10 essential learnings from SaaStr Europa
This week I attended my first SaaStr event in London. Two days of startups, VCs, learning, networking and entertainment.
It was one of the most impactful events I have ever attended.
Here’s my ten takeaways and suggestions for attendees next year.
Urgency - reduce the time from idea to execution to near zero
One of my favourite sessions was Sam Blond’s “here’s how we did it” session - lessons from hypergrowth at Brex.
Through the stories you can feel the urgency and momentum in a business that was executing at a rapid rate.
“We had this idea, we came up with a plan, we did it”
Brex implemented a billboard campaign to raise awareness
None of this annual planning and let’s see if we can fit it in in Q4. Getting **** done, testing, learning, iterating.
Action: Consider what slows your time from idea to execution and get rid of the friction.
Winning begets winning
This phrase came from Sterling Snow, ex-CRO at Divvy who talked about target setting.
Sterling Snow explains how he used three targets to create a culture of winning.
If you set your targets at a level where the majority of your team are winning, then the feeling is infectious.
Aim to pay out 105% of your OTE.
Work doesn’t seem like work. 100% becomes the entry level not the goal.
I’ve been in this environment before and I totally relate. Winners win more whereas losing destroys the will to fight.
Action: Quotas are self determined, so set them at a level that creates a culture of winning.
Profitable growth instead of growth at all costs
Every VC session I attended talked about the rapid change in the funding market and the priorities for investors.
Profitable scalable growth is critical, and a key metric mentioned in the Notion Capital session is revenue per head.
Jos White of Notion Capital explains revenue per head
At a startup you should target $100k per head, and moving up to the larger public SaaS businesses $300k per head.
Action: measure and track towards revenue per head if you aren’t already
Every time your company doubles, its a new company
In Job van der Voort’s session he described the incredible scaling of Remote from 1 to 1000 employees over just a couple of years.
Job van der Voort walks through the different stages of Remote’s journey
He described how every time your company doubles in size you should really think of it as a new company.
New people, new leadership, new processes, new systems….
If you continue to hold on to the way you have done things at the previous stage then you will slow your growth.
You might have taken the entire team on a ski trip at 50 people - you can’t do that at 100 people.
You might have interviewed every new hire at 100 people but you can’t at 200 people.
Action: plan how you will reinvent your company for the next stage of growth. What are you holding onto that you should let go of?
In person events drive serendipitous meetings
SaaStr brought 4,500 likeminded people together in one venue for two days.
I made so many connections just by being present, bumping into people at the happy hour, in the coffee queue, waiting for sessions to start.
Of course you can watch the sessions online, but being around people passionate about starting and scaling businesses gave me connections I could never have planned for.
Action: Find relevant in person events, register and be present. Serendipity is a beautiful thing.
Wear a branded t-shirt
I made up branded RevOpsCharlie t-shirts for the event. I deliberately had a logo on the front for people I was talking to and a logo on the back for people sitting behind me.
Both resulted in conversations.
I would be sitting in a session and someone would tap me on the shoulder from behind - “so tell me, what is RevOpsCharlie?”
I’d be in a group at Happy Hour and someone would join the group, “I guess you are Charlie!”
The Lavender team all wore purple capes and were the talk of the event - no-one could miss them.
No-one likes networking - but if you make it easy for other people they will appreciate it.
Action: don’t be too proud to brand yourself.
Have a useful giveaway and give it early
I made up flyers to hand out to people to remind them about our meeting. I’d thought I would give them out at the end of the conversation, but actually started handing them out pretty much as soon as we started speaking.
The content on it was a little humorous and was relevant to what we were discussing, so it guided and reinforced the conversations I had.
Action: prepare for the conversations you might have and think about how to help the person you are speaking with remember you.
“Revenue” is the important word in Revenue Operations
I learned that most people think the important word in Revenue Operations is “Operations”.
On mentioning Revenue Operations a common response was “what tech do you specialise in"?”
As a function we have an education job to do to ensure that “Revenue” is the most important word.
Yes systems and data and processes are important, but this function is about customers, growth, and increasing firm value, supported by those internal aspects.
Action (for me!): create more content and education around the strategic nature of revenue operations.
Even in tougher times, companies are executing.
And my final learning, is that whilst individual companies, even entire categories, are in challenging environments, some companies out there are executing and winning.
You can’t put a price on being around them and soaking up that energy.
You might work for a large public company, or even a non-tech company and think that an event like SaaStr is not targeted at you.
But I believe being surrounded by founders who just trust themselves and go for it every day, getting **** done will be some of the most inspiring couple of days you could spend.
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Whenever you are ready, there are two ways that I can help you accelerate your revenue growth.
Buyer Experience Audit - I’ll impersonate a buyer researching your segment and company and let you know what I find. Ideal for planning your RevOps strategy.
RevOps Impact Playbooks - I’ll help you implement one or more tactical processes across your revenue teams - content, referrals, testimonials, adoption and more.