SaaS is Dead!

sales

Jacco van der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design, a consultancy helping SaaS companies design, build and scale their sales efforts, talks with Alex Theuma about why SaaS as we know it is dead and what to do to stay alive.

The Power of the Network with Rachel Delacour

management

If Rachel Delacour had to pick one key thing that has moved the needle for BIME Analytics in more ways than one, building a strong network would be it. Every person The CEO surrounded herself with was picked smartly, trod with care, and nurtured to take up the mission of the SaaS cloud company. The effort paid off massively.

Customer Success Metrics that Matter

customer satisfaction

Helen Crowley, the VP of Customer Success at Socialbakers talks with Zoli Radnai, Director of Customer Care at Prezi, David Apple, VP Customer Success at Typeform and Krish Subramanian, co-founder of Chargebee about the philosophy and tactics they implement to minimise churn and learn from the users who leave. From Net MRR Churn to NPS and annual renewals, they all have their North Stars and share some of the A-ha moments they had and the decisions they made.

Building a $100 million ARR SaaS business without VC

bootstrapping | growth

Peter Coppinger, the CEO and founder of Teamwork.com talks with Alex Theuma about the things the Cork-based project management suite of tools for professionals is doing right and the mistakes it is making on the way to becoming a $100 million ARR bootstrapped business, taking over the world.
 

Delighting Your Customers - How and Why to Go that Extra Mile

customer satisfaction

Janna Bastow, the CEO, and Co-Founder of ProdPad shares her beliefs about the power of delighting customers, a knowledge that she has gained from hundreds (maybe thousands) of interviews with product managers. According to her, that starts with dismissing the Net Promoter Score and asking a far more important and insightful question. Watch the video or read the edited transcript to find out what that is, as well as what are the differences between delightful and satisfactory product features, what are some of the successful ways ProdPad has delighted their customers and what other companies do right in this domain, which Janna admires. 

Want Traction, Growth and Scale? Announcing the SaaStock 2017 Agenda

saastock

The SaaS Universe is coming to Dublin in September, rightfully expecting ROI on attendance. So let’s be straightforward about it: we're convinced that you as a SaaS Founder, executive, or investor in SaaS companies, will get a 10X ROI on your ticket. Here's why.

Lessons from Growing a Human Company with Pedro Magriço, Head of Growth at Typeform

growth | pricing

Pedro Magriço, Head of Growth, has been with Barcelona-based Typeform for the past three years and a half and has learned a ton about experimenting strategically, asking the right questions, balancing the act between monetization and virality, sticking to brand values and other key aspects to growth. Read on to learn some of his lessons.

5 Things Every SaaS Growth Marketer Needs to be Doing Today

marketing | growth

Guillaume Cabane, VP Growth @ Segment talks with Alex Theuma about the top 5 things that have helped the Analytics API and Customer Data Platform achieve incredible growth through using the two best tools for collecting data, focusing on the 5% of visitors that matter and initiating onboarding programs and dynamic content that are individually tailored.

Going From 0 to $300K MRR as a Self-funded SaaS Business

growth | marketing

What has it taken to grow from 0 to $300K MRR in the world of AgoraPulse? Five years filled with pain, many sleepless nights, and no or minimum wage salary for many months. But also patience and persistence not to give up. In this honest talk, recorded at the Paris stop of SaaStock on Tour, the co-founder of AgoraPulse, Emeric Ernoult talks about the dark 3 years it took the company to have a lift off, the lessons learned and how they got to profitability.

The Data-Driven Marketing Playbook with Hubspot, GoCardless and idio

marketing | growth

Are finding your target audience, determining the right KPIs to focus on, and scoring leads in pursuit of the ideal customers, all a bit too overwhelming? Elizabeth Yin, Partner at 500 Startups talks about all these and more data-driven marketing tactics with Nicola Anderson, VP Marketing at GoCardless, Kieran Flanagan, VP Marketing at HubSpot, and Andrew Davies, CMO and Co-Founder of idio.

