The classical approach to outbound is dead. I think a lot of us have been saying that in sales. The vendors are great because they're much more sophisticated platforms, but that old playbook of just load up a database with the same freaking email is dead. And I think most of us believe it's not dead, but the yield is really low. And I think what I meant to say by that is that AI is blowing that up. We're all getting a trillion AI emails and they're terrible, but they're actually better than the ones the humans sent. I got a DM from an SDR today: 'Dear Jason, will you be at SaaStr today? What time shall we meet?' This is a human-driven one. This is the quality of an SDR today. That is what I mean. That is dead. Slow it the frack down. Stop with the dumb emails.
Please welcome Jason Lemkin, founder and CEO at SaaStr. Thank you everyone for being here. So this is great. Thank you for coming back. I'm not sure how much time we have, but this has become, to the extent that I can help, this kind of closing has become a little tradition. Maybe just a couple of notes first, maybe just more stuff for folks that have been here multiple times. We've been doing SaaStr Annual in September since that little bug went around in 2021. It was great. We did it in September because September 2021 was the first week we were allowed to do it. In fact, San Mateo County was the only county in 2021 that let us do an event. We tested 5,000 people three times a day. It was pretty fun. So we did September for three years, but September kind of sucks. There's way too much going on. There's Dreamforce, there's Inbound, there's a million things. So we're moving back. We'll be in May 13th to the 15th. May is the earliest we can do it that this venue is open, indoor/outdoor. So plan a little early. I think it'll be better. There's less going on. It'll be more fun. And SaaStr tickets are always relatively — they're not cheap, but compared to anything else they're cheap. But if you want super cheap ones, you can buy them today on saastrannual.com. Like they're literally more than half off if you buy them like this week at SaaStr. So May 13th to the 15th, it'll be fun.
And just maybe a couple of nerdy things that are interesting to folks that have been part of SaaStr for a while. This event, in some ways, the attendance is a pulse of SaaS, and it is interesting what the numbers show. The raw attendance is about 103% of last year, just a tiny bit up. That's great. In an ideal world maybe it would be bigger, but it's pretty interesting that it's up. But the mix is pretty different. Of the people here, of that 103%, CEOs and founders are up about 150% of last year. Folks from other countries are up, as you can probably tell. It's always been diverse. In 2021, as crazy as it was, the United States was locked down. It was all Americans in 2021. I think this year it's a majority of folks outside of the US, so that's fun. So founders and C-levels are up overall. CMOs, CROs are up because we've had three 200-plus summits here for CRO. We're going to do that bigger next year and integrate them more with everybody. So look for a thousand extra CMOs, CROs and CCOs to meet next year. That worked well. So those are good overall numbers. Founders are good, C-levels are good.
VCs are about 60% of last year, about 60% this SaaStr. It's not designed — we have a VC lounge, we do stuff — it's not something that's designed for VCs, but it's traditionally been a magnet for VCs because of the concentration of founders. Down 40%. I could hypothesize why. What is clear, no matter what you read, even great — we love all the Carta data, I quote it on SaaStr all the time — the aggregate data says VC is back, it's on fire. You heard that from Thomas and others. But not really. As we said in the opener, it's back, but it's different. And while YC is as hot as ever, right, I talked to two YC founders in this batch that got 40 VC offers this week and the batch hasn't even started yet. So that's hot. Portions of AI are so hot that like hair is getting singed off founders. But a lot of folks in venture, even though it doesn't look like it, they don't have money to invest. They're struggling to raise another fund. They're sitting on the sidelines. They've slowed it down. They're worried.
And I think, how true is that? I didn't know how true that was until this week. But attendance is down. It's only 60% of last year. I think that's — if you really want to know what the vibe is for venture, for real, forget about the actual hard data. Thank you, Carta, but forget about the hard data. What's the reality of the human data? It's about 60%, or down 40%. That's still down. So it's just something to think on. So that is down. And then a couple of other interesting things. There are more C-levels, founders and CX. The individual contributors, the managers — they're not our core audience, but they love SaaS. The ones that really want it, not the reps working 10 hours a week from home for jobs, but the ones you want to hire, right, the ambitious ones. That group is down a bit this year. I'm worried about the next — I'm not worried about us, there's more of us than ever. I'm a little worried about the kids. I'm a little worried about the kids because that group is down, which we talked about in the opener.
