SaaStr Annual 2024 is Sept 10-12 in SF Bay!! See You There!!
So I caught up with a VP of Sales who told me he wasn’t coming to SaaStr Annual this year for the first time. I asked why — what could we do better? Was it us? He said it wasn’t that. It was that his startup was “just barely growing 20% now, so I’m not going to travel much anymore, I’m slowing things down.” This is a tough one. Does Slower Growth => Lower Effort by the team? Is it a Doom Loop? This is a tough issue with no perfect answer that many founders and execs are facing today. If you’re in the 70% or so of B2B startups that are growing more slowly, do you cut the team some slack? If so, how much? And if you cut so much slack that there isn’t any true urgency, can a startup even survive, let alone thrive? I don’t know the perfect answer. What I do know is almost 100% of startups can do a >smidge< better than they are doing now. At least 10%-20%. That’s in fact been most of the post of all our SaaStr content for more than a decade. How to do 10%-30% better, with improvements, tweaks, and upgrades. Now going from say 80% growth to 100% growth can have an epic impact a few years down the road. But does going from say 20% growth to 25% growth by doing better have the same impact? That’s the tough part. It still matters. But it doesn’t compound at the same rate, and it doesn’t take you to the next echelon of startups. What I do know is that VP of Sales I talked about, 90% of their core ICP and customer base is at SaaStr Annual. He should be there. But if all it gets him is going from 20% to 25% growth this year, I get it. This is the challenge for founders at slower growing SaaS companies: you have to keep the team in the game. But you’ve also got to fight a total slowdown in inertia however possible. Usually, injecting some new energy into the team helps. Sometimes, setting micro-milestones (e.g., usage growth) that are doing better than revenue growth can help as well. At a minimum, founders, don’t let your own intertia falter.
Jason M. Lemkin What are you doing for first time attendees? Should I expect a gift 😁 Excited to attend this year!!
Jason Kerr
1w
We found changing the measure of success to be super helpful in keeping motivation and momentum forward looking. Using this time to improve internal ops and celebrating those successes, for instance. But mostly, its time to double down on your core purpose and speed up the rate of work, not slow it down. IMO.
IMHO - As 99% of startup organizations mature, they tend to prioritize stability and conformity, often at the expense of agility. The "no boat rockers" can be especially detrimental in revenue-generation and "the product ideation and features that win" balance gets rocked off it's anchor, the phases were where adaptability and creative problem-solving are still crucial. By rewarding those who simply fall in line, these most startup companies risk losing their competitive edge. The irony is that the same fearless, results-driven individuals who propelled the company to success are often casualties during these stages of startup growth. In my direct experience approaching 10 million in revenue this is always the bureaucracy stage that slows. (needs 1000 things to deliver, and makes everything 1000 things more complex, all while doing very little of the activities that actually grow startups.)
John Cutler
1w
This is where excellence around the inputs is so important. There are many things you can't control, but you can control the behaviors, rituals, and approach. You can control what you can control. The issue we're having now is that the situation is really testing leaders and their ability to make it psychologically safe to strive for excellence around the inputs, and potentially still fall short. A lot of founders are very results focused people. They don't take "no" or "I tried" for an answer. So the idea of creating a culture where people strive for excellence in the game — even if the score doesn't go your way -- is a little foreign. What underpins a lot of this "phoning in" behavior is fear. People don't want to sign up for big numbers because they are afraid it is impossible. And they don't trust their leaders to support them if they do the "right" things and still fall short.
You also can't keep doing what was working say 18-24 months ago and keep working at those levels. Something shifted, doesn't matter what it is, the correct effort needs to be applied to the environment. By the VP sales and everyone in sales and marketing. That means more calls, emails, booked meets, talking to more people, etc and if the audience is at SaasStr -- try to make an intro to nearly every person in that room. Now is the time to do more - not less.
Mikael K.
1w
Jason M. Lemkin I see rest of 2024 as clearly SaaS startup valuation correction , and I say 2025 most unlikely much a difference , considering Salesforce, Mongo, and dozen other SAAS companies announcing expectation for single digit growth , therfore the coming years is going to be challenging for any startup trying to become a decacorn , I doubt we will see any SaaS unicorn unless is hyped by AI or possibly cybersecurity .
If his ICP is there he should bring his CEO and have his team book coffee meetings with current and prospective customers. You learn a lot face to face in a comfortable atmosphere like SaaStr.
Xceed Growth
1w
Great insights on managing slower growth. Keeping the team motivated and finding small wins to boost momentum is crucial. Thanks for sharing this, it’s a reminder of the importance of continuous effort and energy injection.
Sounds like a lot of VPs of Sales might miss out on boosting their authority and expertise if they fail to attend this event too.
Chief Revenue Officer | VP Sales | Global Head of Enterprise Sales | Scaling Early Stage Ventures to Maturity | GTM Expert | Global B2B Enterprise Solutions Sales
1wDoom loop, you need to be where customers are. Don’t overthink it, cut elsewhere