Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

The unit must be: Easy for a customer to understand Simple to predict Crystal-clear to avoid future disputes about what constitutes a unit Directly tied to the value delivered by your product Can this pricing model achieve certain boundary pricing conditions? How much should a Fortune 500 bank pay for your startup?

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

Payrix

FEBRUARY 4, 2025

This setup is commonly used in marketplaces, software platforms, or businesses that facilitate payments for a network of sellers, service providers, or smaller businesses. This creates integrated, streamlined experiences that are essential to businesses and sellers competing in modern digital-first environments.

Merchant Services 130

Merchant Services Payment Services Payments SaaS Payments 130

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2023

With nine figures in revenue, Ariel and SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin talk about all things Navan, rebranding when you have brand equity, building B2B software for people, pricing and business models, and much more. They also have a business model that only connects to one content source. If it goes to 5.5

Payment Solutions 282

Payment Solutions Payments Travel Scale 282

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

The harsh reality: Most enterprises are adopting AI due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) rather than for specific business outcomes. A chief data officer at a top-five global bank recently shared they have 150 generative AI projects in the lab but zero in production. Yet there’s a massive gap between interest and implementation.

Technical Review 171

Technical Review Artificial Intelligence AI Marketplace as a Service 171

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2021

An open core business model empowers customers and fosters brand loyalty. At GitLab, we run on an open core business model. We have a dollar-based gross retention rate of 97% and it’s in part because of our open core model. Clearly and publicly state your business practices.

Innovation 246

Innovation Business Model Banking Scale 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

Strategic finance can be thought of as a project management function for your company’s underlying business model or a BizOps team that operates within a more financial lens. Strategic Finance optimizes a company’s underlying business model to create long-term value by increasing revenue and decreasing costs.

Scale 236

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 236

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2024

This includes real-time bank connectivity, treasury forecasting, payment automation and automated accounting and reconciliation with e.g. ERPs. However, this enthusiasm is notably more focused on specific segments and business models. Embat is building the next-generation treasury management software.

Payments 276

Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions Scale 276

Stax

MARCH 18, 2025

A typical payment processing procedure involves multiple parties, including the merchant, customer, payment processor, payment gateway, issuing bank, acquiring bank, and card networks. The processor facilitates the transaction by communicating with the payment gateway, issuing bank, and acquiring bank.

Payment Services 88

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 88

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2021

A good reminder that Freemium doesn’t really work as a business model without a mass-scale product. No one was comfortable entering bank info and signing in.” ” — Eric McClure, Head of Revenue Operations, Xplor. Jason, ed. : “Regular price increases for SaaS” — Benjamin Irvine.

Pricing 322

Pricing Scale Enterprise Onboarding 322

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 2, 2023

Once a company has decided it wants to embark on the journey to become public, the first thing it must do is select a group of investment banks. At the end of the day each company only goes public once, while investment banks have taken hundreds (if not thousands) of companies public and have a wealth of experience to tap into.

Cloud 49

Cloud Marketing Banking Pricing 49

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

But in general, urgency is always helpful, balanced with thoughtfulness for what you want your business to look like over the next 30 years. Don’t Tie Revenue To Headcount “You want to get away from a business model where every incremental dollar requires incremental hiring,” says Deatsch.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 261

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

But you can’t base your business model purely on gut instinct: you need to understand the problem by conducting serious research. But UserZoom’s roots in Europe drove them to be more creative – everything from FFFs (friends, family, and fools), to bank loans, to government grants. Fall in love with “solving a problem”.

Scale 246

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring SMB 246

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2024

How do you drive business around that? They want the overall pie to be as big as possible, and their entire business model is predicated on capturing a small piece of what is hopefully an extremely large pie. But when they discover a large global bank using Grafana Labs, that’s where the product strategy comes in.

Scale 291

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 291

Stax

JANUARY 23, 2025

How Merchant Underwriting Works The merchant underwriting process typically follows a few steps carried out by the payment facilitators or acquiring bank to develop an underwriting risk profile. Provide complete documentation: Ensure all required business and financial records are accurate and up to date.

Merchant Services 68

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Methods Development Team Review 68

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

When the company first began web app development and selling software-as-a-service in 2004, their business model wasn’t even called SaaS. Early on, Basecamp had to deal with banks that were wary of their subscription plans. And, like every software startup, their small team had a million other things to worry about.

New CTO 201

New CTO SaaS Sales CTO 201

ProfitWell

DECEMBER 4, 2019

The SaaS business model powering all of this activity is startlingly unique, still young, and inextricably tied to the power of cloud computing. What is the SaaS business model. As a result, revenue recognition is a fundamental part of the SaaS business model. Recurring payments. Early stage.

Business Model 54

Business Model SaaS Payments Payment Methods Payments 54

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

They had open cores and created enterprise features around it to protect the business model until it got torpedoed by AWS early on. You have to keep money in the bank. Fire yourself by hiring people to do jobs better than you when you aren’t keeping money in the bank and selling the vision.

Scale 242

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Cloud 242

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

Lost a bank customer we had served well for 5 years and up to.5M “Dig deep about their business model before sending them a proposal.” We all know this, but we forget about it, especially when the Hot New Deal and the sales team’s wants and needs consumes all of management’s resources.

CTO Hire 325

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 325

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

“Industry-Centric” SaaS business models offer an alternative SaaS company categorization to the “Customer-Centric” SaaS model, which is defined based on the “go-to-market” strategy used by a management team. When SaaS business models originated, the most successful venture-backed startups used a horizontal model.

Business Model 52

Business Model Business SaaS Scale 52

Stax

MAY 6, 2025

Acquiring bank This is the merchant bank that allows the business to receive money from card transactions and store these funds. The issuing bank This is the cardholders bank or the financial institution that issued their credit or debit card. Think: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover.

