Don’t Let Churned Customers Become Angry Ex-Customers; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

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Hey SaaStr Community,

The other day, I had an experience I’ve never had in 14 years of building and buying SaaS: I became That Angry Customer. Really, an Angry Ex-Customer.

In this case, the vendor just went too far, too many times, and created disruption all across our little tiny team. Again and again and again. The details don’t matter. The learning was being on the other side.

For the first time ever, right or wrong, I felt so mistreated by a software vendor that I became … The “Crazy” Angry Ex-Customer.

What I saw from that was how, if you aren’t careful, a few angry customers can become an avalanche.

The Average SaaS Company IPO’s at $225m in ARR. And is No Longer in the Bay Area

The late-stage VC firm Meritech put together its annual SaaS report here and it slices the data in a few interesting ways. Only 33% of SaaS IPO’s in 2021 were HQ’d in the Bay Area. Wow, and down from 40% in 2020

MORE HERE

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by Owl Labs

WHAT IF THERE ARE NO NATURAL ACQUIRERS (FOR YOUR COMPANY)?

As the number of SaaS companies continues to grow and explode, and as SaaS changes and penetrates more and more market segments … it seems like there are more and more exciting SaaS companies without a natural acquirer. At least that I can see, or believe.

And if it’s IPO-or-bust … for many entrepreneurs at least, that’s pretty intimidating.

THE HIGHER-LEVEL QUESTIONS TO ASK

30+ TOUGH LEARNINGS FROM LOSING A TOP CUSTOMER

On both SaaStr University and Twitter, we had 30+ founders, CEOs and execs share their top, tough learnings from losing one of their top customers. There are some great teachable moments here, and also some deja-vu if you’ve been through it!

THE LEARNINGS

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

WHEN CAN ANGEL INVESTORS SELL THEIR SHARES?

There’s isn’t that much “liquidity” for startup shares, but there’s more than there used to be.

There are 2 basic ways for angel investors to sell their shares before an IPO or a sales (a so-called liquidity event).

THE ANSWER

LESSONS LEARNED IN HYPERGROWTH AND SCALING WITH CANVA CMO ZACK KITSCHKE AND SAASTR CEO JASON LEMKIN

Zach and Jason dive into the initial growth marketing strategies and framework behind Canva’s exponential growth as a start-up, the strategies for targeting and growing into the enterprise, and how to build out a global marketing function.

WATCH NOW

ClickUp is looking for a Vice President, Product Management to with engineering, design, and marketing to build world-class products; and assist in defining, articulating, and executing the go-to-market strategy.

DuploCloud is seeking an Account Executive to work with the sales team, VP sales, marketing team and the CEO managing the end to end sales process. You will be conducting high level conversations with engineering leaders, specifically CTOs and other engineering leaders to drive business and achieve your monthly quota of qualified pipeline.