2024

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Venture Backed or Bootstrapped? There’s a Third Way. Just Raise One Round.

SaaStr

There’s so much debate on social media and elsewhere on bootstrapped vs VC. Bootstrapped you maintain control, and the unit economics. But many see it as so much harder. And it’s almost always longer. VC can let you go faster, but it can become an addiction. And the dilution all-in generally ends up being 60%-70% by the time you approach an IPO.

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Clouded Judgement 2.29.24 - Shades of 2021

Clouded Judgement

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Shades of 2021 in Venture Markets Private markets are really starting to heat up, and I’m starting to see shades of 2021. Anything AI related has always been “hot,” but it has really hit a fever pitch in the last few months.

Cloud 308
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AI Design Patterns

Tom Tunguz

As we’ve been researching the AI landscape & how to build applications, a few design patterns are emerging for AI products. These design patterns are simple mental models. They help us understand how builders are engineering AI applications today & which components may be important in the future. The first design pattern is the AI query router.

AI 306
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Squaretalk Review

The Daily Egg

Squaretalk offers a budget-friendly, adaptable, and intuitive cloud communication platform to enhance your sales and support teams’ performance and productivity. Its vast. The post Squaretalk Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Cloud 277
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How Investors & Strategic Buyers Evaluate Integrated Payment Strategies

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.

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Marketing Your Video Game Outside of Game Marketplaces & App Stores

FastSpring

Todd Harris knows how to leverage effective video game marketing strategies to get games in front of players. As the former COO and Co-Founder of Hi-Rez Studios, he spent 15 years making games and marketing them to gamers — with the studio’s games reaching 150 million players. (At the time of writing, Hi-Rez’s 2014 release SMITE sits at #15 on Steam’s “Most played Massively Multiplayer games” list , with SMITE’s Steam page boasting 40+ million players.

More Trending

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More Than a Trend — 5 Crucial Ways This Untapped Service is Changing Marketing

Entrepreneur - SaaS

SaaS is not just about convenience; it's a smart move that helps businesses save on IT costs and focus more on their main operations instead of dealing with complex software issues.

Trends 126
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The American Dynamism 50: AI Edition

Andreessen Horowitz

From the last mile to low Earth orbit, solar fields to the battlefield, artificial intelligence is redefining our barometer for progress. Thus, this year’s American Dynamism 50 — a16z’s annual spotlight on 50 groundbreaking tech companies advancing the national interest — all harness AI to fulfill their missions.

AI 144
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Heartfelt Connections: The Power of Relationships in Business Success

Nimble - Sales

This Valentine’s Day, let’s celebrate a different yet essential aspect of our professional lives: networking! Successful businesses thrive on networks of relationships that are built over time, which are crucial for sparking new opportunities, forming partnerships, and driving growth. We’ve connected with industry experts who have shared their insights and personal takes on how effective […] The post Heartfelt Connections: The Power of Relationships in Business Success ap

Business 128
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How to Make AI Your Writing Sidekick for Content Marketing

The Moz Blog

Tasmin shares her tips on how to make AI your content marketing sidekick. Optimize every step of the process, from generating ideas to crafting headlines and simplifying your writing.

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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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5 Essential Tools for Invoice Payment Processing

BlueSnap

Effective invoice payment processing is crucial for your business’s financial stability and healthy cash flow, yet so many companies still grapple with delayed payments, inefficient processes and the risk of funds stalling in collections. The post 5 Essential Tools for Invoice Payment Processing appeared first on BlueSnap.

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Redpoint: Seed May Still Be Strong, But There’s No Bounce Back at Series A. And the AI Premium is 3x.

SaaStr

So Redpoint Ventures published some of the slides they recently presented to their Limited Partners (their own investors) here. There’s a ton of good data there, but this one slide stood out to me, because it was put together in a really clear fashion, better than other data sources I’ve seen. And what it says is that even though Seed stage investing remains arguably as strong as ever … Series A hasn’t bounced back.

