FastSpring

JANUARY 9, 2023

FastSpring: International Payment Solution for SaaS. Paddle: Payment Infrastructure Platform. Square: Popular Payment Platform for Startups. Amazon: Payment Service and Order Fulfillment. More often than not, SaaS companies end up with a payment tech stack of over a dozen tools for: Calculating international taxes.

Payment Methods 147

Payment Methods Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Features 147

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 20, 2015

Payback period is the number of months a company requires to payback its cost of customer acquisition. The median SaaS startup has a payback period of 15 months on a gross margin basis. A short payback period confers two massive advantage to a startups: smaller working capital requirements and a consequent ability to grow much faster.

Startup 147

Startup Sales Hiring SaaS Payment Services 147

ChurnZero

FEBRUARY 28, 2025

You might be surprised to know that SaaS companies can learn a lot from their consumer subscription counterparts. 4: High-end sales teams Increasingly, SaaS organizations leverage inside sales teams, since selling subscriptions is easier and less of a commitment than selling enterprise software. 3: Make onboarding seamless.

SaaS Payments 52

SaaS Payments Subscription Payment Features B2B 52

The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 29, 2013

In order to succeed you need happy customers who do free marketing for you, otherwise customer acquisition will always be an uphill battle. Therefore you’ll have to focus on the relationship between your CLTV and your CACs (customer acquisition costs), your CLTV/CAC ratio, which measures the ROI on your sales and marketing investments.

Scale 190

Scale Startup SaaS Customer Lifetime Value 190

Incredo

OCTOBER 8, 2019

Just look at customer acquisition vs retention statistics. Existing customers are 4-5x more likely to repurchase, refer your product and forgive your mistakes ( source ). What if I am starting out a business and don’t even have leads, not to mention SaaS customer acquisition strategy? What do you see?

Acquisition 148

Acquisition Strategy Technical Review SaaS 148

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2021

. “The Cadence: How to Turn Your SaaS Startup into an Army” With David Sacks of Craft Ventures. One of our most popular sessions on how to keep growth sustainable. “A Step by Step Guide to Revenue Growth with Mark Roberge, Harvard Business School” #10.

Acquisition 246

Acquisition Retention Subscription Payment Features 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2020

CEO Lew Cirne, after regretting selling his first startup in the space to CA for $375m, tries again with New Relic. If New Relic had even 120% NRR, it’s growth rate with the exact same rate of new customer acquisition would be 137% instead. New Relic is one of my favorite Cloud stories.

Scale 342

Scale Outsourced Development SMB Cloud 342

Hitenism

JANUARY 9, 2017

Optimizing your startup for speed is the only way to keep your head above the water. The key to optimizing your startup for speed? Let’s apply this framework to three of the hardest questions early startups have to answer, from building product, to choosing a marketing channel, to figuring out how to prove ROI.

Startup 167

Startup Payment Methods Payment Solutions SaaS Payments 167

Chart Mogul

OCTOBER 3, 2019

The customer acquisition cost can help you create, measure, and improve a business model that will put your business on the path to profitability. After your product/market fit, your business model is the most important consideration if you’re to save your business from the startup graveyard. What is the Customer Acquisition Cost?

Acquisition 91

Acquisition Underperforming Technical Team Startup Customer Lifetime Value 91

Tom Tunguz

MAY 11, 2023

In the last five major cycles (internet, social, mobile, cloud, web3), startups seized the new technologies of the era to create a distribution advantage. Google led to search-engine optimization, which startups like Expedia & Zillow grew to become public companies. What is the distribution advantage AI confers to startups?

AI Search 218

AI Search AI Scale Cloud 218

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

The Startup Stage: Finding Product-Market Fit The startup stage is the foundation of any SaaS companys journey. At this stage, startups face significant uncertainty. Scaling Operations: As the customer base grows, the company refines its pricing strategy to optimize customer acquisition costs and lifetime value.

Pricing 110

Pricing Scale SaaS Technical Review 110

BrightBack

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

In this report, we've surveyed over 400 subscription businesses to better understand how the industry is approaching and prioritizing customer retention. We found subscription companies have completed a shift in focus toward retention over acquisition, but still struggle to execute and engage their customers across teams and systems.

