Jason M. Lemkin is a hyper-founder centric VC and out of a $90,000,000 fund, he leads $250k-$5m initial investments in great SaaS or enterprise startups. 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 of 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.
In this episode you’ll learn:
- [01:12] Two ways Jason used to recruit his co-founders in the past
- [03:01] Why did Jason settle for the SaaS vertical?
- [04:45] Why having the pressure off as an entrepreneur is not all good?
- [05:29] What’s the difference between pressure in big companies and startups?
- [06:51] What has Jason been up to in the last 5 years?
- [07:27] Reason why Jason calls one of his companies ‘half a company’ even when it’s doing 12 million dollars in revenue
- [07:59] What drives Jason when he could’ve easily retired 5 years ago? (2 reasons)
- [09:53] What did Jason learn from having millions of views on his content every month?
- [11:18] Why is Jason doing an in-person event?
- [14:02] Things that didn’t work at SaaStr
- [15:48] What did Jason learn from building a team for SaaStr?
- [16:58] Why no one was allowed to quit their job in a startup Jason ran before SaaStr?
- [19:12] What roles were the key hires for the annual event?
- [21:45] How to be rigorous about budgets when running a low margin business?
- [22:32] Why did Jason start a CoSelling space?
- [26:00] Would Jason ever expand his investing criteria outside SaaS?
- [27:05] Is entrepreneurship fun or not?
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About The Author
Alex Berman is the founder and chief content creator of X27 Marketing.
He is passionate about promoting efficient B2B lead generation channels and executing on data-driven strategies for his clients.
