The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

"Find a need and fill it" is a well-known maxim. After identifying the white space, though, understanding how to navigate category creation is key in order to grow and scale a company for the long term. For many SaaS businesses, the first category others consign you to may not match your ambitions as a founder. Entrenched forces have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and it takes courage to stick to your convictions about the future. As industries expand and mature, new strategies are needed to further deepen the competitive moat to secure and retain category leadership. Product is just the beginning: Ongoing success hinges on the growth and cultivation of the team, the company culture, and the larger stakeholder community—the work is never done.

When Braze was founded in 2011 with Bill Magnuson as CTO, smartphones were just becoming mainstream and mobile marketing was in its infancy. At that time, the category term 'customer engagement platform' did not exist yet, but the cofounders believed that technology which enabled brands to better understand and serve customers across mobile and beyond was the future for Braze. Fast forward 10+ years, and the founding team's conviction has enabled Braze to become a leader in the nascent customer engagement category, reaching $100M in ARR in eight years, then doubling that to $200M less than 18 months later, to then making its public company debut at the end of 2021. In this session, Braze Cofounder and CEO Bill Magnuson will share best practices and lessons learned from his experience scaling Braze and establishing the company as a leader in the recently formed customer engagement category, including:

• Having conviction for your vision will help you navigate the changing SaaS landscape as you grow your business. Staying true to your initial vision is critical to category creation and for long-term company success.
• Determine when and whether to pivot, or to adapt to shifting circumstances. Founders must be adept at identifying and articulating the unique value the business delivers, refining the message over time without deviating from foundational beliefs.
• Category leadership results from a community effort: customers, end users, partners, investors, analysts, and team members collaborate to build on the founders' vision.
• How and why a CTO founder might transition to CEO: Technical founders deeply understand product value and can take on the wider leadership role as they navigate the nuance of category creation.

Full video: https://youtu.be/T5r6ajAHyvI

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Tune into Founder Confidential with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Hubspot Founders Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan to hear their key learnings and considerations of what it takes to be a Founder in today's SaaS landscape.

Full video: https://youtu.be/gn01HIUyE9M

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It's no secret that 2022 has brought market shifts that even the previous two years lacked. While previously, investors were a bit more open and hyper-focused on growth, now SaaS VCs are more interested in proving efficiency alongside growth. As always, investors still have high-growth expectations, which have not changed. But in 2022, there is a new focus on efficiency. In fact, 82% of investors in a recent survey said that efficiency is more critical this year.

During this year's SaaStr Annual event, Christophe Janz, Partner at Point Nine Capital, shares the secret to attracting investors in the new landscape.

Full video: https://youtu.be/nBYHFm-H8pA

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Leading a scaling business requires systems and plans for various stages of growth. Dave McJannet shares lessons learned from scaling HashiCorp, including: how to implement overlapping systems for the business (finance, people, product, go-to-market); how to manage the layered time horizons of various teams (36 months for a CEO, 90 days for sales); and how to reinvent these systems as the company enters new phases of growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/KJk5B3R9rBw

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

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The number of global venture capital (VC) investments dipped in 2022, thanks to ongoing geopolitical tensions, turbulence in global capital markets, supply chain issues, and increasing interest rates. This has caused VC investors to be increasingly wary. With no end in sight to the economic uncertainty, VC investment could remain soft, with downward pressure on valuations resulting in decreasing levels of investment.

Founder and Managing Partner at Cowboy Ventures, Aileen Lee, discusses the state of the VC market in 2022 with Founder and CEO of SaaStr Jason Lemkin—the change in VC activities and seed deals, the importance of the board in the success of a startup, profitability and much more.

Full video: https://youtu.be/R3G6P19qHY4

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Amidst the volatility of today's economic climate and market, GTM leaders need to be especially savvy when it comes to their company growth strategies and earning their customers' love. A renowned enterprise software leader that has led revenue organizations and spearheaded the cloud GTM strategies at companies such as Oracle, New Relic and now Confluent, Erica Schultz is Confluent's President of Field Operations and will share what she has seen evolve in enterprise GTM and tips on how to thrive in the current environment. From PLG and consumption-based pricing, to value-based selling and driving efficient growth, Erica will share veteran insights that will help you develop your own successful GTM strategy.

Full video: https://youtu.be/j293NArWW38

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

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Anu Hariharan works with hundreds of startups annually as Managing Director at Y Combinator. Through experience, she explains five company-altering learnings from B2B startups that founders should consider at the earliest stages of their businesses.

Full video: https://youtu.be/pPgtmFaxkrc

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

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Product-led growth (PLG) is the consumerization of software—a strategy B2B software companies can learn from growth teams at successful consumer tech companies.

Stage 2 Capital's Co-Founder and Managing Director, Mark Roberge, breaks down what a consumer tech growth team looks like and how they operate. He advises bringing these features to a B2B growth team and then shares mistakes that B2B companies make while adding go-to-market (GTM) to PLG.

Full video: https://youtu.be/prLzBINL4tI

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

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Bessemer Venture Partners unpacks the most important trends of the cloud economy, and explores the new milestone entrepreneurs need to value above all else—reaching Centaur status, or $100M in ARR—and the paths to get there. Releasing insights for founders with big ambitions, Sameer Dholakia, Elliott Robinson, and Mary D'Onofrio share the insights from cloud benchmark data and dive into the strategies that three Centaur companies took to scale their cloud businesses to $100M ARR.

Full video: https://youtu.be/pUKwyAxwAqI

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

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Join Mailchimp Co-Founder Ben Chestnut and SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin in a follow-up to their popular fireside chat held during SaaStr @ Home 2020. Ben and Jason will chat about the highlights–and the challenges–of scaling a company like Mailchimp to $1B ARR.

Full video: https://youtu.be/5fx3qFD62ak

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

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