Retention 120

Retention Subscription Payment Features Payment Methods 120

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2024

Kelsey joined them as CPO, and they started experimenting with less expensive packages downmarket where customers could go online and set up a subscription. There were big opportunities in the QR space, so Bitly made an acquisition that was a big accelerator and set the stage for becoming a multi-product platform.

Scale 306

Scale Scaling Underperforming Technical Team User Experience 306

The Angel VC

SEPTEMBER 16, 2013

The last post in my series on DOs and DON'Ts for early-stage startups was about lead generation. As a rule of thumb, you should aspire a payback time of 6-9 months, meaning that you spend 6-9 months' worth of subscription revenue to acquire a customer. Don't worry about scalability yet.

Scale 153

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales 153

Kellblog

JULY 8, 2020

I was talking with my old friend, Mark Tice , the other day and he referred to a startup mistake as, “on his top ten list.” ” Mark’s been a startup CEO twice, selling two companies in strategic acquisitions, and he’s run worldwide sales and channels a few times. Make it work. (DK:

Sales Hiring 145

Sales Hiring Startup Software Review Enterprise 145

Incredo

OCTOBER 8, 2019

Just look at customer acquisition vs retention statistics. Existing customers are 4-5x more likely to repurchase, refer your product and forgive your mistakes ( source ). What if I am starting out a business and don’t even have leads, not to mention SaaS customer acquisition strategy? What do you see?

Acquisition 134

Acquisition Strategy Technical Review SaaS 134

FastSpring

DECEMBER 20, 2018

What’s the story with subscriptions? If your digital business is just getting off the ground, subscriptions can be a lifesaver. Thanks to heavy up-front customer acquisition costs, SaaS startups often struggle with cash flow issues until they recover their initial investment.

Payment Features 90

Payment Features SaaS Payments Subscription Payment Solutions 90

Chart Mogul

FEBRUARY 13, 2025

When and how to launch sales and marketing is a tough topic for most startup founders. But sales and marketing are the backbone of every successful go-to-market (GTM) strategy, and getting them right can be the difference between … When and how to launch sales and marketing is a tough topic for most startup founders.

Scale 52

Scale VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Startup 52

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

Your account churn rate, also called "customer churn rate" or "logo churn rate", measures the rate at which your customers are canceling their subscriptions. The following two charts show the disastrous effect of MRR churn, using an imaginary SaaS startup (let's call it Zombie.com) with $100,000 in MRR that has a net MRR churn rate of 3% p.m.

Churn 161

Churn Startup SaaS Software Review 161

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

With the Salesforce IPO in 2004, we saw the first sign that institutional investors were comfortable with a standard set of SaaS metrics: Churn, sales efficiency , ARPU, LTV, customer acquisition cost , and so on. . It’s hard to imagine a world where analysis didn’t understand recurring, subscription based revenue for technology products.

Venture Capital 298

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 298

SaaStr

DECEMBER 9, 2022

So in the triangle, you have …acquisition strategy, monetization, and retention, and when you’re putting together your strategy, you have to pretty much decide; Is your pricing strategy for being aggressive but scaling and going for acquisition? Most startups go with freemium, which can be favorable for customer acquisition early on.

Data 245

Data Pricing Marketing Acquisition 245

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 19, 2024

My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g., At $200M+ ARR, businesses have built up a substantial base of recurring revenue streams that have already paid back their initial CAC. net retention and CAC payback).

Cloud 318

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 318

ProfitWell

NOVEMBER 8, 2019

Scheduled payments have become a core form of revenue collection. Of course, recurring payments vary depending on the business. As the subscription universe continues to expand, you can expect to see even more subscription payment plans. What are subscription payments? Predictable income.

Merchant Services 68

Merchant Services Payment Features SaaS Payments Payment Services 68

Baremetrics

MAY 7, 2019

There are more funding and financing options for startups today than there ever have been before. There’s also been an explosion in debate and transparency about navigating startup funding and financing. Let’s explore the funding and financing options for your startup. Funding Your Startup. Buffer spent $3.3

Finance 111

Finance Startup SaaS Payments Payment Methods 111

Chaotic Flow

JUNE 11, 2013

The good news is that SaaS growth can be very smooth and predictable, because of the SaaS recurring revenue subscription model. After a few years of rapid SaaS startup growth, it’s easy to find yourself on the short end of the hockey stick if you don’t know the right levers to push. Alternatively….

