The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

Panintelligence

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

If you've got one core proposition with one core market vertical, then you've got a concentration risk—and that equals risk for the investment community." This disconnect is evident in the lack of tailored solutions for niche markets, particularly in areas like financial inclusion. Think about it.

SaaS 52

SaaS Scale Banking Innovation 52

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2019

He had a company called Wily back in 2000 that he started, that ultimately sold on to Computer Associates, and really was seen as the father of the APM market segment, and learned a number of things in that experience that we then applied in terms of building New Relic, which is his second go around on the whole monitoring space.

Scale 170

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 170

Chart Mogul

JUNE 13, 2018

After founding several internet businesses in the 90s and early 2000s, Christoph converted to a career in venture capital and made several early investments in companies such as Zendesk, FreeAgent and Geckoboard. Today, Point Nine invests in early stage companies with a focus on SaaS and marketplaces. Topics covered in this episode.

Venture Capital 40

Venture Capital Startup Data SaaS 40

OPEXEngine

JANUARY 14, 2020

If a company expands into a new geography, the benefits of that investment in new sales could take years. For product sales companies, once the sales are made, the investment is repaid more quickly. For SaaS companies, the investment is not recouped until after years of initial SaaS revenues. Deferred Revenue = Deferred Profits.

SaaS Payments 59

SaaS Payments SaaS Scale Customer Lifetime Value 59

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

Every time we raised prices, it was a battle between us; Adam and I as the co-founders and the sales leadership and the sales managers and the sales team. My biggest takeaway from metrics after being on the boards of a number of SaaS companies investing in 27 different companies is that churn becomes the biggest killer over time.

Sales Recruiting 162

Sales Recruiting Scale Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 162

Kellblog

DECEMBER 27, 2021

Before diving in, let me remind readers that I do these predictions in the spirit of fun, they are not business or investment advice, and that all of my usual disclaimers and terms apply. What drives these disruptive cycles: Feature creep , which leads to market overshoot over time. Software companies become their parents faster.

Blockchain 142

Blockchain Technical Review Venture Capital Sales Hiring 142

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

It was around that time about 12 years ago that Jeff Bezos launched AWS, and some of you may remember that, when he did this, Wall Street analysts were looking at him and saying, “Why would you take what’s already a very unprofitable business and drive it further into the red by investing in this AWS initiative?”

Cloud 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2018

Don’t miss out on two full days of thought leadership content, networking opportunities, fantastic French food, and fabulous evening events, all in the heart of Paris — snag your Europa 2019 tickets and catch up with us on the other side of the Atlantic next year! There’s investment arms all over the UK.

Technical Advisors 156

Technical Advisors Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 156

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2019

So what is our target market? We go after two market segments, and I think this is important because when you’re a young SaaS company, we would be happy to sell to anybody who had a pulse. And we said we’re not going to focus on these other segments, which is real large enterprises and also consumers.

Sales Recruiting 165

Sales Recruiting Construction Scale SaaS 165

Point Nine Land

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 61

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 61

Sales Hacker

JUNE 14, 2018

When you select the low-cost option, you sacrifice expertise, leadership, and the ability to execute. Is it more important to save a few dollars on a subpar partner or invest in a specialized team that possesses the expertise in a particular channel? Go To Market Strategy ).

Outsourcing Services 58

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Sales Outsourcing Outsourced Development 58

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

Champion/Challenger Test is a testing approach for determining the best engagement strategy for a given market segment, wherein the Champion represents your current production/servicing paradigm while the Challenger(s) represent new or different ways of doing things. Marketing Qualified Lead. Mid-market. Forecasting.

Scale 99

Scale Payment Methods Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments 99

Outseta

MAY 8, 2020

Invest millions of dollars into growth while running your business at a loss. I can assure you that most people in the tech industry spend countless hours thinking about how to make this happen, investing only a fractional percentage of time thinking about their impact. The lack of self awareness is real.

Part-Time VPE 102

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 102

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2019

We also invested around those field account executives, more technical sales, pre-sales and eventually, customer success and post sales. And for that, you need leadership and the right kind of leaders. It’s true for other market segments. I’ll start with some of the easy ones on the sales side.

Scale 174

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 174

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2020

Matt Garratt: So for those that aren’t familiar with Salesforce Ventures, we are the strategic investment arm for Salesforce. Adnan Chaudhry: We’re doing sales leadership, all hands calls with customer service and support and sales every single week. So that’s been a heavy investment. One, Salesforce Care.

Sales Hiring 158

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 158

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2020

We had grown a bunch, but our market had changed, and our go-to-market really needed to change as well. But, with all the change needed, we mutually decided that change in terms of leadership and ownership over the sales team and go-to-market function was needed. What does great change management mean to you?

Sales Hiring 173

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Systems Review 173

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

Harry Stebbings: Sorry, this is so unfair of me to go off schedule like this, but when you think back on only possible in the cloud, I think through every investment of mine is unbundling or bundling and try and very carefully be aware of which camp we’re in and why. So from that first buyer meeting until deal closed, around 90 days.

SaaS Payments 256

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Services Payment Solutions 256

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 9, 2020

We also did a lot of co-marketing. And then lastly, we also had a lot of thought leadership content. And so they have started to invest more into content, and that means that the spaces are getting more crowded for everyone. So we partnered with other brands, created unified strategies and assets and leverage their audience.

Technical Review 199

Technical Review Scale Underperforming Technical Team Software Review 199

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 8, 2017

In order to do this well, we will also see increased investment in data science and leveraging a lot more data to better predict which accounts to spend time on (both new and existing). There’s been a remarkable shift in traditional executive leadership to more growth focused, consumer-centric leadership.

Scale 97

Scale Technical Review Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 97

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2019

Okay, so what were the stages of investment rounds that you took? But the first one was, yeah, I mean, who are you and why should we invest in you? People who invest in you eventually want to see their money out, that means that this is a business model. Vlad : Hey, you know, have you considered an investment? I think so.

Scale 142

Scale Business Sales Hiring CTO Hire 142

SmartKarrot

MAY 4, 2021

Leadership teams want regular updates on account health, onboarding results, implementation journeys, customer adoption trends, and more. Customers are more aware, engaged and invested. For a mid-market segment, a mid-touch just in time strategy would suffice. It is more of a personal guide for customers.

Customer Success 11

Customer Success Technical Review SMB Onboarding 11