SaaStr Annual 2024: Effectively Scaling Go To Market from 0 to 1,000 with Index Ventures
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The document discusses the importance of human elements in business scaling, emphasizing that successful companies are built by people rather than just ideas. It presents a framework for go-to-market (GTM) strategies and highlights the hiring and attrition rates across various functions in scaling organizations. The insights from entrepreneurs and industry leaders underscore the significance of understanding customer needs and processes before developing technology solutions.
SaaStr Annual 2024: Effectively Scaling Go To Market from 0 to 1,000 with Index Ventures
- 1. Scaling Through Chaos The Art and Science of GTM Paris Heymann Partner Index Ventures
- 2. Ideas don’t build businesses. People do.
- 3. CURRENT PORTFOLIO COMPANIES 300 INVESTORS 30 OFFICES 5 2011 2022 2002 1996 2022 Partnering with exceptional entrepreneurs from SF to NY, London to Tel Aviv, Seed to IPO
- 4. SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS 200 CAREER PROFILES 200,000 INTERVIEWS WITH TOP FOUNDERS 60
- 5. Our latest set of resources for founders “SCALING THROUGH CHAOS” Book TEAMPlan App
- 7. The Dream vs. the Reality The Dream The Reality 50FTE 125FTE 250FTE 500FTE 1000FTE 26% 31% 33% 35% 36% 10% 20% 30% 40% % of FTE in S&M
- 8. Scaling your GTM – A Framework Seed Venture Growth Product Market Fit Repeatability Return on Capital Founder-Led Founder + IC AE’s Sales Leadership, AE’s, Specialists Primary Goal Sales Motion
- 9. GTM specialization will come with scale 1 2 7 20 72 50 FTE 125 FTE 250 FTE 500 FTE 1000 FTE 0 2 4 8 17 7 18 41 88 207 Sales Engineering Sales Ops Total Sales HC Company Headcount 3 7 15 28 70 3 7 15 32 48 AE/Sales Reps SDR/BDR 43% 39% 37% 32% 34% Rep % of Sales HC
- 10. Bake-in attrition and back-fills into your hiring plans Average attrition rates by function SDRs Marketing HR Customer Success Sales (ex SDR) Operations Recruiting Product Finance CX Engineering Design Legal Annualized Attrition Function 22% 18% 17% 16% 15% 15% 15% 15% 13% 12% 11% 11% 9%
- 11. You have to understand that it’s about people and processes first. Of course we love technology, but it’s that human aspect—understanding the problems CISOs face, all their different processes and priorities—that I think has made Wiz so successful. Once you understand the people, only then can you create the products and technology. Assaf Rappaport, Wiz
Editor's Notes
- #3: show association: Adyen, Figma, Datadog, Scale, Wiz, Discord. more consumer. Roblox, Etsy, Notion, Slack, Farfetch
- #7: One of the key messages of StC is that in high growth, founders should expect half their time to be absorbed by people-related stuff. In high-growth, companies are typically doubling headcount YoY, for several years. So at any point in time, half of the workforce will be "new". This inevitably causes massive org stress, and chaos. Here you can see how founders' "people time" shifts as companies grow, with less time on hiring, and more on internal comms + leadership alignment. The book dives into various ways that founders can create personal leverage. For example, by hiring a COO. We found that COOs are much more common in Marketplaces compared to SaaS, which makes sense when you consider operational complexity in each model. Alternatively, founders can hire a Chief of Staff. We found that by 250 headcount, 31% have a Chief of Staff. But we expect this to rise to 60% in the next generation of startups. ————- => Takeaway: when you speak to founders… are they emotionally and practically ready for this shift? Particularly CTO co-founders…
- #8: One of the key messages of StC is that in high growth, founders should expect half their time to be absorbed by people-related stuff. In high-growth, companies are typically doubling headcount YoY, for several years. So at any point in time, half of the workforce will be "new". This inevitably causes massive org stress, and chaos. Here you can see how founders' "people time" shifts as companies grow, with less time on hiring, and more on internal comms + leadership alignment. The book dives into various ways that founders can create personal leverage. For example, by hiring a COO. We found that COOs are much more common in Marketplaces compared to SaaS, which makes sense when you consider operational complexity in each model. Alternatively, founders can hire a Chief of Staff. We found that by 250 headcount, 31% have a Chief of Staff. But we expect this to rise to 60% in the next generation of startups. ————- => Takeaway: when you speak to founders… are they emotionally and practically ready for this shift? Particularly CTO co-founders…
- #9: One of the key messages of StC is that in high growth, founders should expect half their time to be absorbed by people-related stuff. In high-growth, companies are typically doubling headcount YoY, for several years. So at any point in time, half of the workforce will be "new". This inevitably causes massive org stress, and chaos. Here you can see how founders' "people time" shifts as companies grow, with less time on hiring, and more on internal comms + leadership alignment. The book dives into various ways that founders can create personal leverage. For example, by hiring a COO. We found that COOs are much more common in Marketplaces compared to SaaS, which makes sense when you consider operational complexity in each model. Alternatively, founders can hire a Chief of Staff. We found that by 250 headcount, 31% have a Chief of Staff. But we expect this to rise to 60% in the next generation of startups. ————- => Takeaway: when you speak to founders… are they emotionally and practically ready for this shift? Particularly CTO co-founders…
- #10: Finally, something on attrition. We're looking at the relative attrition rates of different functions at 500HC (when there's more data), but we found a similar pattern at earlier headcount stages too. Expect to see highest attrition rates in SDR and marketing teams, and lowest in engineering, design, and legal teams. It's worth digging deeply into attrition stats… regretted/non-regretted, voluntary/involuntary, first-year/later, exit-interview analyses… all of which can contain hidden warning signs. The book goes through all this in detail… Obviously there's more ‘signal-vs-noise’ from attrition metrics as companies get bigger. But, early-on, you really want to dig into the reasons employees give for quitting. These can indicate problems with culture, management, comp, etc.