If Your CRO, CCO or CPO Doesn’t Meet With Customers Their First Week On The Job … Move On. ...
SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin warns that a newly hired CRO, CCO or CPO must meet with customers in their first week, or the company should apologize for the mis‑hire and let them go. He says skipping direct customer interaction signals a lack of urgency and will impede alignment across sales, product, and customer success. Recruiting senior revenue leaders often takes months, so a mis‑hire is especially expensive. Lemkin urges firms to act quickly, own the mistake, and replace the executive to protect growth momentum.
5 Interesting Learnings From MongoDB at $2.4 Billion in ARR
MongoDB reported $2.4 billion in ARR, with revenue growth rebounding to 24% and its stock up about 45% year‑to‑date. Seventy percent of Atlas ARR now comes from customers that use at least one additional platform capability, and those multi‑product users generate...
What’s Working in GTM Right Now
Surveying 195 software GTM leaders, the inaugural 2025 State of B2B GTM report finds companies juggling heavy channel experimentation—an average of five core GTM channels plus 5.5 experiments—while inbound (23%), outbound (19%) and account‑based GTM (18%) remain the most common...
Sabbaticals Keep Our Attrition at Bay
37signals says offering a six-week sabbatical every three years has been a simple, effective tool to curb churn in an industry where average tenure is about 18 months. The company reports the policy — in place for roughly 15 years...
From Zero to Eight Figures in 18 Months: Decagon CEO’s Playbook for AI-Native SaaS Growth. And Why They Partnered With...
Decagon, founded in late 2023, scaled to eight‑figure ARR in roughly 18 months by selling AI customer‑service agents to major enterprises including Hertz and Chime, claiming roughly $800K in annual savings for every $250K spent. Backed by Accel at Series...
AI in Tech Isn’t So Much About Laying Off Humans. It’s About AI Backfills
Jason Lemkin explains that SaaStr has replaced departing employees with AI agents as a routine backfill, not as a cost‑cutting layoff, and now runs over 20 agents covering sales, marketing, support, RevOps and operations. He notes that AI agents require...
The Brutal Truth About Series B: Only 1 in 3 Deals Even Double Investors’ Money, Per Latest Carta Data
Carta’s analysis of 547 U.S. startups that raised primary Series B rounds in 2018 shows that only about one‑third of those investments doubled investors’ money, while 66% delivered two‑times or less – including 38.6% that are now worth the same or...
The Change Economy with Bonfire Ventures’ Brett Queener: Why Your Product Must Ship Every 30 Days or Die
Bonfire Ventures partner Brett Queener warns that AI‑driven “agentic” software forces a new SaaS playbook: companies must ship major product updates roughly every 30 days or risk being outcompeted. He advises starting small with demos and rapid trials, embedding continual...
“Cursor Is a Much Better Product Manager than I Ever Was”: How This PM Uses AI for PRDs, Jira Tickets,...
Dennis Yang, Chime’s principal product manager for generative AI, says he uses Cursor as a no‑code product‑management hub to generate PRDs, push documentation to Confluence/Notion, create Jira tickets, and automate status reports and comment replies. His workflow leverages Model Context...
SaaStr AI App of the Week: Higgsfield — The Video AI Platform That’s Crushing It Where Everyone Else Is Still...
Higgsfield, a mobile‑first AI video and image platform, is gaining rapid traction with a “click‑to‑video” UX that eliminates prompting and produces cinematic short clips via curated presets. The startup has attracted over 11 million users and 1.2 billion social impressions...
5 Tips For Pitching VCs for The Very First TIme
Veteran founder Jason Lemkin offers practical advice for first‑time founders pitching VCs: rehearse with experienced founders, craft a compelling opener that highlights your top growth metrics, be candid about weaknesses without leading with them, and deliver a strong product demo....
🧠 Community Wisdom: Diagnosing Early-Stage Churn, Automating Cross-Department Release Comms, Paying for UserTesting.com, Integrating Prototypes Into Your Product Development Process,...
The Community Wisdom newsletter roundup highlights practical product and growth tactics from a members-only Slack community, including diagnosing early-stage churn, automating cross-department release communications, budgeting for UserTesting.com, and integrating prototypes into development workflows. Contributors shared actionable diagnostics and process templates...