And then the last point I'll make, even though overall it's up, this was the first year we missed our inclusion goals here. And for folks that have been here for a while, we were the first people that I knew of to have aggressive inclusion goals for underrepresented founders here. I think we started in 2017. I think I realized that we had to have 50% women speakers and as many diverse folks. We mostly hit our speaker goals this year. I think we came just under 50% women, which we shouldn't have, but I think we were like 60-something percent underrepresented speakers. But the weird thing was for attendees, we put a lot of money and energy into our inclusion program. We had about 30% less takers than last year. 30%. So I hope that this is a little bit more representative and diverse environment than your average bro tech event. I hope that it is, but I'm disappointed on many levels that despite 10,000 tweets, probably a half million or more invested, that goal we didn't achieve, even though we've achieved it since 2017. And I could hypothesize why, but it's something I'm going to reflect on because I think overall — folks, feel free to challenge me — but I think overall tech cares less about inclusion and being representative than it did two years ago. It cared, I think, more in March 2020 when we shut down the world than it cared today. And then there was a revival in 2020 when it was on fire. And there may be a lot of reasons, and I'm not here to even take any politics in it, but I think we all know that as leaders, that the more diverse our teams are, the stronger they are on all vectors. The more socioeconomic, the more gender, the more background, the more countries you're from.
I know when I was a founder for the first time, my co-founder, who was a Palestinian-Lebanese refugee, female, she and I came up with only two rules. We wouldn't hire anybody from either coast. We didn't want anyone entitled in our company. So I was the only white male of some privilege in our original team of 14. We had folks from everywhere, from Vietnam and Mexico and everything. And I don't know, I think the Bay Area is the place of SaaS. I would hire from here. But what I learned from that experience — we didn't know what we were doing as first-time founders when she and I did that — our company was so resilient being that diverse. It was unstoppable. We did things that were actually thought to be scientifically impossible. Could I do it? I think it's all because we were from 11 countries and had two out of three women on our founding team. I don't know, but I know that extreme diversity made us just resilient no matter what. And I worry as we've moved away from this that we're more brittle. And it is easier to work with folks that look like you and that were in your dorm. And I think it's okay for your co-founder to be your best friend, but I worry that we are building brittle startups and have forgotten. And I don't have the answers, but I'm bummed that this is the first year we missed that goal, and I'm going to try harder next year. But to be honest, just between us, I don't know how much more I could do. I don't know how many more emails I can send. I don't know how many folks that came to our inclusion last year that we asked to bring a friend, that we asked to share it. I can't tell you how many more leaders in tech I asked. About 20. I'll end it here. I asked about 20 C-levels and founders and CTOs to help us with the inclusion program this year. Okay, you know how many offered to help? One. Dharmesh Shah from HubSpot said he would fund the entire thing next year. The entire freaking thing. The entire freaking thing. Yeah, so tweet that out. Okay, he didn't make a big yell. And I said, do it next year where you can help us. He said, just tell me what the check is and how I can promote it. And bless his freaking soul. Been to SaaStr many times. The only one. So love the founder vibe, founder power. Founders here more than ever. More C-level executives. Come back next year. There'll be even more C-level execs. VC is interesting. A little worried about the next generation. I think we all have to do more in inclusion. Those are my learnings for this year. And I could go on, but I think that's it. So anyone wants any questions or anything, let me know what we want to chat about.
