Kellblog

DECEMBER 27, 2021

Before diving in, let me remind readers that I do these predictions in the spirit of fun, they are not business or investment advice, and that all of my usual disclaimers and terms apply. Management changes , as leadership teams drift from a spirit of value creation for customers to value extraction from them. Tech bubble relents.

Blockchain 142

Blockchain Technical Review Venture Capital Sales Hiring 142

Kellblog

JUNE 27, 2022

Chris , Eric , James , Fred , Andrew ) while drawing on my nine years at Business Objects , five years on the board of Nuxeo , and two years on the board of Scoro , as well as many advisory gigs both within the Balderton portfolio and outside. So is developing a geographic strategy. International expansion is hard. The market is vast.

Startup 116

Startup Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Compensation 116

Baremetrics

MAY 7, 2019

Every business is funded, it’s just a matter of how it’s funded. Every business, every founder, and every market is different and requires a unique approach. I guess what we’re trying to say is: Do what’s best for you, your business, and your customers. TinySeed , Earnest Capital , and Indie.vc

Finance 111

Finance Startup SaaS Payments Payment Methods 111

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2019

Small and large businesses are often seen as competitors, with small businesses owning a fierce mentality of proving themselves as a player in the game instead of an underdog. But what happens when these different sized businesses unite forces in strategic partnerships? Where are you on your business.

Development Team Review 131

Development Team Review Scale Technical Review Software Review 131

ProfitWell

JANUARY 6, 2020

There may be multiple markets in your product-market fit, but it’s an incredibly important first step when building a product/business to find at least one. If you don’t have product-market fit, you could be advertising to the wrong buyer personas and attracting the wrong buyers, leading to higher churn and poor retention.

Product Marketing 52

Product Marketing Underperforming Technical Team Marketing Advertising 52

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 5, 2022

In today’s data-driven SaaS scene, these can affect hundreds of millions of users and cause damage in the billions of dollars, and as compliance frameworks become requirements to do business, businesses are turning to third-party services that can help expedite and facilitate the process. Less than a year later, Drata was launched.

Scale 211

Scale Software Review compliance Technical Review 211

ProfitWell

AUGUST 13, 2020

Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. Ben Horowitz is the co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a private venture capital company. That’s why he calls it a delusion: employees can handle bad news.

Payments 52

Payments SaaS Payments Payment Methods Underperforming Technical Team 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

To date Bob has raised over $15m with Crossbeam from friends of the show including Andy @ Uncork, Matt @ Firstmark, Bill @ First Round and Matt @ Salesforce Ventures, to name a few. Prior to Crossbeam, Bob founded Stitched, a powerful ETL service built for developers that was acquired by Talend in 2018.

Sales Hiring 133

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 133

Point Nine Land

JUNE 22, 2023

I can already hear Christoph and the rest of our software-loving P9 team telling me that they would have preferred to invest in SaaS if it had existed, and he’s probably right. Some pure hardware businesses have capex requirements that would break a typical venture fund’s model. Still, it’s clear that things are different today.

Outsourcing Services 59

Outsourcing Services Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development AI 59

FastSpring

MARCH 10, 2023

I’m a bit closer to business owners from the 50s,” he admits — a time when he believes creating an enjoyable work environment was more highly valued. We are more or less a business consulting company as a software consulting company that as there are many outside, but we are specialized in Apple users, helping Apple users.

Consulting 78

Consulting Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Software 78

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020

371: It’s no secret that businesses today are struggling with an unpredictable economy. Jennifer Tejada: So it’s not all terrible bad news because Winston Churchill told us, “Never waste a good crisis.” First, do no harm and deliver the business results. But management has changed. It may not be first nature.

Scale 157

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Branding 157

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

What does it take to scale a sales team successfully? I’ve heard so many good things from Kobie, now at Upfront, and then also the team at Openview. Andy MacMillan: I started my career in tech actually as a developer. How does one instil volume based pricing without disincentivizing usage? Andy MacMillan: Excellent.