Scaling to $3B: How Clio Built a Vertical SaaS Powerhouse with AI and Innovation with CEO Jack Newton
Clio has grown over 17 years from the first cloud practice‑management tool for lawyers into a $3 billion vertical‑SaaS platform with about $300 million in ARR, 1,500 employees and a $900 million Series F. The company built a multi‑product stack...
New Woo
WooCommerce 10.3 was released ahead of Black Friday/Cyber Monday, introducing checkout improvements, built-in tracking for cost of goods sold, and a beta MCP server that lets AI assistants (like Claude, Cursor, VS Code and other MCP-compatible clients) interact directly with...
Product-Market Fit Is No Longer Static
Venture investor Tomasz Tunguz argues product-market fit (PMF) is no longer a one-time milestone but a continuous condition because rapid advances in AI are constantly reshaping customer needs and technical possibilities. He points to firms that lost PMF between 2021–2024,...
5 Interesting Learnings From Klaviyo at $1.2 Billion in ARR
Klaviyo is emerging as an undervalued SaaS leader after hitting $1.2B in ARR, trading at just 6.1x ARR despite 32% YoY growth and top‑7% Rule of 40 performance. The firm is driving durable expansion via multi‑product adoption (54% of ARR),...
Your Pricing Is (Probably) Broken
SaaS and AI startups largely have broken pricing: founders default to flat fees, feature bundles, seat-based and usage models that misprice customers and leave revenue on the table. Poyar highlights concrete fixes — e.g., add premium editions (50–100% higher price...
From Zero to 20 AI Agents in 10 Months: The SaaStr Playbook for Actually Deploying AI Agents That Work
SaaStr scaled from zero to 20 AI agents in 10 months by prioritizing aggressive training over vendor hunting—committing 30 days of daily tuning up front and an hour a day ongoing—to drive real revenue outcomes. The company ingested 20 million...
Why SaaStr AI London 2025 Is Where You Learn AI + GTM From The People Actually Doing It. At...
SaaStr AI London 2025 (Dec. 1–2 at Park Plaza Westminster Bridge) positions itself as a hands‑on conference for B2B leaders to learn AI‑powered go‑to‑market playbooks directly from operators—over 100 speakers including OpenAI, Intercom, Databricks and Wiz are slated to present....
How This Yelp AI PM Works Backward From “Golden Conversations” To Create High-Quality Prototypes Using Claude Artifacts and Magic Patterns...
Yelp product manager Priya Badger outlined a conversation‑first approach to building AI features, starting with curated “golden conversations” and working backward to design realistic prototypes and interfaces. She demonstrated using Claude to generate and refine dialogue, Claude Artifacts to embed...
10 Things To Know About Raising Venture Capital for The First Time
Raising venture capital is a disciplined, sales‑like process that founders should treat as a long-term relationship-building exercise rather than a one-off transaction. Investors prize timing, clear traction and unit-economics (ARR, growth rate, CAC, LTV, burn multiple), and founders are advised...
How to Measure AI Developer Productivity in 2025 | Nicole Forsgren
Nicole Forsgren, creator of the DORA and SPACE productivity frameworks and Senior Director of Developer Intelligence at Google, argues in advance of her new book Frictionless that traditional developer productivity metrics are often misleading and must be replaced with measures...
Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 10 Metrics Series A Investors Look At?
Jason Lemkin outlines the top 10 metrics seed‑stage SaaS startups must prioritize to secure a Series A, led by rapid ARR growth (ideally 7–15% month‑over‑month toward $1M ARR) and strong retention signals like 100%+ NDR and 90%+ GRR. He emphasizes...
SaaStr AI App of The Week: Alloy — The AI Prototyping Tool That Actually Looks Like Your Product (Not Some...
Alloy, an AI prototyping tool from the makers of Index, captures live product pages and generates on‑brand, production‑looking UI prototypes from plain‑English prompts, letting PMs iterate features in minutes rather than weeks. The startup says it has 10,000+ signups and...
Competition Is Really Heating Up in Our Market. What Should We Do?
