20VC: Why the Traditional Seed Fund Model No Longer Works, Why Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed Bring Signaling Risk but also Less Pressure, The One Criteria All Potential Sales Hires Need to Have and The Clear Signs of 10x Sales Hires w

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and Managing Partner @ SaaStr, a social community of 500,000+ SaaS founders and a $100M venture fund. In the past, Jason has made investments in the likes of Algolia, Talkdesk, Pipedrive, and RevenueCat to name a few. Prior to SaaStr, Jason was the Co-Founder and CEO @ Echosign, backed by Emergence Capital, Echosign was bought by Adobe and is Adobe Sign as we know it today.

In Today’s Episode with Jason Lemkin You Will Learn:

1.) Origins into Venture:

• How Jason made his way into the world of venture having sold EchoSign?
• What were some of Jason's biggest lessons from his first 4 investments being unicorns?

2.) The Importance of Ownership & Multi-Stage Funds

• How does Jason assess the importance of ownership today?
• If companies can be $20BN, does ownership really matter?
• How does Jason advise founders who have offers from multi-stage funds at seed?
• Why does taking multi-stage money at seed result in less pressure for founders?
• Does Jason believe that signaling risk from large funds is real, when investing at seed?

3.) Building Your Sales Team

• Does the founder have to be the one to create the sales playbook? What are the nuances?
• Should you hire a Head of Sales or sales reps first? What should you expect from each?
• What are the one criteria that you must look for when hiring your first sales reps?
• What are the signals that a sales rep or leader is a 10x hire?
• What works when hiring sales reps, 80% of the time?

4.) Boards and VC Value Add:

• Why has Jason changed his mind when it comes to boards? Why are some inefficient and some very efficient?
• How do the best founders manage their board? How do they bring in their exec team?
• What is the right documentation to prepare for board meetings? Why does Jason prefer slide decks over Notion and Coda?
• How can leaders use board meetings to direct and goal set with functional leads?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Jason Lemkin

Jason’s Most Recent Investment: Owner