If you are bootstrapped in SaaS, it helps a lot to be SMB focused, viral and/or truly product-led growth

Why?

Sales.

Venture-backed startups just can >afford< to invest so, so much more in sales.

With the average SaaS enterprise/B2D/mid-market leader seeing net revenue retention of 120%-130%, or even higher, it just >pays< to invest heavily in sales if you have the $$$

The lifetime of a customer is often well in excess of 5x the first-year ACV, sometimes 10x

So paying sales reps 30%, 50%, or even more of the first-year ACV can still pay

But when bootstrapped, it's really hard to pay much more than 20% of the total ACV in sales comp. That often means a 10% commission.

VC-backed startups can just pay up here, and should

If your NRR is > 100%, you should be closing every customer you possibly can to go long and win

Every lead should be smothered in attention, until it is too much

Loading up on 50% more, 100% more, even 200% more sales reps than you'd have if you were lean ... pays off

Where this totally breaks down is a high-churn environment

If your NRR is < 100%, "paying up" for sales truly is a leaky bucket ... one that gets worse & worse as you scale

If your NRR is <100%, sales needs to be hyper-efficient. Or just support-on-steroids.

If nothing else, before you scale sales ahead of your ARR growth, make sure your churn is net negative

Here's how the best look:

More data here: https://www.saastr.com/whats-a-good-net-retention-rate-in-saas/