The Most Important Thing You Need to Know About Marketing with Bill Macaitis

marketing | growth

Never fear mistakes. If Bill Macaitis could offer you one tip for achieving hyper-growth, it is that you must constantly innovate on your Go-To-Market strategy and organizational structure. Fearing mistakes and using old conservative tactics are the surest path toward low growth and mediocrity. Read on to see what the former CMO of Slack and Zendesk, SVP of Salesforce and now Board Advisor for other startups has learned about marketing and growing a team through this disposition and how it can help you to be a better CMO.​

Building a product and a product management team with Martin Henk, co-founder of Pipedrive [PODCAST] - The SaaS Revolution Show

product | hiring

Martin Henk, Co-Founder and Head of Product Management at Pipedrive tells us about the seven years worth of lessons learned at the Estonian sales CRM and pipeline management tool. From building the product and growing the product management team, to finding the best candidates and learning what is the single most important thing for product growth before a single line of code is written. 

The Developer CEO - Peter Coppinger, Co-founder, Lead Developer and CEO at Teamwork.com

video | saastock | dublin

Peter Coppinger – Founder/CEO/Lead Developer of Teamwork.com

In this brutally honest keynote, Peter tells us how he's a terrible CEO!  In building the €12m ARR Teamwork.com, he shares some of the huge mistakes he made along the way, including:

• The worst product launch ever
• Believing they didn't need Salespeople
• Having no deliberate hiring strategy and much much more

Podcast - When and How to Build a Customer Success Team with Dan Steinman, GM EMEA Gainsight

podcast

Dan Steinman, General Manager EMEA of Gainsight and Customer Success/Startup Veteran talks to Alex Theuma about when and how to build a Customer Success team.

Engineering your Sales Team for Hyper Growth

video | saastock | dublin | panel | growth

Panel Discussion at #SaaStock16: Alex Kayyal, Europe Head, Salesforce Ventures, hosts:

• Hampus Jakobsson, Co-Founder & CEO, Brisk 
• Fergus Gloster, SaaS advisor/Former MD Europe Marketo & SVP EMEA Salesforce
• Orla Moran, Founder, Selling Through Spirituality, ex Head of Europe at New Relic

This discussion covers:

• The 6 Cs of Hiring
• Hiring Mistakes
• Training and Onboarding
• Why you should get to know your first 10 hires very well
• Culture and fit

Building a $100m SaaS business? Think people, purpose & product - from SaaStock on Tour, London, 15th March 2017 at Salesforce Tower

video | saastock | london | tour | thoughts

SaaStock on Tour London, 15th March 2017, Salesforce Tower.

Keynote by Stephen Millard, Chief Platform Officer at Notion Capital.

Stephen talks about Notion Capital's criteria for investment decisions, and what they've learned from their investment portfolio about the characteristics of success and live examples of Founder journeys including:

• Exceptional People
• Solving an industry-defining global problem
• Fundamental ability to execute
• Obsession
• Sense of Purpose
• Self Awareness

The recipe to building a great company with Liz Cain, VP GTM OpenView Partners - The SaaS Revolution Show podcast

podcast | growth | lead gen

Liz Cain Vice President of Got to Market at OpenView Ventures talks to Alex Theuma about the recipe to building a great company.

Achieving Meaningful Exits in SaaS - Mark MacLeod, Founder at SurePath Capital

video | saastock | dublin | stats

Mark MacLeod – Founder at SurePath Capital Partners, keynote speaker at #SaaStock16

In this presentation, Mark:

• shares statistics on 2 years of tracking exits in Europe
• reveals some interesting patterns
• who's buying, and types of buyers
• outlines some steps to take in preparation for exit

UK vs US Funding environment & how to build a strong Sales Team - from SaaStock on Tour, London, 15th March 2017 at Salesforce Tower

panel | video | saastock | interview | london | tour

SaaStock on Tour London, 15th March 2017, Salesforce Tower.

Panel Discussion: UK vs US Funding Environment & How to Build a Strong Sales Team

Hosted by Alex Kayyal, Europe Head, Salesforce Ventures and featuring:

John Thompson, CEO & Co Founder, User Replay
Dmitry Aksenov, CEO & Co Founder, DigitalGenius
James Osmond, GM EMEA, Triptease

The operational learnings of Hotjar getting to $7 million ARR within 24 months - The SaaS Revolution Show podcast

podcast | operations | growth

David Darmanin, Co-Founder and CEO of Hotjar discusses the operational learnings from having reached $7 Million ARR within 24 months, being founded in Malta and with a remote organisation.

