20 VC 050: Starting, Building and Selling in SaaS with the King of SaaS, Jason Lemkin, Managing Director @ Storm Ventures

Jason Lemkin is Managing Director at Storm Ventures focussing on early stage SaaS and enterprise startups. Jason is an acknowledged thought leader in SaaS through his creation of the SaaStr community, connecting thousands of SaaS entrepreneurs and generating upwards of 1,000,000 views a month around core SaaS topics, with a particular focus on accelerating revenue and early-stage SaaS sales and marketing. Prior to Storm, Jason served as CEO and co-founder of Storm Ventures-backed EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service. Jason led EchoSign from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. in 2011. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Jason made his way into the SaaS and VC industry?

What actions did Jason do to get his blog to 1m+ page views per month?

What advice would Jason give to founders thinking of selling to large companies?

What type of entrepreneur does Jason like to invest in?

How does Jason see SaaS valuations, with recent enormous rounds from Zenefits?

What areas of the SaaS industries are neglected or undervalued?

Is the 40% growth rule broadly correct and can this be applied to early stage tech companies?

What is Jason's pre-investment meeting approach like?

What makes a founder insane in a good way, rather than a bad way?

How are SaaS companies innovating to acquire new customers?

Quick Fire Round:

1. Apple: Hit or Miss

2. Most exciting SaaS companies and sectors

3. Jason's favourite book and why?

Items Mentioned in Today's Episode:

SaaStr: Jason's Blog

Jason's Favourite Book: The Lion Who Shot Back

Mark Suster: Both Sides

Follow: @saleshacker (amazing content from VPs of Sales @ Top Tech Startups)

Emergence Capital: Joe Floyd

David Saks: Yammer

Slack: Stewart Butterfield, Zenefits: Parker Conrad