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by alephnerd 848 days ago
> Do you have information not in the link

I do this for a living, first as a PM and now as a VC. These multiples are fairly common knowledge for anyone in Enterprise SaaS, and have have worked with accounts teams that have done this and have recommended similar strategies (at a smaller scale) to portfolio companies.

> the person making them needs to be fired, and fast. They should have considered that they could handle both accounts. Increasing the number of customers is called expansion.

I can expand the # of customers by selling 1,000 $1 contracts - that doesn't materially impact my company's financials.

You want to increase your (Revenue-COGS).

If you need to drop a needy customer to increase COGS because you have mistiered accounts caused by an account team targeting a hefty quarterly bonus (happens everywhere, and caused a big shitshow at a major cybersecurity startup recently that brought a federal investigation) so be it.

2 comments

> I do this for a living, first as a PM and now as a VC. These multiples are fairly common knowledge for anyone in Enterprise SaaS, and have have worked with accounts teams that have done this and have recommended similar strategies (at a smaller scale) to portfolio companies.

So the answer is no, you don't have any information not found in the link, and everything you wrote was speculation.

> You want to increase your (Revenue-COGS).

Exactly, and without knowing anything about the financials of this deal, there's no way to know if your claims are correct. It might have been an attempt to take advantage of someone that built on their product, expecting that they'll pay more.

I've worked on these kinds of accounts at a VMWare sized company before.

If you don't trust me, go chat with CROs, Product Leadership, or Execs are similarly sized companies.

I agree this is tribal knowledge, but that's how most pricing and renewal negotiatons occur, with maybe a bit of RevOps black magic to justify a decision one way or the other.

> caused a big shitshow at a major cybersecurity startup recently that brought a federal investigation

Care to elaborate?

I can't exactly. The Enterprise SaaS industry is very small. Ask around over drinks during a cyber trade show like RSA or Blackhat.

I can say this is a company where the CRO "left".