The Angel VC

MAY 6, 2008

Shafqat over at Newscred , a digital newspaper which is currently in private alpha, wrote a good post titled " The New Digital Divide - Building Web Services for the Mainstream". His point is that the chasm between early adopters on the one hand and mainstream users on the other hand is getting larger: The mainstream don’t even use or understand RSS, but us techies have moved on to Twitter and FriendFeed. Very true. While it's great to see all those new Web 2.0

Innovation 100

Innovation Technology Startup 100

IT World

JANUARY 20, 2020

Windows Server 2008 has reached end of life, which typically means upgrading to a newer version. If you still have workloads running on Windows Server 2008, you’re not alone. As recently as July 2019, Microsoft executives at the company’s Inspire partner conference estimated that up to 60 percent of Windows servers were still running Windows Server or SQL Server 2008.

Cloud 48

Cloud Technology 48

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 1, 2020

Millennials and Gen Z have been hard-hit by the one-two punch of the 2008 and 2020 financial crises. That experience has radically shaped their approach to finances and their mindset around credit and debt.

Finance 90

Finance Education Mobile 90

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 11, 2020

The most recent event to use as an analogy is the 2008 financial crisis. In 2008, I had just joined the venture industry, and then Lehman fell. That grew to about $5B per quarter in 2007 and early 2008. Seed investments suffered a 50% fall in Q3 2008, but the market came right back in Q4 and continued to increase in volume. Aside from Q3 2008 which saw a dip, VCs were still investing in as many rounds.

Investment 86

Investment Startup Trends Marketing 86

SaaStr

MAY 9, 2020

9: Founder/CEO Lessons from 2000 & 2008 Applied to 2020 with Jeff Lawson, Twilio and Byron Deeter, Bessemer Venture Partners. #10: Since Shelter-at-Home, we’ve seen a micro-explosion in growth on our YouTube Channel. Perhaps it’s part of the general trend in eLearning all across-the-board. That must mean it’s a good time to get caught up on the Best of SaaS. So what are The Top 10 SaaStr Videos of the Week? Let’s take a look! #1:

Benchmarks 170

Benchmarks SaaS Trends Sales 170

Andreessen Horowitz

JANUARY 27, 2020

The idea of “ 1000 true fans ” — first proposed by Kevin Kelly in 2008 and later updated for Tools of Titans — argued that to be a successful creator, you don’t need millions of customers or clients, but … The post a16z Podcast: The Truth about a 1000 True Fans (and Our Attention)!

Communication 77

Communication Blockchain Trends 77

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2020

Founder/CEO Lessons From 2000, 2008 and 2020 with Jeff Lawson and Byron Deeter , CEO of Twilio and GP at Bessemer Venture Partners. We have a bunch of the SaaStr Summit: Bridging the Gap up on You Tube now. You can start watching them here. We have an incredible line up of speakers and sessions to watch already (and more will dribble out in the coming weeks): Taking Care of Your Team and Customers with CEO of Slack , Stewart Butterfield.

Enterprise 149

Enterprise Strategy Management Sales 149

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 22, 2020

Federal Reserve recently made a range of moves — from cutting interest rates to near zero (which it also did in the 2008 financial crisis) and using other tools — to support “the flow of credit to households … The post 16 Minutes on the News #27: The Economic Virus – Monetary Policy, Fiscal Policy, and Small Business appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz. The U.S.

Business 49

Business 49

Zuora

DECEMBER 20, 2019

This story, originally titled “Here’s how the 2008 financial crisis led to the dominance of subscriptions in the software industry, […]. The post The Dominance of Subscriptions in the Software Industry, and Why They’re Here to Stay appeared first on Zuora

Subscription 40

Subscription Software 40

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2020

Adapt, Plan Deliver: Founder/CEO Lessons from 2000 & 2008 Applied to 2020 With Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson and Bessemer Venture Partner’s Byron Deeter. Ok we are almost at our cap of 10,000+ attendees for the FREE SaaStrSummit on Bridging the Gap on April 22. Many of the sessions already have 5,000+ registrants or more already.

Enterprise 148

Enterprise Sales Strategy 148

SaaStr

APRIL 6, 2020

I wrote an early SaaStr post way back in 2013 on my “Year of Hell” as a SaaS CEO in 2008. My personal Year of Hell was 2008. In 2013, we were just 2 years removed from the real recovery from ’08-’09. And the one thing that was clear to me was that as hard as it was to see at the time, once we got out of our Year from Hell at Adobe Sign / EchoSign … things roared back. I thought it would be worth a refresh of that post here.

