Ameya Pathare

7. That's the median employee headcount for SaaS companies under $1m in ARR. Nearly half of those positions are in engineering. I'm often asked about headcount planning and it's so helpful to provide data to drive decisions. The High Alpha SaaS Benchmark Survey is live and it's full of data like this. Download the report now. (Link in the comments)

17

1 Comment

Could Replit Agent potentially 30x Replit's market size? It's idea-to-deployment in minutes (i screencapped my experience below). While still buggy at the moment — my app was caught in a pesky OAuth error— it points to a world where Replit’s customers grow beyond developers (20M today) into truly, anyone with an idea. This positions Replit closer to a Canva (general public) with 185M users versus a Figma (professional/ semi-professional) with 4M users. Canva generates more revenue than Figma, Miro, and Webflow combined. There has been a number of new players in the battle for AI code generation — like Copilot, Codeium, Claude, Cursor AI. But Replit has a unique insight that gives them an edge: a great user experience. Design might just be the differentiator that gives them the winning edge.

70

13 Comments

Ten years ago, I stepped into a role that would forever change my perspective on software. As the newly minted PM for connectors at Avalara, I discovered complexity on a scale I hadn't encountered before. With 700+ connectors "off the shelf", this strategy drove Avalara's growth through their 2018 IPO. But behind the scenes? It was a different story. I saw no leverage, no opportunity for strategy or innovation. Just grind at an increasing frequency. Two weeks in, I was demoralized and lost hope. The sheer volume of work required to maintain and expand these integrations seemed insurmountable, even with the largest engineering team in the company. Luckily, I jumped at the opportunity to rollout PLG in partnership with Steven Dunston, and went on to lead the flagship AvaTax product, among other fun and high-value contributions. But the integration problem? I kept that idea at arms-length. Or, so I thought. Over the years, most of the products I've built have had a heavy integrations component. I've tried it all - no-code platforms, iPaaS, unified APIs, outsourcing to dev shops. Nothing scaled. Many flat-out failed. In 1:1 coffee chats, my engineering partners would confide how they still struggled to scale integrations. It's a universal pain point. Every software company has to provide integrations because their customers demand it. Many need integrations to drive their partnerships strategy. And every single one of them struggles with how to deliver on this promise. Until now. I'm thrilled to tease that we have solved integrations. Full-stop. I don't have the words for how excited I am about what's coming up. We're not just iterating; we have an entirely new way to integrate that is 10x better than existing options. It's been a decade-long journey, but the destination? It's going to change everything for software. Stay tuned. The integration revolution is here, and it's going to be a wild ride. Let's go! #SoftwareIntegrations #StartupLife #Integrations #AI

134

35 Comments

In vertical SaaS, the very best companies landed with a product solving a specific, burning pain point that horizontal solutions solved badly and then became broad product suites over time (ServiceTitan, Veeva Systems, Doximity, etc). My partner Gordon Ritter calls this “layering the cake”. In vertical AI, the landing wedges are much more brittle. While the painpoints they solve are very real (and often unaddressable by SaaS alone), they’re also much more likely to commodotize in the near term as the tech advances. 👀 Therefore, the need to layer the cake in vertical AI is much more urgent than in vertical SaaS. 👀 The best vertical AI CEOs not only recognize the dynamic, but talk about it openly. Helps those around them keep up the speed of innovation and their eyes on the bigger prize.

44

10 Comments

Startup friends, be careful of large tech company executives transitioning -- especially those who are late in their careers -- to startups. Today, I received a "backdoor" reference call about someone I worked with at Cisco with the self-given title "corporate vice president." That title did not exist when we both worked there (although it is a real title at Microsoft). Non-divisionally organized large companies do not have COOs or CMOs (but lots of VPs and SVPs). Global Managing Director was another one of those fake, self-given titles. Inflated titles tell you what people value versus what they accomplish.

90

22 Comments

"Work-life balance: a myth in fastest-growing SaaS companies?" The snapshot below is from Avenir's report written by Jared Sleeper, Hannah Bao, and David Prilutsky on the State of SaaS. It highlights that the fastest-growing public companies in SaaS fare lower on work-life balance scores than their peers Data consistently shows that extraordinary outcomes demand exceptional efforts from every team member, not just the founders. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise! This rings especially true for early-stage startups in India. Joining forces with smart, passionate, and driven individuals often means giving up some personal time each week (and it is worth it)!

