9 Signs A StartUp Isn't Going to Make It with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Jason Lemkin lists nine startup red flags: poor market understanding, slow hiring of senior execs, sluggish product iteration, recurring excuses, surprises instead of telegraphed bad news, reduced transparency, weak competitive knowledge, manipulative CEO behavior, and uncontrolled burn. He also covers when to hire a VP of Sales (after roughly two reps or 1-2M ARR) and how new CEOs can salvage zombie companies.
Chapters
And of course drop in the chat where you are tuning in from because we'd love to see we're back this week for another exciting workshop Wednesday. Thanks so much everyone for joining us. Jason and I are thrilled to be here. So last week we had Jason Lumpkin here of course Sasser's very own CEO. He was talking more about the VC perspective and he did a great VC funding workshop for us. This week he's back talking more from the founder operator perspective. 9 signs a startup isn't going to make it and also five things that.
We shouldn't worry about so much.
He's going to run through some great content and then of course get to everybody's questions. So turn your videos on, drop in the chat where you're tuning in from. And Jason, thanks again for being back back to back. We'd love to have you. Really appreciate it.
Yeah, thanks. I. I am a. I'm a late substitute for someone we had to reschedule till a little later in the year but I'll I'll be the substitute.
I thought we could have a little do something a little bit different and.
Fun today and actually we probably won't hit the five things to not worry about so much. We'll embed them in the nine signs a Startup's Going to make it.
There's a lot of obviously it's strange times.
A lot of AI companies are growing 500% a year and exploding. But a lot of public leaders are struggling. UiPath said today they're going to grow in the single digits next year. I think 9 or 8%. Asana said 7%.
Next year Salesforce had 7%.
There are unicorn startups that are doing incredibly well. And then there's there are those that were growing at insane rates a couple years ago and now are growing at zero. So it's a strange time.
And so I thought I would update.
A post we did a long time ago Saster, and do it live.
And then we can ask questions at.
The end we can do to run out of time. You can ask questions on anything. Doesn't exactly have to be in this.
Content but I know this is focused on Are you trying to figure out there's really like three types of parties.
That are trying to figure out how startups are doing. There are.
I have a lot of conversations every.
Week with VPs that ask me what do I think about a startup. All the time they're trying to figure out how to startup is doing for real before it's joining.
Especially when the CEOs don't share all the data.
I had one recently, a VP of sales I've known for years got excited about the startup where the growth was good but not great and the CEO.
Wouldn'T quite share the burn rate. They shared the fight. I asked them to share the financials with me and they sort of did. And I could tell how it was growing, but not really how it was burning. So a lot of VPs and executives.
And folks are trying to decide, should I join this company?
A lot of VCs are trying to.
Figure out, should I keep supporting this company? Should I write another check? Should I hang out?
And on the other side, a lot of founders are, are struggling with how to deal with times that have changed.
Should you retreat a little bit? Should you hide?
Should you pretend a little bit?
Should you fake it until you make it?
So it's nuanced, but I wanted to at least give folks on either side, executive founders and executives and others, nine.
Signs that I've seen over the years.
When you see this, a startup's not.
Going to make it. They are not going to make it.
And so especially as leaders, if you see yourself doing some of these things, maybe stop. Even if they feel natural, even if feels like something you don't, okay, this is the number one thing. This is a sign that you need to move on from anyone, including VPs.
And others in New York.
But this is one sign I see.
Of a startup that maybe in the early days people got excited about, but simply will not make it. A founder's understanding of their market doesn't get deeper over time.
Um, if you meet a great, a.
Truly great founder, like an, an, an.
EPIC founder, I found that even when you meet them at half a million.
In revenue, sometimes pre revenue, I'm shocked at how well they understand the market, how well they respect their competitors, how.
Well they can see the market. Not always 10 years out, that's a bit of an illusion, unless we're Sam Altman or Reid Hoffman, but that they can absolutely see where the market's going.
To be in three to four years, better than you ever could. Crisp, clear.
But whether they're that clear on day zero or whether they find that clarity.
Around a couple million in revenue, sometimes.
We, we, we find it in the field. You've got to see founders understanding their.
Market better and better over time.
And my biggest worry is when I don't see that happen in general, and especially in a flag, can be when.
They continue to denigrate the competition. Oh, Salesforce is stupid. Oh, Zendesk is terrible. Oh, Twilio is dated. Oh, Datadog, you know, that's an old product.
Like, there's a lot of truth in that, guys. But DataDog's still growing 30% at, I.
Don'T know what, almost 2 billion in revenue.
The best founders aren't arrogant toward their competition too much.
Sometimes they are like, I mean, if.
It'S truly terrible, the best ones actually.
Know where the competition is still strong.
And the real irony is if we.
Look who has fueled the stock market, NASDAQ and tech today, you know who it is?
What I call Jurassic SaaS, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, IBM was founded over a hundred.
Years ago, folks, and they're having a record year.
Now. A lot of this is fueled by.
AI and other things, but you want.
To make fun of those companies of Oracle, IBM, Salesforce, Microsoft, they're the strongest companies in tech today outside of an OpenAI. So it's okay to say, listen, you.
Know, Microsoft's got a lot of technical debt, Microsoft's got to support all this.
This issues and we don't. That's all true, but be respectful of why they're good. And when you don't see this is a real flag. So I like to see them just.
Get smarter and smarter over the market or it's just a big flag.
Okay, number two, and I know this is tough, this is tough. But if you want to gauge momentum.
In a startup, if you want to.
Gauge a team that you should join, if you want to decide if you.
Should continue to support a company or.
Invest in company, issue number two is with, they're just too slow to hire VPs. And I, I've, I've struggled with this myself, but the best leaders find a way. Now, look, is it easy to hire.
Mercenary VPs when you're growing 500%?
Sure.
Right. When you raised $100 million on TechCrunch, you'll get a thousand folks that want to, mercenaries that want to come join you, and everyone will think you're great and.
But the best leaderships find a way, even in slightly tougher times, to find a steady stream of executives.
Maybe not five in one week, but that's what you want to see.
And I think a rough rule, if.
You'Re trying to judge the pace of a startup.
No point in rushing, no point in hiring a bunch of VPs.
That are going to flame out.
But if 12 months have come by.
And you haven't seen a couple solid additions to the team, that's a sign of real stress in the system, at least. Something that's going to struggle to scale. So watch, ask like you don't want too much turnover, you don't want everybody to leave.
But figure out and watch if you're.
There or thinking of joining.
Have one or two great folks joined.
In the last year, that's, that's a good sign.
And if no one has, maybe it's the perfect team and they don't need any.
But I, but I'd be, I'd be concerned.
Okay. Three, this is obvious but yet not listen, it's, it's a, it's a Twitter.
Axism and I've said it many times over the years on Saster that the best startups really do iterate more quickly. They really do because, because.
And it's just so powerful. If, if you say you have two.
Competitors, both at a million in revenue, both pretty crummy products but because that, because they only have a million, they.