Lessons in Scaling from Slack, Box and Gainsight - from SaaStock on Tour, London, 15th March 2017 at Salesforce Tower

video | panel | london | tour | saastock

SaaStock on Tour London, 15th March 2017, Salesforce Tower.

Panel Discussion: Lessons in Scaling from Slack, Box and Gainsight

Hosted by Dan Steinman, GM EMEA at Gainsight, and featuring:

Dan Farkkas, Senior Director, Customer Success at Box
Rav Dhaliwal, Head of Customer Success EMEA at Slack

Lessons Learned from 3k SaaS Companies - Patrick Campbell, CEO at Price Intelligently

video | saastock | dublin

Keynote from #SaaStock16, Patrick Campbell, CEO at Price Intelligently speaks about the danger of focussing on acquistion at all costs. Retention and monetisation can lose out to acquisition, but is that the way to go, and how will you know? Patrick's scary talk looks at how software is going to zero, at the normalised value of features over time, how cost of acquisition is going up, and, how companies who say they are doing customer development aren't really doing it at all. This talk will really get you thinking.

The DocSend Growth Story - With CEO Russ Heddleston - The SaaS Revolution Show podcast

podcast | growth

Russ Heddleston, CEO and Co-founder guides us through the growth story of DocSend

Improve your Retention with this One Change - - David Cancel, CEO at Drift

video | saastock | dublin

Keynote from #SaaStock16, David Cancel, CEO at Drift explains how making one change can have a profound impact on your retention figures.  What is that change?  Get the incentives right!  Sounds simple right?  In his session, David gives excellent insights about: 

• External v Internal Incentives
• Leveraging Cognitive Bias
• Incentives & Disincentives
• Incentives and the dark side of Metrics
• Aligning incentives across Marketing, Sales, Product departments

Genius or luck? What it takes to build a successful SMB SaaS business - Martin Henk, CEO at Pipedrive and Alex Ferrara, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners

interview | video | saastock | dublin

Fireside Chat at #SaaStock16: Alex Ferrara – Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners interviews Martin Henk – Co-Founder at Pipedrive

Hear Martin speaking about 

• the early days of Pipedrive; how being door-to-door salesmen led to build a SaaS product
• why Europe is such a good fertile ground for creating SaaS companies and access to capital
• opening a US office and compensation for global teams
• communicating & decision making for global teams
• product-market fit
• growth and metrics
• raising capital and exit strategy
• and near-death experiences!

4 ways attending #SaaStock17 can help your SaaS business

interview | dublin

SaaStock17 is under 8 months away and tickets are selling like hot cakes. We talked to four  of the early birds, those returning founders who have committed to coming back for a second time. We wondered what their motivation was for committing so far ahead of time, given that a founders schedule is more than full and their time is more than precious.

Building a Category Leading SaaS Business: How we did it - - Jos White, Partner, Notion Capital; Nikos Moraitakis, CEO, Workable; Tim Pickard, CMO, NewVoiceMedia; Nicolas Dessaigne, CEO, Algolia.

video | interview | panel

The Panel: 

Jos White, Entrepreneur turned investor, founded MessageLabs in 2000, an anti-spam, anti-virus provider, and sold to Symantec for €700m.  Nikos Moraitakis, founded Workable in 2012, has rasied $34m and scaled to employ 100 people in Greece and USA. Tim Pickard, CMO, NewVoiceMedia, a company disrupting Customer Communications space that has raised $141m in funding. Nicolas Dessaigne founded Algolia in 2012, providing Search as a Service, employing over 50 people, and having raised $21m.

In this panel they discuss how to scale a European SaaS business:

• Focus on one part of a large market, get really good at that
• Stay really open minded, be ready to be wrong
• Spend money on resources to help you grow
• Even if you have investment, stay lean until you reach product-market fit
• Don’t take on money too soon.
• Invest aggressively in growth post product-market fit
• You have to scale into the US. You have to go there.
• Use your European difference to your advantage.

Announcing SaaStock On Tour - Bringing the essence of SaaStock to a city near you

tour | dublin | london | barcelona | paris | amsterdam | tel aviv | berlin

SaaStock is hitting the road and coming to a city near you, in the run up to the main event in September. Read more to find out why, where and when.

14 Startups who have raised $54M+ since SaaStock 2016

saastock

In September over 700 SaaS founders, executives, investors and media from across the globe joined us in Dublin’s RDS to attend the inaugural SaaStock. In the past four months we have noticed companies who attended raise fresh funding, in some cases from investors who also attended SaaStock. Did we play any part in it? We’d like to think so….

