SaaStr Annual Begins; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

Toast … we’ve all used it in a restaurant or 10 by now. Now with a $30B (!) IPO behind them, we can take a look behind its metrics. And they are both incredibly impressive — 118% growth at $3B run-rate and $500m in ARR in software alone may be an all-time record — but also, perhaps not SaaS?

A lot of classic SaaStr advice has been how to spot the best potential VPs. When to hire them. How to interview them and qualify them. What they really do. Because to scale, you are going to need to add a true management team, and then a second one, and then layers of management.

Once you hit Initial Traction in SaaS, say that first $1m-$1.5m in ARR, you’ll finally find something that works. One channel, often. A channel that works. Once you do, one thing I’ve learned, both as a founder, an investor, and now again at SaaStr: every marketing initiative, and every channel, plateaus.

In this era of unprecedented unicorn production and public SaaS multiples, where it looks like every Series A on TechCrunch is $30m+, it can seem like getting venture funded must be easier than ever. It isn’t.

The other day Nick Mehta CEO of Gainsight invited me to talk about the latest trends in Customer Success. The full session is below. A few points we dove in on: Should your VP of CS be most focused on NRR or Churn? The real answer is often — whatever they are best at.