OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

This week we released our third annual Expansion SaaS Benchmarks report. More than 500 SaaS companies participated in this year’s survey, which covered topics like financial performance, product led growth adoption, founder priorities and much more. But benchmarks alone are not enough. We’ve got to make the leap from benchmarks to action. Here’s our advice on how to use the benchmark data to grow even faster in 2020.

Benchmarks 41

Benchmarks Underperforming Technical Team Scale SaaS 41

ProfitWell

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

On this ProfitWell Report, Toby Biddle of Loop11 ponders how quickly product features are losing their value. To support this notion and answer the question, we looked at over 1.2 million different subscription consumers. Here’s what we found. As to not bury the lede – the products we’re producing are losing their value at an alarming rate. Twenty years ago if you gave someone a database with a login screen, you were kind of a god.

Entertainment 58

Entertainment B2C Subscription Payment Features 58

Cobloom

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

SaaS pricing is difficult to master, and just a few tweaks to your strategy can have a huge impact on your revenue. Today, I’m looking at how you can determine the most appropriate value metric for pricing your SaaS product.

Metrics 60

Metrics SaaS Pricing Strategy 60

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

I was curious the other day how many of the recent Cloud and SaaS IPOs had founders that were equal co-founders from an equity perspective. That was how I was brought up (the first start-up job I had, the founders were equal shareholders). And I generally thought that was the default, albeit was many exceptions. Well, I was wrong. Only 3 of the most recent ~25 SaaS/Cloud IPOs I looked at had equal founder ownership at IPO, Atlassian, Pagerduty and (close enough) MongoDB: (One note / disclaimer

SaaS 208

SaaS Cloud Benchmarks Development 208

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While data platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and programming platforms have evolved to leverage big data and streaming data, the front-end user experience has not kept up. Holding onto old BI technology while everything else moves forward is holding back organizations. Traditional Business Intelligence (BI) aren’t built for modern data platforms and don’t work on modern architectures.

Artificial Intelligence

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Last week, SaaS stocks fell by about 18% on average. The chart above shows the most recent enterprise value to forward multiple for a basket of next-generation software companies. The red line is the value and the blue line is the median over the same time frame. As of Friday, the median forward multiple is 9.3x which is a 11% drop from the previous high of 10.5x.

SaaS 213

SaaS Pricing Enterprise Startup 213

Predictable Revenue

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Keys for effective onboarding and training for SDRs. The post Keys to Effective Onboarding and Training for SDRs appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Onboarding 124

Onboarding Revenue 124

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2019

As you begin to scale and add a sales team, you’ll encounter more and more drama with “bad” customers. These so called “bad” customers from a sales team perspective will include: Folks that share licenses that shouldn’t be. Sales will get mad they aren’t buying more seats. Folks that use SMB or other editions that should be on your more expensive enterprise plans.

Scale 225

Scale SMB Churn Retention 225

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

I’ve been searching for a great history of the venture capital industry since before I joined Redpoint. There are a handful of books that are pretty good. Done Deals. eBoys. Creative Capital. But there’s a great one called VC by Tom Nicholas. Nicholas traces the history of the venture capital industry back to whaling. They were called venture capitalists back then, but they serve the same role.

Venture Capital 194

Venture Capital Technical Review Investment Pricing 194

Neil Patel

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

In case you missed it, Google has just changed up the rules for link building. It used to be that when people link to you, the link would either be a dofollow link or a nofollow link. Well, that’s now changed. They are now introducing 2 more link types that will affect SEOs. Now before we get into the 2 new link types, make sure you read the whole post.

User Experience 112

User Experience Data Sales 112

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Payments

Predictable Revenue

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

We'll take an in-depth look at how to scale a sales team and effectively nail each stage of sales growth. The post The art of selling services: How Go Nimbly’s Troy Conquer listens, educates, and executes revenue operations consulting appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Education 100

Education Consulting Scale Revenue 100

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

So I’ve had a chance to observe some of the worst sales processes of all times in the past few weeks! What happened? Well, first I wrote a few small pieces on a challenge we had with a piece of software. And I was then inundated with emails, tweets, and LinkedIn posts from competitors telling me to look at their oh so wonderful product. Then right after the same time, a terrific company that produces software in the investment space emailed me almost a dozen times over the past weeks tr

Sales 197

Sales Software Investment Business 197

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

I’ve gotten to know Marc Randolph as a fellow board member at Looker. Marc has helped many companies get off the ground, but the most famous is Netflix. Marc founded the business and served as its first CEO until Reed Hastings took the helm in 2003. In [That Will Never Work](), Marc recounts the early days of the $130B market cap company first started in Santa Cruz and it’s a remarkable story.

Scaling 183

Scaling Product Marketing Marketing Business 183

Nimble - Sales

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

Whether you’re running a multinational agency or a small local business, you must have wondered how to properly retain your customers in the long run. Highly successful businesses understand the significant difference between customer acquisition and customer retention. Both processes are equally important, though many contemporary businesses neglect the latter.

Retention 104

Retention Strategy Marketing Acquisition 104

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.

Innovation

ProfitWell

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

In this week’s episode, Hiten and I want to talk to you about something both of us have a lot of experience with: freemium product strategy. With more startups looking into this model every day, we think it’s important to discuss the inherent tradeoffs of using freemium for your business. While both Hiten and I are big proponents of freemium, it’s definitely not the easiest business model to work with if you don’t understand how to make it work.