32

3 Comments

My teammate Sean O'Brien, asked me an interesting question while we were discussing how epic it is that, moving forward, very small teams (1-3 people) will build significant software products thanks to development agents like Replit. He asked, "Does all software melt to N-of-1 solutions over a decade?" Essentially, will all software be a highly personalized experience where the software adapts to the needs of a single user or entity. Cool question. My current thinking: Not all software will melt to N-of-1 solutions, but the trend will likely dominate for many categories... Likely to Melt:  Consumer-facing software, productivity tools, and AI-driven platforms (e.g., CRMs, content creation tools). Less Likely to Melt:  Regulated industries and foundational infrastructure where standardization and compliance outweigh personalization. I predict we will be looking at a hybrid landscape: general frameworks at the foundation and N-of-1 solutions flourishing in user-facing layers. Over a decade, most software will have no choice but to embrace elements of personalization and adaptability. For many investors, I think most of the ROI is to be made in the regulated industries as only a select few companies on the consumer-facing side will own almost all use-cases. Am I off the mark?

6

You’re going to have to let people go—get good at it CTOs and tech leaders, layoffs are inevitable when you're under PE control. You better get good at it. Be clear about the company’s future, be as transparent as possible, and grant people the respect they deserve at every step. This isn’t just good practice—it’s the golden rule. The faster you master this, the more effectively you’ll lead through tough decisions.

13

4 Comments

Have you ever looked for theory that can answer - how to approach investors - what kind of product to build first - how you’ll defend the company against competitors This new article from CDA partner, Kevin Maney extends Steven Johnson's writing from the book Emergence to #CategoryDesign. All #Startups and #VentureCapital teams should dig in. (link to article in comments)

4

1 Comment

I recently shared that one of my favorite parts about working at Amplitude is the fact that despite being a public company, it still feels like a startup. And I think one of the key reasons for that is the high sense of ownership that everyone here has. Ownership is one of our core company values, and I love being able to see it in action every day. I share more below:

54

1 Comment

✈️ Wrapping up at AWS Re:invent today. Spent half the day yesterday walking the exhibit floor. The main purpose was to observe traffic hot spots and booth placement on the floor, to get at sense of which areas folks are interested in, and how important of a partner these companies were to AWS. Here were my high-level observations: -- startups that had the most traffic/attention: Anthropic, Unstructured, some of the code gen players like Poolside, Codieum, etc. Glean’s booth had a massive amount of traffic. Poolside had a massive booth relative to their company stage (maybe owing to the amount of compute they spend with AWS). The Anthropic booth was very nice and centrally placed on the floor. They seem increasingly tied to the hip with Amazon. -- startups that weren’t getting a lot of traffic: MLOps, RAG-as-a-service, vector DBs, “build you own agent” platforms. Not sure if this reflects overall market interest or simply the attendee profile at this conference. Also could be that their booth positioning wasn’t that great – many of these startups may not be major AWS customers or could even compete with AWS in certain areas. -- overall, I felt there was still a massive discrepancy in crowd size and interest between incumbents and startups. One reason might be that most people who come to Re:invent come from larger enterprises and are either less familiar with startups or don’t align well with startup’s ICPs. This was noticeably different from other AI conferences I’ve been to such as Databricks + ai summit or NeurIPS. In terms of specific things from AWS: -- Bedrock got a lot of new upgrades including multimodal processing, graphRAG, and structured data retrieval. Also, announced some features around multi-agent orchestration, distillation, and prompt caching. It appears that they’re increasingly consolidating the middle layer. -- They’re also pushing Bedrock Guardrails a lot as it was mentioned during the keynote and by separately by folks I spoke with.  For those unfamiliar, the Guardrail platform does a few things such as using automated reasoning to check against factual errors and hallucination, and filtering toxicity and PII. As these things get rolled out into production, I see trust and safety becoming increasingly important so I see why they’re pushing this. -- They also announced some cool things around RPA with Amazon Q. They showed a demo where Q Business was able to create an automated workflow simply by watching a video recording of how it was done. Under the hood, this is probably leveraging Computer Use recently announced by Anthropic and incorporated into Claude 3.5. My overall feeling was that the middle layer is increasingly going to be owned by the CSPs like Amazon as they continuing to push up the stack. I expect acquisitions to happen in the next few years in this layer, but perhaps not at the valuations that investors/founders were originally hoping for.

105

14 Comments

"Probably the worst decision that I made as CEO of Loudcloud was to take ona. 10-year lease with a $30M letter of credit. We leased the space right before the dot-com crash. Rents dropped 10-fold in Menlo Park... worse yet, due to the recession, we couldn't hire so the space we already had was sufficient and we never ended up moving into the new building. So I basically lost $30M for nothing." This is from Ben Horowitz's recent interview with Big Think. Even a quarter century ago the typical office lease construct is misaligned with how a company needs to operate. Our industry could get away with this when office spaces had a monopoly on how and where work got done, but those days are dead. As global markets are crashing, we'll be looking at another disruptive cycle for businesses which will create more cost cutting pressure and the first thing to go when they roll will be inflexible leases. CRE needs to develop new offerings and fast. https://lnkd.in/ePuZgzkU