Accept Credit Card Payments 88

Accept Credit Card Payments Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods 88

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2023

SaaS as a vertical is a relatively attractive business model with high margins and recurring revenue, particularly valued in this market. Prioritization also depends on cash in the bank and when you need to fundraise next. The reason? If you have 3-4 years of runway, it’s OK to go more aggressive in year one.

AI 242

AI Trends Banking Benchmarks 242

Payrix

SEPTEMBER 25, 2024

This growing market is switching up how small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) access financial products, creating exciting new opportunities for software companies to reimagine their business models and restructure their product offerings.

Payments 130

Payments Payment Solutions Embedded Payments Trends 130

Stax

NOVEMBER 21, 2024

Whether you are starting a new online store or looking to grow your existing brick-and-mortar small business, you must make provisions for accepting credit card payments. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco showed that credit cards account for 31% of all payments, significantly more than cash at 18%, and debit cards at 29%.

Payment Services 88

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 88

Stax

MARCH 11, 2025

There are six main payment methods used in online payments, including credit & debit cards, digital wallets, ACH & bank transfers, direct debit, Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services, and cryptocurrencies. The merchant account : this is a special bank account that allows you to accept and process credit and debit card payments.

Payment Methods 88

Payment Methods Payment Services Merchant Services SaaS Payments 88

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

So utility -based software includes SaaS companies that operate very often on recurring business models, while general entertainment covers use cases like gaming, social platforms, and IP -driven content, such as short films. Number one, in terms of the utility -based software, and number two, in terms of general entertainment.

Merchant Services 192

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Methods SaaS Payments 192

Stax

AUGUST 29, 2024

A PSP (Payment Service Provider) can equip your eCommerce and brick-and-mortar business with an all-in-one platform that supports multiple payment systems, including debit & credit cards, eWallets, and bank transfers (ACH). They will check your business model, credit history, business risk, tax history, and more.

Merchant Services 88

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 88

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 29, 2019

This data typically comes in three broad flavors: Firmographic: This includes employee headcount, revenue, vertical, business model, location, tech stack, web traffic, and other publicly available information about the customer. additional data on our customers’ business models, size, web traffic, and verticals.

Business 184

Business B2C Scale Headcount 184

Subscription Flow

JUNE 26, 2024

What Mol did was identify how badly traditional banks’ online payment processing worked for small European businesses, before offering Mollie recurring payments as an alternative to these businesses that were nearing bankruptcy during the lockdown.

Payment Features 98

Payment Features Payment Methods Payment Services Payment Solutions 98

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

OCTOBER 9, 2012

Or should you starve the process and keep the cash in your piggy bank? Because of the way the SaaS business model works, if you feed the customer acquisition process, you hurt profits and burn cash. And finally, making the "feed it" option work requires a deep understanding and confidence in the SaaS business model.

Acquisition 124

Acquisition Scale SaaS Headcount 124

Sales Hacker

MARCH 7, 2022

The best sales model in the world cannot make up for a flawed business model. Back in the day, the majority of Frank’s students wanted to go into investment banking and consulting. Students now apologize if they want to go work for an investment bank or consulting firm.

Technical Review 106

Technical Review Sales Marketplace as a Service Banking 106

Stax

MAY 5, 2025

Inconsistent acceptance of certain cards or banks in different regions. Early-stage communication and a shared understanding of your business model can help avoid most of these pitfalls before they become costly problems. Challenges include: Lack of support for local payment methods (e.g., Alipay, iDEAL, M-Pesa).

Payments 88

Payments Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Solutions 88

Subscription Flow

JUNE 27, 2024

This feature allows businesses to accept credit and debit card payments from customers helping them manage their finances more efficiently. An integrated payment processing service, Quickbooks Payments, offers businesses the option to accept credit/debit card payments as well as bank transfers (ACH).

Payment Services 98

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 98

FastSpring

DECEMBER 12, 2022

Payment processors verify that all necessary information is present and in the correct format and then carry it to the issuing bank or credit card network for final authorization. MasterCard or Visa), issuing bank, or electronic wallet (a.k.a., e-wallet) that you want to accept. Local Payment Processors. Learn more here.

Payment Services 148

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 148

Casey Accidental

OCTOBER 20, 2020

This is part two of a three part series on sequencing business models. Casey’s first sequencing business models essay talked about the transition from a SaaS business model to marketplace business model, and why it’s so difficult. This essay is a collaboration with Gilad Horev. We’re not sure.

Marketplace as a Service 40

Marketplace as a Service Business Model SaaS Payments Payments 40

Stax

MARCH 5, 2025

The payment processor is a financial institution that handles transactions between the two banks. Learn More Cater to a Large Set of Customers The online payments process allows your business to accept credit card payments in an easy yet efficient way. To accept online payments, you need a payment processor and payment gateway.

Payment Services 88

Payment Services Payment Methods Merchant Services Payments 88

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2023

So, whether you’re hiring or you’re selling or you’re running a leadership meeting, a lot of the time you’re banking on your natural skills and experience to get you to a good result so you can move on to the next thing. A lot of young entrepreneurs are so earnest, they wear their strategy and business model on their sleeve.

Technical Review 240

Technical Review Leadership Company Culture Startup 240

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

At a16z’s recent Connect/Fintech event, a16z Partner Alex Immerman sat down for a broad conversation with Immad Akhund , co-founder and CEO of banking startup Mercury , and René Lacerte, founder and CEO of financial services company BILL. Alex: Let’s dive into your business models. When we started, it was mostly SVB.

Payments 110

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Sales Hiring 110