SaaStr 135: Auren Hoffman on Why Raising Prices Is Not A Good Idea, How Fewer Employees Can Mean Fast Growth & Why The CEO Must Never Delegate HR

Auren Hoffman is the Founder & CEO @ Safegraph, the startup that is unlocking the world's most powerful data so that machines and humans can answer society's toughest questions. They have backing from likes of Naval Ravikant and prior guests of the show including SignalFire, IDG Ventures and David Rodnitzky just to name a few. Prior to Safegraph, Auren has an astonishing 5 successful exits under his belt with one being, LiveRamp (sold to Acxiom for $310m in 2014). If that was not enough, Auren is also a prolific angel investor with a portfolio including the likes of ThumbTack, Rainforest QA, Brightroll and Groupon.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How Auren made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found his 6th SaaS startup in Safegraph?
• Auren has said before there are two types of successful sales people, what are these two types and what are their character profiles? What type of company should have each different profile? How does each profile interact differently with the rest of the company?
• Why does Auren take the contrarian view and saying that highering your price is not always the right answer? In what markets is it right to higher or lower your price? When is it the wrong time? What percentage of revenue should sales and marketing be at a healthy SaaS startup?
• Why does Auren believe that you can actually grow faster by having fewer employees? In what situation and start does this work and when does it not? ?
• Why does Auren believe that the CEO should never delegate HR? What does Auren mean when he says the best HR professionals are real capital allocators?

60 Second SaaStr

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Auren Hoffman