We were delighted to host @DavidSacks yesterday for a #MastersOfSaaS session. Some super helpful learnings that I've summarized in this thread. For more insights on building your SaaS business, sign up for David's newsletter here: sacks.substack.com 1/n 
Trends usually start with consumer and then make their way into the enterprise. What could go from consumer to enterprise today? Perhaps the @joinClubhouse audio use-case. But you can't port over exactly. You have to adapt to actual enterprise needs. 2/n
Case-in-point: Yammer started in 2008 - key insight was that consumer social networks were communications utilities (not media companies e.g. MySpace/Fox) and better communication could be useful within the enterprise. This was a view of Paypal mafia/@peterthiel, Zuckerberg. 3/n
Perception of category leadership is important. 30 years ago "nobody got fired for buying IBM", today, it's "nobody got fired for buying the category leader". Majority of customers/ investors/ media will default to choosing the category leader because it's the safe choice. 4/n
How do you lead a category: Redefine the category or go after a sub-category you can win. Even small niches can be big. SaaS is so much bigger then we all thought. 10 years ago, we thought $1-2B was a great outcome, now routinely seeing $10-30B. Avoid being the n'th company. 5/n
Be thoughtful about when to sell and when to play the long game: Paypal sold for $1.5B, now a $300B company 20 years later (0.5% of current value). Yammer sold for $1.2B, 5 years later Slack came along and sold for $25-30B outcome. Don't sell too soon. 6/n
Peter Thiel's input: businesses are either commodity or monopoly. Have a POV on which one your business can be, although hard to know. If monopoly, then never sell. If you get to $20-50mm of ARR, it is very hard to big companies to compete with you. 7/n
If commodity then value will erode over time, you need to time your sale to maximize value - if you are strategic to a larger buyer, think hard about taking that deal. In their case Chatter from Salesforce was going to be zero-priced and might have commoditized Yammer. 8/n
Below 50 people, founders can run around telling everybody what to do, what to build. Beyond 50, there needs to be a product + marketing system and a sales + finance system. Sales + finance is on a quarterly plan, board meetings on this plan, reporting/metrics on this plan. 9/n
For prod+mktg, have a mid-quarter public launch that eng, product & marketing can work towards eg Salesforce/Dreamforce. It's a bit scary because you don't know as a founder if your team will make it. But this fear is tremendously focusing and helps the team prioritize. 10/n
Signals that shows ability to go from single digit millions in revenue to $100M+: David looks at m-o-m growth rates. Below $1M ARR, would like to see 20%. Between $1-5mm, would like to see 15%. $5-10mm range, 10% would be great. 11/n
When you get below doubling y-o-y, you might be hitting a saturation point. Make sure no incentivized/uneconomic growth eg low burn multiple, high churn. 12/n
He's not a fan of LTV/CAC, that 3:1 ratio everybody likes to talk about... great SaaS businesses have more expansion than churn, NRR is more important. If you have positively growing revenue cohorts, you have an infinite LTV. 13/n
Happy-talk vs. real talk. You have to maintain this dual-state about being optimistic because the odds are stacked against you as a founder BUT at the same time, continue working on the company's biggest problems and be paranoid about all the things that could go wrong. 14/n
Remote sales team are being forced on us today. But don't forget the value of "mgmt by walking around" where you can understand nuances, solve problems more quickly. Once companies get into 100s of employees, there will be challenges in working remotely. 15/15
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