Jason Lemkin warns that intensifying SaaS competition requires measured diagnosis and an aggressive, customer‑focused response rather than panic. He advises tracking win/loss rates, doubling down on top customers, accelerating feature gap fixes, and hunting for a 10x differentiator, while emphasizing...
Snowflake’s AI Revolution: How AI Transformed Marketing and Sales at Scale with Snowflake’s CMO and Founding CRO
Snowflake executives Denise Persson and founding CRO Chris Degnan outlined how the company has operationalized AI across marketing and sales to drive measurable ROI, scaling AI adoption to 90% of its 450-person marketing team and serving over 10,000 customers. Internal...
20VC X SaaStr Is Back!! The New Rules of Venture: Portfolio Construction, Kingmaking, and When Founders Walk Away
Venture investing is being rewritten as AI startups compress time-to-unicorns and force a rethinking of portfolio construction: early-stage funds now need ~20–25 initial bets before concentrating ~75% of capital into 3–5 winners, while the exit threshold has risen from ~$200M...
In Startups, The Harder You Work in Sales, The More Good Leads You Get
Jason Lemkin argues that in startups the highest-quality leads concentrate with the hardest-working, most prepared sales reps, creating a self-reinforcing “hustle feedback loop.” He cites internal data showing top-quartile activity reps closed deals at 2.3x the rate, had 31% larger...
5 Critical Phases of Building Your SaaS Sales Machine: Jason Lemkin + Harry Stebbings
SaaStr co-founder Jason Lemkin and investor/podcaster Harry Stebbings updated their deep-dive guide on building a SaaS sales machine, refreshing a 20+ minute playbook for 2025 that outlines five critical phases for creating a first sales team. The piece details practical...
The Odds of Making It
A new look inside startup growth from zero to $25 million ARR
AI Deals Are Scaling to Massive Valuations. But In Many Cases—Also Massive Dilution. See E.g., OpenAI
So there has never been a “start-up” like OpenAI. Already with 800,000,000+ users and a breathtaking $500 Billion (!) valuation. But it’s also raised and spent epic amounts. So as the chart from FT below shows — all the historic...
If You Ever Think “Should I Fire This Person?” Even Once … Well, Then It’s Time
A new article emphasizes that managers should act decisively when doubts about an employee's performance arise, suggesting that if a leader contemplates firing someone even once, they should proceed with the termination. The piece argues that extending additional chances may...
Everyone Should Be Using Claude Code More
In a recent discussion, Lenny highlighted the transformative potential of Claude Code, an AI tool that operates locally on users' devices, significantly enhancing productivity for non-technical individuals. Unlike cloud-based solutions, Claude Code boasts capabilities such as file organization, image enhancement,...
Everyone Should Be Using Claude Code More
How to get started, and 50 ways non-technical people are using Claude Code in their work and life
The Data Pendulum Swings to Consolidation
Fivetran and dbt Labs have announced a merger in an all-stock deal, creating a combined entity with an anticipated annual recurring revenue (ARR) nearing $600 million, signaling a strategic shift towards consolidation in the data infrastructure market. This merger reflects...
Programming Bottom-Up
Evals, Error Analysis, and Better Prompts: A Systematic Approach to Improving Your AI Products | Hamel Husain (ML Engineer)
Watch now | 🎙️ How to build better AI products through data-driven error analysis, evaluation frameworks, and systematic quality improvement
Dear SaaStr: I Want to Keep Doing 1-on-1s With My VPs, But How Do I Streamline Them?
Dear SaaStr: I Want to Keep Doing 1-on-1s With My VPs, But How Do I Streamline Them? 1-on-1s may be partially out of fashion, but most CEOs I work with still do at least some of them. 93% of you...
Dear SaaStr: What’s Your Top Advice For All New B2B Founders?
A veteran SaaS VC advises new B2B founders to temper speed with caution, recommending they pause on uncertain big decisions and extend runway budgets by 6‑12 months beyond original forecasts. He stresses the importance of building a aligned founding team...
Dear SaaStr: How Do You Draw The Line Between Founder and First Employee?
The piece advises that the line between founder and first employee should be drawn by timing and commitment: founders are present before a name, product, code or funds, take essentially all the risk and work for little to no salary....