AI 302
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Clouded Judgement 1.12.24 - Hard Truths

Clouded Judgement

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Reinventing Founder Friendliness - Back to the Future This week I joined Ed Sim (Founder and Managing Partner at Boldstart Ventures) on Harry Stebbings podcast to chat about the state of venture backed companies heading into 2024 and 2025.

Cloud 281
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Why Databases Won't Charge for Storage in the Future

Tom Tunguz

The database is being unbundled. Historically, a database like Snowflake sold both data storage & a query engine (& the computing power to execute the query). That’s step 1 above. But, customers are pushing for a deeper separation of compute & storage. The recent Snowflake earnings call highlighted the trend. Larger customers prefer open formats for interoperability (step 2 & 3).

AI 278
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People, Passion & Perfection: The Key Ingredients for an Awesome Product

Need help launching innovative software quickly? Dive into "People, Passion, and Perfection" and unlock the secrets to building excellent products in the digital age. Fast-track your journey with Tech Accelerator: Agile and Cloud-Native for flexibility & scalability AI-powered innovation for faster results Quality at every step for a flawless user experience See real impact across industries: Healthcare: Empower patients and medical professionals with intuitive solutions Education: Transform cla

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8 IVR Survey Tips: Get Vital Feedback Instead of Noise

The Daily Egg

IVR surveys are a set of pre-recorded automated questions customers can answer via voice or phone keypads. Aside from the benefits IVR. The post 8 IVR Survey Tips: Get Vital Feedback Instead of Noise appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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Our First Fixathon: How We Squashed 44 Bugs in One Week

Buffer Resources

Buffer, as a company, closes the last week of the year every year, and historically, as an engineering team, we’d do a code freeze for the week before we’re closed so nothing broke heading into the holidays. (Pretty smart of us.)  This year, we did something different, and it still worked out. We used the last week of the year as a “fixathon” for our whole engineering team.

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Email is the Most Consistent, Reliable Marketing Channel on the Web and I Can Prove It

Sparktoro

This is a very short post to say: If you’re not investing in your own email marketing list, you’re making a bad choice. Social media engagement rates have plummeted the last 15 years. Ad engagement, too. Google CTRs have fallen massively the last decade with the rise of zero-click searches.

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User Activity Trend: What Is It & How to Track It

User Pilot

A user activity trend can provide key insights into changing user behavior and help you increase conversion rates and product engagement. In this article, we’ll dig deeper into what user activity trends are and outline the key tips to monitor them. We’ll also discuss a few useful tools to analyze user activity. TL;DR A user activity trend represents a pattern or change in user behavior over time.

Trends 105
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How to Achieve Product-Market Fit

Speaker: Dan Olsen - Product Management Trainer and Consultant, Author, and Speaker

Everyone working on a product is trying to achieve the same goal: product-market fit. But most products fail to do so. In this webinar, product management expert Dan Olsen will share his simple but effective framework for achieving product-market fit from his book The Lean Product Playbook. He will explain his Product-Market Fit Pyramid and The Lean Product Process, a 6-step methodology that guides you through how to: Determine your target customer Identify underserved customer needs Define your

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How AI Will Usher in an Era of Abundance

Andreessen Horowitz

It’s impossible to talk about new technology without talking about human flourishing — every new technology from the plow to the microchip has typically been followed by a period of newfound wealth for consumers in the form of cheaper goods, improved productivity, and longer, healthier lives. In many ways, the most financially average person in our modern society experiences daily luxuries that history’s Pharaohs and Caesars could not imagine: instant communication, broadcast television, global

AI 140
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Global Growth: Understanding Merchant of Record for E-commerce

Subscription Flow

The function of the MoR – merchant of record ecommerce – has become essential for companies looking to streamline their online sales operations in the ever-changing world of digital commerce. A Merchant of Record ecommerce solution acts as a vital middleman, taking on the vital duty of financial and legal facilitation in transactions, acting as the visible party for both consumers and regulatory bodies.

