Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 26, 2020

As 2021 approaches, discussions about forecasting MRR are becoming commonplace in companies of all sized. It’s sort of like being the weather forecaster — perfection unattainable. I just reviewed a forecasting model that I built 6 months ago where actual MRR is going to beat the modeled prediction for MRR a month early.

Forecasting 116

Forecasting Advertising Sales Hiring Churn 116

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2022

Weimer organizes her team at Podium by the seven pillars of revenue marketing: Marketing Operations: Marketing operations cover scaling of the campaign execution process, marketing tools, forecasting, attribution and reporting, and driving improvements to campaign quality metrics and infrastructure. . Key Takeaways.

Scale 274

Scale Revenue Scaling Marketing 274

ChurnZero

APRIL 25, 2025

How can we shift our mindset from reactive to future focused, from assessing past mishaps to forecasting ideal scenarios? Renewals forecasting was historically a sales game, but increasingly, CS teams are responsible for expansion revenue. Choose the right metrics to inform your forecasting model. Where can you start?

Forecasting 52

Forecasting Customer Success Payments Data 52

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

This keeps morale high and creates a very predictable revenue forecast. Just a quick reminder: Payback Period = Cost of Customer Acquisition/Gross Margin The gross margin is the revenue per customer minus the costs to provide the service. On the other hand, higher price points require more skilled, more expensive salespeople.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2024

It’s an end-user-focused growth model where your product drives acquisition, activation, expansion, and retention. You’re likely not having demos with customers because they’re exploring the product independently, so customer acquisition costs are low. Find and use them to drive customer acquisition, expansion, and retention.

Scale 299

Scale AI Search Azure Sales 299

SaaStr

MAY 17, 2024

It sometimes manifests with misalignment on where to make a new acquisition or which avenue of growth to focus on. Depending on the stage and maturity of your business, how far can you realistically forecast, and how do you want to set up your process around that? Often, this is when the CEO isn’t the founder.

Scale 299

Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence 299

Baremetrics

MAY 4, 2021

Financial forecasting models are used to predict financial outcomes within a specified area of your business, like recurring revenue or payroll. In this article, we'll have a closer look at five different forecasting methods and present examples of use cases. What Is Financial Forecasting? Delphi Forecasting Models 4.

Forecasting 98

Forecasting Benchmarks Finance Subscription 98

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2017

I also assume that sales represents 65% of customer acquisition cost, which is true for inside sales models according to the survey. It’s not a fully fledged model, but a very basic scenario forecasting tool. Another way to answer this question is to use at Pacific Crest’s SaaS survey to build a bottoms up model.

Investment 274

Investment Startup Marketing Sales 274

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 20, 2021

If you know what to look for, acquisitions, mergers, and divestitures can represent that unique opportunity to make the sale of a lifetime. Why Mergers and Acquisitions Offer a Great Opportunity. The 3 Keys to Taking Advantage of Mergers and Acquisitions. Capitalized acquisition funds. Well, good news — there is.

Acquisition 120

Acquisition Sales Hiring Sales Forecasting 120

yoursales

JUNE 2, 2023

Sales Forecasting: A Strategic Imperative Sales forecasting is a critical process for any B2B organization, particularly for companies operating in a highly competitive landscape. Sales leaders’ primary concern revolves around accurately forecasting sales.

Forecasting 88

Forecasting Sales Sales Funnel B2B 88

Sales Hacker

JULY 1, 2021

But the reality is that human-based forecasting is subjective and error-prone. A miss in a sales forecast creates pessimism in your market and might impact how your company allocates resources. Business success depends on forecast accuracy , but what happens if the inputs are flawed? Let’s take a look at a case study.

Forecasting 98

Forecasting Sales Artificial Intelligence Systems Review 98

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 13, 2024

A $1B Acquisition with a Singular Leader for Both Sales and Customer Success In 2017, tech leader Vikas Bhambry found himself at a crossroads. Seamless customer journey Owning the entire customer lifecycle from acquisition to retention eliminated disconnects between pre- and post-sales teams. Lets get into it.

Scale 105

Scale Sales Hiring Acquisition Customer Success 105

Stax

APRIL 15, 2025

It can help forecast future revenue, keep on top of performance of various customer segments, and measure customer retention and churn. It can also be used to calculate the customer acquisition cost (CAC) and gross margin. MRR is an important metric for SaaS businesses to track to understand business health.