Only have four engineers but they do something well. So they both gotten to a million, both seem cool. The one that can push out 50%.
More software a quarter is probably going.
To win because it's not may not.
Make a difference that quarter because they.
May pick wrong but story points, features.
Product development compounds just like NRR and revenue compounds and so if I can.
Build great software 50% faster than the competition in two years, I mean someone on this helped me do the math.
It's a little bit complicated.
I could be four have have four.
Times the feature and functionality of my competition.
So the fastest absolutely win. The flip side of that is, look, sometimes we're in the middle and we.
Don'T have enough team and we don't have money, we don't have enough resources.
But there's a certain level of slown.
This where the startups is just not going to make it. It's just not going to make it. One of my earliest investments I ever made that had product market fit. It took them four years to come out with their mobile app.
Four years. Four years. They couldn't find anybody good. They were still learning mobile and you laugh and actually they eventually got to.
Over a hundred million revenue but then they just lost it because they were just too slow.
There's a lot of reasons you can be too slow. The core is usually that the engineering team is not truly great. And I know if you're not technical and you haven't worked with great CTOs and leaders, it may be hard to judge.
If you're not sure, ask someone that's.
Great to tell you. But if you're Just too slow. You will be eclipsed by the competition.
No matter what else, no matter how well you can sell, no matter how cool you're. So.
So look for companies that are just too slow. And you know, if you're trying to judge your own company or another, just ask them like this. And this is like the question I ask when I meet, when I meet.
A lot of founders, like, what are you excited about? That's on the roadmap in the next six months?
And when they can't answer that question.
In a nanosecond, they're too slow. They should be very excited about some stuff coming on the roadmap.
Okay, four and I know and to the prior point, if you're founders, if.
You'Re too slow, find a way to be faster. I know it's hard, but just don't.
Hide in the, in the existing product.
You got to go faster.
Okay, four, and this is a challenge. This is both a flag if you're thinking of working with a company, joining a company, and also something to just.
Stop doing as founders and leaders. Just stop it.
The number, number four, biggest sign of.
A startup that just isn't going to.
Make it is when I hear excuses.
Again and again and again.
Maybe this sounds obvious, possibly, but I.
Got to tell you, 90% of founders send excuses. They send excuses.
And often, like every investor update, it's.
Like the same excuse as the last one. Like we don't remember or something.
And you don't need excuses. A root cause analysis is great.
The best founders have root cause analysis.
Good founders have a root cause analysis.
Here's what's happened. Here's why growth slows.
You know what the best ones do.
And here's the solution.
We made this mistake.
We made the wrong hire, we entered the wrong market.
We build a great feature.
And you know what the answer is? I hired Jane, I hired Amelia, I hired Caitlin.
Or we're relaunching this next quarter or fixing it. You know, the mediocre have excuses. The decent have. They don't have excuses.
They have a root cause analysis. And the great have a root cause analysis and a solution.
Be that, be the latter. And look, here's the thing that, that a lot of founders don't get, especially for your investors.
Investors know not every month and quarter will be perfect.
New hires don't always. But your team gets it.
Your team gets that. You're going to have ups and downs. It happens to all of us.
But when the excuses keep coming out, here's the final point from this Confidence.
Just goes out the door. Excuses don't create success. They don't create success. And this is. You are graded on success in this world.
Okay, five, this is related to the prior point. This is how VPs lose their job.
This is how CEOs get fired. And this is also where your investors.
They really usually can't fire you.
This is where investors just check out. They just check out.
Is surprises. There is surprises.
There should be zero surprises in a recurring revenue model. Why you have recurring revenue.
Now listen, you may have a rough quarter, bookings may be down, but let's.
Assume you have 100% NRR, 110% or 90% or 80% NRR.
That means like most of your revenue in the very short term is in the bag because it's recurring. It's recurring. So there can be a lot of surprise. You will and, and also the ones that are coming, the big customer that's.
Churning, your top customer that's churning, the.
Competitor that's nipping at you, that's stealing deals from you. If you're a CEO that's talking to.
Customers, that's in deals, that's working with.
Sales, you know this six months before.
It shows up in the numbers.
This is the key in SaaS, you know the issue six months before they.
Show up in the numbers.
So anyone that needs a heads up from your own team that maybe isn't close to it, from your investors, from.
Others, there should be no surprises. This is coming down the road in six months, guys.
We're going to lose Google as a.
Customer because they're turning to their own AI platform.
It's not going to show up until.
December when the contract's up for renewal.
But it sucks.
Or like I'm seeing this happen, I'm.
Seeing this trend happen in AI.
AI is at risk in our base.
Whatever it is, you know it's coming. And there's. The CEOs absolutely should know. And the worst, the worst is when a VP comes to a board meeting.
Or team meeting and the, the execution.
For the quarter of the month is like nothing like they had presented, nothing like it. And I think so many folks get into a trap of trying to make.
Stuff up or lie or cover up for the issues.
Sales executives, in my experience are the worst. I'm not, I guess I am being critical. I don't want to be critical.
They will make the most crap up.
And they'll always be like, well, yeah.
I promised a million this quarter and it was only 50,000.
But all the deals slipped until the.
Next month, all the deal.
Like, there's always something, but there should be no surprises in SaaS.
You should telegraph it ahead of time.
And you should telegraph it to your colleagues, to your team and your investors.
And if you're a VP or an.
Executive, whatever you do, do not hide.
From the news you already know is coming.
Get ahead of it. You probably won't lose your job or lose your respect again if you at.
Least get ahead of it. And the best already have an answer. Bad news is we're losing our largest customer. The good news is we've changed our product roadmap and we lost them because we don't have this feature. It will be out in 60 days and we will never lose a deal like that again. That's inspiring, right? No surprises in SaaS. The revenue recurs.
Okay, you can see a theme. This group is kind of related, but you may see in a little bit of this in yourself, even if you don't hide things, even if you have surprises. Another issue I see 90% of the.
Time with everyone up and down the stack from CEO to sdr is when things get harder. I see a slowdown in transparency.
I see for like just lay employees.
I see folks stopping sending updates, stop sending, stop wanting to fill in their dashboards, start. Stop wanting to share metrics.
The worst one with 11 bullets, nine.
Flags, 12 emoji rocket ships.
The worst one in all of planet.
Earth is when founders stop sending investor updates to their VCs the first day of the month.
As soon as VCs see this, they.
Immediately lose confidence in the founder.
Okay? Because what happens, especially with venture backed startups is when things are great. Like everyone's so excited on the last.
Day of the month, on the 31st.
And so you get an email from.
The founder on the 1st or even.
Sometimes the evening, midnight on the 31st. Hey, Caitlin and team. This was such a great June for us at, you know, at, at Credco.
We grew 11% a month.
We closed these 11 logos. The team's crushing it.
More to come, but just wanted to.
Give you an excitement and you get it. And then when it's like 5% a month, instead of getting on the 31st.
You get it like on the 7th. And then when growth slows to 2% a month, they just stop sending them. They just stop sending them.
And I, I never did as a founder, I, I went the other way.
