10 Ways to Avoid BURNOUT in SaaS. And Go On and Build a Unicorn.

Hey everybody. This is the time of the year when a lot of us start to feel burnt out. I know, it happens to me. And it especially gets even stronger every three to four years. There's so many startups, you'll see them on TechCrunch or otherwise, and you'll see they sell around year five or so, even if they're doing 5, 10, 15 more million an ARR just because the founders get tired. And ultimately getting tired is going to be your biggest enemy in SaaS. You think it's going to be getting, getting that big deal done. You think it's going to be hitting the airplane for the year, but it's not. You'll eventually close that great customer if you keep at it. You will eventually hit that AR plan, even if it takes you a little longer than you thought or you have a bad year. No, ultimately it's getting tired that is the biggest thing keeping you when you have something from getting to a unicorn or beyond. So I want to give you 10 ideas to avoid burnout. And none of these are brilliant, brand new insights. None of these are something, at least for the most part, you've never heard before. But they all work. I've seen it work again and again. I've seen it myself. And so I want to outline 10 tips. And if you're feeling a little crispy and burnt, let these 10 rattle around your head and see if you can do one or two of them over the next quarter. Okay? Number one tip to avoid burnout, it really always works, is hire an extra VP that can be a true owner. And really there's three types of VPs you'll hire under you. You'll hire folks that somewhat underperform. Those will end up sucking up a lot of your resources and you'll probably have to manage them out. Then you'll hire two types of VPs that actually perform, that do their job, that hit their commit, that hit their number, that hit their goals. There's ones that just do that. The sales folks that hits the sales plan, the marketing folks that brings in the leads, the CS leader that hits the MPS and NRR goals. And that's great. Look, you're lucky if you can find a full management team of VPs that can all hit their goals. But what's even special is when one or two goes further and they're almost like a founder, they're a true owner. They take the entire company's success on their backs like you have. And you think all your VPs and key employees should do this but it's too much for 90% of the world. It's too hard to take all of that burden on your back. But you will find if you keep at this journey and you hire some VPs, you will find find some that are so romantic, that are so committed to the vision, they will take some of that burden on your back. And as an aside, make sure you at least get them extra equity, extra something, extra bonus. Make sure they know it. But when you find one of these, it will take some of the load off your back and you will be less burnt out when you have someone else to carry the load. Trust me. So if nothing else, look at the weakest part of your org, chart the weakest vp and go hire the very best person you can. And. And hopefully it's someone that will not only do the job, but take some of the burden of owning it all off your back. Say item one, the VP. That's a true owner idea. Number two, related to the prior. But hire a CEO, maybe earlier than you thought. And what is a CEO in SaaS? It's an amorphous title. Sometimes it could own internal stuff, sometimes it can own operations. The truth is, a CEO is someone that can own half of your direct reports. Like as a CEO or even as a cto, but as a founder, the. The most reports you can really own is 8. More than that is just too much. And what if you could cleave off half and have someone else manage those hires? If they're good, that can take a lot off your plate. And the exact parameters of that role can vary. It's hard for sales to come off your plate in many cases, or marketing. But in any event, someone that can at least own 20 to 40% of your reports can really take something off your plate. So even if you're not sure if you need a coo, you it's really your number two, or in Star Trek parlance, your number one. Go find your Riker or whomever and give yourself find the budget to make that higher. 3. This sounds silly, but fly business class once in a while. Stay in decent hotels. Take it easier on yourself. Eat a good meal. What I mean is, and some of us figure this out, some of us don't. Enough with the nickel and diming. When you don't have to. It's. It's not going to help the company if when you get off that flight to visit the customer, you have back pain. Okay? It's not going to help if you can't sleep in that terrible hotel room. Don't put the Tesla plaid on the company credit card. That's not cool. Even if maybe you could justify it. But go nicer. Let some of the stress off. Whatever you can do, take that Uber and if you can, at home, if you've got family, maybe ask your board for enough of a raise, you can get more help at home. Get someone to help you with housework, kids. You shouldn't be doing any of that. As little that stuff as you want. Once you have money, get help so that you can provide the most leverage. Fly business. Get help. Get an EA at work. Definitely budget yourself. You can find an ea, a chief of staff, whatnot that can make you more efficient. Start doing that as soon