The Most Important Lessons Learned as a Founder-CEO; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

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Hey SaaStr Community,

Reg is open for FREE SaaStr Money 2021 this week, July 14!

The top sessions will likely change a bit by the time we get there, but here are the Top 5 sessions so far:

# 5 - 3 Ways Payments Drive Growth for SaaS Companies with Adyen’s COO

# 4 - Secrets to Aligning Marketing and Revenue Strategies with Marqeta’s CMO

# 3 - The Non-Obvious things about the Future of Fintech with Plaid’s COO

# 2 - Ringing the Bell on Your Competition with Chime’s CEO

# 1 - How to Move Upmarket and Serve Multiple Customer Segments at the Same Time with Square’s Global Head of Sales

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New This Week

The Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned as a Founder-CEO (and VC)

Power laws are real. If your startup is worth $20m today, it can be worth $100m in a few years, and maybe, $1000m a few years after that. Value, brands and revenue compound.

Here are my learnings -->

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

Almost 10 Years On, I Remember Every Minute

A lot of early posts at SaaStr were about my learnings co-founding Adobe Sign / EchoSign. That was a while ago though and I try to keep some of those learnings now to a minimum and incorporate more of the learnings from the 25+ investments I’ve made, and 5 unicorns.

Still, so many of those lessons still hold -->

What’s the Proper Way to Commission Multi-Year Deals?

There’s no perfect answer here, but at least until you are at $10m+ ARR, my strongest recommendation is align around cash. Later, you will align around bookings (including multi-year bookings), and change the comps plan to align around bookings.

Align around bookings anywhere -->

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

The Meanest Thing VCs Do To Founders

Even today, a lot of founders worry about raising VC capital. They hear the stories about how things went sideways. And those stories often are true.

There’s only so much investors can really do -->

CEOs of Zapier, Walkme and Dialpad: How to Build Your First Management Team

As your company grows, eventually there will come a time to bring in subject-matter-experts and experienced executives. When members of your team can step up to lead it can make sense to promote internally but typically you will need to look outside of your company to your network, your investors, or headhunters to find the right talent.

Watch now -->

Hot Jobs

•	Calendly is looking for a Digital Marketing Manager to join and help with the build of their marketing growth team.

•	SaaStr is seeking a VP of Customer Success to work directly with leading CEOs, CMOs, VPs of Marketing and more on their partnership and sponsor strategy with Team SaaStr