Why It’s Never the User’s Fault; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

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Hey SaaStr Community,

I know as founders you know this, but perhaps the rest of the SaaS world doesn’t. It’s a simple rule.

It’s never the user’s fault.

Especially when it is. It’s the 2020s! Business software should be as easy to use as a social network. If it isn’t, then at least you should try and strive for that level of ease of use and familiarity.

Don't let user error — which is real of course — ever be an excuse. The best products just iterate as much of it away as possible

> Why it's never the user's fault

New This Week

5 Interesting Learnings from GitLab at $250M in ARR

So GitLab is one of those ones that always was doing well. It was exciting at YC 2015 Demo Day. It was exciting as it scaled to be a more “enterprise” product. And the engine really never stopped running, and this week it IPO’d at $250m in ARR, growing a stunning 69% year-over-year, with 3,600+ customers at $5k or more in ACV.

Here are the 5 interesting learnings -->

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by Platform.sh

Your VP of Sales Shouldn't Be Perfect

Do your best to optimize your VP of Sales hire around your target ACV. If your average customer is $50,000 in ACV, and you hire a great VP of Sales with lots of experience at that price point … then they may not be as good at $5,000 and $500,000 deals. But at least they're optimized around your core deal.

No VP of Sales is great at every deal size -->

5 Tips To Minimize “Churn and Burn” Behavior in Your Sales Team

As you scale your sales team, unless you are very careful whom you hire and how you train them, incentives being what they are in variable compensation, some negative behavior will creep in. Many call it “Churn and Burn” or other variants. Salespeople, often intentionally, but sometimes through poor training and/or product ignorance, often way oversell a SaaS product. It’s bad for everyone.

Here's how to avoid it -->

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

The Top Customer Success Sessions from Annual 2021

Getting customer success right is one of the most powerful levers in SaaS. Upsell + expansion with existing customers costs 62% less than acquiring new customers ($0.63 upsell + expansion CAC vs $1.67 new customer CAC, per KeyBanc 2021 Private SaaS Company Survey). Here are five of the customer success talks from the conference.

Learn from the experts -->

State of the Cloud with Bessemer Venture Partners

State of the Cloud 2021 with Bessemer Venture Partners

At SaaStr Annual 2021, Byron Deeter, Mary D’Onofrio, and Elliott Robinson of Bessemer Venture Partners share a state of the cloud economy, tactical lessons and case studies for early-stage founders, private market analysis, alongside key predictions and trends driving innovation.

Watch now -->

Hot Jobs

•	Algolia is looking for a Revenue Enablement Manager to create, define, and optimize onboarding, learning & development & strategic GTM projects for revenue roles at Algolia

•	Nylas is seeking a Director of Product Marketing to manage and hire the team, execute on the product marketing strategy, and work closely with their Director of Product peers to drive topline business metrics like revenue and net expansion