OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

It seems like everyone wants to “go viral.” From SaaS startups to Instagram celebrities, businesses and wannabes are searching for the magic moment that will propel them into the stratosphere. But, even the founders of so-called “unicorn” companies know that magic isn’t a viable growth strategy. There are, however, more predictable and controllable ways to harness viral and network effects.

SaaS Payments 40

SaaS Payments Payment Methods SaaS Payment Services 40

The Angel VC

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

At the SaaStr Europa conference in Paris a couple of weeks ago I sat down with Joaquim Lecha, the CEO of our portfolio company Typeform , to talk about “Freemium at Scale”. Founded and headquartered in Barcelona, the company launched a free version of its service seven years ago. During our conversation Joaquim revealed that this free service helps drive 180,000 monthly signups, and about 3% of those signups convert into paying users who are billed anywhere from €25 to €70 per month, depending o

Scale 172

Scale Engineering Enterprise SaaS 172

Predictable Revenue

SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

Scale 127

Scale Leadership Scaling Sales 127

Totango

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

If you want to make your business customer-centered , you’re going to need customer data. Without it, you can’t keep track of your customers’ needs, business goals, and challenges. When you gather and analyze customer data, you can uncover customer journey insights that will allow you to take action to deliver a more personalized customer experience.

Software Review 70

Software Review Onboarding Customer Success Data 70

Advertisement

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?

Generative AI

Agile Payments

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

A Payment Facilitator can be thought of as a Master Merchant that facilitates and processes credit and debit card transactions for their platform users.

SaaS Payments 68

SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Facilitation Payments 68

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

I think there are two different phases you’ll go through, and your exit strategy should evolve. Phase Early: You Can Be Killed. This is probably up until $8m-$10m ARR in SaaS, although it can vary. Here, you might not be able to raise another round. Or continue to build a competitive enough product. Or get disrupted by a partner or someone else. Or keep up with customer needs.

Strategy 164

Strategy Startup Acquisition Branding 164

Net-Results

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

Being the person in charge of generating leads for a B2B SaaS business ( Net-Results , a marketing automation platform along the lines of Pardot and Marketo ), let me try and answer this question. With varying success, here are some things that we’ve tried to generate leads: Paid ads. Even though it’s gotten pricey, Google Ads still has positive ROI for us (measure by a cost per lead and revenue per lead source).

B2B 40

B2B Business Social Media SaaS 40

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 7, 2019

Hiring a VP that doesn’t work out is tough. What’s even tougher? Keeping him on for more than a few months. Because the damage compounds. You fall further and further behind on the plan. You hire a bunch of folks that don’t perform. Morale suffers. Everyone gets a bit lost. So if you do make a mis-hire — and everyone does — at least course correct quickly.

Sales Hiring 148

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale SMB 148

OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 13, 2019

The mission statement of Customer Success is simple: ensure customers realize value from your products or services. A defining characteristic that separates Customer Success from Customer Support is being proactive in delivering that value. And allocating additional resources toward your customer’s long-term success pays huge dividends – improving retention by just 1% affects a company’s bottom line by around 7%.

Customer Success 43

Customer Success Revenue AWS Retention 43

Advertisement

Discover how top SaaS companies are earning up to $700k + and zero upfront cost with Usio Integrated Payments.

Payments

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

Selling based on ROI (return-on-investment) sounds great. A salesperson lays out an iron-clad case for how the customer will make 5x or 6x or 10x their initial investment in a piece of software in three years or less. The champion will use ROI math to assuage upper management and procurement’s concerns. Or so the thinking goes. If we reflect on the most successful software companies, the very largest, very few sell based on ROI.

Sales 181

Sales Innovation Investment Pricing 181

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

?. Like the built world, the internet is constructed for the majority. Too often, our online architects fail to take into account differently abled users. Design can help, to be sure, but it can also hurt – and that’s likely to be the case when the teams we assemble are one-dimensional, exclusive or lack diversity. As a rule, design should first do no harm.

Systems Review 112

Systems Review Scale Consulting Travel 112

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

There’s a simple point I’ve been talking about a lot lately, but it’s a super important one: When the time comes when you have enough momentum, capital, etc. to hire a real VP or two … you don’t have to start with the VP of Sales. It’s the natural place many of us start. We get 1-2 reps to hit quota, and we realize we need help to scale past that.

Sales Hiring 191

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Retention 191

Neil Patel

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

Google makes over 3,200 algorithm changes per year. That’s a lot of changes. Just think about that for a minute… and let that sink in. It’s roughly 9 changes per day. So how can you beat this gigantic company at their own game and rank high? Especially when you consider that they generate over $100 billion+ per year in ad revenue? You could follow their advice on how to rank well but that won’t do much for you.

Strategy 111

Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Engineering Technology 111

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

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

Negotiating is one of the most important skills salespeople can develop, yet it’s often overlooked. Which is a real problem… Because after you’ve put effort and resources into researching and creating a solid pitch and proposal, it only makes sense to come to the table prepared to negotiate with the prospect. The key is to create a negotiation strategy in advance, which helps you talk about price and other important elements of the deal.