Look, those are fun topics. The first one is, I think I did write on SaaStr. I'm not a clickbait guy. I like fun titles and fun images. I'm not a clickbait guy, but I did write something like that that maybe was exaggerated a little bit. I think what I meant to say and wrote was that the classical approach to outbound is dead. I think a lot of us have been saying that in sales, that the old classic spam cadences — I invested in SalesLoft pre-revenue, I watched it happen, and Mixmax and others, watch Outreach — that playbook, the vendors are great because they're much more sophisticated platforms, but that old playbook of just load up a database with the same freaking email is dead. And I think most of us believe it's not dead, but the yield is really low. And I think what I meant to say by that is that AI is blowing that up. We're all getting a trillion AI emails and they're terrible, but they're actually better than the ones the humans sent. That terrible. I got a DM from an SDR today: 'Dear Jason, will you be at SaaStr today? What time shall we meet?' This is a human-driven one. This is the quality of an SDR today. That is what I mean. That is dead. Who trains this person? Okay, so when I get the SDR emails with AI, they're better than that. They're like, 'Hey Jason, I'm so proud of this.' But you can see that they all sound the same under the hood. But what I mean is, because they're better than that crappy human I got today, and because software will send it, we are already being inundated in SDR spam, and we're being inundated in LinkedIn comments that are fake, and now that's spread to Twitter and X. I get a lot of engagement on LinkedIn. If you ever see, I get hundreds of comments now, 70% are AI, right? So it's destroying this old cadence that used to work. That's what I meant to say.
Now, what I also said was that through all of the history of time of software, back to the early tools of the 1700s and the early 1800s, on those really early computers, those four-bit computers in the 1820s, selling software, finding someone through a carrier pigeon, parchment, email, today, at the exact moment when they have a problem and solving, sending them the solution, has always worked. It has always worked. And I remember when I was first a SaaS founder, I'd never done outbound. I'd done like seven-figure deals, pick up the phone for huge deals, but I'd never done this type of outbound that we do. And then I was at Dreamforce, actually, which is next week, and we had a customer panel, and we had the CEO of SuccessFactors, which was bought by SAP, so a big part of SAP today. And he laughed, 'How did I find Adobe Sign?' EchoSign was the last week of the quarter, and my damn sales team, I couldn't take them standing by the fax machine anymore. And I got an email from you, Jason, at the right time. Like me, that was my head of marketing that sent it from me. But literally the busiest CEO running to public SaaS company, any other time it would have been ignored. But he had that moment that day. He needed his problem solved. He had to close this deal. He could not stand it. This was the early days of e-signatures, and he bought that day, a public company, right? So that type of outbound, slow it the frack down. Stop with the dumb emails.
So if you're trying to get something off the ground, be honest. First, do you have a 10x feature? Do you have one? Because your product, if it's early, is feature-poor, bug-ridden, slow, and does nothing. No one needs your product unless you have a 10x feature. What is 10x better? And then figure out 100 folks, for real. Slow it down. Spend a week, a month if you need to, research 100 folks that you think have that 10x problem, and spend an hour each writing them the email. An hour. Research that email for an hour, right? 'Hey Jason, at SaaStr Annual, I saw you had this issue around some of the networking complaints. I did it. I'm not trying to do this. I can solve this one problem for you today. Here's how the tool works. Here's how we did it for your competitor. Here's how we did it for someone else in your industry. I can solve this for you today. And if you're busy, I will do all the onboarding for you. I will do all the onboarding for you. Are you interested?' If that's my top problem, I will take that email. I can't tell you for me now. I'm not a typical customer. I get an email a month from someone that actually can solve one of SaaStr's top five problems. That one gets responded to. I often forward it to Amelia, who runs SaaStr, but that one gets in, that gets responded in minutes.