Acquisition 99

Acquisition Revenue Scale Retention 99

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

At the recent A+ Traction conference in Vancouver , Justin Kan and I had a lot of fun doing a presentation I hadn’t done or seen before — “S**t VCs Say” We went through some of the Top 10 things that VCs tell you, that is true but … biased. Every investor has a bias. Seed investors have one perspective. Accelerators another.

Venture Capital 193

Venture Capital Investment 193

Sage Intacct

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

“Digital transformation” may sound like a buzzword, but the drivers behind it are very real. In an era where technology is reshaping businesses and industries, companies that harness technology can reap big advantages over those that don’t. Businesses must first determine how to adapt their businesses for the digital age and then put technology to work to bring these changes to life.

Business 95

Business Technology Software Leadership 95

Nimble - Sales

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

Customers are the center of every business’s growth; their strategies, plans, blogs, services, etc. are all dependant upon their user-base. And one of the best ways to fuel the master plan of retaining and establishing a powerful bond between the brand and its customers is through CRM. However, retention and conversions are not the only […]. The post 5 Simple Ways To Improve Your SEO With CRM appeared first on Nimble Blog.

Retention 104

Retention Branding Strategy 104

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Payments

InsightSquared

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

Marketing attribution is no buzzword. It’s a fundamental building block of achieving ROI. Sometimes seen as more art than science, it’s often given too little attention – or too much. When sales cycles are short, marketing attribution can be fairly straightforward. The higher the value of the contract, the longer the sales cycle and the more complex the marketing machine, the harder it becomes to know where marketing spend is achieving ROI.

Marketing 91

Marketing Advertising Communication Engineering 91

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

“How did you get started creating your SaaStr community, and how could I get started on making one for a different industry?” We certainly never would have predicted that answering a few questions on Quora and a few blog posts in 2012 and 2013 would eventually lead to a global community with 50,000+ attending our global events, 150,000,000+ views of our content, 2,000,000+ downloads of our podcasts, etc.

Content Marketing 136

Content Marketing Trends Data Marketing 136

Groove HQ

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

It felt like the exact wrong thing to do. It was crazy. Maybe even a little stupid. We had recently finished our rebuilding project, trying to rescue our company from a slide into failure, and we were just starting to find our footing. Things were going well, but after working our way out of the […]. The post Vacations Are Important, but Most Founders Do Them Wrong appeared first on Groove Blog.

93

93

Nimble - Sales

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

In any dynamic industry, it is especially important that accounting software for small businesses is as efficient as possible – easy to use, intuitive, and powerful. Startups and small companies have to take rapid action to pick up on the latest lines of the market and grow, so technology has to be on point. However, […]. The post Best Small Business Accounting Software for 2019 appeared first on Nimble Blog.

Software 103

Software Business Startup Technology 103

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Artificial Intelligence

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

It's easy to get lost in the weeds when there's so much to do. But sales is the one thing founders cannot oversee — without it your startup will die. Startup founders are stretched thinly like silly putty. Between hiring, training, and helping new employees excel, iterating on customer feedback, building brand awareness, et al., there are hundreds of activities you can engage in on a daily basis.

Sales Hiring 93

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Startup 93

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Ep. 266: Janine Pelosi is the CMO @ Zoom, the next-generation enterprise phone system. Prior to their very successful IPO, Zoom raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures and 2 of my favourites in the form of Matt Ocko @ Data Collective and Dan Scheinman. As for Janine before joining Zoom, she spent 11 years at Cisco where among many incredible achievements she led worldwide demand gen for WebEx and led their worldwide digital mar

Scale 136

Scale Sales Hiring Traceability Acquisition 136

Agile Payments

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Payment Facilitation allows a SaaS application the ability to accept payments on behalf of its end users. The platform users complete a simple application and in minutes can begin accepting credit cards and in some cases ACH Payments. This ability to onboard clients without having the user apply for a traditional merchant account [that can take days and require supporting documentation like bank statements and tax returns] offers a friction-free onboarding experience.

SaaS Payments 68

SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Facilitation Merchant Services 68

Nimble - Sales

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Finding your target audience is an essential step while setting up a business. Many small business owners confuse the terms target audience and target group. Target Group are the people you want to benefit from the product. Target Audience is the people you want to market the product so that it eventually reaches the target […]. The post How to Identify the Best Marketing Platforms to Reach Your Target Audience appeared first on Nimble Blog.

Marketing 95

Marketing Business 95

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User Experience

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” – Steve Jobs. I’m massively concerned! . What’s happening with tenured sales reps? . I’m not here to show disrespect nor point fingers. This comes from conversations, messages, and even observations from the teams I work with. .

Engagement 81

Engagement Sales Investment Communication 81

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

It’s a full-time job. Yes, you can start off a a founder doing support, QA, sales, marketing, and more. But sales is a full-time job. And you need folks with experience , usually. You need 40+ hours a week to: Do 2–3 demos a day. Follow up with 20–50 new leads a month. Follow up with the 60–200 leads from the past few months. Answer questions from prospects.

Sales 136

Sales Management Marketing 136

Agile Payments

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

Property management applications are extremely popular today. There is rarely a week that goes by where we are not contacted by a software application that serves property management in some way or another. Often, we are discussing payments solutions with many at one time.

Payments 68

Payments Payment Solutions Management Payment Services 68