Nov 30, 2023 · 32m · saastr
How to Scale Go-to-Market Through IPO with ICONIQ Growth's General Partners
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
ICONIQ Growth partners Doug Pepper and Christine Edmonds share a data-driven blueprint for scaling SaaS go-to-market motions, executive leadership, and operational efficiency from early revenue stages through an IPO.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Jason as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 1.0 Guest disagreement 0.0 Jason pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Jason, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 31:00 Hard reality of replacing non-scaling talent
Doug delivers the most direct, challenging insight of the session, emphasizing that founders must proactively switch out executives who have done nothing wrong but cannot meet the next stage.
Hardest push from Jason ▶ 21:00 Rebutting common marketing hiring prioritiesChristine addresses founder assumptions around hiring high-profile brand marketers, clarifying that data strongly correlates product marketing backgrounds with sustained tenure and success.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 10:35 Data-backed 25x ARR hiring ruleDoug shares proprietary portfolio data demonstrating that hiring sales leaders with experience managing twenty-five times current ARR results in a 55% success rate past $100M ARR.
Jason holds their own ▶ 28:50 Public valuation regression analysisDoug demonstrates deep market expertise by presenting longitudinal regression data showing revenue growth surpassing the Rule of 40 as the dominant multiple driver.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Jason as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Jason pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Imperative of GTM Excellence and Efficient Growth | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Doug and Christine deliver a stage keynote outlining why go-to-market excellence must match product quality and note declining industry plan attainment. Because this is a monologue presentation without host questioning, host metrics are scored at zero. | |
| Early Stage Milestones and Overcoming the Growth Plateau | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Doug details the growth plateau companies encounter at fifteen million ARR when founder selling exhausts its initial pull, while Christine introduces the Enterprise Five metrics. The delivery is cooperative and instructional. | |
| Sequencing and Selecting the First Head of Sales | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | The speakers provide empirical data regarding first sales leadership hires, showing candidates with twenty-five times ARR in quota responsibility achieve significantly higher long-term success. The talk is entirely presentation-driven. | |
| Establishing Performance Culture and Incentive Compensation | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Doug shares benchmarks on variable compensation structures across sales roles and recalls Marketo's energetic deal-celebration culture. No interview friction occurs. | |
| Early Growth Stage Scaling and Team Segmentation | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Christine breaks down team expansion and customer segmentation by geography and size as startups move toward fifty million ARR. The flow remains explanatory. | |
| Sales Tech Stack, RevOps, and Enablement Architecture | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Doug highlights tech stack adoption, RevOps infrastructure, and sales enablement required to counteract declining rep quota attainment and longer ramp times. The monologue continues smoothly. | |
| Hiring the Scaling Sales Leader and First Marketing Head | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Christine explains the rationale for prioritizing product marketing over brand marketing early on, and Doug addresses offshore workforce cost dynamics and enterprise service demands. | |
| Pre-IPO Stage Readiness: CMOs, Retention, and International TAM | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Doug explains why pre-IPO CMOs are hired late to serve as corporate storytellers, while Christine reviews the role of cross-sell and international expansion in IPO readiness. | |
| Public Market Valuation Drivers and Growth Versus Efficiency | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Doug and Christine analyze regression data on valuation drivers, illustrating how public markets have pivoted back to valuing revenue growth over pure efficiency metrics. | |
| Executive Summary, Team Evolution Insights, and Q&A Transition | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Doug concludes with an observation on the difficulty of replacing executives who have executed well but cannot scale to the next phase, followed by a wrap-up before Q&A. |
Statements from this episode (18)
SaaS Net Bookings Attainment Dropped From 95% Pre-2020 to 83% in 2023
“And to put these numbers in perspective, pre twenty-twenty, we typically saw these fall in the 95 to a hundred percent range, so really just speaks to the meaningful impact that we've seen. Again, 83% in the first half of this year may feel like renewed optimi…”
Successful SaaS Startups Consistently Hit a Growth Plateau Around $15M ARR
“We looked at all the data of our companies over a decade. Even the successful ones hit this thing that we call the growth plateau. Around fifteen million ARR, you can see in the data, and again, these are the successful companies that made it through. They hit…”
Founder-Led Sales and Early Adopter Pull Run Out at $15M ARR
“Founder selling works really effectively at the early stages. You start to run out of juice of that around fifteen million ARR, and then especially with great products, there's always pull from initial early adopters, and again, that runs out, and the key is t…”
Most SaaS Startups Hire Their First AE Before a Head of Sales
“Most companies will hire their first AE before a head of sales.”