I probably shared over shared, which is.
A smaller issue, a real issue, but a smaller issue. But I see this 90% of the time. Don't, don't, don't, don't. Transparency builds trust. It builds trust at every level in.
An organization, but especially in startups. We are too small and there are too much change to not have transparency.
Now for your team. You know, I generally advocate about 80 to 90% transparency.
I think 100% is too much for.
People don't need to know every bit of bad news.
Every bit of bad news.
I remember in the years ago, Owen McCabe, the CEO of Intercom, did a.
Live workshop with us at our old co working space and I asked him how much transparency was right. He's like about 80%.
Because if I shared with them everything.
Terrible that was happening at Intercom, they'd all quit.
So maybe a hundred percent is too much, but 90% to your investors and 80% to your team. But whatever the exact ratio is, do not slow it down.
In tougher times, startup folks can take bad news. They are wired to take bad news.
But when the news stops, you know.
It'S a terrible sign. You know it's a terrible sign.
Not only does your team know it's.
A terrible sign, if you want to.
Know the number one flag for an.
Investor being worried or checking out, it's not when I get an email on the 1st that, hey, this was a tough month, guys. This was the second tough, tough month in the row. But it's that it doesn't come. Okay, I know I said this three times, but if you're one of these people, don't do it. Send the email on the 1st of.
The month, okay, A couple slightly smaller ones and then we can, we can.
Open up a little bit of questions.
But things that I look for, this is related to the first one, but boy, I, when I don't see this.
Deep understanding of the competitive landscape. But I know we hit this one.
I just always check out and I'll tell you a Colombo question, a trick, a nice Columbos.
I mean, I don't even watch the show. It's an old police detective where some guy in a rumple trench coat would ask ridiculous questions that seemed innocuous.
And then for, I think for 24.
Years, he arrested you by the end of the show because those, those silly.
Innocuous questions actually got you to sort.
Of implicate yourself by minute 56 of the Colombo Hour. I don't know, I've only seen a few, but I call them Colombo questions.
See them on YouTube. But when I, for example, what I'm looking to either invest or somehow work with a Founder, I'll always ask them.
A competitive question, right?
Oh, like let's say they're a sales tool. Oh, oh, you know, I saw clay raise 50 million.
What do you think's going on there? Right?
Or you know, I watched that outreach came out with this feature. What do you think?
Or you know, if you're an observability.
I saw that Datadog now has 12 core products.
What do you think of that? Or if you're in CRM, you know.
I can't quite get the numbers right.
But I think HubSpot's doing over 600 million in CRM. And I asked those questions and when.
The answers are mediocre, they're all, these.
Are always stock rate startups, so they've.
Got to have this deep understanding of the competitive landscape. It is a trick question. I always ask the story, what's the Clay story? If you're curious, like, why is Clay.
Blowing up when other sales tools are struggling? Like, if you're in the industry, you.
Should be as even more curious than. That's the thing.
You should be even more curious than me, right? Because it's your industry. If you're not more curious than me, it's a struggle.
Um, so that's the number one thing. And again, and a related one is when I hear them diss the competition too much, it's smaller. Unless it's 100% true.
It's usually a tough sign.
Okay, 8. This one you're going to laugh and say is silly, but I, but I actually want to push on.
The number eight sign that a startup isn't going to make it is when the CEOs have manipulative and sociopathic behavior and. Okay, listen, let me step back a minute.
If I, when I read my LinkedIn feed, I see like 10 million trillion.
Quadrillion, especially revenue professionals saying I got fired because my CEO's a sociopath. Why did I get fired and the board not fire the CEO?
Why aren't I get this at least twice a day on LinkedIn. Why does nobody fire the CEO?
My CEO was a sociopath, crazy jerk my CEO lied about.
I mean, there's a million reasons you can't fire the CEO because who's going to run the place?
We could talk about that if folks want.
You can't VCs and others bet on the CEO because you got to bet on somebody. You can't have no one. You can't fire them. But it seems like these days when there's a lot of ennui and frustration and Woe is me in tech that.
Folks think every CEO is a sociopath or manipulative.
I don't.
I actually think it's, it's a minority. I think CEOs a hard job and.
Being pushed hard is not sociopathic.
Being asked to deliver 100% is not sociopathic.
What is, is being, is being totally full of shit and making crap up and truly manipulating people. So, and here's the fine line. Here's the fine line. And I'll tell you, the deals I've lost money investing are often folks that are sociopaths.
And the problem is in the early days, the kind of confidence you want to see, the boldness of vision is sometimes difficult to distinguish from a sociopath that will manipulate everybody and can't scale.
But the number one sign is when the story isn't quite true, when there's.
A little bit of bullshit.
I remember a company I invested in that grew like a rocket ship to.
10 million and then imploded after the.
CEO kept telling a story of how.
A large tech company used them internally.
And it just, it never added up to me. And I finally talked to the VP.
Of engineering at this large tech company.
And they never used the product. And the way the CEO kept describing it wasn't remotely true.
It wasn't remotely the way they did their business process.
And like you, we all have to.
Have a story, but when the story.
Isn'T real, folks run from it. And we're going to see a lot of this in AI, we're starting to see it in some fintech explosions when.
The story just isn't real, it's too much.
So be careful, but don't. The flip side is I believe this. The, the lying stories, the stories that.
Aren'T true, telling everyone we have three years of Runway when it turns out we have three weeks of cash, that, that's truly bad. But, but don't, don't.
This is a minority of folks, but.
When you see it, you got to run for the hills.
Okay, last point.
9.
But this one is. So this one should be obvious and then we can take some questions.
But I see this so often. The number 9th sign that a startup is not going to make it is when the founders are unable to get the burn rate under control. And I see this for, so I see this at so many levels.
There is the slightly sociopathic CEO that just assumes that if someone gave him.
Money once, he's going to keep getting money.
Okay, I recently, I, not too long.
Ago, I talked to a CEO at about 15 million in revenue, growing 30% that was burning $4 million a month. $4 million a month and had about 20 million left in the bank.
Caitlin, help me.
How long is that going to last? Burning $4 million a month with 20 million bank. How long is it going to last? Help me do the math.
Roughly five months.
Four months.
Four months with a buffer six months. If you stretch it and growing 30% of 15 million, you're not going to.
Be able to raise any more money.
And I asked him what he was going to do and he's like, I'll.
Just get more money now.
It did work for him.
This is a very charismatic, possibly sociopathic CEO who talks a great game like everyone comes under his spell.
And it worked for four times, but I don't think it's going to worth.
A fifth time, not in today's environment.
So one is just this, and I don't understand it, this sort of crazy belief that the money will just come. I see this again and again. There's a, there's a second issue where it's not that CEO thinks the money's going to come, but they just, especially.
In high churn models, they just don't.
Know what to do because they need it.
They need it.
I've seen this more commonly with SMB.
Models because a lot of SMB models have higher inherently high churn where as.
They scale, the SMB is often able to scale very efficiently in the early.
