23 things you should know

1: Management’s true confidence is reflected in how fast they are hiring

2: Sales heads added this year are next years incremental revenue

3: Product-led growth SaaS companies should be analyzed similar to internet - downloads, intensity of usage, viral coefficient

4: If a company is beating/raising less than normal they are probably behind plan

5: Press release velocity does not equal R&D productivity

6: Billings are usually pulled forward so someone can make their number

7: Gross margins don’t reflect pricing pressure (true in some industries, but not SaaS!)

8: Increasing CAC does reflect pricing pressure

9: Sustained low CAC often means pricing power

10: Second acts don’t have to be second products - can mean new segment or addressing new user base with same product

11: The SMB market is big with multiple ways to monetize

12: Consistency of strategy creates big companies

13: Repetition is necessary to successfully communicate what you are to investors, customers and employees

14: Customers pay attention to your stock price

15: Narratives are increasingly single threaded - customers, employees, investors all feed on same storylines, creating positive or negative feedback loops

16: If a successful head of sales leaves for same job elsewhere, beware

17: Good sales execution that suddenly becomes poor sales execution usually means competitive environment has changed

18: The big enterprise tech cos to fear organically developing a market changing competitive product are Microsoft and Amazon. 

19: Duration/time horizon is a competitive advantage

20: Most technology partnerships amount to nothing

21: Systems integrators are key to sustained growth >$1B of revs in most end markets

22: Incentives always change when a company is acquired. Usually for the worse

23: Trailing 12-month billings is the closest metric to ARR for almost every SaaS business