as you can afford it. I did. Number three. Number four. You'll hear this again and again from founders that are successful. But it's true. Take your vacations. Force yourself to take two weeks a year and go somewhere and try not to check more than twice a day and don't do anything. And whatever you do, no dumb staycations. They don't work. Okay, no working half the day, no working from home or whatever. You could do that once in a while too. It's great. We're basically all living a distributed life today. But that's not a vacation. And personally, somehow I got worse at this. The first time I was a founder, I knew this was true. It helped that I had an amazing co founder, but I went to Europe for two weeks and barely checked in and the company did great without me and I've never personally quite gotten back to that. But you got to take your real vacations. Trust in your team. Even if you've just got one or two other folks to carry the load, they'll have your back on vacation. They want you refreshed. They really do. So giving them up takes its toll. 5. Find a mentor. A real one. Again, you're going to get this advice a million times, but someone you can talk to about the big decision, the big decisions, the one a quarter, the two or three a year that really matter. Find the best ones you can and pay them if they have real money, which they probably do. Pay them in equity, even if they don't want it. Give them shares anyway. Give them enough shares that it feels fair and. And that you feel like you can hit them up on those couple big decisions a year. Those are the ones that matter. You're going to make 50 decisions a week as a founder, but there's two or three years that are going to be epic. Should I make this critical hire, can you talk to her? Should I sell my company? Should I raise the round at this crazy valuation? Should I do this partnership when the partner's asking for too much, really the decisions that are irreversible, that's where you need your mentor. And so many folks don't really have that. It's great. If maybe your angel Investor, your first VC, those are often, the later VCs are tough to confide in, but often your first one can kind of act like this. But find another, Find a, Find a CEO that's a couple stages above you, someone that can help you, can help you think through the irreversible decisions, the two or three year that really, really matter, and maybe three or four or five other things by email. It really, really helps. Okay, point six, raise a few extra bucks. Okay, what do I mean is, if you're fortunate enough to be able to raise capital, an angel round, a seed round, an A round or a B round, there are reasons to not go crazy. There are reasons to not raise far more capital than you need for no other reason. You have to pay it back, right? You often have to pay it back three to ten times back, what you raise. There's stress there, there is stress in raising too much money. That's not going to make it easier on you. That's not gonna, that's not going to avoid burnout. Too much money can create burnout if you can't handle it. But even worse is not enough. Even worse is not enough. And ask anyone that's invested in or worked or founded startups, 70 or 80% of them are going to tell you, at least in those early rounds of venture, they wish they'd had just a little more because they came up, they needed another three to four months, five months of Runway. I had this in both my startups. In my second one, Adobe Sign, Echo Sign, you know, we had, we needed six extra months. I had to go without salary and could you get a bridge round? And it worked, but that was too much stress. So my rough rule is especially very analytical. If you say, Look, I need $2 million in this seed round, look, that's hard to get, but if you're fortunate enough to be able to raise it, raise 2.4, 2.5, raise 20% more. And if you really can put it in a different bank account, not your own, another corporate account, but almost put it aside so that, so that you don't use it. But we all end up needing 20%, that little bit of extra dilution, 20% more than you planned. It often can de stress your life. It's worth it. Point six. Okay, and this one's a bit meta. Okay. But don't take it home after year one. Okay? What do I mean? This is advice I got from one of my mentors and it took me a while to understand it in my first startup because we got acquired in a year. But at some point, your significant other, your best friend, that doesn't work at your startup. It's too much. The stress and the drama, the almost running out of money, the crazy vp, the terrible hire, the lost customer. It's too much on your family, it's too much on folks you don't work with. You need those VPs internally that can take some of that burden to help de stress you. But your family can cannot be your outlet for your work stress. At least not after the beginning. And listen, those first six months of your startup, it's exciting for everyone. Share everything. But after that, don't overshare. If you burn out your family, you're going to burn out yourself even more. Share what you need to do. But again, be careful.8. It's almost the flip side of raise the extra 20%. But trust me on this one.8. To be less stressed is to burn less, earn less money. Make sure if you raise Money it lasts 24 months. Make sure you always