Days because it's self serve and PLG and the deal sizes are small and the sales cycles are short. But then they hire 10 reps, 20 reps, 50 reps and scale the marketing budget. But the churn remains 3, 4, 5, 6% a month. And as you scale what happens with is that just consumes more and more cash.
And so CEOs are in a pickle.
They're like, listen, I got a double this year. I got to grow 80% or 6% on 80%.
But my burn goes up linearly with.
The amount that I grow. And they, they can't solve this problem. And the answer's gotta be in the product. It's gotta be. In other words, that's the second way I see folks get the burn under.
Control and then there's a third way. And that doesn't lead to crash and burn, but it leads to a lot of pain. The third way I see is, and this is especially true with first time founders, the craziness is often, and the.
First one is often with second time founders.
The third time founders is they just.
Don'T understand how to budget and how to overhire.
So let's imagine you've never raised any.
Money and that's great. And you got to a million revenue and you raised $5 million.
Terrific. It doesn't really mean you get to.
Spend all of it because there's nothing left.
And so they go from burning zero a month for two years because they're bootstrapped to 50k. And that's okay because 50k for 5.
Million lasts a long time.
Then they hire a couple VPs and.
It goes up to 100k. But then those VPs kind of over hire and overspend and the 100k becomes 200k and then two hundred and fifty. Right. And it starts to become 5% of your capital per month. If 5% of your capital you're spending per month, it's not going to last that long.
So I see this happen just because.
Folks guts of how much things should cost when they've never raised often is not what it actually costs. In reality they don't model it properly, they don't have a good control, they don't have good systems and they go from 0 to 10 to 50 to 200, whatever per month.
And then they just, then they just don't know what to do. And, and the ones in the third category where they, where it wasn't intentional, it creep up on them. Eventually they course correct. But it often requires layoffs and team.
Changes and a level of belt tightening 12 months down the road that was never necessary if you had better controls and better budgeting. Right.
If you raise 5 million and it and it only ends up lasting you.
18 months when it was supposed to last you 24 months, you would have been far better off just spending 20% each month. Just get your systems under control.
But. So this is the one in the second.
Sometimes it's more maims and sometimes it kills them. But I try to help here. When I see this happening from the sidelines, I raise it two to three times. I raise the issues, I raise it gently and then more forcefully and then I'm so blunt that people get mad at me and then I just call it a day. If I've said it three times and you're comfortable with this burn rate out of control, there's nothing I can do until you figure it out, until it's too late. But generally speaking, I would run from these startups. Sometimes it kills them, but.
It always.
Maims them when they can't get it under control.
So those are my nine signs to start ups going to make it.
We can break now and take any questions here, any related questions that folks have.
Love it.
Thank you.
This is great.
And we've got some questions lined up already. So I'm going to start inviting some.
Folks up to the stage, starting with Marin.
You've got a great couple questions that.
Jason loves talking about about hiring and.
When the right time is to hire.
So go ahead and ask. Thanks for joining us.
Hey.
Hi. Jason Marin from OmniSearch here. Great seeing you almost live. Appreciate.
Nowhere to go.
Well, that was it.
It was just great to see me live. I do, I do, I do. I do. Genuinely appreciate it.
All right. He just came back. If not I can ask this question.
My connection sucks. Sorry about that. It's only 2024.
I get it.
But anyways. So I guess the first question is around VP hiring. Like at what revenue level do you hire a VP for a particular function and which one?
Yep. So let me read it because the Internet's a little rough.
When do you hire VPs and what functions?
In what order? Right. This is.
It's an enduring team and theme and.
Saster since the beginning and it's.
Things have changed over the years, especially last four years.
Things have changed like multiple times from good times to terrible times to insane times to challenging times. But a couple rough, rough rules.
We know the basic one.
So. So listen, the. The conclusion that everyone comes. Usually most folks want to hire a VP of sales first. And I don't think that's always the right conclusion. That's the second point I'll make. But since that's where the majority of you will come. When should you hire a VP of Sales? The answer 90% of the time is when you have two reps that you're managing directly that are hitting some sort of quota. When you have some sort of engine. Hire a VP of sales.
It is super duper, uber wooper risky.
To hire ahead of sales before you have two reps that can close 200,000, 300,000 a year each at least.
Because what a VP of Sales main job is to take an engine that's.
Sort of working and just get it working better. That's their job. That's their job for recruiting, for processes, for joining deals.
But it's to get a wheel that's.
Kind of just starting to go spin more.
You do not hire a VP of.
Sales to figure out how to get anybody to buy your product. That is your job.
That what we we now I'll call.
It founder led sales.
But you Got to figure out how.
To get to that first X amount of customers.
And it's usually so. A rough way of thinking about it.
Is for most of us, hiring a.
VP of sales before 1 to 2.
Million in revenue is too early because.
You haven't gotten that engine going and.
You haven't gotten two people that can sell. So that's the VP of sales answer.
Okay, if you wait, if you try to hire reps 3, 4, 5 or 6 yourself, once you have two that can sell, you're sort of wasting your.
Time because it's time to bring in an expert. It's time to bring in an expert. So folks do wait too long and.
If you're lucky enough to convince someone.
To join you too early, Hey, I hired Linda, I hired Caitlin, I hired Jason. He's going to figure out sales for us. That guy's that person either is terrible or is going to be out of there in 90 days. That's not what a sales leader wants to do. A sales leader wants their shot.
That's what you, you'll hear about. Listen, you're going to need to hire.
A stretch stretch VPs for most of your role. And you want to hear something? If you really love a candidate, listen, for one thing, someone that wants their shot, they want their shot. They've already been a director, a manager, a top whatever, they want their shot. And their shot is not to figure out how to get your first 10 customers is to figure out how to get you from 100 to 1000 customers or 50 to 500. So that's the VP of Sales in a nutshell.
Now the second piece is harder in.
Practice, but it is such an important point that you will see later in the journey, which is that any great vp, truly great, not good, not mediocre, not your buddy says they're great.
Any great.
And I've said this before, but it's worth repeating infinitely.
Any great VP is accretive.
Okay? Is accretive.
A great VP of demand gen or.
Marketing will get you more leads and more opportunities than you pay her in compensation. A great VP of Customer success, once you even have a half million or 1 million will get more upsell from your biggest customers or drive down churn. They will. A great one will.
If you're at if you hire a VP of customer success at 1 million.
In revenue or even half a million.
And he gets he doubles your biggest.
Customer or makes sure a hundred customers.
Don'T leave, that's going to cover their comp, isn't it? The great VP of marketing. Great. A great VP of product. You think, oh, I don't need a.
VP of product, I'll just have a kid do it. No.
If they go out in the field and they figure out this need or.
Workflow that Google needs or IBM needs.
Or Microsoft needs, they may be able to help you close a 2, 3, 4, 500,000 audio. You couldn't close without them. So to answer your question, we almost none of us, unless you're a hot.
AI research company, has infinite capital at day zero.
But hire any great VP you can.
Find whenever you find them. That's the answer and all. It's never too early to hire a.
