Insight
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…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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 …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
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.”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
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.”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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.”
Insight
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.”
Opinion
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.”
Insight
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…”
Insight
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…”
Opinion
Roberge: Inbound leads rarely drive million-dollar enterprise deals
“Inbound is probably not going to drive enterprise. Like it's really rare to get an inbound lead and be like, and then three months later, oh, we have a million dollar account.”
Opinion
Roberge: AI is the first blank canvas for B2B software in 20 years
“For the first time in 20 years, it's a blank canvas. It's complete artistic freedom. Especially in our area of B to B software. We can re-imagine everything.”
Insight
Roberge: Embedding AI into existing workflows is not true disruption
“Certainly iterative technologies, just embedding an AI in the workflows we do today. That's not the answer. That's not the disruption.”
Opinion
Roberge: Petitions to pause AI will let bad actors pull ahead
“This technology is coming no matter what. I appreciate petitions to sign to try to stop it, but I, I'm not sure that that's the solution. It just seems like bad actors will be able to get a head, a leg on us, and I'd rather this technology be run by the people…”
Insight
Roberge: AI startups should target areas where incumbents lack proprietary data
“If you want to stack the deck in your favor, choose use cases as an entrepreneur where the big company incumbents don't have the data. That'll stack the deck in your favor.”
Insight
Products With High Retention Will Eventually Solve Acquisition and Monetization
“I might argue that if you can get people to stick and continue to use your product, you will figure out the scalable user acquisition model, and you will figure out the monetization model.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Consumer Giants Spend Over 50% of Engineering on Experimentation Tools
“Some of them say that over half of their engineering resources are not spent developing features that a consumer will ever experience.
They're spent making experimentation easy.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Best-in-Class PLG Startups House Growth Teams Inside Product, Not Marketing
“A lot of these startups I see in PLG, almost all of them actually, put their growth teams in marketing, and I think that's an opportunity because all of the best-in-class ones put their growth team in product.”
Insight
Housing Growth Teams in Marketing Prevents Startups From Hiring Engineers
“And what happens if you put your growth team in marketing is you won't have any engineers. I've never had met an engineer whose career goal was to work in marketing. Like, no offense, right? It's just, like, not what they want to do. And so, if you have your g…”
Insight
PLG Product Funnel Growth Must Outpace Sales Headcount Growth
“The growth rate of your growth funnel, whether you measure that as users or M or MAUs or PQLs, product qualified leads, that has to grow faster than your sales headcount.”