Customer Lifetime Value 165

Customer Lifetime Value Scale SaaS Acquisition 165

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2016

Channel distribution represents one of the biggest and most important changes in customers acquisition for SMB SaaS startups in quite a while. As many of these channel partners move to newer distribution models, the brokerage channel model in particular, they represent an efficient and leveraged customer acquisition channel.

Outsourcing Services 114

Outsourcing Services SMB Acquisition Scale 114

Subscription Flow

MAY 30, 2024

Did you know the subscription economy is touted to reach $1.5 As a business that provides software as a service, you will not only need to jump on this bandwagon, but more importantly, you will need the right set of subscription management tools to stay on it to keep reaping the profits of this booming industry. trillion by 2025 ?

Merchant Services 97

Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payment Services SaaS Payments 97

Casey Accidental

JULY 17, 2023

I was recently on Lenny Rachitksy’s podcast again, and one of the topics we discussed was consumer subscription business. Don’t worry I got more marketplace content on the way as well Shortly after I got into tech, investors started to fall in love with subscription business models, mostly on the B2B side. In short, everything.

Payment Solutions 98

Payment Solutions Payments Subscription Payment Features 98

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 10, 2018

Andrew’s been an angel investor and advisor for a slew of name-brand startups; however, he’s most widely known for his invaluable essays on growth. This creates an acquisition treadmill with built-in natural churn. Why you need a mechanism for free acquisition. If you enjoy the conversation check out more episodes.

Acquisition 224

Acquisition Marketplace as a Service Retention Startup 224

Neil Patel

APRIL 12, 2021

They offer some of the best-known subscription boxes around, reflecting an increasingly popular (and potentially lucrative) business model. Why Should You Launch a Subscription Box? According to MarketsandMarkets , the subscription and recurring billing market will grow to around $7.8 Recurring Business Revenue.

Outsourcing Services 123

Outsourcing Services Payment Methods Subscription Payment Features 123

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 27, 2020

?. The subscription model has revolutionized virtually every industry. Customer acquisition costs are rising , churn is every company’s poison pill, and the competition is relentless. Success in the subscription economy isn’t about having the best product; it’s about having the strongest customer relationships. Over the last 7.5

Scale 211

Scale Payments Payment Features Subscription 211

The Angel VC

MARCH 23, 2016

Almost exactly four years ago I published a financial plan template for SaaS startups based on a model that I had created for Zendesk a few years earlier. The original v1 model was a very simple plan for early-stage SaaS startups with a low-touch sales model.

SaaS Payments 217

SaaS Payments Headcount SaaS Payment Methods 217

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 16, 2019

The classic example sees a company move from niche startup to mainstream scale-up, but it can also see companies hone their product-market fit by focusing on a more specialized, and yet more lucrative, user base. The key here is to keep the cost of customer acquisition down. The middle ground ($5,000 p.a. – $100,000 p.a.).

Business Model 195

Business Model Scale Pricing Payment Methods 195

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

From a Go-To-Market perspective, Zapier uses a hybrid model that involves a combination of freemium offerings, subscription plans, and partnerships. In a startup, you might have a strong hypothesis, but it might not work out. What are the most important things about this acquisition strategy that make it successful?

Scale 321

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 321

Baremetrics

JUNE 30, 2021

You've got a brilliant SaaS startup idea. A startup financial model is the plan. In fact, we've already built the SaaS financial model you'll actually use — but let's take a look at why this is especially important for SaaS startups. 1 What Is a Startup Financial Model? What Is a Startup Financial Model?

Startup 98

Startup Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Deferred Revenue 98

Baremetrics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

The pre-revenue startup phase has a host of stresses that hopefully disappear as the company begins to earn revenue. Depending on the amount invested, it is possible that all members of the team are working full time jobs to support themselves and then doing that again to push their startup onto the market. Table of Contents.

Payments 110

Payments Revenue Startup Development Team Review 110

Baremetrics

AUGUST 16, 2021

What does it mean to reactivate a subscription? There are several reasons a customer would cancel their subscription. Reactivating the subscription could mean many things, but primarily it means the customers decided to activate the subscription and make payment for another billing cycle. Table of Contents.

Subscription 87

Subscription Payment Features Metrics SaaS Payments 87