is Managing Partner at Founder Collective, a successful seed fund with investments in companies like The Trade Desk, Olo, and Coupang. With decades of experience as both a founder and investor, David brings a unique perspective to the often-misunderstood process of selling a company. He openly admits that many of his past exits were mistakes, which makes his advice on the topic particularly valuable.

He joined SaaStr Workshop Wednesday LIVE to do a deep dive with Jason Lemkin on his 10 Point Checklist when you sell your startup.

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

We've partnered with Stripe to give you access to the internet economy conference. Stripe Sessions brings together the payments and financial technology community to share ideas that drive progress.

Gong announced it’s just crossed $300 million in ARR.

That’s impressive, but I think even more impressive than it sounds. Because while I don’t have the exact numbers, I do think Gong has reaccelerated the past 6-9 months.

It’s clearly growing faster today, at $300m, than it did at $200m, when a wave of consolidation and cutbacks hit the overall space. CEO Amit was kind enough to join us at SaaStr Europa in June 2024 and talk about their approach to AI and more. And while they were doing well then, they weren’t growing as fast as they are today.

In many ways, All of Them.

• Microsoft. Bought 86-DOS, turned into MS-DOS (which Gates did not invent), which in turn was an improved clone of CP/M. Did not invent BASIC, either. Office in many ways built in part on top of Lotus 1–2–3’s success. Windows after/alongside Mac OS. Etc. etc. etc.
• Facebook. MySpace, Friendster, whatever.
• Google. Yahoo, Altavista, whatever.
• Salesforce. Maybe not a fast follower, but already Siebel Sales.com, etc.
• Apple. Copied Xerox, Altair, everything.
• Square. Very innovative, but a mobile PayPal, etc.
• Zoom. More a slow follower, but still.
• HubSpot, Marketo, etc. Neither invented the space.  HubSpot’s original CRM was in many ways a clone of Pipedrive.
• Slack. Very innovative, especially in integrations. But we had so many point solutions before, and since.
• Datadog. Datadog caught up with and blew past New Relic.  Even though in its day, New Relic was just as beloved.
• Almost everything in cybersecurity.  New vendors, new approaches, but the threats are evergreen 

This may not be 100% fair and certainly is an over-simplification. And OpenAI launching ChatGPT first certainly created a huge tidal wave the likes of which we haven’t seen in a generation, even if it was in some ways an unexpected one at first.

One of the classic original SaaStr posts was on the Top 10+ Questions to Ask a VP of Sales Candidate. All the questions still hold today, but I wanted to update them for 2025. It’s a different world today, AI-fueled, often distributed and hybrid, and with inflation both in titles (CRO or VP Sales) and compensation expectations.

Use this updated script for hiring that first VP of Sales. It works.

Before we get there, as a reminder, I strongly recommend before you go to hire a VP of Sales (let alone a CRO) you:

• hire 1-2 sales reps (ideally 2) before you hire a VP Sales, at a minimum.
• and make them successful first. I.e., both hitting quota.
• So you can practice what you preach, and know of what you are hiring. And also to get big enough so a VP Sales can actually help, not hinder you. A VP of Sales job is to scale sales.  Not figure it out from scratch. Not usually.

Now if you are ready, but haven’t done it before in SaaS, here are 13 good screening questions to see if you have a real VP, Sales candidate in hand — or not.

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

Start build what you need, fast. Join Prismatic on 3/19 to learn how to fill a custom connector SDK fills your integration gaps.

SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin highlights nine key reasons that create friction in the modern SaaS buying cycle. He emphasizes how these factors can deter new customers and impact overall growth. Through examples involving well-known companies and the importance of a seamless customer experience, Founders are encouraged to evaluate and reduce these hurdles within their own SaaS products to ensure they remain true to "Software As a Service."

Slow it down.

Email is amazing. CEO, CXOs, VPs and more read their email. Including cold emails. They don’t pick up the phone anymore. They don’t listen to voicemail much anymore. They don’t care about your tweet. But they do read email everyday. All day long, in fact.

But:

• There is way too much spam & promotional email.
• Stuff that goes into your Promotions tab is also never read.
• So what about your email in particular.

The key is to slow it down. Write 10 personalized, well-researched emails a day to top potential prospects. Research those emails. Research the prospect. Propose a solution to their particular problem. Instead of 500 identical blasts in a cadence.

Blasts can work if you have a solid list. They work if you have a well-develop pipeline that needs regular drip marketing.

But don’t confuse drip marketing with high-quality prospecting. There are no shortcuts.

If you can solve a big problem for a CEO, she will open an email from you. But you have to do that.

Not ask for a coffee. Or 5 minutes of their time.

Codeium is one of the fastest-growing startups in the AI coding assistant space, having scaled its go-to-market team from 3 to 75 in just under a year. Recently valued at over $1 billion, Codeium is proving that AI-driven software development is not just the future—it’s the present. In our most recent episode of CRO Confidential, hosted by Sam Blond, Graham Moreno, VP of Worldwide Sales at Codeium, shared invaluable insights on what drove this growth, the challenges they faced, and how other B2B and B2D companies can replicate this success.

• SaaStr 792: Why I’m Scared to Buy New SaaS Apps Now with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

• SaaStr 791: CRO Confidential: How Codeium Built A Billion-Dollar AI Company and a Winning Sales Machine with VP of Worldwide Sales, Graham Moreno

• SaaStr 790: AI at Scale: 8 Learnings from monday.com Co-Founder and Co-Ceo Eran Zinman and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

Listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcasts

Do not take things personally

Do not take things personally

Do not take things personally

Do not take things personally

Hard for founders

At least try

The best marketer I've ever worked with said to me early that you have to

fire all your agencies after 6 months

Why?

They give you their best upfront,

and then turn the gig into an annuity staffed with the mediocre

I thought it was a bit aggressive

But he was right

© SaaStr 2025

644 Emerson St. Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA 94301

If you'd like to stop receiving the SaaStr Weekly, click here