Mark Roberge
Co-Founder & Managing Director, Stage 2 Capital. On 2 shows, 5 appearances, plus 2 compilation re-airs not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorexecutiveoperatoracademicauthor@markroberge ↗LinkedIn ↗stage2.capital ↗
Roberge was the founding Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot, scaling revenue from zero to over $100 million ARR and an IPO. He co-founded Stage 2 Capital and authored the bestselling book The Sales Acceleration Formula.
2shows
5appearances
92statements
8resolved
6supported
1contradicted
75%fully supported
22said about them ↓ Everything Mark Roberge said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Roberge: Startups Seeking Product-Market Fit Should Avoid Commission Plans
“I don't like commission plan salespeople in the journey to product market fit. Like I just want pure equity people.”
HubSpot rejected a $3M Facebook deal at $3M ARR to maintain focus
“I mean, I think we're at two, three million in revenue at HubSpot and one rep brought Facebook to the table as a customer. It was like a three million dollar contract. It would have doubled our revenue. And he said, no, we were being pulled, said no.”
Roberge: Top AI talent beats mediocre teams with trillions of data records
“So if you had to choose between having an A plus AI tech talent team with millions of records of data, and you were going against a mediocre AI tech talent team with trillions of data that the startup wins. And that starts to make sense with the diminishing re…”
Roberge: Hiring sales reps based on domain experience correlates with failure
“10 years of experience selling a product like mine to a customer like mine. And there's tremendous research that shows that that mindset correlates with lack of success, like doesn't work out.”
Roberge: Prioritize deal size experience over domain expertise when hiring sales reps
“I have strong conviction that deal size has a higher weight. In correlation to success. Let's just say we sell million dollar deals to banks. And I have two candidates. One candidate sells 10,000 dollar deals to banks. And one candidate sells million dollar de…”
Roberge: Sales Commissions Should Be Split to Reward Customer Retention
“I'm gonna give you half of the commission when the customer pays, and half the commission when they hit their leading indicator of retention, which usually happens in the first 30 days.”
Roberge: PLG sales reps should earn higher commissions on expansion revenue
“I would do something like this, Harry, you're a salesperson, your job is bringing customers. I'm going to pay you know, three percent. Rate on the first ACB from a customer and five percent on any expansion revenue. So now it's like, oh, sweet. Okay. I get it.…”
Roberge: SaaS CAC payback periods longer than 12 months signal flawed economics
“So if someone pays us 10,000 dollars a year, And it costs us 10,000 dollars to acquire them. We get paid back in 12 months, right? Anything above that, you start to question whether your economics work, anything below that, it's really good.”
Roberge: Series A CAC payback under 12 months signals overly conservative growth
“At the Series A, less than 12 is a, it's almost like you're probably being too efficient. Like, we could probably, like, try to grow faster. 12 to 15 is really good. 15 to 20 is fine. It's kind of like, that's fine for now. We'll have to work on it later. Abov…”
Roberge: Net revenue retention is more critical for compounding growth than GRR
“I probably put more weight in net revenue retention because at the end of the day, if you have a 120% net revenue retention, Then you're going to grow 20% a year without acquiring any customers.”
Roberge: Startups should not target enterprise customers below $2M ARR
“I will say that it is extremely rare that you want to go into enterprise south of a couple million in revenue.”
Roberge: Startups face irrelevance from AI like 1997 on-premise software
“I think there's a decent chance that whatever you're working on as a startup, as a use case, as a problem, It might be irrelevant. It might be like it's 1997, and you're working on a client server, on premise piece of software, and you're about to get the rug …”
Roberge: Non-VC startups generate more wealth than VC-backed startups
“More wealth is generated in startups in non-VC backed startups than VC backed startups.”
Roberge: AI founders should target startups first despite high churn
“If I'm gonna build my MVP, I'm gonna build it with the startup tech community. That's, like, scary for me to say, because the startup tech by itself, as an, that, that has a high failure rate, so you're gonna have a lot of churn, but it's just where you're gon…”
Roberge: Startups fail primarily by scaling at the wrong time
“I personally believe the number one failure reason for startups is they choose the wrong time to scale and they choose to scale at the wrong pace.”
Customer Retention Depends Far More on Sales Processes Than Onboarding
“A lot of research has shown That the success of a customer in retaining and expanding has a lot more to do with the sales process than the onboarding process.”
PLG Attackers Will Dominate B2B Public Markets Within a Decade
“Just like today the public markets in B to B are dominated by the SaaS attackers, I predict in the next decade the PLG attackers will dominate the public markets for the categories that it's in.”
Designing PLG to Prevent Revenue Cannibalization Guarantees Disruption
“The minute you start designing your PLG funnel with cannibalization in mind, you're cooked. Cause someone else is gonna cannibalize you.”
Roberge: 1980s-era sales comp models cause SaaS underutilization and revenue contraction
“We're using a sales comp plan that was invented in the 19 eighties, and it's causing our customers to utilize their licenses at a lower rate, and it's causing revenue contraction.”
Founders should build moats at Series B and C, not Series A
“Don't work on sustainable moat, in my opinion, at Series A, but around Series B and Series C, build the moat. Know what it is. Build the moat, and sometimes it comes at the expense of growth, and that's ok.”
Hitting $1M ARR proves market-message fit, not product-market fit
“I have product market fit when I have a million in revenue. I could not disagree more. That's market message fit. Congratulations. You know how to sell. Doesn't mean your product works.”
Lump-sum sales hiring after funding is the number one startup killer
“Let's hire a bunch of salespeople all at once. It's not good. It kills company. It's the number one killer.”
Roberge: Target salesperson churn rate should be 10% to 20%
“I like 10 to 20 I feel good about. 10%, lower than 10% I'm probably being too soft. I'm just not that good at hiring. Just not that good at hiring. And I can push my folks more. 20 to 25, I'm like, my business still works. North of 25, I'm like, my culture's g…”
Roberge: Why Big-Company Sales Reps Fail Under Technical Founders
“When you're two engineering-based founders bringing in that first salesperson, geez, that guy showed up at Oracle or Salesforce or wherever it was. He went through a month of training how to handle the top 20 objections. That process is not built. And if you d…”
The other half of the tape: Mark Roberge's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 22 times in 8 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jason Lemkin 7Jeetu Mahtani 5Brian Halligan 4Tom Clayton 3Tomasz Tunguz 2Harry Stebbings 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Official SaaStr Podcast 15
20VC 7
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 8 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
- Jeetu Mahtani, Sales Leader @Hubspot: How and When to Go International and Crush It | E1207 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- The State of SaaS Go-to-Market l Theory Ventures General Partner Tomasz Tunguz #saas #b2bsaas
- Jason Lemkin: Why Pricing is Worse Than Ever and There is More Funding Than Ever | E1157 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2022 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Mark's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAASTRLEDGER | Co-Founder & Managing Director, Stage 2 Capital | 4 +2 | 62 | 80% 4/5 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & Managing Director, Stage 2 Capital | 1 | 30 | 67% 2/3 | full record on 20VC → |