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Four Steps to a Better-Performing About Page

The Moz Blog

An About page is often part of a buying journey. It can drive people to your site and help convince them to trust your brand, boosting both brand loyalty and conversions. Ann shares four key steps to create better-performing About pages.

Branding 123
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Why (and How) to Think About Your ROI of Global Digital Payments

BlueSnap

When CFOs and other business leaders think about their return on investment, it is easy to overlook payments. However, your global digital payments strategy can significantly impact profitability. The post Why (and How) to Think About Your ROI of Global Digital Payments appeared first on BlueSnap.

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Addressing Top Enterprise Challenges in Generative AI with DataRobot

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.

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Look, No VC Wants to Fund a Startup With So-So Growth. Except Maybe Your Existing Investors.

SaaStr

Ok some of this post I’d hope would be blindingly obvious. But it isn’t, so I’m going to try to help by being brutally direct: No VC on Planet Earth Wants to Invest in a Startup with Mediocre Growth None. No one. I can’t tell you how many emails a week a month that go something like this: “It’s been a challenging year with 30%-50% growth, but with some funding, we can grow much faster next year!

Startup 331
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The Best Way to Drive Demand in Marketplaces is Hiding in Plain Sight

Casey Accidental

This essay was co-created with Dan Hockenmaier. In marketplace businesses, the network is the product. If you’re not growing both supply and demand, the product generally isn’t getting better over time. And your network effects which compound organic growth are not getting better, and probably getting worse. Most marketplace founders and leaders intuit this over time, so they obsess over growth metrics.

Payments 115
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The Sudden Repricing of Startups in Early 2024

Tom Tunguz

We’re entering a new pricing environment for software: AI vs non-AI. It’s only happened in the last few weeks. Recent earnings have pushed some of the most important companies to all-time highs. Company Performance Confluent 34% Cloudflare 21% ServiceNow 20% Microsoft 14% This dynamic doesn’t favor everyone. Theory created a public market AI index to track software companies who have significant product plans or current AI businesses.

AI 263
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10 Standard UCaaS Features + 7 Cutting-Edge Capabilities

The Daily Egg

Successful organizations know that the more interconnected their communication channels are, the better they can perform overall. With UCaaS (Unified Communications as. The post 10 Standard UCaaS Features + 7 Cutting-Edge Capabilities appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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Brick & Mortar Retail Relevance: How to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Speaker: Jay Black, Senior Account Executive

Let's set the record straight: in-store retail isn't dead - it's evolving! Faced with the digital age and the demands of omnichannel shopping, some retailers are thriving while others are struggling to adapt. Join Jay Black in this exclusive session as he explores the strategies that set successful stores apart, including: Crafting unique and unforgettable in-store experiences 🛍️ Mastering the art of retail demands 🛒 Navigating inventory challenges in today's climate 📦 an

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From Prep to Pass, Scytale Launches Its Built-In Audit, Transforming It Into The Complete Compliance Hub for SaaS

Scytale

For SaaS companies, it’s hard not to hear the word ‘audit’, without your heart skipping a beat or two. Finding the best audit firm for your company’s culture and tech stack, hundreds of back-and-forth requests, and manually collecting and sharing evidence, takes up so much valuable time and resources. Let’s just be honest: audits are annoying.

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Where Web Users Spend Time vs. Where Traffic Referrals Originate

Sparktoro

“Most of our site’s traffic comes from Google, so most of our digital marketing efforts and spending should be on Google, too.” – An absolutely terrible way to invest in marketing On Monday of this week, I published a comprehensive look at how traffic flows on the American web.

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11 User Flow Examples + How to Inform UX Design With Them

User Pilot

Looking for user flow examples to inspire your UX design process ? This article shows you 11 examples across different user journey stages. We also cover best practices to help you create logical user flows and develop memorable user experiences. TL;DR A user flow is a visual representation of the steps a user takes to achieve a specific goal within a website or app.