20

2 Comments

🤔 The State of Cloud ➡ The State of the Union 2016 né 2024. Bryan Cantrill gave a talk at Structure 2016 which is so reminiscent of the current situation like little else frankly. I want to add a few thoughts of my own. 🔥 I agree, we in the software industry and "high-tech" are still 𝗳𝗲𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗿𝘂𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲. This time it is perhaps less about the cloud or exploiting taxi drivers using an app but about Large Language Models and Artificial Intelligence. ✂️ And the 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗼𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘀 are opening up further and further. The society is falling apart into two groups in the United States and a similar thing is happening in Europe too. The 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲𝘀 and the 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝘀 and of course a few opportunists fueling the tension. And of course this is not only about money, but also education, opportunities, health, customs and religion, housing, family, lifestyle or world view and more. 👉 If you feel like you are more on the receiving end of disruption and are dragged into change possibly against your convictions, if you feel like your options are diminishing you will wonder if something can be done about it from the top. 🚢 At the end of the day 𝘄𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝗮𝘁, we all have the responsibility to stay afloat and move towards at least relative prosperity for all. We will have to talk to, listen to and understand each other a lot more. What do you think? #kaliszutelefonu #disruption #economy #elections

31

5 Comments

KNOW YOUR REAL BUSINESS ECONOMICS • GAAP Revenue • Cash Flow • Cash • Contribution Margin • CAC • CAC Payback FUNDRAISING: PRESENT & SUBSTANTIATE FINANCIALS • Investor needs to know what your forecasts are • They need to believe them David Weiden, Khosla Ventures

5

AI is reshaping GTM strategies, but it's not just about automation - it's about enhancing human capabilities and improving the customer experience. At Pear VC's Zero to $1m conference, I got to chat (and debate 😏)with some awesome folks on how AI is transforming GTM: - Amanda Kahlow (1mind) brought her AI assistant Mindy, showing how AI can provide immediate, personalized responses to prospects: "Think about the world in a new paradigm where we could meet the buyers immediately the minute they lean in and say I'm interested." - Zach Vidibor (Octave) stressed the importance of empathy in sales: "AI now means I have 10 times as many competitors shipping 10 times as fast saying a lot of things that all sound the same. The best way to differentiate is have highly empathetic people that really understand our customer problems." - Everett Berry (Clay) highlighted the emergence of the "growth operator" role: "The most important role for early stage companies is the growth operator role, someone who sits in the cockpit and has AIs do things for them." - Kathleen Estreich (Pear VC) touched on the blurring lines between traditional GTM functions: "I think those lines are blurring more and more in this AI world of go-to-market." Key takeaways: 1. The buying experience is evolving. Buyers want to do a ton of education first and then talk to an empathetic human. 3. Human creativity is more important than ever to stand out. 4. Data quality and management are essential for effective AI use. 5. AI is dramatically changing content creation and repurposing. 6. The role of SDRs is evolving, but human touch remains important. 7. AI tools should enhance, not replace, human decision-making. 8. Personalization at scale is becoming achievable. 9. The "full stack seller" concept is re-emerging. 10. AI is enabling more efficient use of data. The panel seemed to agree that the future of GTM lies in finding the right balance between AI-powered efficiency and human-driven empathy and creativity. Thanks for hosting Pepe Agell, Ana Leyva and the whole Pear VC team! Full video here! https://lnkd.in/genDfTCV

17

4 Comments

Here's my commits/week vs. customers added. Not a perfect metric for total product effort, but a decent proxy. I get so excited about building products because, compared to consulting, there is unlimited upside. A fixed amount of product effort can make unbounded money while you sleep. (And yeah, I'm not factoring in time spent on customer support. Obviously that's rising with customer count and at some point requires hiring staff. But you get the point.)

57

8 Comments

Who would our solutions engineer role be great for at Mapistry? My likely uncommon take on the "normal" company job description ☑ You love figuring out problems....you like digging into spreadsheets and asking well articulated questions based in curiosity (e.g. why are you doing it that way?) ☑ You want to solve problems (technical and user/workflow) that have an environmental impact using software ☑ You like working with people, maybe you consider yourself an "extroverted engineer"....you like some time working with customers and internally with your team but also like the head's down time to do deep work and solve problems. The variety is key to your happiness! ☑ You want to work in-person some or most of the time in Berkeley, because you learn quickly and fuel yours and others creativity that way ☑ You like being organized....maybe your use project management software in your personal life or color code sticky notes or like organizing your work photos/files and developed your own naming conventions or ??? ☑ You value direct, frequent communication.....you communicate well within in a team, to clients, and to managers. You love giving and receiving continuous feedback. You follow up to emails quickly, you send meeting summaries, and you ask about next steps ☑ You are ambitious in learning/growing and having an impact in your role.....small company and working in-person with myself and Allie Janoch means you get direct access but also like the pressure :) If this sounds like not much fun, please don't apply :) there are lots of jobs out there that will be great for you If you are excited after reading this and say "yes" to each of these then please apply! https://lnkd.in/eZuvcjQN If you are not sure what I mean with any (or all of these), but are intrigued by the role...send me a message!

6

2 Comments