Payments 88

Payments SaaS Payments Revenue Payment Services 88

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 16, 2023

Economic data is turning more positive, eg housing starts exceeded forecasts. First, acquisitions. The metrics for Series As remain unclear, which provides an opening for selective technology & team acquisitions at reasonable prices. The Fed no longer predicts a recession.

Startup 189

Startup Scale Strategy Forecasting 189

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

Founders often describe their unit economics in terms of their LTV/CAC ratio - the ratio of the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer to the Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC). Because a company one or two or even three years into sales can’t yet accurately forecast customer lifetimes.

Startup 189

Startup Forecasting Benchmarks Acquisition 189

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

Scaling Operations: As the customer base grows, the company refines its pricing strategy to optimize customer acquisition costs and lifetime value. The introduction of Zoom One drove a 27% year-over-year increase in enterprise customers, reinforcing the value of simplifying pricing for customer acquisition and retention.

Pricing 104

Pricing Scale SaaS Technical Review 104

User Pilot

MARCH 6, 2023

What’s product-led acquisition? TL;DR Product-led acquisition (PLA) is an organic way of growing a customer base through recommendations from existing customers. The benefits of PLA include considerably lower customer acquisition costs, exponential user base growth, and lower dependence on changes in paid advertising.

Scale 98

Scale Acquisition Scaling Customer Lifetime Value 98

SaaStr

APRIL 11, 2023

Who Is Venture Debt For Venture debt is often looked at as an insurance policy, a way of having some extra ability to invest in acquisition or runway or getting a particularly important hire or whatever the case is. You’ve raised equity and created pitch decks, financials, plans, and forecasts. Who are the sponsors?

Banking 271

Banking Sales Hiring Venture Capital Communication 271

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 3, 2023

Lengthening sales cycles created pipeline shocks & instability in sales forecasting. The Implications of Increased Regulatory Scrutiny for Startup Acquisitions. The Typical Startup Saw a 24% Increase in Sales Cycle in 2023. The first two quarters of this year were rough for startups. How Markets Value SaaS in 2023.

Artificial Intelligence 192

Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT Generative AI AI 192

Kellblog

MAY 10, 2025

This leads to three critical realizations: That you must also focus on future pipeline, but segmented into quarters , and not on some rolling basis That you need to forecast pipeline (e.g., Think: “OK, we’re forecasting 2.2x CMO) and the other as head of the pipeline task force. Who can do what to get us that $2M?”

Forecasting 60

Forecasting Sales Hiring Finance Sales 60

Chaotic Flow

MARCH 25, 2014

When you know you will have customers tomorrow, you can invest in the support of those customers, as well as the acquisition of new customers, with a much higher degree of confidence. B2C companies have always had the law of large numbers working in their favor, enabling a wide array of statistical methods for planning and forecasting.

Metrics 156

Metrics Business SaaS Scale 156

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

Alex: Let’s forecast out. The opportunity is to leverage that trust factor to drive customer acquisition, and it has worked for us. Immad: I find it funny that everyone complains about the difficulty of SMB and consumer customer acquisition, but ironically, SMB and consumer companies are some of the most valuable.

Payments 110

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Sales Hiring 110

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2024

Sometimes, it’s two hours a week; the rest is spent filling out forms, one-on-one meetings, forecasting calls, etc. If you grew by acquisitions that drove immediate growth, whatever you buy has to grow 20%, too. Reps spend about 75% of their time on non-selling tasks. If you measure the hours they’re customer-facing, it’s 25% or less.

Scale 306

Scale AI Sales Underperforming Technical Team 306

Chart Mogul

APRIL 15, 2021

Keeping your pace of growth while going through an acquisition is difficult. Acquisition by Sage. We asked Kaspars to tell us the story of how ChartMogul helps his team grow SageHR pre- and post-acquisition. A similar shift has also occurred in their strategy after the acquisition. What is Sage HR?

Acquisition 83

Acquisition Data Scale Banking 83

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

Depending on what calculation you use, LTV can paint an honest picture of whether your customers are spending and staying long enough to cover acquisition costs and hopefully—make you a profit. Tracking your LTV/CAC ratio allows you to spend the right amount on customer acquisition while still making a profit.

