Mar 10, 2023 · 1h 9m · saastr
SaaStr APAC AMA with Jason Lemkin, SaaStr CEO
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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 APAC AMA session, SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin delivers actionable advice for scaling enterprise SaaS companies, addressing global hiring, capital efficiency, financial metrics, community-led growth, and founder execution. He urges international entrepreneurs to maintain disciplined operational standards, focus on net revenue retention, and aggressively pursue global customer acquisition.
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 87.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Jason as informed peer 7.4 Guest teaching 0.1 Guest disagreement 0.6 Jason pushing back 3.6
speaking balance: gold is Jason, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 32:29 Audience member pushes back on MRR revenue inclusions
The audience member challenges Jason's blanket statement on revenue by pressing for specifics on how to spread customization and one-time fees.
Hardest push from Jason ▶ 52:46 Jason dismantles category creation terminologyJason forcefully shuts down the guest's framing around category creation, calling it a manufactured VC buzzword rather than an actionable founder strategy.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 38:59 Guest politely checks accent stereotypeAfter Jason jokes about unintelligible Australian accents in Sydney, the attendee gently corrects him by noting Sydney's highly international composition.
Jason holds their own ▶ 35:10 Jason exposes bookings commission distortions at AdobeJason draws on his firsthand corporate experience to demonstrate how paying commissions on non-cash bookings collapsed EchoSign's ARR at Adobe.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Jason as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Jason pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Global Talent, Hybrid Teams, and Founder Density | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Opening monologue by Jason responding to a preceding VC panel about distributed talent, recruitment workload, and founder density. | |
| Why Singapore and Unlocking APAC SaaS Potential | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | The attendee asks why Singapore was chosen and what APAC startups should double down on. Jason provides macro SaaS purchasing data and VC dynamics, challenging the perception of APAC disadvantage. | |
| SaaStr's Community Marketing Strategy and Product Roadmap | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | An attendee asks about SaaStr's internal marketing plan. Jason jokes about not having a traditional marketing strategy and outlines his programmatic matchmaking roadmap. | |
| Strategic Timing and Execution of SaaS Localization | 8 | 0 | 0 | 2 | An attendee asks when startups typically localize their products. Jason shares his direct operational experience from EchoSign, urging founders to localize early in single-digit millions. | |
| Essential Metrics and the Superiority of Net Revenue Retention | 9 | 0 | 1 | 6 | When asked for top three metrics, Jason immediately cuts through SaaS acronyms to prioritize growth efficiency and Net Revenue Retention, citing case studies from HubSpot and MailChimp. | |
| Bootstrapping Strategy, Category Velocity, and Scale Convergence | 8 | 0 | 0 | 2 | An attendee asks what failing bootstrapped startups miss compared to Zoho or Atlassian. Jason reframes bootstrapping as category-dependent and explains how bootstrap and VC models converge around twenty million ARR. | |
| Financial Integrity, GAAP Revenue, and Booking Pitfalls | 9 | 0 | 2 | 8 | An attendee inquires about nuanced formulas for booking complex revenue. Jason firmly rejects bespoke booking practices, demanding adherence to standard GAAP revenue recognition. | |
| Event Scale Discipline and the Reality of Post-COVID San Francisco | 8 | 1 | 0 | 3 | An attendee asks three questions covering Sydney expansion, small intimate events, and the state of post-COVID San Francisco. Jason outlines SaaStr event unit economics and analyzes SF commercial real estate changes. | |
| Actionable Frameworks for B2B Community Building | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Jason provides strategic frameworks for B2B community growth, reviewing examples from Gainsight, HubSpot, Notion, and Doximity. | |
| Dismantling Category Creation and Defining the MSP | 8 | 0 | 2 | 8 | An attendee asks about category-creating MVPs. Jason strongly rejects both category creation and MVP terminology, asserting that founders should focus on finding tangible white space and building minimum sellable products. | |
| Late-Stage Capital Efficiency, Rule of 100, and Unicorn Runway | 8 | 0 | 1 | 7 | When an attendee asks about optimizing late-stage startups for the Rule of 40, Jason corrects the premise, explaining that VCs demand high capital-efficient growth and that late-stage unicorns must treat remaining capital as a final allowance. | |
| Conquering the Year of Hell and Reigniting Founder Execution | 8 | 0 | 1 | 4 | Nikhil asks a philosophical question about human behavior in downturns. Jason reframes the prompt to address founder psychology, conquering the year of hell, and overcoming strategic retreats. |
Statements from this episode (26)
Lemkin: Pre-COVID, US sales leaders would not join APAC startups
“Before March, 2020, there was zero percent chance a great, okay, less than one percent chance a great CEO in Singapore could convince a US VP of sales to join them. They just wouldn't do it.”
Lemkin: CEOs must spend 20% to 30% of time recruiting past $1M ARR
“The best CEOs recruit 20 to 30% of the time. Constantly. 20 to 30. If you're not spending 20 to 30% of your time as a CEO recruiting after a million or two in revenue, you're not getting the job done.”
Lemkin: Average US Enterprise Uses Over 400 B2B Apps
“The average Enterprise company in the US has over 400 B to B apps, and the average SMB has over a hundred.”
Lemkin: SaaS Startups Should Open EMEA Office by $2M Revenue
“Actually, I think most folks wait too long to have an EMEA office. You at least want to do it by the time you have a couple million in revenue to service those customers, right?”
