Jan 24, 2025 · 33m · saastr
9 Things You Can Do to Grow Faster This Year with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this SaaStr workshop, founder and CEO Jason Lemkin presents nine actionable growth layers to help software companies accelerate revenue in the new year. Lemkin provides practical playbooks across targeted outbound sales, multi-product development, in-person customer events, enterprise tiering, and dedicated customer success.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Jason holds 99.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Jason as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 0.0 Guest disagreement 0.0 Jason pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Jason, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 5:02 Audience agreement
There is no combativeness in this solo workshop format; attendee interjections are purely brief agreeable affirmations like 'Right?'.
Hardest push from Jason ▶ 5:31 Challenging inbound-only complacencyJason pushes back against the conventional hesitation founders have regarding outbound costs by highlighting how blended unit economics remain profitable.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:10 No schooling presentThe episode is an instructional monologue by Jason Lemkin, with no guest presenting corrections or educational counterpoints to the speaker.
Jason holds their own ▶ 23:40 Dell roadmap meeting case studyJason demonstrates his operator experience by recounting how a 40-person roadmap presentation at Dell proved the importance of in-person executive visits.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Jason as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Jason pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy 1: Crafting Thoughtful, High-Impact Outbound Campaigns | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Jason delivers a solo presentation detailing why thoughtful outbound strategies still succeed despite outbound noise. The attendee only provides passive affirmations ('Right?', 'Great', 'Add it'), making this a monologue presentation. | |
| Strategy 2: Launching a Genuine Second Core Product | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Jason explains why scaling founders regret not launching a second core product before reaching ten million in ARR. There is no guest interaction or debate. | |
| Strategy 3: Hosting Half-Day In-Person Customer Conferences | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Jason outlines the high ROI of hosting half-day customer conferences with prospective clients in attendance. The attendee only offers brief acknowledgments. | |
| Strategy 4: Adding an Enterprise Tier to Capture AI Budgets | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Jason argues that enterprise tiers are essential to capture growing AI budgets rather than simply hiking base prices. This segment is entirely delivered as a presentation monologue. | |
| Strategy 5: Appointing Dedicated Leadership for Business Development | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Jason discusses the mistake of treating business development as a part-time founder task and emphasizes visiting customers for roadmap presentations. The attendee offers no pushback or dialogue. | |
| Strategy 7: Preserving Retention by Staffing SMB Customer Success | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Jason argues against dismantling customer success teams for SMB tiers, noting that human support prevents significant recurring revenue churn. The attendee only says 'Add it. Add it.' in agreement. | |
| Strategy 8: Arming Brand Advocates Through Dedicated Customer Marketing | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Jason covers dedicating marketing budget to existing customer advocates and going international early. The monologue concludes without any adversarial exchange. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Lemkin: Top SaaS teams accelerate growth by continuously adding go-to-market layers
“Not only do you have to drive up NRR and drive down churn and solve those 82 feature gaps and build that integration, but you got to add a layer if you really want to do it. And the best teams, the most agile teams, the ones that are killing it are doing this.”
Lemkin: Mangomint reached $20M ARR on 100% inbound sales
“Today, the brand's big enough that at twenty million, the model's a hundred percent inbound.”
Lemkin: New sales motions only need to break even if core engine is efficient
“As long as you break even on a new layer. As long as you break even on a new initiative, it's worth it. As long as your core is efficient, not every marketing campaign has to have perfect ROI. Not every sales motion has to be profitable instantly. It just has …”
Lemkin: SaaS founders consistently regret waiting too long to go multi-product
“Everyone regrets not going multi-product earlier.”
Lemkin: A second core product must unlock new customer budget
“A core product, a second core product has to unlock much, much, much more budget for a discreet reason than the first.”
Lemkin: Producing the SaaStr Annual conference costs up to $8M
“You want to know how much it costs it to do SaaS through annual? It costs five million dollars unburdened. It costs close to eight million dollars fully burdened.”
Lemkin: In-Person Events Enable Existing Customers to Sell Prospects
“When you put the customers and prospects, your potential customers, prospects in the room, they can't help. Your customers will just sell your prospects for you.”
Lemkin: Enterprise AI drives all current growth in B2B cloud budgets
“All the growth in cloud budget and B to B budget is for AI. Some of it's sure for AI native platforms, some of it's for other things, but all this AI budget is basically in the enterprise. Okay. That's where you see the growth. It's all enterprise.”
Lemkin: Only Top 20% to 30% of Customers Can Successfully Deploy AI
“And if you talk to folks that are selling, that have an AI offering and they're selling in a B to B platform and they're selling to small customers, medium customers, and large customers, you're going to hear the same thing from all of them. Our AI product's g…”
Lemkin: Startups must hire dedicated staff once partnerships exist
“As soon as you have one or two big partners, one or two big channels, one or two big whatevers, you need a full-time person managing that. And ultimately, as it scales, a full-time team. You cannot do partnerships and business development on the side. You can …”
Lemkin: Marc Benioff attends Davos to meet 100 enterprise customers in person
“Mark Benioff has been going for 15 years. And, you know, he, I didn't understand why for a while. He's like, I sit at the top of this one. He said, Mark Benioff said, I sit at the top of this one staircase. And I just meet a hundred customers in person. It's t…”
Lemkin: Offering roadmap presentations consistently secures in-person meetings with enterprise clients
“You know, it always works a roadmap presentation. It always works. Tell your top customers, and this works for prospects too. Hey, I'm coming to Dallas. I'd love to just show you what we're building over this year. I'd love to show you and get your feedback. I…”
Lemkin: Customer success is weaponized for upsells when rolled into sales
“Anytime customer success is part of sales, customer success is just weaponized to do upsell. It's literally just weaponized to upsell.”
Lemkin: The best AI support tools resolve only 30% to 40% of issues
“If you really talk to the best AI vendors at scale, even the best AI support tools, and this isn't customer says it's just support the best ones. If they're honest, can resolve 30, maybe 40% of issues, right?”
Lemkin: Top Scale CMOs Spend 10% to 20% on Customer Marketing
“Now, if you talk to some of the best CMOs at scale, right, and I've asked them many times over the years, they'll typically tell you, 15%, 10%, usually not more than 20% because of the pressures to deliver for sales, but they're spending double digits of their…”
Lemkin: Most Founders Spend Zero Percent on Marketing to Existing Customers
“What I find is that for most folks, when I ask them this question, it's zero percent of their marketing budget is going to their existing base.”
Lemkin: HubSpot, Asana, and Monday Generate Roughly 50% of Revenue Outside US
“50% of many cloud leaders revenue is outside of the U S more than 50% of HubSpot's revenue is outside of the U S almost. Asana's revenue about 50% of Monday's revenue is outside the U S”
Lemkin: RevenueCat's API now powers 40% of all subscription mobile apps
“I was the first investor in a company called revenue cat. That now about 40% of all mobile apps that have subscriptions use their API to manage subscriptions.”
Lemkin: Hire an On-the-Ground Foreign Geo Lead at $1M, Not $10M+
“If you have even a million dollars in a geo outside your home geo or North America, and it's growing quickly, just hire a full-time person there you trust to get it to two million to four to eight to 16. People wait until 10, 20, thirty million in a geo to hir…”