Construction 111

Construction Pricing Sales Strategy 111

Nimble - Sales

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

Data is important for more types of organizations than ever before. No longer are giant corporations the firms that depend the most on big data for decision-making. Small businesses and even nonprofits rely on their data for support in nearly every aspect of their operations. Your small business almost certainly already uses its data about […].

Data 107

Data Business 107

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2019

You can back into it. Ultimately, in most SaaS models, in the U.S., sales reps will take home about 20% of the total deal value they close. In the early days, especially if the company is venture-backed, it might be more, as much as 30% or even a smidge higher with accelerators, etc. VC dollars are there to accelerate growth, and if paying a bit more to the sales reps helps there, that can often be worth it.

Scale 187

Scale SMB SaaS Sales 187

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

One of the holy grails in the newco world is to build out a digital platform that successfully serves the needs of a broad number of adjacent verticals, and become the definitive platform in its space.

Startup 107

Startup 107

Advertisement

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.

Payments

Sixteen Ventures

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

Companies struggling with growth are the ones that try to figure out how to spend as little as possible to acquire customers. The companies growing like crazy have figured out it’s not about how much you spend, but the efficiency of that spend. They know that if you can outspend your competition to get in front of prospective customers, you’ll win.

Venture Capital 87

Venture Capital Benchmarks Acquisition Investment 87

Nimble - Sales

SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

The speed of development and the profitability of a business depends on the number of clients. For these reasons, companies are spending more and more resources on attracting new customers and increasing the loyalty of existing customers, and on converting consumers from the “user” category to the “business partner” category. Some methods have already proven […].

Engagement 101

Engagement Strategy Development Business 101

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

Congratulations you’ve built a product that’s proven itself in the marketplace! So how can you leverage that product’s success to obtain the valuation and funding you need to scale? Ashley Smith, Venture Partner at OpenView provides insight on what investors are looking for in product metrics and growth indicators so you can capitalize on your product’s story for funding.

Investment 101

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Software Review 101

InsightSquared

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

Before we dive in, let’s cover the basics: what are campaign attribution models and why are they important ? . Attribution modeling is a way to analyze which marketing channels are accredited with lead conversion. Think of your attribution model as a map of sorts. You have a starting point (the campaign) and a finish (the deal), and it is your attribution model that will reveal how your buyer travelled from point A to point B.

B2C 78

B2C B2B Travel Advertising 78

Advertisement

Start-ups & SMBs launching products quickly must bundle dashboards, reports, & self-service analytics into apps. Customers expect rapid value from your product (time-to-value), data security, and access to advanced capabilities. Traditional Business Intelligence (BI) tools can provide valuable data analysis capabilities, but they have a barrier to entry that can stop small and midsize businesses from capitalizing on them.

SaaS

Agile Payments

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

Applications that have a subscription component can differ in many ways, but almost universally there is an advantage for the application to integrate to an ACH API for origination and management of recurring payments. requirement, maybe not. Advantage to integrate and offer, most certainly. One of the common problems that subscription based applications.

Payment Features 68

Payment Features Payments Subscription Management 68

Nimble - Sales

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

Effective team members are crucial to any company’s success. They can shape the vision of the brand, affect the degree of client contentment and, in the long run, the amount of profit the business turns over. What determines the ultimate success or failure of the company is team morale. What Causes Low Team Morale? The […]. The post How to Motivate Your Team to Achieve Their Highest Potential appeared first on Nimble Blog.

Branding 98

Branding Business 98

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

In 2006, LendingClub introduced a then-novel business model: the ability to offer online personal loans to millions of underserved customers. The peer-to-peer lender was a media and investor darling, hailed as a tech-enabled alternative to traditional banks.

Banking 80

Banking Business Model Business Mobile 80

Casey Accidental

SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

Many founders spend a lot of time trying to codify their culture and get culture right for their company. Yet many companies end up with serious cultural issues as they scale. Frequently, this is due to a forest for the trees approach to culture. Companies think they maybe they can hide lack of alignment and political strife with pool tables and company offsites, and are surprised when they still have employee attrition problems.

Company Culture 76

Company Culture Scaling Management Data 76

As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.

Pricing

Totango

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

To succeed as a subscription or recurring revenue enterprise, you need to adopt a customer-centered approach. Instead of focusing just on the acquisition of new business, you have to prioritize retaining and nurturing existing customers. This is because the digital transformation of business has greatly increased customer fluidity and lowered the revenue value of the first purchase.

Customer Lifetime Value 72

Customer Lifetime Value Onboarding Education Software Review 72

Nimble - Sales

SEPTEMBER 13, 2019

Many people dream of starting their own business one day. But the harsh reality is that the vast majority of new businesses will fail in just the first few years. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, one out of every five startups will close their doors after just twelve months, and over half […]. The post 4 Tips for Establishing a Startup That Won’t Disappear in a Year appeared first on Nimble Blog.

Startup 91

Startup Business 91

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 8, 2019

There’s been a lot of talk about the need for our healthcare system to shift away from volume and fee-for-service, where you pay by appointment, procedure, etc, to value-based care, where you pay for both quality and outcomes—essentially, good health.

Healthcare 76

Healthcare Payment Solutions Payment Services 76