Here is a list of 14 startups who’ve closed $54M+ in funding since attending SaaStock:

8 DOs and DON’Ts for SaaS Startups - Christoph Janz, Managing Partner, Point Nine Capital & Nick Franklin, CEO, ChartMogul

video | saastock

The title of this #SaaStock16 talk is 8 DOs and DON'Ts for SaaS Startups. Actually there are 7 DON'Ts and 1 DO shared here by Christoph and Nick, who between them have seen all the pitfalls for early stage SaaS companies along the way. Watch now for deeper dive into their 8 top tips.

Account-based Prospecting: How to build an outbound Sales Strategy in 60 days - Bastiaan Janmaat, CEO & Co-founder, Datafox

video

In his presentation at #SaaStock16 Bastiaan Janmaat, CEO and Co-Founder at Datafox, explains how they left it too late to set up their outbound Sales Strategy. He outlines their 4 step approach to turn things around:

• Pick the right companies to go after
• Build a relationship by taking a personalised approach
• Incentivise your reps to do the right things that you want them to do
• Support your sales team with collateral and marketing efforts to educate your future customers

Leo Widrich and Robin Wauters at SaaStock 2016 - The Science of Running Great Experiments and How to Build your Growth Team

interview | video | saastock

​Robin Wauters of Tech.eu chats to Leo Widrich CEO and CoFounder at Buffer, on stage for #SaaStock16 which took place at RDS, Dublin, Ireland, in September 2016. Leo speaks about the early days trying to sustain the company, learning about pricing, being a product-first company, demonstrating value to customers, True Activation Metrics, testing and much much more.

Peter Reinhardt, CEO, Segment: Finding Product Market Fit

video | interview

On September 22nd 2016 in Dublin Ireland, Peter Reinhardt – CEO, Co-Founder of Segment was keynote speaker for #SaaStock16. In this, our first video release from the conference, Peter tells the story of Segment’s journey to Finding Product Market Fit. He shows us how, at various points along the way, he had almost convinced himself that they had found it on several occasions. When they did finally reach that sweet spot, he tells how it felt, what it looked like, and how they just knew.

Time to re-up on growth for your SaaS

editorial

Get yourselves ready for more education, proliferation and amplification of your SaaS! Team SaaStock are thrilled to formally announce that Europe’s leading B2B SaaS Conference is Back in September. Back in Dublin. Back to bring you twice as much value as the 2016 edition and looking to turn your SaaS up to eleven!

Around the World in 10 SaaStock Founders

editorial

Last week in our Attendees Guide to SaaStock you learned that we’re expecting people from over 30 countries at SaaStock. They’ll be storming Dublin in just a few days, excited to learn, teach, and yes, network. Between SaaS.City, the SaaStock opening and closing parties, access to breakout rooms, and the SaaStock pub, there will be…

The Attendees Guide to SaaStock

guide

We ran the numbers and discovered that we have over 700 people representing 30+ countries signed up for SaaStock 2016. For out-of-towners and Dubliners alike – here’s our guide to rocking SaaStock. But wait! What is SaaStock? In case you didn’t already know: It’s simply the greatest European SaaS conference of its size. Here’s why…

Patrick Campbell on how Pricing Can Work for You

thoughts

Fun fact: Patrick Campbell, founder of Price Intelligently found out that on average companies spend a mere 8 hours pricing their product. That’s 8 hours over the company’s lifetime. What?! Don’t do that. Instead, learn this: Pricing is the exchange rate for the value you’re creating for your product – it’s that important. Pricing decisions…

Your Team x SaaStock = Success

editorial

You already know the benefits of attending SaaStock, but what about the importance of bringing your entire team along for the journey? Well, let’s break it down to this – multiply the knowledge gained and community built as an individual with each team member you bring. How do those numbers look? If you’re still not…

Win your chance to introduce your favourite speaker at SaaStock!

competition

What if you could introduce your favourite speaker onto the SaaStock stage on September 22nd? We’re offering 5 SaaStock attendees the opportunity to bring their rockstar-founder-idols onto the stage. (Think: Des Traynor, Peter Reinhardt, Leo Widrich and more?

