6 Things in SaaS That Are Only Obvious At Scale; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

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Hey SaaS Fans,

Some thoughts on things you don’t really get until about $8m-$10m ARR or so:

#1 Churn Lurks. Churn doesn’t happen overnight, especially with annual contracts. It lurks. Use customer visits, NPS surveys, and more to root it out before it happens. Oftentimes, you don’t even lose customers until Year 3. So it really only hits you just when things are getting good. More on that here: Why It’s Year 3 When You Lose Your Customers

#2 You Hit a Wall Without VPs. Don’t Underhire Here. Everything in SaaS starts to get pretty complicated around $4m-$5m. Too many customers, too many workflows, too many marketing programs, too many salespeople. Without a VP to head each functional area, you will hit a wall. Exactly when, varies. The faster you grow, the longer it takes to show up in the numbers.

+ 4 more things in SaaS that are only obvious at Scale

New This Week

5 Interesting Learnings from ON24 at $200,000,000 in ARR

ON24 is one of those SaaS companies you sort of know and have probably used if you’re a marketer … but probably didn’t pay too much attention to otherwise.

Here are the five interesting learnings -->

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by Capchase

How to Close More Revenue Today — With The Leads You Already Have

If you are on either side of $1m in ARR, there are 3 things you can almost always do from a pure process standpoint to squeeze materially more revenue out per lead.

Do ’em now! -->

GuideCX: 5 Ways to Improve Client Onboarding and Implementation Experiences — and Earn Customers for Life

You only get one chance to make a first impression. Your new client onboarding process could be that chance.

Here's how to make the right first impression -->

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by Snowflake

How to Build a Great Intern Program From Scratch with Shopify

Internships have sparked millions of successful careers, and they can be a valuable talent pool from which companies can eventually hire full-time employees. But it’s critical to build your internship program the right way.

Here are insider tips for launching a successful initiative of your own. -->

How to Market at Mass Scale with Whereby

Harry Stebbings sits down with Ryan Bonnici, Chief Marketing Officer at Whereby to discuss how to hire marketers at scale and how to use marketing to set your brand above the rest.

Watch now -->

Hot Jobs

•	Snowflake is seeking a dynamic, high energy, and results-driven Director of Demand Generation. This individual will coach a team of individual contributors while owning vertical and solution program strategy, customer targeting, database segmentation, and program implementation.

•	Gorgias is looking for a VP of Marketing to get them to $100m ARR and build a marketing machine that covers the full customer lifecycle, from awareness to expansion.

Latest Podcast Episodes

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How to Market at Mass Scale, with Harry Stebbings and Ryan Bonnici, CMO @ Whereby

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How to Build a Great Intern Program with Farhan Thawar, VP Engineering @ Shopify

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How to Execute a Winning Self-Service Strategy with Naomi Rozenfeld, VP of Revenue @ Wix Answers

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Play Music or Spotify

@jasonlk Tweets of the Week

Paypal is worth $300 billion today

But it just makes sense even more will become unicorns betting on Shopify ecosystem

Perhaps the #1 mistake I see startups make after $1m ARR is hiring a VP of Sales that is good ...

But not good for >their< startup. A mismatch.

And revenue then goes down, not up.

Here’s a 5 part test to make sure that doesn’t happen:

If literally one of the best you have ever worked with starts a startup, /a>

Invest right then.

Later, even find out what the startup actually does.

It probably doesn't matter.

The mid-market is the graveyard of SaaS

Customers expect as many features as in enterprise, But only pay a fraction of what BigCos will

You need sales motions of enterprise, Without the ACV to support it

There are still multiple stakeholders, And real sales cycles

Still ...