SaaS 212

SaaS Cloud Scaling Trends 212

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

His first company Commerce Decisions was an early SaaS exit back in 2008. Today we bring you the first of our extended podcast episodes, where Alex gets to ask the nitty-gritty details he usually doesn’t have time for. These hour-long episodes offer a well-rounded insight into the workings of some of the most successful SaaS founders and their companies. Our guest is John Thompson, a Co-Founder and a CEO who has taken 2 businesses from zero ARR through seed and A rounds.

SaaS 145

SaaS Interviewing B2B Sales 145

OpenView Labs

AUGUST 5, 2020

Jay Simons, Atlassian’s President for the last 12 years, joined the company in 2008 when Atlassian was already a product-led success making an estimated $150 million in revenue that year.

Revenue 52

Revenue Engineering Pricing Branding 52

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2020

Just as the economic downturn of 2008 led to the cloud-based SaaS boom that became the new norm for digitally modern businesses, remote work will become ingrained in the core of the new “business as usual” following this pandemic. By Kara Kennedy, G2 Director of Market Research. 88% of businesses have shifted to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, leading us all into uncharted territory.

Cloud 172

Cloud Market Research Trends Software 172

SaaStock

MARCH 20, 2019

Founded: 2008. Founded: 2008. Founded: 2008. As we wrote in our launch post about expanding SaaStock New York into SaaStock East Coast , our main aim is to foster a community of top SaaS companies that spans all the way from Florida to Quebec. The SaaS industry’s beating heart will probably always be New York, and it will also be the home of SaaStock East Coast on June 4-6. However, we believe in giving the entire coastline a chance to flourish.

SaaS 214

SaaS Healthcare AI Airlines 214

Hitenism

JANUARY 6, 2017

It was 2008, and I was having a classic founder moment. Back in 2008, “content marketing” wasn’t a thing. We founded KISSmetrics in 2008.). It was 2008! Twitter in 2008 was pretty limited. I had no idea what I was doing. But at least I was doing! I was founding a SaaS business, KISSmetrics. Like any startup, we were flailing, failing, and on fire, all at the same time. It was a wild, insane, and ridiculously exhausting experience.

Startup 158

Startup Marketing Engagement Growth Hacking 158

SaaStock

JANUARY 30, 2019

Founded: 2008. Founded: 2008. Founded: 2008. As we showed you in the list of SaaS companies coming out of Latin America, the region has no shortage of SaaS superstars. How did this come about, though? What are the ingredients required to help foster such an ecosystem? A healthy availability of capital is one. We looked at the data and discovered a few vital moments in the funding history of the region.

Venture Capital 137

Venture Capital Investment Finance Healthcare 137

Tomasz Tunguz

MARCH 15, 2020

My hunch originates from this analysis of the 2008 crisis. As we readjust to the impacts of the coronavirus, I’ve been asking myself: what is a basic useful model for estimating the growth impact to a software company? Of course, every business should develop a more conservative model, focused primarily on cash management to provide a longer runway. I expect the venture market to slow round counts for a quarter, but then resume. As growth rates fall, valuations should move similarly.

Churn 72

Churn Development Software Management 72

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 14, 2019

However, her path changed in 2008 when she took on a new challenge: an MBA in Business and Management. In 2008, he founded his first business:the local services marketplace Acessozero. Latin America is undergoing a digital transformation, and the SaaS community is exploding as a result.

Entrepreneurship 171

Entrepreneurship Telecommunications Healthcare Consulting 171

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 17, 2019

In the following chart for SaaS companies in 2008, you can see average COR as a percentage of Revenue at 40.4%, and average Gross Margins at 59.6%. SaaS gross margins have been getting attention lately as investors dig into SaaS cost structures and revenue growth rates going into 2020. Gross margin is simply revenue minus cost of revenue, expressed as a percent. Gross margin shows what is left over after you deliver your products and services.

Retention 40

Retention Subscription Scaling Acquisition 40

Kellblog

JULY 25, 2020

2008) it can get well below 5x. 2008, 2015) it’s not outrageous to think that multiples could drop towards the middle or bottom of that range, i.e., closer to 5 than 10 [6].