And the last, the related obvious point is there's so many tools. There's reasons that booths work because buyers come here. There's reasons that digital advertising works. It all works. But praise the Lord that email is an open system that people still use. You can reach, if you do it right, you can reach any executive with email. I was with Andrew Bialecki, CEO of Klaviyo, an $8 billion company, yesterday. Someone grabbed him. I said, 'Andrew, you don't...' He was swarmed. I'm like, 'No, I'll talk to this one guy.' The guy gave him a pitch. He gave him his personal email. He said, 'Email me about it.' Email works. Email works, but it's got to be great. It has to be great. And 99.99% of the sales emails we get are automated or mediocre, or automated and mediocre. And AI, because AI is making it better, it's making it worse because there'll be a hundred times more mediocre but not terrible email. We're being flooded with them that are almost good, and it's not going to work. But boy, any... we forget the point of outbound is not to get... I hate this vibe of so many sales teams have their SDRs judged by how many folks they can get on the phone. I don't know about you, but it was always true, but it accelerated the last two years, whatever it is with CR and BDRs, sales are like, 'We're going to judge SDRs by calls.' I get so many... I will outbound to a vendor that I will buy from. Okay, there, I forget, there was a tool I literally would just buy that second a couple weeks ago. I outbound, 'We have to get on the phone to talk about it.' No, what I mean is these interactions are crappy. Make that email so good, then slow it down. Then this is the trick to pitching VCs too. Here's the thing, at the end of the day, this always works: find the hundred people that will really buy it from you, and then slow it down, make the best email, and then before you hit send — and no SDR on planet Earth does this, but founders can — slow it the hell down and look at this email and say, 'Would I buy my product based on this email?' Be honest, just a freaking email. Because clearly with this guy at SAP, I didn't even write the email, my marketer did, but clearly it said, 'Are you struggling with your sales reps at the end of the quarter? Is it taking them hours? Are you unable to find the deal? Would you like something that can be signed and pushed into Salesforce in three seconds?' His answer was, it was a great email, right? No one writes that green. I read all of them and forward the ones I get, right? So no, slow it down. No one asks, 'Is this email good enough to sell the company on its own?' How many SDR emails have folks ever got in the room where you would buy the product based on the email alone? It's one a quarter if you're lucky, because they're all crappy. Do that.
And I'll give you one last story, and it turns out, I know it's not what you asked, it's the same story for venture capital, right? I published on SaaStr, so I've done maybe 10 investments from founders cold emailing me. People say cold email doesn't work for investment. Many folks don't like it. Okay, I invested in the first one was Pipedrive from a cold email that sold for $1.5 billion. I cold-emailed the seed. Okay, I did Algolia, which is going to IPO, it's a $240 million from a cold email. Then the next one was Talkdesk, they're worth $10 billion, that was a cold email. Okay, the fourth one was Greenhouse for $800 million, I knew them. The fifth deal I did was SalesLoft, it exited for $2.3 billion from a cold email. Okay, I just did one last week. TechCrunch wrote up that I invested from a cold email in this company called Manglan. Okay, and I wrote a whole thing on SaaStr. I asked David Sacks, Keith Rabois, Allen Lee, Sam Saffron, how do they... and they all said, 'Here are the type of cold emails we like to work with, but they have to be great.' The reason I invest off cold emails is because it's not the one that says, 'Do you want coffee?' or 'I saw you at SaaStr' or 'Are you free?' or 'I'm in Palo Alto.' It's like the email is so good, like, I want to invest before I get below the fold. And if you want to see some VC examples, I wrote an old post, two cold emails I funded for millions, and the CEOs of Talkdesk and Mapistry let me publish their emails. When I show these to founders and they read them, they're like, 'Yeah, I would fund those.' I don't know much about investing, but yeah. So make your product email as good as those two.
Okay, so that ramble answer, and then I'll give you one last little anecdote, and hopefully that's enough for the two. So I'll tell you, I got this as a founder, right? And then I remember we were acquired by Adobe, and I was a VP or an SVP, but my boss was like an EVP, okay? And he had 11 VPs reporting to him. He had two secretaries surrounding him in his corner office, and he had a lot of resources. And I remember sitting next to him in our E-staff meeting, and I'm like, 'Jesus, how do you handle all the emails you get?' I'm just curious because I've never worked in a Fortune 500 tech company. How do you handle all the emails you get? And I'm watching him with his laptop. He didn't get that many. A lot, okay? But my point is, people don't go direct to him, or had filters. My point is, even this, not the CEO of Adobe, but one level down, if you sent him the right email and it was great, he was going to sit there in our staff meeting and open it right there. It's magical. So write that email. Email works in 2024, 2014, 2004, 1994, probably not before email was invented. But thanks for the question.