Great vp and you probably want to.
Hire your first head of sales by 1 or 2 million to summarize the answer. So thanks for the question.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
We are getting a ton of questions about folks that joined late. So as a reminder, we've dropped this into the chat, but the stream is available. Go to our Saster YouTube, you'll be.
Able to see the recording.
We also post the slides to our slideshare, so please check those out after. All right, Jack, I'm going to invite.
You up to ask your question.
Thanks for joining us, Jason, wonderful to meet Caitlin. Thank you so much. So my question very briefly is about. I think it mostly pertains to vertical SaaS. I have pivoted once before and now, you know, it seems like there might be a second pivot coming where upon chatting with over a hundred, that could.
Be a theme of 2024.
The second pivot is coming.
Well, when you raise money in 2021, there are a lot of habits that you build that, you know.
No, I get it. Keep going. It's just. I like how you put it.
So I in interviewing a ton of customers, there was a small subset of those customers who seemed to have a very specific problem. And upon actually launching the product, it.
Turns out that many of those were.
Not early adopters, but actually just a very small subset of this actual audience actually had the problem. And so I don't see a path for this business getting beyond 30, $40 million a year in revenue.
So what? And so okay, are you at 29.999 million today?
I'm not at 29.99.
Okay, so what's the. Is the onks that you think your.
Market'S too small today, that you don't see it getting bigger than 30 or 40 billion?
So yeah, I, I think the market is too small and I don't see a way to Very easily move adjacent markets.
Okay, sorry. How long have you. I used done a couple tilts. How long have you been in market.
Selling your current product?
About six months.
Okay, look, I mean first of all, listen, the best. I don't think a 30 to 40 million dollars market is a bad thing.
If you can get decent market share in it.
Like you got to start somewhere. Very few folks, very, very, very few.
Folks have started are able to have.
The engineering resources, the product depth to.
Directly take on salesforce, data, dog, workday, whatever on day one.
We don't.
We find a niche one way or the other. And sometimes that niche is just a segment of a large market, right? Sometimes it is a part of a market that's just not huge.
Right.
A 30, 40 million.
But you've got to start in these.
Small spaces one way or the other.
And I think if you look at a lot of success stories and you peel the story back, they often start.
In a very small segment of the market.
So it's not that you shouldn't be.
Very concerned about your tam, right? You should be. I don't mean to.
And I want to get questions from other folks and you can ask one follow up question.
Because I may not be answering it.
But don't fear the small tam. If you think you can have high.
Penetration and your team is good because.
That gives you, you should but you what you need to do then unlike other folks, listen, if you are in.
A vast market, if you're, if you're.
A Canva or something like that, maybe.
Every four to five years you can redefine your TAM. Okay.
It might be for you every 18.
Months you have to, and you have to be relentless about it.
You're like okay guys, this is only.
A 30 to 40 million dollars market today. And so this here's my roadmap. And I know it's going to be hard, but next year we want to build this and the year after that we want to build this. And you have to go 10 years.
In the future but give yourself the confidence that you can, that you have.
The vision and the market awareness to build that up to 100 and 150.
But you don't have to be there today. Get the, get the friggin points on the board, get to a couple million. And the related point is in small towns, when you have good, great founders, once they have a couple million of revenue, I always see them figure out.
In the field how to grow their tam.
You think you know it all, but you meet with more customers and you.
Talk to more customers.
You're like, oh, you know what? Actually if I did this, GE said.
They'D pay me 300,000 instead of 30,000. And if I did this, I could do that. And if I did this integration or expanded into or I have this partner, but maybe I'll compete with my partner or whatever.
When you're doing this thousands of hours a year, you figure out if nothing.
Else had a double or triple your tam just by adding more value to your customer base just by doing it.
So worry about it relentlessly, but get to a couple million in revenue before you quit.
Yeah, that's fair.
Thank you. I don't have any follow up. Thanks, Jack. Thanks.
Thanks, Jack. All right, Charanya, you're up next. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you. You can call me ck. Hey, Jason, thanks for the session. So, curiosity question. Of course. Actually you were an investor in my previous company, so thank you for that. I used to work at Target before.
Oh, right, right. Yeah, you did.
So, curiosity question. So I've worked with founder CEOs who really overshare numbers, right? So like I used to work for a company where even pre ipo I could wake up middle of the night and you know, say exactly what's the burn rate and growth and ARR and you know, things like that. And then I've also worked for companies where the numbers are not shared even internally, even with execs sometimes. And I think there's proofs and cons to both the approaches. But now that I'm a founder CEO myself, I'm just curious from your perspective on what works. When do you share, when do you not share and when do you overshare? At least my perspective so far has been ARR and growth. You absolutely share with your team with 100% transparency. That's when people rally around it to make it happen. Burn is always a little bit tricky because, you know, it can alarm people. Sometimes with investors you share everything. But I'm just curious to get your perspective.
I used to think that you didn't and I was actually rereading an old.
Saster post that I was updating on this exact topic.
I used, it's funny, many years ago.
I wrote in the earliest of Saster.
That maybe don't share all the burn.
Rate with the team. Right.
Specifically, I think in 2024, where everyone's.
More sophisticated in the world and if.
You don't share it, people it's just.
Going to raise more questions.
So, and then here's how I think about it. You're Right. I think it's generally a net negative.
When companies don't share limit the amount.
Of information they share, at least up until there's a point at 40 to.
50 million or something where you really get worried that employees are going to forward, crap around or take screenshots.
It's a real issue and you have to trust them. But once you have four or five hundred employees, you can't, unfortunately, you can't trust.
You can't have this implicit level of trust. You get me there.
So there are some issues about you got to be worried about. Just assume anything you tell the teams.
There'S going to be a Screenshot or a TikTok.
And so you do have to be.
Cognizant of it's all going to be shared.
But two things. The first one is you got to realize that if you don't share, to me it's like lying in the sense not that it's a lie, but in the sense that it's takes a lot of energy. The CEOs I've worked with that have.
Still been successful and not shared.
There are most CEOs that don't share.
It's a bad sign going to the presentation. But there are some that have not shared and been successful.
It is a cognitive load. It because you're constantly asked, you're constantly asked by people, how are we doing on this? What's the level, what's this? And when it's not shared, like it takes a lot of energy versus every Monday sharing the metrics, that takes very little energy. In fact, if you do it every Monday for three years, everyone does their dashboards, they roll it up, they come into work, they said it takes almost no energy. So the amount of energy it takes to hide stuff is so high.
I just don't have the time at this point in my life or career. And everyone's smarter and everyone's asking better questions. Right.
Having said all that. So I err on more disclosure and realizing people are more sophisticated.
They read saster, they read LinkedIn, they read Twitter, they know better.
Now, they don't always know what these, some of these things mean, but they're.
More sophisticated than they are.
It is absolutely true though I do believe going to the conversation, I think.
The 80% I think is the right amount share 80% of what's. I think it's a simple, great way to put it from Owen and Intercom.
And I also think you have to be super cognizant and if you are a transparent leader.