Venture Capital 69

Venture Capital Metrics Pricing Revenue 69

SaaStock

MARCH 8, 2019

Since 2008, she has been on the SAP team. We want to think of International Women’s Day as a day to celebrate women – their power and glory – rather than their difficulties in navigating a male-dominated world. We would like you to meet a few extraordinary women who have the impressive task of driving tech in Asia, a part of the world that could be even more challenging to women. These 18 women are powerful, relentless and are all making SaaS and tech in general a better place.

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital SaaS Banking Consulting 209

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2020

Started Twilio in January 2008, just as the last downturn happened. Our recent SaaStr Summit: Bridging the Gap was the first time I’ve had a chance to be a participant at a SaaStr event in a long, long time. Usually I personally have to do too much planning, moderating, etc. I learned a lot! ?? So I thought I’d share my learnings from the sessions as we put them up on YouTube.

Airlines 195

Airlines Scaling Finance Investment 195

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2019

And so we funded it in 2006 that full product didn’t come out until 2008. And ironically, Eloqua came out a few years later after we had launched our product in 2008 with something that they actually described in the market as a Marketo killer. And in the case of Marketo, Eloqua was selling heavy software with services and Marketo back in 2008 really pioneered this high velocity selling model. You can see 2007 to 2008 we went from one to two.

SaaS 148

SaaS Innovation Venture Capital Metrics 148

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2019

Github was founded in 2008. It’s hard to imagine but SaaStr Annual 2020 is just around the corner. We’ve been tinkering away trying to line up the absolute best experiences and content for you, our awesome attendees. So, ready for a sneak preview? After the jump, we have the very beginning of our stellar speaker line-up. Check back every week for more until you can see them for yourself in person! In case you haven’t snagged your ticket yet, CLICK HERE and get one now!

Airlines 119

Airlines Benchmarks Retention Engineering 119

InsightSquared

JULY 27, 2018

Nate Silver was named one of “The World’s 100 Most Influential People” by Time magazine after he successfully called the outcomes in 49 of the 50 states in the 2008 U.S. Sales, marketing and business operations professionals will join forces for Ramp by InsightSquared , the second annual revenue ops event of the year, on August 6th-7th at the Westin Boston Waterfront. Here’s all the reasons why you should be there: 1.

Revenue 120

Revenue Trends Business Technology 120

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 19, 2019

The previously fixed financial products that existed in 2008 of a $4-6M Series A and a $10-12M Series B are gone. I’ve written before about the Jacob’s Ladder of Fundraising. The Jacob’s Ladder is a children’s toy that flips over, and it’s a great metaphor for the seed market. Seed rounds are rapidly approaching and now often equal to the sizes of Series As just five years ago. The chart above shows the mean round size in the US across.

Finance 85

Finance Innovation Marketing Startup 85

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2019

2008: Cross-platform. Recently there was a lot of discussion around if there are truly “10x engineers” or not. It’s a complicated topic. But one thing that is clearly true — there are 10x Features. Talk to any experienced SaaS sales leader in a competitive space. She’ll agree. What’s a 10x Feature? It’s a feature that, for a material number of customers and prospects, wins the deal vs. the competition. Period. Not always, but often. .

Mobile 170

Mobile Branding Engineering Scaling 170

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 5, 2020

In March, I published analysis of the fundraising market in 2008. It showed that the later rounds, the series B and series C were the most impacted. The early data from March 2020 shows a different pattern. Seed and Series A rounds are first to bear the compression in the market. Later rounds are unblemished. Round volumes in seed have been declining since summer 2018. The same is true for Series A and Series B. Meanwhile, Series Cs are flat to up.

Trends 64

Trends Data Investment Marketing 64

The Angel VC

MAY 31, 2016

With constantly rising table stakes and a fundraising environment that looks quite a bit less favorable than last year’s, I believe the bar is higher than in the last 18-24 months (although raising money is still much easier than it was in “Silicon Valley’s nuclear winter” in 2008 ). When we invest in a SaaS startup, which almost always happens at the seed stage, the next big milestone on the company’s roadmap is usually a Series A.

SaaS 160

SaaS Finance Mobile Enterprise 160

Tomasz Tunguz

OCTOBER 7, 2019

In 2008, there was a $5M series A product and a $10M series B product. We’ve all seen the data on the average increases in round sizes over the last four or five years. Startups are able to raise larger early rounds because of the financial environment. One way of thinking about the early-stage fundraising market is as a collection of financial products. Those were the most popular.

