Top 25 SaaStr Tweets / Short-Bites of 2020

Folks join startups for many reasons. Career advancement. Speed. A great boss. A great mission. Less bureaucracy. To make money.

But really, it is for a sense of purpose.

Create that environment

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) December 1, 2020

Zoom: founder knew the space cold, did the same thing a second time

Slack: founders didn't know business software, starting it as a gaming company

There are multiple ways to success

Just keep going

Don't quit

Hire great people

Don't run out of money

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) December 2, 2020

Just get there

Blackline is worth $7 Billion pic.twitter.com/PmdU6Zf4sD

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) December 7, 2020

So my first batch of venture investments hit 20x this week

I'd like to say the learnings are novel or different than others

But they aren't

Learnings:

1. All that matters are the winners

The #1 investment is 55% of the returns

The #2 and #3 are each 12%.

So Top 3 = 79%

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) November 15, 2020

Reasons not to invest in Zoom:

– Solo founder
– .us TLD
– Crowded space
– Low ARPU
– Entering bottom market
– Isn't it a commodity?

Those weren't really great reasons in the end, however

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) November 30, 2020

It's generally about 12 months after an investment that I really, truly understand what the startup does

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) October 1, 2020

2014: Never ran a community before
2016: Never ran own VC fund before
2018: Never ran an events company before
2020: Never ran a digital media company before

I mean

Sometimes you just gotta roll with it

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) October 23, 2020

If the CEO doesn't seem at least a little bit intense,

Join a different start-up

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) September 4, 2020

Most salespeople will fail at your startup

Most

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) September 12, 2020

Try this exercise as CEO:

* Create brand new email account
* Fire up Incognito

Then ..

* Sign up for your app from scratch, slowly
* Click on support
* Try full onboarding
* Read wiki
* Try each feature anew
* Use it on Android

You'll find so many things you .. can't believe

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) August 28, 2020

Yes, you can start a Unicorn at 50 https://t.co/Uwg0WrrYg2

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) August 12, 2020

How it feels at $1,000,000 MRR pic.twitter.com/oQ3zX1wsCE

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) August 27, 2020

Don't pick a cofounder that

– has something better to do
– wants to see how it goes
– has a clear backup plan
– sees it as risky
– argues over who should be CEO
– doesn't 100% believe

You'll see

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) July 18, 2020

Shopify:

June '15: $2 billion
June '16: $2 billion

and then

June '17: $8 billion
June '18: $18 billion
June '19: $34 billion

June '20: $91 billion

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) June 9, 2020

I remember when

Okta was niche

Zendesk would be easy for Salesforce to clone

Twilio was dependent on Uber and might not scale

Veeva's market was too small

Salesforce was worth $2b

You grow
You learn
You expand
You scale

And then you have a decacorn

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) June 29, 2020

A bit more here: https://t.co/oRaeG4BFhq

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) June 13, 2020

Founders have an incredibly annoying attention-to-detail

* They see every typo
* Notice every time anyone is late
* Catch 10,000 bugs
* Remember every time anyone said they'd do something

It's not that they don't have anything better to do

It's just, start-ups die otherwise

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) May 7, 2020

Mailchimp has ~ 1,000 employees and ~ $1,000,000,000 in ARR …

So yeah well then it can be done pic.twitter.com/aIcla6ktko

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) May 28, 2020

A VP of Sales can solve many problems

Product-market fit isn't one of them

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) May 2, 2020

If someone is trying to decide between joining your startup and something like Salesforce or Adobe,

Let them go there

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) April 25, 2020

Startups generally are either sales-focused or product-focused

Sales-focused by nature becomes more short-term focused

But … if it yields additional growth, that lets you hire more product people#itscomplicated

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) March 7, 2020

Types of investors:

Angel: even forget some deals they invested in

Seed: can write off any deal

Series A: can write off 1-2 deals

Series B: it better work

Series C: if it doesn't work, I might lose my job

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) March 8, 2020

Imagine you are only growing 40% a year at $10m ARR

That's not great

But if you just go heads down, and keep it up:

2020: $10m
2021: $14m
2022: $20m
2023: $28m
2024: $38m
2025: $53m
2026: $75m
2027: $105m
2028: $148m
2029: $206m
2030: $290m

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) February 29, 2020

Eng: “Just go sell what we have!!”

Sales: “If you just build this one feature we won't lose all these deals!!”

Years you'll hear this:

2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2….

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) February 19, 2020

The secret to how venture investing works:

You meet with 50-1000 startups a year

You get excited about 10-20.

Often, before the 1st meeting, or within 20 minutes.

You drop everything, and try to close 6-10 of those.

1-4 get done.

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) January 21, 2020

You might not be a great CEO, especially not yet

But anyone else:

– wouldn't really know the product cold
– wouldn't really know the customers
– wouldn't really know crazy nuances of the market
– wouldn't see the future
– wouldn't care so much

So you are probably the right CEO

— Jason ✨BeKind✨ Lemkin ⚫️ (@jasonlk) January 25, 2020