Right. I'm pretty transparent.
What you have to do is ask your leadership or even some friends share what you're sharing and be cognizant if you're over sharing in terms of quantity, people just cannot the things that as founders things that, that we can process is much more than Your even your VPs can't process the number of you you think your VPs and you are.
Peers in terms of processing capability but.
Only a few can process all the.
Crap that you can process.
And then it gets tougher and tougher and as you go down the org, no matter how smart they are, they may not really exactly understand some of these metrics like no matter how much.
Time you send, explain it. So I don't have the perfect answer.
But this is different than being transparent. Just you I don't know that people.
Need 200 pieces of data. It's too.
It can lead to erroneous conclusions when people don't have the skill set to.
Process all of it.
So just if you. I would share 80% but in terms of volume, like if it doesn't fit above the fold in one email or.
Doesn'T fit above the line on a.
Notion doc, it's maybe it's too much.
And if you're not sure, ask someone you trust, a mentor. Hey, am I over sharing?
And if you're a sharer, I think nothing. I think we, we I overshare and.
I think you might overshare. So thanks for the question.
Awesome.
Thank you.
Yeah.
The other thing I'll add and then let's take the question I'm not sharing your burn rate. The other thing is people are going to ask. They're going to want to know in.
This world they're going to read the layoffs and other stuff when not only.
Are they going to be as anxiety going to go up when they leave. I will tell you that if folks on your team are going to quit.
Because you have six months of Runway, they're going to quit.
You got to be transparent here. How are we going to solve the.
Problem if we have six months running? Are you planning to raise money? Great. Who are you talking to? Terrific. Are we going to stretch the money? Great.
People that join startups know their startups.
And again they just want to hear the plan. Right.
If they don't know, they're more likely.
To assume negative than positive.
So you don't lose as much sharing your Even if you only have six.
Months of cash, you don't lose as much as you might think.
Yeah, we definitely saw that people assume the worst, the worst possible when it's actually better but you don't share. So makes sense.
Yeah.
Cool.
All right, thank you, Sammy.
Hey Jason, nice to meet you again and thanks for taking my question for you. And this is more on the employee side of being in a startup. I'm curious how would you approach asking the team certain questions to get an assessment of like is the company truly growing in the right direction or is it facing headwinds? That would be alarming. So for, to give you some context, there's a company that's growing through acquisitions and they seem to be all equity deals. So there's quite a bit of dilution happening. But the core product is facing some headwinds in growth. But the overall vision has been that these new acquired companies and the packaging of that is what's going to take us to the other side. So again like it's a little bit chaotic as you can imagine in the startup with all these acquisitions happening almost six within a year. And so I'm curious to get your thoughts on like what questions would you pose to a management team to suss it out a little bit more.
Well, look, first of all, two things. This, this sort of roll up strategy.
Of acquiring a lot of startups. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's if, if.
You'Re, if companies that are backed by.
Private equity, for example, it's very common.
It's like when, when a, when a.
Vista or Tomo Bravo or if folks haven't heard these names, these are the guys that spit the bot that write the bigger checks. There's a group of them when they.
Buy a B2B company for a variety.
Of financial reasons, you know what a fifty million, a hundred million, two hundred million.
I can tell you the first things they talk about are other stuff they can buy to bolt onto it.
It's financial engineering. If I have something that's 100 million.
Growing 40% which is, it's okay, but it's not enough to IPO. If I can buy something doing 20.
Million and bolt it on and now we're growing 50% or 60% and I get a higher revenue multiple, it could be almost free. Right?
So actually if you go to saster this week, saster.com, we just wrote up a company called Instructure that is the.
Leading manufacturer vertical SaaS company for in classroom software. It's called Canvas and It has like 40% market share in schools and it went from 1 to 100 in five years. Wrote it up and then they went public.
But now I think at 800 million growth is super slow because they're in every class.
Like they saturated the market.
So what did they do?
They bought an adjacent company doing 100 million. So they bought all their.
So their growth instead of being 8% this year is 22%.
Right.
You can, you can read it.
And they took on debits. But I wrote it up just this week on our five interesting learnings. So listen.
And that was bought by. Even though it's public, it's barely public.
It's bought by a P firm, Tomo Bravo.
That's their playbook to do this stuff.
Right.
Vista bought Salesloft and Drift and they combined them into one company to try to go public.
Right.
So it's just two things. One, just understand it is a very.
Different vibe than a standalone startup that's not doing this playbook.
And it's not bad. It's just different. Is it dilutive? Sure. But so is hiring a hundred people. So is bringing in a new management team. I actually, even though it seems very dilutive on paper, I can tell you that these PE firms usually are majority owners or close.
They'll try to buy 40 to 80% of a company.
So they're more dilution sensitive than anybody else. And so they only do these deals.
If they believe they're accretive.
Just like hiring a great vp. They'll only do roll ups that they believe are accretive. They may be wrong but they put a lot like they're no dummies. People are not dummies here.
Okay?
But it is a different working at a roll up company, buying eight companies is very different than just working at OpenAI today or wherever. It's just a different vibe.
It's not a singular journey and you.
Have multiple teams and multiple things. And it gets just because the operations.
Get very complicated when you roll these things in together.
And so some people enjoy that, some people are neutral on it, some people find it interesting, some if it's not your vibe then you know, leave if.
You'Re not running it. Right.
Because it's just, it's just different.
Right. If it's not your vibe but it's.
Not necessarily bad and it's not necessarily.
The dilution is not necessarily bad. It can really work if it can get you to IPO or bigger is.
The is the thing in terms how to judge it? You know, sometimes these types of companies do get less transparent.
Right.
There is a company I invested in.
Early that got to about almost 20 million and then got rolled into a competitor with 100 million. I get one update a year and the only update I get is we're not sharing any data this year. One. Great.
So like I get it now actually their debt is publicly traded so I.
Can go on Google and find some of their financials they have to share with. It's very interesting that since they're debt they have to do public, they won't even share it with us.
So I get that some of these.
Roll ups have limited transparency, but I wouldn't judge.
Listen, if you're buying, if you're doing a Vista sales off drift, if you're.
Doing the instructure with parchment, you're doing.
It for very transparent reasons, to grow.
Faster in an efficient way.
So just judge it the same way you would a standalone company. Is the company growing at mid level.
Or higher rates and is it reasonably efficient? Are we running out of money or not? If we're growing at mid pack or higher rates, we're not running out of money.
It's probably still a decent play.
That's my simple answer of a complex question, but thank you.
Thanks Jason.
Thanks. All right, Corey, I'm going to invite you up. Talking about cs.
Yes.
Let me scroll back up to my question here. So where the heck is my question? Like there was, sorry, there was a lot of back and forth here. Oh, what's the best way to get feedback from customers on feedback from customers on new features in some programmatic way?
Well, listen, there may be more behind.
Your question than we have time to ask.
The best way, and it's, it's a.
It'S a dream is do get on the road.
I have never, when you, if you haven't done this, or other folks that are listening or watching, if you've never.
