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, 8 tweets, 3 min read
Algolia announced it raised $110m yesterday

Here is what it looked like 5 years ago, at $12k in MRR

They had already begun to run a playbook
First, even though they were in part a self-service product, they had already begun to follow their customers and tilt a bit upmarket.

More on that here: saastr.com/why-tilting-ju…
Second, they did whatever they could to increase Lead Velocity

They got a basic outbound engine going

They showed up at events

They promoted their long tail

More here: saastr.com/why-lead-veloc…
Third, and importantly, they embraced sales early even with a freemium model

Their first outside hire was in his dev

They remained developer first, and kept a free edition

But they weren't afraid to sell

More here: saastr.com/curse-of-the-m…
Fourth, they made they made their own TAM

In 2014, the market for search-as-a-service was $2m. Yes, $2m.

So they created a true solution instead. That was bigger.

More here: saastr.com/you-really-don…
Finally, they went all in.

The first product did not really achieve market fit.

They knew it would take a decade.

They moved their kids and families from Paris.

More here:

saastr.com/2013/01/21/a-s…
The tactics change every year, sometimes a few times

The strategy should last at least 5 years

Then, you have to reboot it all over again

Excited to see how Algolia reboots it all for the next 5 years
saastr.com/customer-centr…
And here is a great look back on the sales mistakes and learnings getting to the first $50m ARR:

saastr.com/building-sales…
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Jason ✨😊✨ Lemkin 🦄
@jasonlk
Had an A+ podcast with @LorenPadelford, GM of @ShopifyPlus, coming out soon

Shopify Plus is Shopify's enterprise platform and brand for top brands

My learnings ahead of that:

1/ Even with Shopify brand behind them, Plus needed 100 logos to get most to see them as enterprise
@LorenPadelford @ShopifyPlus 2/ Most of the functionality for Plus was already there. Plus, in the beginning, was as much Product Marketing as Product. But they needed to break it out into its own offering, with its own team.

So you should do the same too, with your Enterprise edition + team
3/ Red Bull was their internal "hero logo" early to get everyone rallied around going enterprise. Red Bull was such a huge brand, it showed everyone they could do it. A company that was very SMB-focused before.

So when you get one of these -- it's your time to decide.
Read 9 tweets
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Jason ✨😊✨ Lemkin 🦄
@jasonlk
If you've gotten a business to $10m, $20m, $50m, $100m before, you know how to do it again:

- First, Magic. Get 10-100 customers to buy a product they have never heard of and don't need.

- Second, Love. Find co-founders that truly great and that are on the same journey.
-Third, Management Team. After $2m in ARR even, nothing else matters but building out the management team. Spend 50% of your time recruiting if you can.

-Fourth, Get on Jets. Each hour with a customer, prospect, or partner yields 100x benefits years down road.
-Fifth, Customer Marketing. Lean in 5x on customer happiness, customer success, and more. Because after even $5m in ARR, Brand Really is Everything.

-Sixth, Settle In. After $10m or so, things may feel like they slow down. That's OK. B/c you now can see $100m.
Read 5 tweets
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Jason ✨😊✨ Lemkin 🦄
@jasonlk
A few tips for folks thinking about planning their first larger event (> 500 people or so):

1. Avoid "warm shell" venues. Piers, industrial venues. They are cool, but the build-out cost is insane.

2. Events professionals all go over budget. Almost 100%.
3. Food + Beverage gets insane. Will cost $1.5m+ for 2020 Annual. More importantly, the cost per person will more than double as you move to large venues.

4. Bribes and kickbacks. They are everywhere. Your events "professional" will likely be getting kickbacks from ...
hotels, from A/V vendors, from lots of vendors. Even if he/she is a full-time employee of yours. Bribes and kickbacks are so common they are laughed about.

5. Crazy vendor choices. Since are so many kickbacks and+inside relationships, you will get >odd< vendor recs. Be wary
Read 10 tweets

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David Frum
@davidfrum
Years later, I wrote of the George W. Bush administration nytimes.com/2013/10/20/boo… 1/n
My own role in the administration was both brief and modest, as I describe here. amazon.com/Right-Man-Insi… Yet because the administration is so widely perceived as unsuccessful, it feels cowardly to remark this truth, as if I were looking for some kind of personal exit.
For me, the most enduring effect of the Bush years - from the recount through 9/11 to the 2008 financial crisis - was to push me to think harder and deeper about US social divisions and the need to reknit the bonds of American social solidarity. 3/n
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AmandaC25 🌟🌟🌟
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@pulte this person is claiming to be part of your team and in DMs yelling people not to contact you directly til after they get their money they won upwards 100,000. I haven't seen you post anything in that bracket. I could be wrong but I've seen some screenshots and its not lgt.
@Pulte and Team this poor guy in such need has been conned by a fake teammate. Trying to bring attention do others do not succumb to the same. Please help.
@pulte and team please help.

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Robert Maguire
@RobertMaguire_
Two years ago, I had an emergency appendectomy.

I had insurance (I had GOOD insurance)

And even though I went to an in-network hospital, the *on-call* surgeon was out of network, and I got a $14k bill.

My story is not unique, and I'm amazed that it doesn't come up in debates
When I received the bill, my first thought was anger and frustration at the fact that I might have to pay it.

Then, I realized that--while it would be a huge hit to my wife and I--we *could* pay it.
But there are families across the country who, through no fault of their own, were getting the same bills, and they couldn't afford it.

It is enraging to know that people in other comparable counties don't deal with this financial stress. It is completely unnecessary.
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Matt Klein
@mattklein123
As horrendous as I find Go as a language (🔥), it's runtime performance is very good, especially for a GC language. Where I've seen it fall short is when context switching between many goroutines, as one would do with many connections in a proxy. Perhaps this is better now.
Ultimately Go has been great for @lyft and as with many choices in technology I think it's the least bad option for a general purpose programming language right now. I'm happy we went with it as our Python replacement.
As for why @EnvoyProxy was not written in Go? I knew I could build something high quality in C++ quickly using rock solid foundational libraries. I also knew that I would eventually be competing with HAProxy and NGINX perf and the ridiculous horse race benchmarks that come with.
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