Christoph Janz
32 statements across 6 episodes · 6 bullish · 5 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Feb 4, 2021 by Christoph Janz · said 29 times in 11 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Christoph Janz's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Jason Lemkin (13), Mikkel Svane (11), Robert Lacher (2), Devdutt Yellurkar (2), Guillaume Cabane (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2024 10 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- How to Hire a Great VP of Sales Today with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
- Navigating Fundraising and the VC Landscape Today with 20VC and Visionaries Club
- Fundraising from VCs and Hiring VPs in 2025: AMA with Jason Lemkin SaaStr CEO
- Forget the SaaS Gloom and Doom. Just Build. with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin
- Deep Dive: AI-Powered Marketing to Get More Leads and Customers with HyperGrowth Partners
- Top 10 Go To Market Mistakes Founders Make Again … and Again with SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2022 2 mentions in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2017 13 mentions in 1 episode
Everything said about Christoph Janz, oldest first
Feb 4, 2021 neutral
Janz: Venture round definitions have shifted upward by an entire stage
“Like what used to be called a seed is now a pre-seed, what used to be called a series A is now a seed, what used to be called a series B is now a series A, and what used to be called
A series C is now a series B.
So you can almost shift the columns one step if…”
Feb 4, 2021 positive
Janz: The top 20% of SaaS startups defy standard funding benchmarks
“The best or the hottest, if you will, 10 to 20% of the companies, they kind of defy all rules.
So we've seen companies
Raising at really very, very remarkable terms in the last in the last years, but even, even more so, or especially in the last 12 months.
if…”
Feb 4, 2021 negative
Janz: Preemptive VC Discussions Benefit Investors, Not Founders
“Investors will often try to pull you into preemptive fundraising discussions. I think that's mostly good for them, not necessarily good for the founders, and I think in almost all cases you are better off if you decide when you go out fundraising, and then you…”
Feb 4, 2021 neutral
Nov 17, 2021 positive
Jun 29, 2022
Jun 29, 2022 bearish
Janz: Venture debt should be a last resort due to default risk
“Venture debt or revenue based financing, but it should probably be the last resort because it'll add a lot of risk to your company. So if you do that and things Don't work out, then basically the bank owns your company by the time you have to pay back.”
Jun 29, 2022
Janz: Inability to find high-probability leads signals deeper product-positioning issues
“What you should maybe try to do is open up the funnel, try to get more leads but then let your sales team be picky to focus on the leads that have the highest probability of closing. And if you don't have any of these leads, then I think it's, it just points t…”
Jun 29, 2022 negative
Janz: Fire any VP who isn't amazing after a few months
“Move on from any VP that isn't amazing. I think this advice has been given and repeated many times over, but it's doesn't make it wrong. If you've hired a VP, say it's marketing or any other function, and if he or she isn't absolutely awesome after a couple of…”
Jun 29, 2022 bearish
Jun 29, 2022
Jun 29, 2022 neutral
Janz: The Rule of 40 only works for SaaS over $10M ARR
“The problem is that this only really works if you're at
I know, 10, fifteen million or so in, in ARR. At a much earlier stage, you will almost always have a not so good rule of 40 because the investments in product and engineering are just like so high that t…”
Jun 29, 2022 neutral
Janz: The marginal 10-20% of marketing spend is far less efficient
“If you look at your marketing spend, you will almost certainly find that the last 20%, or last 10%, or last x percent of your spend is much, much less efficient than the average. That's just really basically quite natural and logical. You catch the lowest hang…”
Jun 29, 2022 bullish
Janz: Seed deep tech startups can still raise $5M to $10M
“I think pre-seed or seed companies will still be able to raise significant amounts of money, like let's say five or ten million dollars if it's the right team and if it's the right opportunity to do that R&D work to get a product into the hands of customers.”
Jun 29, 2022 neutral
Janz: Cutting bottom 5-10% of staff costs almost no productivity
“Every company has five to 10% or maybe even more of people on their team who are just not performing as well as the rest. There is just no company where everybody is at the same level. So just consider letting go, like, the bottom five to 10%. In the sales tea…”
Jun 29, 2022
Oct 13, 2022 neutral
Strict 'default alive' goals can cause startups to underinvest and stagnate
“If you're planning to be default alive, which is a great goal, it might, depending on your situation, lead you to under-invest in, in product and R&D, sales and marketing. So the consequence of that might be that you that you sort of, you don't fail quickly, b…”
Oct 13, 2022 negative
Janz: Spending against exponential growth projections is super risky
“If you project exponential revenue growth and spend money based on that, that's super risky. As I showed in the very beginning, if the growth just happens to be a little bit slower than you expected because of this compounding effect of exponential growth, the…”
Oct 13, 2022 positive
Oct 13, 2022 positive
Oct 13, 2022 neutral
Janz: Rapid startup downturns stem from slowing growth while maintaining planned spend
“So if you suddenly find yourself in a much worse situation, it's probably because two things happened. Number one, your growth rate went down, and number two, you kept spending cash according to your original plan. So this is what typically happens, or at leas…”
Oct 13, 2022 positive
Janz: 15 to 18 month CAC payback is acceptable for enterprise SaaS
“As a rule of thumb, if you're selling to enterprises, you have a long customer lifetime, you might have a net dollar retention rate or in the hour of a hundred percent or maybe even more. 15 to 18 months of payback is probably okay, probably quite good.”
Oct 13, 2022
Pre-product-market fit startups should keep engineering teams under 10 people
“I think for pre product market fit companies, I would say it's always been true that you should have a pretty small team because it's unpredictable how long it's going to take. To get to product market fit and adding more people doesn't necessarily get you the…”
Oct 13, 2022 neutral
Sep 27, 2023 neutral
Sep 27, 2023
Sep 27, 2023 neutral
2023 VC Market Is More Nuanced Than AI Versus Non-AI
“Before we did the survey this year, my expectation was that the napkin could look a bit like this year, meaning that if you're an AI, everybody wants to give you money at any valuation. And if you're not an AI, then, well, probably difficult. I think there is …”
Sep 27, 2023
Cutting Efficient Sales and Marketing Spend Can Actually Shorten Runway
“Because if your marketing and sales spend is quite efficient, then you probably don't want to cut there because it might actually reduce your runway. Because if let's say a dollar that you invest in sales and marketing becomes a dollar of cashflow within six m…”
Sep 27, 2023 neutral
2023 Series B SaaS Startups Raised at $6M to $12M ARR
“Most companies were around six to twelve million in ARR. And interestingly, more than half of them were growing at less than two X. In, in previous years, that proportion was lower. So it's a bit similar to what we saw previously for the series A's. The rounds…”
Sep 25, 2024
Founders must explain CAC calculations because no single standard exists
“There is probably not one generally accepted way of how customer acquisition costs are calculated. You can do it in many different ways. So make sure to explain how you do that or add a footnote. Otherwise, that will for sure trigger a follow up question from …”
Sep 25, 2024
Sep 25, 2024
Clean SaaS metrics reduce diligence friction and accelerate fundraising
“If your data is self-explanatory, in good shape, easy to understand, and aligned with what investors really care about, you will avoid a lot of follow-up questions and a lot of back and forth with the investors that you are going to talk to and that are going …”