The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors SaaStr 072 Part 1: David Skok, SaaS Legend on How Long Should Your Payback Period Be, How To Assess Sales Rep Productivity & What Is A Good LTV In Relation To CAC
David Skok is a serial entrepreneur turned VC at Matrix Partners. He founded four companies: Skok Systems, Corporate Software Europe, Watermark Software, and SilverStream Software and did one turnaround with Xionics. Three of the companies he founded went public and one was acquired. In 2001 David joined Matrix Partners, who had backed his last two startups, as a General Partner. David's successful exits as an investor at Matrix include: HubSpot, JBoss, AppIQ, Tabblo, Netezza, Diligent Technologies, CloudSwitch, TribeHR, GrabCAD, OpenSpan and Enservio. David currently serves on the boards of Atomist, CloudBees, Digium, Meteor, Namely HR, Salsify, and Zaius. You can also find David's amazing blog here! Huge thanks to Hardi Meybaum and Jason Lemkin for the intro to David today.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
- How did David make his way into the world of SaaS? What was it about Matrix that made him want to make the transition from operations to VC?
- Why are metrics so important? What role do they play in an organisation? How do good founders respond to questions on not achieving sales targets?
- Why are SaaS businesses immune from being measured on standard financials like GAP financials? What metrics in SaaS really determine the trajectory of the business?
- How can founders examine unit economics to determine whether they have a sustainable SaaS business?
- How does David address sales rep productivity? How much in ARR should they be booking in relation to their annual comp package?
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