Lemkin: Startups Need $50M ARR Before Inbound APAC Revenue Hits $2M
“You might have to get to, I was thinking about this outside, you might have to get to fifty million in revenue until you naturally have a couple million of revenue coming in through APAC, unless you force it, right? Unless you make it happen.”
Lemkin: All Top US Tech Companies Are Run by Asian/Indian Americans
“All the top US tech companies are run by Asian Americans or Indian Americans. All of them, right? Am I, are there any that aren't? AMD, Microsoft, Google, who am I missing?”
Lemkin: SaaStr does not have a marketing strategy or marketing team
“We don't really have a marketing strategy or even a marketing team.”
Lemkin: Eric Yuan and Stewart Butterfield learned SaaS from SaaStr
“It's where Eric Wan learned SAST, and Stuart Butterfield learned SAST, and so many, that's why we get so many great speakers, because they were part of SASTR so early on.”
Lemkin: EchoSign Fully Localized Its Software at $3M to $4M ARR
“Back in the day when I was running Adobe Sign, Echo Sign, and we were competing with DocuSign, we fully, and it was a pain, right? It was fully, we fully localized a two-byte app all across the, every piece of it, in every language under the world and we did i…”
Lemkin: SaaS Startups Should Fully Localize at Single-Digit Millions ARR
“So if you can do it in, in single digit millions, I think that's my challenge. Try to do it in, try to fully localize your app in, in single digit millions, right?”
Lemkin: HubSpot had horrific 75% NRR at $30M revenue
“HubSpot had horrific NRR for a long time. It was 75% at thirty million in revenue. Horrific. Horrific. And eventually they got it up to a hundred and then finally to a 110% after the IPO.”
Lemkin: SaaS requires 100% SMB NRR and 120% enterprise NRR
“The thing is, SAS is not really that interesting without a hundred percent NRR from SMBs and like a 120% from the enterprise, because you can kind of sleepwalk. I mean, not literally, but it's what makes the business model work is that the revenue recurs, righ…”
Lemkin: Bootstrapped and venture SaaS models converge at $10M-$20M revenue
“Somewhere between 10 and twenty million in revenue, depending on your sales motion, the models converge. The models converge. So, if you have twenty million in revenue and you're bootstrapped, and you're willing to spend all 20, right, you can basically hire a…”
Lemkin: ClickUp bootstrapped to $25 million in revenue
“To some extent, ClickUp bootstrapped to twenty-five million the same way.”
Lemkin: Straying from GAAP revenue accounting creates business chaos
“The further you go away from GAAP, the more
Fracked up, your business is gonna be.”
Lemkin: SaaStr Annual costs $12M to produce; SaaStr London costs $5M
“Sastra Annual will cost twelve million dollars. Sastra London will cost five million. Sastra Annual takes 18 months to plan.”
Lemkin: B2B Tech Companies Will Never Bring Large Sales Teams Back to SF
“The other thing that's never coming back is that every B to B company had 500 sales reps in the Bay Area. They're never coming back. We're never renting a hunt, 20 floors of Soma. Soma, if you go, Soma, south of Market, where we had, everyone had 20 floors. It…”
Lemkin: No Tech Hub Can Match San Francisco's Founder Density
“You will never find the density of founders you find in the San Francisco. You'll never be challenged. You will never go to events and parties like you see there. You will never see that and you don't need it to win, but it's powerful when you have it.”
Lemkin: Shortcuts and unmoderated Slack channels fail at community building
“Everyone tries to take shortcuts in community and buy a piece of software and tell people to sign up for a website or join a circle or a Facebook group. That certainly doesn't seem to work, right? Or join our Slack channel that no one moderates. You gotta go a…”
Lemkin: Notion took eight years to take off before breaking out
“It took Notion eight years to take off. Notion seemed like an overnight success story around 2019 or 20 20.”
Lemkin: 'Category creation' is a stupid VC buzzword
“I think the whole term of category creation is a stupid VC-ism.”
Lemkin: SaaS founders need a 'Minimum Sellable Product', not an MVP
“I don't think there's any such thing as an MVP in SaaS. Yeah. If you want to be a B to C guy, great. I hate that term too. I, the term I use, and I should, I used to talk about it a lot in the early days of Saster, but you want a minimum sellable product, not …”
Lemkin: VCs reject slow profitable growth and demand a Rule of 100
“Rule of 40 kind of implies that mediocre growth is okay if you're profitable, and that's the disservice. It's, no VC is interested in mediocre growth that's profitable, like we started this earlier. No one's interested in the rule of 30. We really, VCs want ru…”
Lemkin: None of my unicorn portfolio companies plan to raise capital again
“I have several that, a couple that raised it north of a billion dollars in valuation with double digits, ah, millions in revenue, ok? And hooray, they have a lot of money in the bank. None of them are ever planning to ever raise another dollar of capital. It's…”
Lemkin: Only forced or highly efficient SaaS companies will IPO within 15 months
“The only folks that are going to IPO for now in the next 12 to 15 months in SaaS are, A handful of folks will be forced to IPO, and they may have, and they may barely pull it off and have really crappy IPOs, or they'll be profitable or very efficient companies…”
Lemkin: 30 of 32 founders I backed faced a 'year of hell'
“I've invested in about 32 founders. About four don't like me. Now I'm not cuddly. Ok, I'm not kumbaya, but I'm about the most honest and earnest person you're gonna find. Ok, I don't, I'm not trying to screw anybody over. I'm not trying, I'm just trying to hel…”