Jul 21, 2023 · 27m · top-founders
Don't do these 68 things in your SaaS company
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Recorded live at the SaaS Open conference and hosted by Nathan Latka, CB Insights CEO Anand Sanwal delivers a high-velocity keynote outlining practical, contrarian operational lessons to help bootstrapped SaaS founders avoid critical missteps in hiring, sales, marketing, and culture.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 3.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 0.0 Guest disagreement 4.5 Nathan pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 22:15 Best practices are for losers
Anand delivers his most aggressive contrarian statement, flatly stating that best practices are meant for people who want average results rather than building exceptional companies.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 0:00 Nathan sets conference stage expectationsBecause the episode is a solo conference talk after Nathan's intro, there is no direct host pushback against the speaker during the recording.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 19:10 Avoiding a 'shit brown' cultureAnand educates founders with a colorful metaphor explaining that designing company culture by consensus leads to a generic, diluted mess.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 0:20 Nathan pitches SaaS database platformNathan establishes his authority and domain expertise during the intro by highlighting GetLatka's extensive SaaS financial database and founder interviews.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nathan Latka Introduces the SaaS Open Presentation | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | Nathan delivers a brief promotional podcast intro before handing over to Anand Sanwal's conference keynote presentation at SaaS Open. Anand sets expectations with humorous disclaimers dismissing personal brand obsession. | |
| Company Culture, Onboarding Teammates, and Pragmatic PR | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | Anand delivers a solo presentation warning against high-performing jerks, half-assed onboarding, and hiring useless PR firms. Because this is a keynote monologue, host-side metrics remain at zero. | |
| Market Discipline, Hiring Rules, and Title Inflation | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | Anand lays out tactical rules against hiring under pressure and gives blunt criticism of 10-person startups handing out C-level executive titles. There is no host interaction during the monologue. | |
| Pricing Clarity, Customer Feedback, and Technical Priorities | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | Anand highlights the futility of overly cute pricing plans and obsessing over tech debt before generating initial revenue. The presentation proceeds without host participation. | |
| Authentic B2B Marketing, Customer Conversations, and Internal PM | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | Anand advises founders to make B2B marketing human, do intense executive reference checks, and avoid dominating customer discovery calls. Host metrics remain zero due to the solo talk format. | |
| Closing Sales, Enterprise Tourists, and Founder Brand Pitfalls | 0 | 0 | 5 | 0 | Anand criticizes enterprise time-wasters, vanity Hacker News traffic, HR innovation gimmicks, and founders acting like influencers on Twitter instead of running their business. | |
| Outlier Bias, Channel Focus, and Avoiding Compromised Culture | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | Anand dismantles startup survivorship bias, mocks useless panel discussions, and introduces his metaphor that participatory consensus creates a 'shit brown' company culture. | |
| Managerial Execution, Tool Traps, and Protecting Company Equity | 0 | 0 | 6 | 0 | Anand concludes his keynote by aggressively rejecting conventional wisdom, declaring that 'best practices are for losers' and warning founders to jealously guard equity. |
Statements from this episode (30)
Sanwal: Focusing on personal branding as an entrepreneur is nonsense
“You know, if you care about your personal brand, and you really, if that's what, you know, like, all that shit is nonsense, so it won't be good for y'all.”
Sanwal: Study positive deviants in sales rather than averages
“What you actually want to look for is what people will call positive deviance. So the people who, with the same amount of information and the same training, are actually over-delivering, and that's who you want to study, right?”
Sanwal: New hires decide career longevity in first 30 days
“People make a decision about whether they feel like they can build a career in your organization in the first 30 days”
Sanwal: Odds that VC alone changes startup trajectory are close to nil
“The odds that a VC alone is going to change the trajectory of your business is close to nil.”
CB Insights has reached ~$100M ARR without a PR firm
“We're kind of in that hundred million ARR category, and we don't have a PR firm still”
Sanwal: Founders who hire under pressure will always regret it
“Never hire under pressure. So, we've had a senior VP role available, or a marketing role open for 15 months, and the team's like, Hey, this person's pretty good. Can we just hire them? Like, never do that. If you ever hire under pressure, you will regret it, r…”
Sanwal: New hires you don't love immediately won't improve over time
“If you don't love them when they join, you're definitely not gonna love them in six months.”
Sanwal: Giving early employees C-level titles causes organizational friction later
“If somebody's gonna be a CTO when you're three people, and then you get to 30, and that person no longer is relevant in that role, then you're gonna have to top them, they're gonna look like they took a demotion, it just creates all sorts of agita and anxiety …”
Sanwal: CB Insights' outfunded competitors all failed or are struggling
“We've been outfunded by numerous competitors. They've all they've all failed or aren't doing very well. So, money is just oxygen. It doesn't buy you the ability to execute, and I think that's really important.”