Done this, this is one of the 10 most magical things you can do as a CEO. And I was a little slow to.
Figure this out, but back in the.
Day of Adobe Sign, Echo Sign, I didn't do this until 8 or 10 million.
But then my VP of CS and.
I would get together and we would just do a roadshow.
Not for to close new deals, not for anything.
We went to Dell, we went to.
Google, we went to Facebook and we would be like, hi, we're here or.
Del, we're at Round Rock, we're coming into town. Can we do a roadmap presentation?
People love it. And not only do they love it, but the magical thing it took me, I realized is if you do this, they will loop like 2030, 40 people into the room to all see it because they give a crap. You have a thousand. Sometimes we forget this is such an.
Important point for everyone at a startup.
Founders get it a little better than.
Us, but even founders don't get it.
Many times if your product costs even.
5,000 or $10,000 a year, a lot of times it's super important to your, to your customers.
Super important.
That's why it breaks my heart when we play games or rip offs or do crappy things on renewals or don't do onboarding or don't do training.
We forget that, you know, you may be the ERP of your customer, you may be the lifeblood. And you know, until you've done enterprise sales and you go, you may realize there's one person who their only job is running your app and, and they're judged on your success like you're a big deal. So when you come into town, if.
You'Re import, if you're important, if you're.
Not just a widget, you'll be shocked.
How many people they rope into that meeting and you, and just, you don't.
Have to do anything, just present the.
Roadmap and it doesn't have to be perfect and just say I want to get your feedback.
The feedback will often be crappy.
It will often be very biased on whatever headache or issue they have this.
Week which you're already aware of and.
Which you're already solving or can't do anything about. And you're going to hear if you.
Go around the room for 30 people.
You'Re going to hear a lot of gripes and you got to have slightly thick skin but you'll hear a couple great ideas out of it and then.
Take them out to lunch.
And it's just magical.
It's just. And the reason it's great is listen.
Go meet your customers.
The classic customer success thing or even.
Co thing is just go chat with your customers. Hi, I'm, I'm Nick Meadow from Gainsight. Everyone loves Nick. They're going to meet with Nick and look, that works great.
Go meet with them. But go meet with, tell them you want to do a roadmap presentation and they'll always, it's magical.
It's magical.
Do as many as you can tolerate. Hit all of your top 20 customers every year, twice a year if you can.
Every quarter might be a little much but it's magical to have this roadmap meeting.
So but again that's, that's my insider tip is the, is all the feedback Valuable.
I'd say maybe 10% of it's valuable. But it's still good to hear it. Right. So thanks for the question.
Thanks.
All right.
Similar question. Steve, I'm going to invite you up. This is kind of a sub question maybe to that roadmap. So do you want to ask Steve, thanks for joining us.
Yeah.
Good to be here. Jason, thank you for the presentation. The question had to do with over committing. So you talked about adding new revenue based on adding new features for your clients. But I've seen the case where you have a large client and the large client wants some specific feature added and that specific feature takes the client, the product roadmap, down the rat hole.
It's called selling to the enterprise as a startup. This has been true since the 1600s in software. Since the 1600s, startups have gone to meet with large customers that had a.
Need, an acute need, and are willing.
To pay the startup what seemed like a lot of money to the startup, but actually wasn't all that much money to the big company. Here's a hundred thousand, two hundred, three hundred thousand dollars.
I just need you to solve this.
Little problem I've been able to solve in 11 years. And it's not on the roadmap, but it does make sense, right? Christopher Columbus had these issues when he was crossing the Atlanta. So what's the question?
First of all, you're not alone. Anyone that has gone up market or.
In the enterprise has faced this issue.
It's obviously, it's actually less acute if.
You start enterprise day one because you get it right.
It's more acute when you're, when you.
Have small, medium and large customers, right?
You have small ones that take it.
As it is, medium ones that ask for a little bit and you have large ones. And so you're like, oh my God.
Like I don't, my team doesn't really.
Want to do it and it's going to take six months and it's going to distract us from the roadmap. But boy, that's a lot of money, right? Is that you. Would you have small, Is that the issue? You have the small, medium and large.
Not me personally asking for a friend.
Got it.
Well, that's the issue. And look here. And I literally was just talking with a company I invested in that's at.
20 million in revenue about this the other day, right? And I said to him, you already know the answer.
Do you want to be more enterprise or not?
You're being dragged there.
Your product has unique functionality. People are willing to pay you in one case, $1 million a year.
If you build something that will take three months.
The self serve cool kids don't want.
To build it because it's enterprise.
You have to decide, it's your DNA. Do you, you have this opportunity, do you pursue it or do you let it go? The one thing I'll add is if I should. I'm going to do a Saster blog.
Post on the 20 worst pieces of advice that VCs give. And I really see horrific advice on this.
And you hear the advice of don't do anything custom, stick to your knitting.
Do what you're great at, right?
They're, they're wrong because once in a.
While they're right, but they're wrong because.
They haven't done enterprise software. If you go, here's the thing, you go, you got it. If you go and all your deals.
Are 10k or 20k and then someone wants to pay you $500,000 a year to do this. And it seems custom. First of all, slow it down.
Is it really custom or is there, are they the only customer like them.
On all of planet Earth?
Right. I remember in the early days, it was crazy of Adobe Sign, Echo Sign. We got British Telecom, we didn't even.
Have anyone in the UK, but they bought 3,000 seats of ours, okay?
And they asked for all these features and my CTO really thought they were.
Annoying, all these enterprise features.
But you know, it turned out they're the same features that every other telecommunications company needed. And so we got all the other ones.
We got Comcast and Time Warner Cable.
And Altel and some of these guys in Verizon. Like we got millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars by building this. And it wasn't even custom, but it felt custom because we hadn't built these.
Hierarchies and these types of relational accounts.
So first ask yourself, are they really the only one or are you getting a gift? Because what you can get from these enterprise deals, there's so much to talk.
About here, but I'm gonna leave it here sometimes, sometimes it's a one off.
Feature, sometimes they're sharing the future that.
You can't see because they know their industry better than you in the enterprise.
And when they really ask you for something, a little startup with 10 people that isn't secure, that could go down, that could go out of money, when they're willing to bet part of their.
Business process on you, it's probably a.
Pretty special reason and they may be showing you the future. And bless British Telecom for showing us the way to get to 10 million.
Of other revenue that we didn't see.
We didn't get it because we weren't experts in how folks buy business, Internet and telecommunications or we just didn't know as a team.
Right. They showed us the future.
And so these, these deals can show you the future.
And so go into them with an open eye and an open heart and.
Make sure it's really custom and not just the future.
That's, that's where I wrap it up.
All right, you touched on the great point which is it's not just product though, it's also the add on services. So the services for sure, for sure charge for but also could be a drain going forward.
Yeah, yeah, but, but that's, that's part.
Of the enterprise life.
You want to be that guy or.
Do you want to, or do you want to run Squarespace? Decide.
Yeah, thank you.
All right, thanks for the question.
Thank you, Steve.
All right, last question here.