Benchmarks 77

Benchmarks Trends Marketing Startup 77

Tomasz Tunguz

JULY 20, 2020

Stress Test: Tim Geithner : play-by-play of the 2008 crisis from the vantage point of the US Secretary of the Treasury. Thanks to everyone who responded to my post about US Economic History. I received a torrent of suggestions for books and decided to share them with everyone, in case you’re interested in the subject. I’m going to be working my way through them and just started the book on Keynes. As I learn interesting things, I’ll share them here.

Healthcare 54

Healthcare Technology Pricing Management 54

The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 26, 2014

The first date When I stumbled on Zendesk in 2008 I knew absolutely nothing about enterprise software, B2B or SaaS. Today the “consumerization of the enterprise” has become mainstream, but in 2008 it wasn’t. Yesterday I posted a brief review of Mikkel’s excellent book “Startupland”. For me, the book is also a good opportunity for some reflections and to share some thoughts in relation to Zendesk’s journey.

Venture Capital 136

Venture Capital Finance Enterprise Investment 136

Tomasz Tunguz

APRIL 21, 2020

In particular, narratives stoked three depressions and recessions in the US in 1920, 1929, and 2008. If I start a salacious tweetstorm that our local bank is running out of money, that rumor will circulate quickly. Eventually, the rumor will trigger a bank run. By tomorrow, the bank will face insolvency, even though it was business as usual at the bank this morning. This is the idea behind Narrative Economics.

Banking 77

Banking Engineering Customer Support Development 77

SaaStock

MARCH 20, 2019

Founded: 2008. Founded: 2008. Founded: 2008. As we wrote in our launch post about expanding SaaStock New York into SaaStock East Coast , our main aim is to foster a SaaS community that spans from Florida to Quebec. The SaaS industry’s beating heart will probably always be New York, and it will also be the home of SaaStock East Coast on June 4-6. However, we believe in giving the entire coastline a chance to flourish.

Healthcare 100

Healthcare AI SaaS Airlines 100

OPEXEngine

JANUARY 17, 2020

To see how COGs and gross margins are changing, take a look at these charts showing SaaS companies that IPO’ed in 2008 versus 2018. Average COGs in 2008 was 40% of revenue at the time of IPO, and gross margins averaged 60%. Downward trending cost of goods (COGs) benchmarks are improving SaaS gross margins. Competitive service offerings and new technologies are driving down costs to maintain SaaS infrastructures.

Trends 48

Trends Customer Success SaaS Finance 48

Tomasz Tunguz

APRIL 13, 2018

The fundraising pitches of 2008 highlighted leading indicators of success: the product, the vision, the team. Ten years ago, Guy Kawasaki took this photograph of me. I was attending my first YCombinator Demo Day, maybe three months into my time at Redpoint. Much has changed. I’m am not as young or as green. YCombinator has thrived and scaled. And the startup demo has disappeared. At that August Demo Day, each pitch lasted eight minutes.

Innovation 63

Innovation Metrics Mobile Churn 63

Tomasz Tunguz

MAY 5, 2020

In March, I published analysis of the fundraising market in 2008. It showed that the later rounds, the series B and series C were the most impacted. The early data from March 2020 shows a different pattern. Seed and Series A rounds are first to bear the compression in the market. Later rounds are unblemished. Round volumes in seed have been declining since summer 2018. The same is true for Series A and Series B. Meanwhile, Series Cs are flat to up.

Trends 51

Trends Data Investment Marketing 51

SaaStr

MAY 22, 2019

His tenure at Atlassian began in 2008 where he rose from VP of Sales and Marketing to President. Meet SaaStr’s Most Respected Leaders of 2019. Our most popular CEO, COO’s and Presidents that spoke at SaaStr Annual 2019. Curious how we came up with this list? We found our most popular speakers by speaker views and likes, session bookmarks and ratings weighing categories more heavily for overall rating than initial interest.

Metrics 141

Metrics Leadership Consulting Cloud 141

Hitenism

APRIL 24, 2017

By the time I had started KISSmetrics in 2008, I was constantly making friends with people like Eric Ries, Sean Ellis, and Ed Baker just to learn everything they knew about getting predictable growth. Back in 2010, on a Monday at 5 PM, I found myself at a bar called Memphis in Southern California in a heated discussion with two close friends. Patrick Vlaskovits was cheerfully drinking a mint julep while Sean Ellis and I were each enjoying a cold beer.

Growth Hacking 146

Growth Hacking Startup Machine Learning Mobile 146