Sanwal: Selling SaaS products to startups is 'the perfect SaaS hell'
“We used to sell the startups in the early days, and maybe this has evolved, but, you know, they die, they churn, they require lots of support, they don't have a lot of money, so it's kind of like the perfect SAS hell.”
Sanwal: Early-stage founders should prioritize revenue before fixing tech debt
“Don't worry about perfecting your tech too early. So again, this one changes with scale, but in the beginning, I remember we used to have conversations about, like, oh, we got tech debt, and I was like, hey, we don't have any fucking revenue. Like, I don't car…”
Sanwal: Founders cannot hire a savior without understanding the problem first
“There's no one hire messiah. It doesn't work out. You have to have a fundamental understanding of the problem before you can just go hire somebody.”
Sanwal: Never hire an executive without effusive reference checks
“Do hardcore reference checks on your execs. If you don't get effusive reference checks, Don't hire that person, right? If somebody that you're hiring at the senior level, especially, can't put together five people who are gonna say they're the best things in s…”
Sanwal: There are no casual coffee chats when meeting with VCs
“If you're gonna meet with VCs, you're, you are pitching. Whether you think you're pitching or not, you're pitching. VCs, private equity, whatnot. There's no, like, coffee chats. Like, they're making an evaluation of you down the road or now as to whether they'…”
Sanwal: Customers should speak 20 to 25 minutes in 30-minute discovery calls
“In a 30 minute conversation, if they're talking 20 to 25 minutes, that actually means I'm asking questions, I'm actually getting insights from them. So, don't dominate.”
Sanwal: Hacker News Front Page Is Useless for Non-Developer SaaS
“Unless you sell developer tools, like, totally useless, right? We would get, we did get there a couple times. Our Google Analytics traffic spiked, and then we just got, you know, a bunch of people who said our product sucks in the comments, so that was fun.”
Sanwal: Startups Should Innovate in Product, Not HR
“Don't try to innovate in HR. So your focus is to build a product, and your innovation should be in the product.”
Sanwal: Sell to Existing Believers Rather Than Converting Skeptics
“Don't try to convert people, right? Try to tell people who are already of your religion, just try to get them over the finish line. Converting people who aren't your religion, that's a lot of work. It's really painful.”
Sanwal: Most tech company exits are under $200 million
“Most exits of technology companies are sub- two hundred million dollars, so you read all of this sort of VC survivorship bias in the media.”
Sanwal: Conference panel discussions are useless for speakers and audiences
“Panel discussions by definition are garbage, because everybody agrees with each other, so don't participate in them. They're just, they're useless, For the speakers, they're useless for the audience. It's like a, it's just mutually self-assured destruction.”
Sanwal: Needing a pros and cons list means you shouldn't hire someone
“When you're hiring somebody, if you're ever doing a pros and cons list, that tells, that means you shouldn't hire them. Immediately.”
Sanwal: Consensus-driven culture results in a 'shit brown culture'
“If you give everybody input into what the culture's gonna become, you're gonna have a shit brown culture. And so what you got to do is say, nope, this is our culture, and we're going to spike on these two colors, and that's it”
Sanwal: Do not hire candidates with a track record of startup failures
“When you see somebody who's taking a lot of L's, like, you know, hey, I was at a startup, it failed, my prior startup had this problem, and you look at their resume, and it's just like a string of losses, like, don't hire that person.”
Sanwal: MarTech and SalesTech vendors sell expensive software for fake problems
“MarTech and SalesTech vendors are so good at creating problems that don't exist. And so what you're going to end up buying is a lot of expensive software that you don't use for a problem that they've convinced you to buy.”
Sanwal: Best practices produce average results and will not build exceptional companies
“Best practices are for losers, full stop. They're for people who want to be average. Like, nobody who follows best practices builds great companies or builds exceptional companies.”
Sanwal: Fired employees being surprised means leadership failed clear expectation setting
“When you're letting somebody go, they should never be surprised. If they, if they're surprised, that means you failed, or your manager failed, because you didn't set expectations that were clear for them.”
Sanwal: Executive hires must contribute within 30 days, not 90
“90 days to get up to speed for execs is way too long. They should be contributing in 30 days. Like, I need to do a 90 day listening tour? That's bullshit. You gotta get in there and get some shit done quickly.”
Sanwal: Managers who have never fired someone are not good managers
“If you haven't, if somebody has never let somebody go, they're not a good manager. At scale. Like, if you haven't, haven't had the hard conversation, that's a problem.”
Sanwal: Startup office perks quickly turn into entitled expectations
“Perks become entitlements. Your kombucha, your cold brew, all that stuff. When the market turns and you take it away, people freak out. So just be careful about what you give in the beginning, because it's not a perk. It becomes an expectation very, very quick…”
Sanwal: Do not convince job candidates who reject an initial offer
“If somebody says no to your offer initially, just let it go. Like convincing them. You're always gonna be, if they do come, you're always, they're always gonna be wondering, did I make the right decision? You're always gonna be wondering, are they happy? There…”