Sales Hiring 205

Sales Hiring Scale Leadership Technical Review 205

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2019

I have been thinking a lot, a lot, about how do you grow your business in 2019, in 2020? Speaker 2: Please Welcome, HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan and NEA Venture Partner Hilarie Koplow-McAdams. He had blogged his way through business school, and I was watching his blog, and he had no people and no money. They trust your customers.

Scale 106

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 106

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2019

I’ve also had more than 10 years of CMO experience, including a good run at Business Objects where I ran marketing as we grew from 30 million to over a billion in revenue during a nine-year period. Do I have the right team? So second question, do I have the right team? Do you have the right team for you?

Sales Hiring 120

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Scale Startup 120

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2019

To date Parker has raised over $59m in funding from some of the best in the business including Mamoon @ Kleiner Perkins, Garry Tan @ Initialized, Justin Kan, SV Angel and Y Combinator, just to name a few. How can one prevent their customer support team from being a wall of protection for the product and eng team?

VP of Engineering 130

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Scale Systems Review 130

Neil Patel

JANUARY 11, 2021

Starting your own business is the dream, right? Almost anybody can start up a business – all you need is a great idea, the right systems, and the drive to see it through. No college degree, huge bank balance, or business experience is needed. In this article, I’m going to discuss the exact steps to start a business.

Underperforming Technical Team 128

Underperforming Technical Team Business Sales Hiring Scale 128

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

What I’m going to do is talk a little bit about what we’ve seen over the course of the last year and then also talk about some metrics we track or we encourage our founders to track as they’re building their businesses, and then, lastly, try to go through a few predictions for the next couple of years.

Cloud 101

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 101

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2022

The Number One Thing You Can Do to Accelerate Your Business Post-Initial Traction is Hiring a Great VP of Sales. I ran their web business service unit which hit $180 million in ARR last quarter. You have to create a repeatable process if you’re going to scale up the sales team. That’s my background.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE VP of Engineering Sales Recruiting 264

Kellblog

AUGUST 13, 2019

If you’re immediately dispatched to Sand Hill Road in search of capital, you’ll be out pitching the company poorly instead of learning the business and making plans to improve it. Culture, to me, is the often unwritten code [8] of what the company values and how business gets done. First-time, non-founder CEOs.

Software Review 76

Software Review Startup Sales Hiring Software 76

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2021

The second is pulling more around values, and how we approached team building. Even as a three person team, we went through an exercise to figure out what do we stand for, as a team? Sam : This is not my insight, but someone else says… I really do believe it, that the team you build is the company you build.

VP of Engineering 268

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 268

Outseta

AUGUST 23, 2017

By Geoff Roberts 15 min read Forecasts, budgets, and performance targets; these activities have long been seen by business people as critical activities in the operation of companies of almost any size. They provide a necessary compass for the business, an accepted and understood path towards a business achieving its goals.

Forecasting 52

Forecasting Scale Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review 52

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 14, 2022

What the soon-to-be podcast host and venture capitalist calls to mind is a somewhat forgettable scene where Peter Thiel becomes Facebook’s first major investor. It was the first time Harry came across venture capital, and, he tells us, he was instantly hooked. There’s no right way to do venture. Delighted to have you.

Venture Capital 129

Venture Capital Interviewing Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 129

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 4, 2021

And no one knows this better than Zanade Mann , founder and Managing Director of the Black Women’s Business Collective. She created this collective in 2020 out of a growing need to provide access and resources to Black and Afro-Latina women business owners who started experiencing difficulties in the wake of COVID-19. Lifelong teacher.

Outsourcing Services 151

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Business Scale 151

Point Nine Land

MARCH 7, 2019

Lemkin recently posted a tweetstorm about his observation that most startups are bad at finance. When we’re at $5–10M in ARR or so, a great CFO might almost pay for him/herself by helping us tweak and optimize the business (in addition to freeing up your time). Like, all of them. Happy to talk to the candidate(s)!

