Scaling SaaS: Essential Strategies and Fundraising

August 14, 2024

Gabby Contro

Partner at Crosslink Capital

Scott Iyama

Partner at Orrick

David Horning

Head of SaaS Practice-Escalon

Are you a startup in the SaaS industry looking to scale effectively? Join our comprehensive webinar on August 14th, to gain insights into fundraising and strategies for early-stage companies. Our expert speakers will cover critical topics such as financial models, go-to-market strategies, investor expectations, and a detailed look at fundraising metrics across the industry.

Our panelists, Gabby Contro – Partner at Crosslink Capital, David Horning – Escalon’s Head of Saas, and Scott Iyama – Partner at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, bring a wealth of experience in venture capital, financial operations, and legal expertise, ensuring you get a well-rounded perspective on what it takes to succeed in the SaaS space.

Topics Include:

  1. Financial Models: How to build your first financial model and plan for growth.
  2. Go-to-Market Strategy: Effective approaches to entering and capturing the market.
  3. Investor Expectations: Understanding what investors look for in a promising SaaS startup.
  4. Fundraising Metrics: An overview of industry standards and benchmarks.

Whether you’re a startup founder or part of a growing team, this webinar will provide valuable education and strategies to help you navigate the complexities of early-stage growth and fundraising. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from industry leaders and set your startup on the path to success!

Meet our speakers

Gabby Contro

Gabby joined Crosslink in 2013 and leads early-stage investments in marketplaces, enterprise applications, commerce and digital health.

At Crosslink, Gabby has been closely involved with investments such as BuildingConnected (acquired by AutoDesk), Postmates (acquired by Uber), Flume Health and Hungryroot, among others. In 2016, Gabby left Crosslink to pursue her MBA at the Harvard Business School. While at Harvard, Gabby worked on the sales operations and strategy team at Pinterest.

Prior to her venture career, Gabby was a consultant at Ernst & Young in New York, where she worked in the valuation analysis and pricing group after graduating from the Master of Accounting program at The University of Michigan.

Gabby lives in San Francisco with her husband, Tom. Outside of work, Gabby is an avid skier, foodie, and aspiring tennis player.

Crosslink, founded in 1989, is a premier early-stage venture capital firm with over $4.2B in assets. Crosslink partners with founders that are market disrupters and category creators, typically at the Seed-Series A stage, across highly dynamic enterprise and consumer technology sectors. Over its history, Crosslink has had the opportunity to partner with defining companies such as Bleacher Report (acquired by TWX), BuildingConnected (acquired by ADSK), Chime, Coupa (COUP), DataStax, Molekule, Omniture (acquired by ADBE), Personal Capital (acquired by Empower Retirement), Postmates (acquired by UBER), ServiceMax (acquired by GE), Verodin (acquired by FEYE), Vungle (acquired by Blackstone) and Weave (IPO NYSE: WEAV).

Scott Iyama

Scott Iyama, co-chair of the Life Sciences practice at Orrick, is an experienced corporate lawyer and advisor to leading technology and life science companies.  Scott provides tactical guidance throughout the life cycle of high growth companies and has led clients through hundreds of financings and numerous mergers, acquisitions, public offerings and partnering transactions.

Orrick serves the Technology & Innovation, Energy & Infrastructure and Finance sectors globally. Clients worldwide call on our teams for seamless transactional execution, winning litigation strategies and forward-looking regulatory solutions. We offer particular strength in helping innovators address opportunities and risks arising from the convergence of tech with finance, energy and life sciences. And we aim to bring distinctive quality, teamwork and value to the table – and innovate in everything we do.

David Horning

David leads our Software-as-a-Service practice at Escalon. He has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, including more than 10 years working as a fractional CFO for venture-backed start-ups. During this time David has helped dozens of companies complete more than $600M in combined equity and debt transactions across a range of industries: SaaS, cleantech, biotech, hardware, transportation and many more. Previously David was an Investment Professional at Palo Alto Investors where he invested in both publicly-traded small-cap companies and private venture-backed start-ups. David began his career as a Mechanical Engineer in the gas turbine industry where he helped developed low-emission combustion systems. David received a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and his M.S. and B.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington. He has been a Chartered Financial Analyst charterholder since 2005.

Meet the partners

Silicon Valley Bank

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) helps innovative companies and their investors move bold ideas forward, fast. SVB provides a full range of financial services and expertise to companies of all sizes in innovation centers around the world. SVB is recognized as one of the world’s best employers by Forbes, and is a member of the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index.

Learn more at https://www.svb.com/

Justworks

Justworks is a technology company that levels the playing field for all small businesses. Through our software and as a partner, we help our customers take care of their teams, streamline their operations, and navigate the complex aspects of managing a workforce with confidence.

 

Learn more at https://www.justworks.com/