Article · 25 min read

The Cadence: How to Turn Your SaaS Startup into an Army with David Sacks (Video + Transcript)

David Sacks · SaaStr Free Advanced

The full explanation of the operating rhythm Sacks ran at Yammer, with the audience Q and A that surfaces the edge cases. Use this version rather than the Medium original, which blocks a lot of readers.

  • The Cadence runs two systems on a quarterly beat: sales/finance and product/marketing, offset about half a quarter from each other.
  • Month one plans (kickoff, territories, quotas, board), month two launches (code freeze, QA, launch event), month three executes.
  • Ship four big releases a year, not a stream of small ones, and scope projects at 2 to 10 engineers for 2 to 10 weeks.
  • End the fiscal year January 31 so a quarter close does not land in the holidays; Sacks ran this at Yammer to 56 million dollars in under four years.
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It answers 3 questions

  1. How do the best run companies keep sales, marketing, product and finance moving in step week to week?
  2. How do the very best forecasting teams actually run their week?
  3. What do elite revenue teams do in the last three weeks of a quarter that ordinary teams do not?

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  6. Video · 43 min The Cadence: How to Turn Your SaaS Startup into an Army w/Craft Ventures General Partner David Sacks David Sacks
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