In addition to doing his best to help run SaaStr, he is a hyper-founder centric VC with $90m to invest in the top SaaS founders. He’s been the first or very early investor in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, including Algolia, Automile, Talkdesk, Parklet, Greenhouse, Mixmax, Pipedrive, Rainforest QA, Logikcull, SalesLoft, Teamable, Gorgias, Mapistry, and more.
Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise. Most recently, he served as CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc.
He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013.
Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. The technology, built into implantable power cells, has gone on to help extend the lives of thousands.
Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are increasingly looking to startups for innovation, big ideas, and flexibility. Although the startup community is large, it can be difficult for CIOs to identify the right startup partners and ensure their own organizations have systems and processes in place to nurture these partnerships successfully. One of the world's most prominent startup advisors, Jason Lemkin, shares his advice for successful collaboration between enterprise IT and startups.
Advice to founders: If you get a lead, take the meeting. If you’re a tiny or small startup, don’t worry about it. It’s easy to build a relationship with a customer.
What qualifies as a successful SaaS startup investment depends on the type of funding / financing source. VCs have very high investment return expectations.
Startups, are your VPs real or fake? You can get by with really smart people in the early stages of startup2. But what about when you’re trying to build scale?
Every entrepreneur knows that starting an enterprise software company is hard. Jason Lemkin, Managing Partner with Storm Ventures and founder of EchoSign (acquired by Adobe), shares his secrets for how to start and run a successful SaaS enterprise software company. Jason is also one of the most popular startup bloggers in the world on his site called SaaStr.