Jason M. Lemkin talks to successful SaaS founders like Peter Gassner and David Sacks about what separates the best from the rest. Deep domain knowledge, relentless execution, and long-term thinking still matter most, even as investors now demand 100% growth and $100M+ revenue paths.
I don't think the bar has changed. And I'll step back a minute. When I was running my last startup, Adobe Sign, Echo Sign, which talked about too much. But in my, in my batch of founders for my series, it was called the Be, then A, B and A. Today was Emergence Capital. So in my group was Peter Gassner, who's CEO of Viva, which is worth 30 billion. David Sachs, who then was CEO of Yammer. Renee Lacert, CEO of Bill, which I think is where it was almost at a billion in revenue. Some of the best like. And so I was like, I think either the worst of the best or maybe the best of the mid pack of that group of CEOs. And it was correlated with the size of the outcome, having a nine figure exit. They had 10 and 11. And so I'm rambling for a point. I realized quickly where I stood in the hierarchy right when I met Peter Gassner, CEO of EVA, and we did a great session way back at 2017 Annual on YouTube. It's one of the best sester ones ever. I'm like, this fucking guy knows this is the best CEO I've ever met with Peter. And how did I know? It's not that he had been the VP of Engine Salesforce or cto. It's not that he was smart and wise. It's that he understood my business almost better than I did in the first meeting and that was that. And he was so nice the way he said it, but that level of insight I'd really never seen. And then I met David Sacks at Yammer. Not when he was whatever all in pod dude. And I mean I love David, but. And David was different than Peter, but he had this energy, this intensity to drive something off the cliff. And I'm like, I'm kind of. I have my own kind of energy, but not like David. Like David's gonna build something bigger than I'm gonna build. And I met Renee from Bill. And a lot of people didn't get Bill for a long time. I mean it's. And I wrote a sass for us when they went public. Our five interesting learnings. Like you probably never heard of this company, but the CEO is really good. And I met Rene and I really think Rene is one of the top 10 CEOs, but maybe for a different reason. I think Rene is smarter than me, but maybe not in the crazy way that Peter is. Rene had a 30 year vision even when I met him. And he'd done a startup before called Pay Cycle that had had a lot of Drama into it, bought it for 100, 150 million, which sounds like a lot, but there was executive turnover and I don't think it was the greatest experience for him. I think he wanted, and he did Bill because he had a. He didn't just want to do payroll on the Internet. He wanted to automate all the ways SME. And he had the same vision when I met him in 2006. He had it in 2008, 2009. And I remember with Renee, we were sitting at an event in Hawaii called the lobby in like 2013 and I'd sold. I was kind of investing and chilling and I'm like, Renee, who's running what, a $20 billion company today, right? And I'm like, renee, how's it going? 20, 30. He's like frigging hard, Jason. He's like, it's so good to see you. He's like, no one understands SaaS. I can't find any great VPs. No one will fund me. Okay? I'm like, yeah, that's pretty bad, my friend. And. But he's like, I'm on this, I'm going to find a way. I'm on this 30 year journey. He actually had to raise, I think around at really terrible terms and prices at the time. And whoever got it got an insane deal, right? But then I saw someone truly on a 30 year journey, right? To revolutionize the way accounting, bill payment, this network for SMBs. And he was such a visionary across two startups. And I'm sharing those stories to say the bar has always been that, right? And I will say as an investor, if you want, from an investor standpoint, I think I've done only 30 venture investments since 2013. The ones that did really well, almost all but one, they were like that, right? And you walk into the meeting and. And the ones you wish you had invested, right? And so. And so the bar has gone up in the sense that investors are looking for even faster growth. Investors are hoping for 100% growth at 100 billion. That's what you can back into today. And it's crazy. Investors want 100% growth. 100. But the intangible piece, that founder, that is better than me, that is better than even most people in the room. I don't know if that, that's what people want. And it hasn't changed. It's that crazy thing, right? And like with Figma, talking to all the folks backstage that met, I don't even know him, he hasn't that met Dylan at Figma, they all say he was just off the charts from the beginning. Right. And that can mean different things, but that's what they. They want 100% growth at $100 million. And then a CEO at least as good as Figma. That's all the VCs want.
