For Entrepreneurs with David Skok
SEPTEMBER 25, 2018
There is much hand wringing in the startup ecosystem about various forms of signaling between the seed and A rounds. Conventional wisdom, and advice, abounds: entrepreneurs should never include a venture firm in their seed round because it’ll scare other VCs off from pursuing the A. After all, the “insider” VC has more information and.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 2, 2018
The SEC announced last week that it wants to find ways to let Main Street investors access stage private venture companies. This news item underscores an important trend that is reshaping the industry. Today in Startupland, startup access is the scarcest commodity. Everybody wants an allocation, an opportunity to invest in the very best companies. The SEC story highlights how much has changed in Startupland.
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Intercom, Inc.
SEPTEMBER 26, 2018
In the world of recurring revenue, SaaS companies realize they need engaged customers if they are to grow a healthy, sustainable business. This is where having a solid customer engagement strategy comes in. Remember those halcyon days when software was sold through licenses and you only had to win over each customer once to stay profitable? Those days are over.
Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth
SEPTEMBER 17, 2018
Everybody likes to win. And while you undoubtedly learn much about your skills, attributes and character from losses, there’s nothing quite like that sense of satisfaction when your team secures a hard earned victory. I’ve been fortunate, both as an individual contributor and as part of a team to have racked up some important wins (jobs, promotions, new business and awards), but in truth, there’s only been three periods where I’ve been part of teams where there’s been an expectation of winning.
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Generative AI is upending the way product developers & end-users alike are interacting with data. Despite the potential of AI, many are left with questions about the future of product development: How will AI impact my business and contribute to its success? What can product managers and developers expect in the future with the widespread adoption of AI?
Practical Advice on SaaS marketing
SEPTEMBER 1, 2018
If you’re marketing your SaaS solution without a compelling and consistent value proposition and messages, you’re doing something wrong. Without a value proposition – a crystal clear explanation of who should buy your solution, what problem it solves for them, and why they should buy it from you – you’re missing an essential foundation for all your marketing efforts.
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
For Entrepreneurs with David Skok
SEPTEMBER 6, 2018
In today’s blogpost I would like to introduce my partner for Zero to 100, Stephanie (Schatz) Friedman. Stephanie has been an executive in 3 successful startups and was most recently the SVP of Sales and Customer Success at Xamarin which has since been acquired by Microsoft. Stephanie joined Xamarin as its first non-engineering hire in.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 30, 2018
In early markets, customers prefer entire solutions, not best in class point products. These solutions often include significant professional services and education. At the beginning of a new wave, most customers don’t understand the technology well. So, they seek experts to guide them. Companies that provide services and education often win the early market.
Intercom, Inc.
SEPTEMBER 12, 2018
In many ways, how we do business today is a model of efficiency and convenience – people come to our websites and we sell to them. That interaction is increasingly being conducted over live chat , and at Intercom, we strive to make those interactions as personal as possible. As this mode of business has evolved, however, there are two unavoidable facts that we sometimes prefer to ignore.
A Smart Bear
SEPTEMBER 5, 2018
We all know that startups should make decisions quickly. Fast decisions leads to rapid action, which accelerates the loop of production and feedback, which is how you outpace and out-learn a competitor, even one that already has a lead. But some decisions should not be made in haste, like a key executive hire , or how to price , or whether to raise money, or whether to invest millions of dollars in a new product line.
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Sales Hacker
SEPTEMBER 10, 2018
Good sales leaders are always on the hunt to bring in new talent that can help a business grow. Still, they don’t always nail down the details when it comes to the things that might entice a prospective salesperson — like a well-rounded sales compensation plan , for example. Creating a strong sales incentives program will help you attract and retain A-list sales talent, so it is worth putting in the legwork to create a strong plan. .
Entrepreneur - SaaS
SEPTEMBER 26, 2018
Even the smallest businesses can benefit from readily available technology, so why won't they use it?
For Entrepreneurs with David Skok
SEPTEMBER 25, 2018
There is much hand wringing in the startup ecosystem about various forms of signaling between the seed and A rounds. Conventional wisdom, and advice, abounds: entrepreneurs should never include a venture firm in their seed round because it’ll scare other … The post We’re Overthinking Seed Round Signaling Effects appeared first on For Entrepreneurs.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 9, 2018
Last week, Elastic filed their S-1 to go public. Elastic is a Dutch company founded in 2012. Just five years later, the company generated $159.9M in revenue. Elastic commercializes open source software called the Elastic Stack, a set of different products that enable users to search and store data in many different sources and formats. This software is used for application search, website search, enterprise search, application performance monitoring, and analytics for business and security data.
Speaker: Timothy Chan, PhD., Head of Data Science
Are you ready to move beyond the basics and take a deep dive into the cutting-edge techniques that are reshaping the landscape of experimentation? 🌐 From Sequential Testing to Multi-Armed Bandits, Switchback Experiments to Stratified Sampling, Timothy Chan, Data Science Lead, is here to unravel the mysteries of these powerful methodologies that are revolutionizing how we approach testing.
Intercom, Inc.
SEPTEMBER 10, 2018
For a long time, many companies had only one way to capture visitors to their website: contact forms. Lengthy lead forms became the lifeblood of modern customer acquisition. But more and more businesses are starting to ask, why do we make people fill out forms just to talk to us? Why aren’t we trying to connect and speak with them when we have their attention?
A Smart Bear
SEPTEMBER 19, 2018
You roll down the windows and wear a helmet when you take your car to the track. This does not make me less terrified of a fiery death. The American Autocross champion was sitting in my passenger seat screaming at me to not let my foot off the pedal until I bounced off the RPM limiter. She was properly intense. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s fun to power through curves in a high-speed tenuously-controlled skid in my Mini Cooper S (plus Cooperworks).