Scale 148

Scale Payment Methods Payments SaaS Payments 148

Kellblog

MARCH 1, 2025

Because there’s a better overall marketing efficiency metric: the marketing customer acquisition cost (CAC) ratio = (last-quarter marketing expense)/(this-quarter new ARR). You might argue that’s a good overall marketing efficiency metric and try to benchmark it. But those benchmarks will be hard to find.

Sales Hiring 74

Sales Hiring Benchmarks Metrics Startup 74

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 1, 2021

The intention of the acquisition is to integrate Baremetrics and Flightpath to bring you an end-to-end financial data tool. Initially, we’ll be bringing your Baremetrics data into your Flightpath account so you can forecast new revenue by new customers, expansion, contraction, and churn. What can Baremetrics do to help you make more?

Finance 96

Finance Outsourced Development Sales Hiring Forecasting 96

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 19, 2024

Every public company has a number of equity research analysts covering them who build their own forecasted models, which combine guidance from the company and their own research / sentiment analysis. Beating consensus revenue estimates is the first aspect of a successful quarter. So what are these consensus estimates and who creates them?

Cloud 320

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 320

ChurnZero

MAY 23, 2025

Poor GRR increases customer acquisition cost (CAC) because it forces you to constantly replace lost revenue. A poor ratio limits your ability to invest – not just in new customer acquisition, but in areas like product and company-wide hiring. Bring your CS leader into forecasting conversations.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Metrics Revenue Scale 52

Blulogix

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

Without a proactive renewal strategy, businesses risk high churn, inconsistent revenue, and increased customer acquisition costs to compensate for lost contracts. Revenue is more predictable, stable, and scalable , allowing for better financial forecasting and long-term planning.

Payment Features 59

Payment Features Subscription Payments Payment Services 59

Baremetrics

NOVEMBER 10, 2019

This means that you need to be able to add individual forecasts, such as a marketing funnel, in a way that doesn’t require re-building the entire model. Say, your customer acquisition efforts are starting to pay off, and you need to keep an eye on your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). Forecasting Model. Operating Model.

Deferred Revenue 111

Deferred Revenue SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payment Services 111

Baremetrics

APRIL 21, 2021

When it comes to understanding finance for SaaS companies, there are key differences between more traditional financial models and SaaS-specific financial modeling and forecasting. Baremetrics can help you improve your SaaS finance model thanks to our robust forecasting capabilities in Flightpath. Start your free trial now.

Finance 98

Finance Scale SaaS Forecasting 98

IT World

MARCH 2, 2022

Salesforce exceeded all expectations with its fourth quarter 2022 financial results on Tuesday, boasting that its recent acquisition of enterprise messaging platform Slack can help the CRM giant reach $32 billion in revenue next year. Since its $27.7

Forecasting 67

Forecasting Revenue Acquisition Trends 67

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2022

Besides helping you forecast future revenues for operational planning purposes, analyzing CLV helps you target your most valuable customers with sales and marketing efforts and determine whether your customer acquisition costs (CAC) are in line with what you expect to earn from each new customer. What is a good customer lifetime value?

Customer Lifetime Value 118

Customer Lifetime Value Forecasting Acquisition Revenue 118

Sales Hacker

MAY 30, 2019

Acquisitions grew 250% to $9.5B, driven by Private Equity funds. Microsoft has remained quiet since its LinkedIn acquisition in June 2016. While Salesforce Ventures continues to invest heavily in the space, Salesforce’s last major acquisition was Steelbrick in December 2015. Forecasting remains mysterious to me.

Scale 110

Scale Sales Hiring Forecasting Acquisition 110

Sales Hacker

JUNE 12, 2024

Highlights: (9:13) Transitioning from IC to sales leadership and driving a forecast cadence. (18:20) 18:20) Navigating the acquisition of Semmle and lessons learned in M&A. (25:58) Strategies for pricing new products and cross-selling within an existing customer base.

Engineering 121

Engineering Sales Hiring Revenue AI 121

User Pilot

JANUARY 28, 2024

11 key metrics to track for evaluating performance : Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is an indication of the efficiency of your marketing and sales efforts and is crucial for product profitability and scalability. Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) tracks predictable monthly revenue, essential for financial health and growth forecasting.

Metrics 105

Metrics Customer Lifetime Value Business SaaS 105