Sales Hiring 72

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Payment Services Finance 72

Outseta

OCTOBER 15, 2018

First it was Wistia , followed shortly thereafter by Buffer ; both buyouts a sort of declaration of independence that gave both companies back the ability to build their businesses on their own terms. Venture capital is not inherently bad or the manifestation of greed and commitments to impossible-to-deliver growth.

CTO Hire 65

CTO Hire CTO Coach SaaS New CTO 65

FastSpring

DECEMBER 8, 2022

FastSpring offers multiple purchase experiences, from a self-serve ecommerce checkout to digital invoices you can send your business customers. We’ll handle all the hard stuff, such as localizing checkout, billing and ecommerce compliance, and tax management — and let you focus on building and growing your SaaS business.

Payment Methods 78

Payment Methods Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Software Review 78

Trint

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

I’d never been exposed to software developers and the mysterious world of coding. I was introduced to a team of software engineers who’d been working on tech that aligned audio and text so that you could follow it like karaoke. I remember saying to the team, “We just invented the future.” I ran one of my interviews through it.

Branding 130

Branding Advertising Underperforming Technical Team VP of Engineering 130

Point Nine Land

DECEMBER 12, 2018

While this is generally true for most companies, it’s particularly true for SaaS businesses, which invest heavily in product development, sales, and marketing upfront and get payments from customers over a delayed period of time, usually several years. The main reason is that your customer acquisition costs are highly front-loaded.

Sales Recruiting 61

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 61

Baremetrics

APRIL 16, 2021

One of the most difficult parts of the capital raise process is determining and deciding when and why what types of SaaS capital are right for your business. Top Types of SaaS Capital. Here are 10 types of capital formations and outcomes to consider for your SaaS business, from inception to exit: 1.

Venture Capital 66

Venture Capital Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team SaaS 66

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 1, 2020

If you missed episode 137, check it out here: Team Selling: A Comeback Story for 2021 with Trish Bertuzzi. Learn how modern sales teams win deals now at 6sense.com/saleshacker. It’s a bad look, it’s a bad way to end your relationship. And a lot of that early founding team came from ExactTarget lineage.

VP of Engineering 63

VP of Engineering Branding Scale Marketing 63

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 20, 2018

Salespeople are BUSY. Take notes, highlight the best parts, and share important takeaways with your team. Get technical help and a dose of motivation from two of the leading B2B sales trainers, leadership coaches and business strategists on the market. Producer/Host: Bowery Capital. Experiment, test, record, and optimize!

Scale 111

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Social Media 111

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2019

I have been thinking a lot, a lot, about how do you grow your business in 2019, in 2020? Speaker 2: Please Welcome, HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan and NEA Venture Partner Hilarie Koplow-McAdams. He had blogged his way through business school, and I was watching his blog, and he had no people and no money. They trust your customers.

Scale 50

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 50

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

The SaaS Metrics That Matter by David Sacks, Ethan Ruby One of the best features of SaaS businesses is how easy they are to measure. The SaaS Business Model & Metrics: Understand the Key Drivers for Success by David Skok, Matrix Partners SaaS Metrics — 201 A slightly deeper dive into SaaS industry metrics. Source SaaS Metrics 2.0:

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2022

While Azure and Google Cloud grew at record rates, Shopify for example, its SaaS business only grew 10% last quarter. But it sounds like the bad news is you’ve got a limited runway. It’s not the investor’s problem if you have an expensive team. We certainly are in a downturn in some segments.

Scale 207

Scale SaaS Payments Scaling SaaS 207

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

When it comes to launching sales teams in hyper-growth startups, few people have walked the walk as much as Maggie Hott. We recently sat down with Maggie to chat about all things sales – from laying down a solid foundation to hiring the right people and, finally, scaling the team into hyper-growth. Look for the team players.

Scale 118

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 118

Neil Patel

MARCH 21, 2023

Being an entrepreneur, you’re going to have to put in long hours and make sacrifices for your business. Learn to recognize the risks that will benefit your business and take them. Most entrepreneurs start their business after years of experience working for someone else. Let’s apply this to the world of business.

Entrepreneurship 92

Entrepreneurship Underperforming Technical Team Entertainment Company Culture 92