SaaStock 2016 by the numbers (so far)

stats

SaaStock 2016 rundown in numbers - we looks at the stats and figures that made up SaaStock in Dublin 2016!

Customer Success-Driven Growth with Lincoln Murphy

opinion

This article was first posted on Silicon Republic on 4th August 2016 According to Lincoln Murphy, Growth Architect and Customer Success Strategist, the best SaaS companies model their operations around customer success. These companies are deliberate about the customer journey.

Ten more reasons to buy your ticket for SaaStock now!

editorial

700 global B2B tech founders and investors are gathering for SaaStock, a conference for SaaS companies in Dublin on September 22nd, 2016. The Conference has a Rockstar line-up of Global SaaS experts in town for the event, including: Founder at Intercom, Des Traynor CEO at Segment, Peter Reinhardt Stacey Bishop of Scale Venture Partners Lincoln…

Turn up the SaaS!!! 3 Epic Reasons to Attend SaaStock.

thoughts

SaaStock is the first SaaS conference of this scale in Europe. If that’s not enough reason to come, read on. SaaStock will amplify your network, crank up your pipeline, and give you the SaaS Playbook. In other words, SaaStock will turn your SaaS up to 11. AMPLIFY YOUR NETWORK SaaS growth can…

SaaS apps to drive your company’s growth

thoughts

What SaaS applications do you recommend founders use during different phases of their company’s growth? Three companies featured on the SaaStock panel – Driving Enterprise Hyper-growth using SaaS Applications – give their recommendations on what SaaS applications founders should use during different phases of growth. They have a long list of apps and three main…

How to build a recruiting machine with Nikos Moraitakis, CEO of Workable

interview

Nikos Moraitakis, Co-Founder and CEO of Workable joins Alex Theuma, Organiser of SaaStock in this third Google Hangout, to discuss: Hiring for SaaS companies.

Peter Reinhardt on SaaS Business Intelligence

interview

Peter Reinhardt, CEO and Co-founder of Segment, joins Alex Theuma of SaaStock, to discuss: SaaS Business Intelligence.

Des Traynor on Product and Building Category Leading SaaS Businesses: Google Hangout

interview

In this first SaaStock Google Hangout, Des Traynor, Co-Founder and CSO at Intercom, talks to Alex Theuma about: Intercoms recent $50 Million fund raise, the current markets for private and public SaaS companies and product amongst many other things.

37 Great Minds. One Event. Meet the Fabulous SaaStock Speakers

interview

September 22nd is a date as a Founder, Exec or Investor in B2B SaaS you should not ignore. On that day, 37 of some of the brightest minds (and nicest people) in the startup world will come together to share their insights, experiences, and offer advice to help you turn your SaaS startup up to…

A lesson in SME SaaS With Pipedrive

interview

What makes the new wave of SME-focused SaaS companies tick? This article was first published in ArcticStartup on 5th April 2016 As pointed out by Jason Lemkin in an article from July 2014, “If you look at the SaaS companies that have IPO’d to date, you’ll see one common theme: almost all sell to Large…

James Wise, Partner at Balderton – The quick 6 interview

interview

James Wise is the youngest person to make Partner in Balderton’s history. Balderton being Balderton Capital, one of the largest technology focused European Venture Capital firms that invests in European founders with global ambition.

3 Leading VCs’ View of SaaS in Europe

interview

With big SaaS names like Zendesk, Intercom, Teamwork, New Voice Media, and many more besides emerging out of Europe in recent years, it is clear that SaaS in Europe is on the up. As these breakout success stories blaze a trail for further innovative SaaS entrepreneurs to follow, the SaaS ecosystem in the region is…

Postcard From Home: Tech Dublin Made Me

interview

This article was originally published on The Dublin Globe on 1/02/2016 Dublin in January conjures a litany of (mainly negative) thoughts in my mind: cold, wet and dark. Returning home for a short trip to meet the great and the good of the Dublin startup ecosystem, however, I can happily say that my negative…

A Journey from idea to fully fledged SaaS conference: Why we built SaaStock

editorial

In the beginning Back in Feb 2015 I started SaaScribe, a blog for the SaaS Startup community by The SaaS Startup community. My idea was that I would be one of many SaaS Enthusiasts, publishing resourceful content on SaaScribe for founders and those in SaaS wanting to learn more about the booming industry.