InsightSquared
SEPTEMBER 20, 2018
Kaizen. The Japanese term “Kaizen” stands for the continuous improvement of a process. Adopted by Japanese manufacturing companies after World War II as a way to reduce waste and create competitive advantage, kaizen evolved beyond the assembly line in manufacturing to all business processes and became the precursor to lean manufacturing. “Kaizen is a daily process, the purpose of which goes beyond simple productivity improvement.
FastSpring
SEPTEMBER 21, 2018
Thanks to the pervasive presence of the internet, digital marketing has become an increasingly popular tactic in the go-to-market strategy for many SaaS businesses. In fact, over half of the world’s population now has access to the internet, according to Mary Meeker’s 2018 Internet Trends report. When done well, digital marketing allows your business to tap into both organic and paid channels to place memorable marketing campaigns in front of your ideal audience.
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Explore how integrated payment strategies impact investor and buyer evaluations. Payments are more than a feature — they’re a key to long-term success and market differentiation. They help SaaS companies offer seamless user experiences and efficient operations. Investors and strategic buyers assess these integrated payment strategies as a measure of a company's growth potential and sustainability.
For Entrepreneurs with David Skok
SEPTEMBER 6, 2018
In today’s blogpost I would like to introduce my partner for Zero to 100 , Stephanie (Schatz) Friedman. Stephanie has been an executive in 3 successful startups and was most recently the SVP of Sales and Customer Success at Xamarin … The post Onboarding your first Sales Hire as an Entrepreneur appeared first on For Entrepreneurs.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 15, 2018
A founder asked me recently if there were any trends in professional services across public SaaS companies. I had examined the gross margins and share of revenue from professional services about 3 years ago. Professional services are consulting fees software companies charge to customers for software configuration, customization and education. What has changed over the past 3 years?
Intercom, Inc.
SEPTEMBER 10, 2018
As engineers, one of the fundamental things we have to learn is the extent to which we can break things – how do we get the right balance between shipping safely and shipping fast? Before I joined Intercom, I thought of shipping as somebody’s else concern – I built things, but other people shipped them. It was a slow process, requiring a full team merging branches and deploying to production.
Ryan Berg
SEPTEMBER 12, 2018
Is it possible to build a billion dollar SaaS without focusing on traditional marketing channels like paid advertising, using high pressure sales tactics, or relying on manipulative growth hacks? After spending several weeks reverse engineering and dissecting InVision’s growth marketing strategy I can say the answer is: yes! InVision’s un-orthodox approach to growth marketing is not only.
As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.
InsightSquared
SEPTEMBER 13, 2018
With less than two weeks until Dreamforce ‘18 , it’s time to plan how you will spend your four days in San Francisco. With more than 3,000 in the agenda builder to choose from, planning which sessions you will attend can be overwhelming. The potential to develop new skills, network with thousands of attendees, and elevate your career are endless, so planning your days strategically is the key to success.
Sales Hacker
SEPTEMBER 19, 2018
Have you ever dreamed of becoming a VP of Sales? This is the podcast for you. This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak to Dan Cook, SVP of Sales & Success at LucidChart, one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the US, about what it takes to become a sales executive at a top company. If you missed Episode 24, check it out here: PODCAST 24: Building a Tier 1 Saas Company From the Investor Perspective.
Unbounce
SEPTEMBER 24, 2018
Ah, they grow up so fast. The fifth annual Call to Action Conference has now come and gone and it was a helluva time, as always. Having been at Unbounce for 4 years now, I’ve seen CTAConf grow from a grassroots sproutling with 300 attendees to a 1,000-person event taking over the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. This year’s theme was “The Marketing Revolution” in response to the fact that marketing has changed.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 23, 2018
About two years ago, Marketo was publicly traded and valued at roughly $1.1B. Vista Equity paid $1.8B to take the company private, a 64% premium. At the time it was taken private by Vista, Marketo generated $241M in trailing revenue, growing at 35% annually. Its net income margin was -31%. Last week, Adobe announced they acquired Marketo for $4.75B.
Advertiser: Data Robot
The buzz around generative AI shows no sign of abating in the foreseeable future. Enterprise interest in the technology is high, and the market is expected to gain momentum as organizations move from prototypes to actual project deployments. Ultimately, the market will demand an extensive ecosystem, and tools will need to streamline data and model utilization and management across multiple environments.
Intercom, Inc.
SEPTEMBER 7, 2018
Volume and capacity are always top of mind for sales, support and marketing teams. At Intercom , we’re helping all three teams do more with their time to increase their performance. For sales and support, the volume of prospects and customers they handle, and their capacity to scale up that volume, is the reason they are so focused on efficiency and output.
FastSpring
SEPTEMBER 13, 2018
It doesn’t matter if you’re an established digital business or an up-and-coming online store looking to sell software, digital downloads, or digital content, a key part of selling online is making sure you’re familiar with how online payment processing works. However, many businesses quickly realize that is easier said than done. Especially since there is a lot of technical jargon and terminology within the payment ecosystem.
Chart Mogul
SEPTEMBER 10, 2018
Welcome to the second installment of our SaaS Metrics Refresher course. This week we'll get back to basics with recurring revenue. It's not as straightforward as you might think! Recurring revenue is the heart of every subscription business, and a key reason for the explosion of SaaS as a business model in recent years. In short, recurring revenue is all about predictable, long-term value — it’s in these characteristics where non-recurring revenue can fall short.
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