have 12 months of Runway. If you always have at least 12 months of Runway, your life will be less stressful. Maybe even go cash flow positive when you don't need to. So that, that stress, that money stress, and we've all felt it, almost all of us, the founders, have known what's our zero cash date? When are we out of money? And we can internalize it. I've got six months in three days. I've got five months and 18 hours. But trust me, if you've run a startup and all of a sudden that clock doesn't matter because you're cash flow positive or you have 36 months of capital or more, it helps you avoid burnout. It's one less massive thing to stress about as a founder. It's not going to turn you turn your frown upside down. It's not going to change your life. But trust me, not having to worry about running out of money is epic. So burn burned less. Make sure, if nothing else, you exactly know your zero cash state that you're on top of, especially your weaker VPs. Those are the ones that will overspend and make sure, ideally you raise at least 24 months. If you're lucky enough to be able to raise capital, and ideally never go below 12 months, never go, go get even close to that empty light on the fuel tank, raise more or do a bridge or just lower your burn rate. We often end up burning more than we need to. And you don't need to be super cheap. I do want you to stay in a decent hotel and take a decent airline flight when you can afford it. But. But just, just burn less and you will be less stressed. 0.9. And this, this will sound unhelpful, but it's not 0.9. 9th idea to lower your stress rate to help avoid burnout. Grow faster now. What do I mean? Of course one of the sources of burnout and stress is not growing fast enough. Oh my God. Every everyone on TechCrunch is raising at a billion. My friend from my accelerator just raised 80 million. I can't even raise 2. I need to grow faster. 60% at 10 million is not fast enough. Maybe not, but here's the magic thing. I found it again and again with startups and even my own experience. If you can hire a great VP or two and grow faster, often just magic happens. If you can grow from into that top quartile of growth, even top third of growth, everything looks better. So seek out that great VP or two, find that great VP of sales, that VP of marketing, that can get you leads. It can be the greatest investment in the world. If it gets you out of too slow growing to feel good, into less stressful growing at a good clip, it really can help. And the other reason it also helps is if you can get that flywheel going just a little bit more, you'll get more resources, more money will come in to hire more people. Everything just gets easier. So look, if you're in a tough time, sometimes only time will solve a tough time. But a great VP or two will pull you out and faster growth will de stress things. Okay, point 10. We've said this many times on Saster, but it's true. If things are stressful, if you don't know what to do, if you're not growing fast enough, if the competition seems to be passing you by, if the world seems to be passing you by, sometimes you don't know what to do. You don't know how to get more customers, you don't know what features to build. You don't know how to get out of this pit. This is SaaS, okay? And there's one thing that always works because we have recurring revenue, at least most of us do, which is focus on your happy customers. If you're even close to 100% NRR and you treat your customers well one it's an annuity that 100% NRR is going to last forever. Datadog's at a billion in ARR and it still has 130% plus NRR at a billion in revenue and it's had it for 16 quarters. High NRR lasts forever. So lean into it. If you don't know what to do, just ask your customers. If you can't get more leads, just ask your existing customers what more they would like to buy from you. They will tell you if they love you. They will tell you what they will be paid more for. If you can't drive up NMR or ARR drive at NPS and CSAT drive, just go for happier customers. If the company's feeling a little demoralized for growth, turn NPS into your number one metric and turn growth into number two. Guys, let's get to a 60% or 60 NPS. Let's get to 120% NRR folks can rally about that around that. Because not everyone in your company necessarily knows how to get more leads or how to sell better or how to sell faster or even how to compete better. But every single person in your company, from support to marketing, sales to product to engineering to the top, knows how to make your customers happier. Get together, talk about it, even have fun with it. Everyone knows how to make customers happy. And that, if nothing else, will give you a bit more growth and will distress you because they're also your most profitable customers, is retaining you. Right? And in any event, high churn is super stressful. So if you need a quarter or two to take a pause and say, folks, not only are we going to just slow things down, we're going to focus on happy customers. Our goal the next two quarters, our number one goal, is not just hit our growth plan. We're going to take a little pressure off that, but we want to drive up nps, CSAT or nrr. Do it. This always works. Everyone gets it. It's a rallying call for the company, even in tougher times, and it will de stress your life.