SaaS Companies Average Two to Three Sales Leaders Before Going Public
“In general, we find that most companies have somewhere between two and three sales leaders between founding and actually going public”
Sales Leaders Need Past Quota Experience of 25x Your Current ARR
“55% of those hires not only were successful, they made it all the way past a hundred million ARR. If you hire somebody who had less than 25 times your current ARR in terms of their quota responsibility, 44% didn't even make it out of the early stage. They didn…”
Scaling Companies Prioritize Geography and Size Over Industry Segmentation
“The maturity of segmentation really kicks in during this phase, with most companies prioritizing geography and size. As companies continue to scale, that's where we start to see segments like industry come into play”
Organize Board Meeting Sales Charts by Manager to Reveal True Performance
“Those salespeople, those individual contributors are really only as good as the managers, the leaders that report to them. And so when we look at those charts in board meetings, we organize them by the managers because some really interesting patterns come in.”
Sales Managers Oversee 5-7 Reps at $20M-$50M ARR, 7-10 Near IPO
“You could see in the 20 to fifty million dollar range, the data that we have is that typically a manager can manage five to seven individual contributors. Of course, as a company gets closer to IPO, they can scale that to seven to 10.”
Sales Leaders Present at IPO Average Three Years of Prior Tenure
“On average, we find the sales leader that is there at time of IPO has been there for more or less three years prior to that, just to have the time to build out the maturity and sophistication in that revenue repeatability.”
Scale-Up Sales Leaders Need Quota Experience 14x Your Current ARR
“You're looking for a sales leader that has at least 14 times of your ARR in quota-carrying background.”
Product Marketing Backgrounds Correlate Best With Head of Marketing Success
“And what we found is both from a commonality standpoint as well as a correlation with tenure and success, it's product marketing.”
54% of Tech Companies Hire Their CMO Within Two Years of IPO
“And you can see from the data, 30% are hiring their CMO a year, less than a year from going public. You know, a total of 54% two years to IPO. And then on the dollar side, 46% are hired after a hundred million ARR.”
Over 50% of Pre-IPO Revenue Comes From Upsells and Cross-Sells
“The first is thinking about the split between existing customer base and new customers, and what you see here is by the time companies are ready to IPO, over 50% of their revenue is generated by existing customers through either upsell or cross-sell.”
Software Companies Average Three Distinct Products at the Time of IPO
“Cross-sell obviously requires a more diverse product suite, and what you can see along the bottom here is, on average, companies at the IPO stage have three products.”
International Customers Make Up 30% of Tech Company Revenue at IPO
“If all of those are the case, then, of course, it makes sense to start expanding internationally, and again, at the time of IPO, We typically see about 30% of revenue made up from non-North America customers.”
Predictable Growth and NDR Rank as Top SaaS Valuation Drivers
“We looked at all the publicly traded SaaS companies and did a regression analysis of what are the key drivers of your valuation and your valuation multiple. And this is actually the answer in order. Revenue growth, probably not surprisingly, but not just growt…”
Revenue Growth Overtook Efficiency as the Top Valuation Driver in Q2 2023
“What you can see through kind of most of 22 last year was that efficiency went to the top. That's how companies were valued. And of course, now look at the very last point on the far right. Q two, 20, 23, it's flipped again and on top revenue growth.”