Pavel, I'm gonna invite you up to ask. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you for hosting this, Jason. Also thank you very much for being very honest and transparent when you give your advice. Like sometimes it feels like maybe not very pleasant but I really value it.
Yeah, I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Yeah, that's my job. It's not very pleasant. Yes, good, good feedback to hear. I can take it.
Yeah. So my question about zombie startups. So imagine there is like at reach 1 million ARR by like acquiring early customers but then they struggle to grow further. Maybe it's like fake product market fit, maybe it's a problem with sales or maybe marketing or the team. So first of all how do identify the root cause of the issue? Like and basically after 12 years of being in let's say zombie mode, the team probably will be demotivated and they.
Are low on average if they even stay.
Yeah, well let's assume they stay. And the question is, let's say you join this company, the external CEO, like a new CEO, what will be your thought process on how to reignite the energy back to the company and we kickstart the crops.
Well look boy, there's a lot of questions in there.
If you, if you join and there.
Are zombies, listen, there are a lot of zombies out there. There are zombies at 1 million and there are zombies at 200 million.
Okay.
I know several startups at 200 million that are growing 0% now. Okay. And I know quite a few growing less than 20%. There's zombies up and down the stack.
And I, you know, in the early. A lot of this advice I gave.
In Saster in the early days was right. But it wasn't as right as I thought.
Because when I looked at the SaaS.
CEOs that I started with, me, Aaron from Box, David Sachs from Yammer, Renee.
From Bill, Peter Gassner from Viva. Once you hit product market fit like we never stopped. We all, we all like once growth got good, we never saw the kind.
Of slowdowns that we see today.
It's much more common, especially for folks that boomed in 2021 when there was.
A lot more discretionary spend than exists today. So it's all over the place today. There's many more zombies today than in my entire career in SAS. I really don't think they existed that much before 2018, 2019, but now the world is littered with them that got to a few million in revenue or even a couple hundred million and aren't growing. A lot to say and talk about. Maybe in brief, because we're running out of time.
As a new CEO, what do you.
Do to reinvigorate the team? This is tough and it's super risky.
But actually you see this all the time.
You bring in a whole new team.
It'S really the only answer.
You bring in a whole new team.
Now listen, it can be terrible. You know, what's his name did it.
When the Pepsi guy, when he replaced Steve Jobs at Apple, it drove the company into bankruptcy. They often bring in folks that don't.
Know the product, don't know the industry. Often you lose the technology team and.
The product stops going anywhere.
It's super duper risky. But what's your other choice if the.
Team is burnt out, doesn't care, and is dejected and won't work? You got to bring in your own team, right?
So really, as a new CEO, you.
Really have two choices.
Do I bring in half the team new or all the team?
Okay.
And it's like it's super risky.
That's the choice, right?
And the most important thing. And I'll say the last thing and.
We'Ll run out of time.
The most important thing I can tell to folks that would do this or watch it. No matter what you do, you got. In today's world, everything's so competitive.
There's so many vendors, there's so many solutions. Who, if there is a gem, a CTO that's a gem, a VP of engineering, that's a gem, a founder that is a gem, whatever you do, you.
Got to Keep them. You can lose everybody else. I think everyone else is. You know, we all say every. No one's replaceable in a company. I'm putting asterisks.
I don't think a truly great CTO is replaceable. You never get that DNA back.
That really wrote that. That really knows how all the code base works.
That knows how it all.
A good CTO is replaceable.
A mediocre one is.
But the epic one, you know, they're irreplaceable. So you. Even if you replace every other function, you gotta keep the technical brilliant team.
Together no matter what it takes.
Double their equity.
Do whatever it takes.
Do not. You can lose everybody else, but do.
Not lose the geniuses behind it. So that's, that's, that's my, that's my best. My best insight.
And the last thing I'll say is.
Look, and then we gotta wrap. I know there's probably other questions, but we just don't have time for them.
There will what as you. First of all, just two things. A lot of us actually I wrote an old post on Saturday update called.
We all go through a year of hell.
And I thought.
And we all do go through a year of hell, almost all of us. And I thought a lot of that was external. For me it was the great financial crisis and some other issues and a few. And some. And some competitive gaps in the product. But now.
But now other. The others just. There's more folks going through a year of hell. The. You'll see it take action faster, right? And if you do have a plan and you have a good enough team to get through it, you can hire new people and new DNA into that environment.
There are quirky people.
Mercenaries will not take this job. Mercenaries want to quit and go to OpenAI. But there are folks who, if you're honest and you're like, listen, it's tough today. We're growing 10%.
We were growing 100%.
But this is coming.
It's great.
I believe in you, I love you.
And here's your shot. This is your shot.
You will find a group of pirates.
And romantics that will take that job.
And I will leave you with one last story and then we can break. I had this Brendan Cassidy, who's been.
A lot a part of Sasser. He was my first head of sales.
He'd been the first head of sales.
At LinkedIn and used us at LinkedIn.
So he was a customer.
He knew us and I recruited him.
And we had grown super fast.
The year before 5x and then I.
Made a mishire in VP of Sales.
And our growth plummeted to like 30% or lower. Okay?
This VP of Sales came in and hired 12 people.
None of them closed anything, nor did he. Right? So it was really rough and Brendan.
Came in, but he had his own.
Reasons for wanting to join us. He'd use us as a customer.
He believed in the product.
The industry was emerging. And I said, brendan, like, I gotta be honest with you, I love you.
I have your back, but if you.
Don'T double sales in 60 days, we're gonna go bankrupt. I just showed him math. I'm like.
He's like, okay, I know the product. I looked at your leads. You have more leads than any other.
Startup I've worked at.
More leads than LinkedIn had at this.
Time, more leads than his other startups. I know how to do this. And he joined and we went back to 100% growth.
So you will.
Not everyone was like this, but you.
Will find a subset of folks that.
If you're transparent and you have a.
Good team and you have a good.
Something, you will find a subset of.
Folks that will take that challenge. Not, not the mercenaries, not the ones.
With the perfect resume, not the ones that were at Slack notion OpenAI, whatever. They're not going to join you. But you will find someone good that maybe has a chip on their shoulder.
Maybe something didn't work out for maybe.
Their boss topped them.
Who knows?
You will find someone that wants their shot and be relentless and find them. So thanks for the question and thanks for the time, everybody.
Thank you.
All right, thank you all. One last question that I will answer if someone asked if these are held every Wednesday. And yes, we are here every Wednesday at 10am Pacific. So we've got a great lineup over the next couple months leading up disaster annual, which if you don't have your ticket, please check it out. Buy it.
Now.
We've launched the agenda. We've got a great lineup coming. So next week we will be back 10am with Sales Loft's new CRO. So Mark joined Sales off a couple months ago. He's going to be talking through his top tips, top action items. Joining us, the new CRO. So if you are a CRO, a revenue leader, or if you work with one, this will be one you don't want to miss. Thanks everyone for joining. Thanks again, Jason, for your time.
We'll see you next week.
Thanks, everybody.
