Kalaari has a strong commitment to provide resources for founders. We wanted to democratise our knowledge by sharing key resources for founders building in SaaS & other adjacent spaces.
We’ve sorted through some of the most popular SaaS resources and compiled a list of books, courses, podcasts, tools and templates that will help SaaS founders stay at the top of the game.
Creating a Legal Entity
- Stripe Atlas entity formation, company structure, access to startup services
- AngelList Stack – entity formation and financial services
- NameVine – create a consistent online presence – instantly find an available domain name with matching social media profiles.
- Firstbase – incorporation, operations, bank account, and other services
- Doola – launch a LLC, corporation, or DAO from anywhere in the world + bank account + ongoing state and IRS tax filings
- Index of Cooley Go Docs – advisor and consultant agreement templates, term sheet templates. Cooley’s Guidance section also has useful information on common legal questions.
- Penn Law Startup Kit – templates and tutorials of legal documents needed by early-stage founders
Recruiting & HR
- The SaaS Org Chart – template for SaaS company hiring
- Cuvette – platform for hiring interns + new grads
- Big.Jobs – Employment as a Service
- LinkedIn Recruiter – Jobs search platform
- Rippling – HR software
- Remote – Remote teams
Pitch Deck
- Shopify’s business plan template
- Pitch Deck Hunt – Successful SaaS pitch decks
- Front Series A Lessons – Seed/ Series A pitch deck material
- Insights from Pitch Decks
- Founder Resources – Dataroom templates (Pitch Deck, Financial Model)
Fundraising
- Fundraising CRM + Database Template
- Mosaic Tech – SaaS Fundraise Pitch Deck Tips
- Questions Early Stage VCs May Ask You by Elizabeth Yin
- Overcoming founder investor information asymmetry
- Decoding termsheets
Investor Update Templates
- Investor Update Template from Bloomberg Beta
- Visible – site for investor updates
- Journey.io – site for embedded content
Board Meetings
- The SaaS Board Meeting (and template) by David Sacks
- Preparing a Board Deck by Bryan Schreier
- Managing Startup Boards by Mark Suster
GTM
- GTM Nirvana – deck by Caroline Clark (Founder of Arcade, formerly Sequoia & Atlassian). Breaks down buyer personas, acquisition channels, and pricing.
- Pricing Your SaaS Product – Lenny’s Newsletter – summary: determine your value metric & personas. Includes a quantified personas spreadsheet.
- Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It by April Dunford. Free online templates here
Marketing
- Holidays, events, and cultural dates calendar by Grace Clarke
- Ortto – for automating communications with prospects
- Mailchimp – for transactional emails (2000 contacts on the free plan)
Sales
- Hunter – for cold emails
- Frill – for customer feedback
- B2B Sales Tech Stack by Basis Set – suggestions on effective sales tools
- The Guide to Crushing Enterprise Sales by Sarah Nökel (Investor at Northzone) – extensive list of resources for a number of company-building categories: marketing, growth, fundraising, benchmarks, pitch deck & board update templates.
- User Onboarding – https://userlist.com/blog/saas-user-onboarding/
Pricing
- Paddle – Payment processing platform for SaaS companies
Knowledge Building
- Technically – demystifying technical topics by Justin Gage
- Field Guides from Unusual Ventures
Team building – Equity Compensation Benchmarks & Resources
- Employee Equity Compensation Guide 2021 by Personal Capital. Includes descriptions of key terms (stock options, restricted shares, stock purchase plans, etc.) and mechanics of how they work.
- Equity 101 by Carta. A series of digestible videos on equity grants, vesting, exercising, and more.
- Understanding Startup Offers by Compound – more info on startup equity compensation.
- The Ultimate Guide for Finding a Startup Job by Vinay Iyengar – a concrete guide, mostly focused on more junior people less than 5 years out of college.
- Early-stage Marketing Compensation Explained by Kramer & Kathleen of MKT1. Marketing-specific, but has good equity basics.
Team building – Onboarding
- Onboarding Tactics for New Hires by First Round Review
Finance
- SaaS Financial Plan Template – By Christoph Janz (One of the best free financial templates for SaaS companies)
- The SaaS CFO – Financial Templates
- List of Financial Templates for SaaS & Comparison – By OpenVC
- Kalaari SaaS Metrics
- Series A SaaS Metrics
Communities
- SaaSBooMi
- SaaS Insider
- Relay by the Chargebee Team
- SaaSTr
- Indie Hackers
- r/SaaS community of Reddit
- SaaS Club Podcasts
- Kalaari SaaS from Scratch Podcasts
- SaaStitute
The Early-Stage Startup Tech Stack List
Accounting & Finance
- Intuit Quickbooks
- Pilot
- Stripe
- Neo.Tax
CapTable & Fundraising
- Clerky
- Pulley
- DocSend
- Carta
Customer Service & CX
- Zendesk
- Intercom
- Drift
Cloud Credits
- AWS
- GCP
- Azure
- Blueocean
Design
- Figma
- Canva
- Miro
Legal & Insurance
- Vouch
- Embroker
- Clerky
- Legalzoom
APIs & DevOps
- Webflow
- Postman
- Bubble
- Zapier
Analytics
- Google Analytics
- Mixpanel
- Firebase
- Metabase
- Hotjar
- Amplitude
Collaboration & Productivity
- Notion
- Discord
- Coda
- Slack
- Asana
- Airtable
- Zoom
Security
- Vanta
- Secureframe
- Cloudflare
- Scrut
- Sprinto
Building something interesting in the SaaS space? Reach out at [email protected]