FastSpring

APRIL 18, 2024

FastSpring is proud to announce that our support team has won a Silver Stevie® award for Front-Line Customer Service Team of the Year in the “Technology Industries – Computer Software” category! This award is the product of a lot of hard work by our support team, and we’re not surprised they’ve earned this distinction!

Artificial Intelligence 78

Artificial Intelligence Customer Support Engagement Technology 78

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2021

Businesses that write the playbook for their product category bring people to something different and somewhere important. #2 2 Category-defining products require new business models. Businesses often build something powerful but don’t create the proper value package, and it fails in the market. Subscribe. #4

Scale 169

Scale Scaling Business Model Company Culture 169

SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2022

Category creation involves dreaming up a new suite of products that can sell via traditional channels or methods. It’s a process that demands more than a game-changing product, as it takes having the right talent on your team and a consistent vision that drives all aspects of your business. Building blocks for category reinvention.

Outsourced Development 223

Outsourced Development Mobile Pricing Software Development 223

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

The Challenges and Pitfalls of a Partner Ecosystem Drata attributes much of its success to its partner ecosystem, which is an interesting case study for most, so how do they break up marketing, sales, and resource allocation vs. a more direct-sales modeled business? They don’t have the bandwidth to support five sub-partners in their category.

AWS 199

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 199

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2023

As buyers grapple with expanding technology, higher prices, and a need for efficiency, SaaS companies need to deliver what their audience is looking for to win in the market. Businesses spend big money on tools they believe are indispensable to their operations and success. SaaS buying has changed. The bottom Line? weakest link.

VP of Engineering 231

VP of Engineering Trends Cybersecurity Sales Hiring 231

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

In this era of ever-increasing digital disruption and innovation, category design can be the ultimate business strategy for brands wishing to stand out from the crowd. The book aims to help companies apply category design to open new markets and create new demand. and the Making of IBM , and The Two-Second Advantage.

Technical Review 205

Technical Review Sales Hiring Innovation Systems Review 205

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 17, 2022

Most categories slow down meaningfully, including Defi. Tougher markets demand better product-market fit from startups leveraging the new technology of the era. This foundation leads to more halcyon days when the promise of technology is realized & the market rewards both customers & founders. Boom cycles begin this way.

Software Review 261

Software Review Technical Review Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 261

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 26, 2024

An enduring promise of new technologies is to find ways to increase human productivity. They weren’t living up to their potential and, as a result, there remains a huge category of repetitive processes that humans still perform manually. We can’t help but think solving the next layer in complexity would create even bigger companies!

Investment 125

Investment Healthcare AI Business Model 125

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 22, 2020

Strong customer relationships are more important than ever for business success, but the old ways of communicating and building relationships with customers are broken. Today, businesses need a modern way to deliver fast, personal, and real-time communication to their customers.

Venture Capital 211

Venture Capital Advertising Communication Branding 211

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

At Intercom, our mission has always been to make internet business personal – and we think the key to creating those personal connections between businesses and customers is to facilitate conversational experiences. This New Wave explores emerging technologies in the Conversation Automation space.

Machine Learning 104

Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Scale Benchmarks 104

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 6, 2021

These two foundational technology shifts ushered in the DevSecOps movement. Through it all, Kamal, Ali, and the rest of the StackRox team led the business to become the first Kubernetes native security company and a leader in the category. Then, there was a scrap for the best orchestration and Kubernetes won out.

K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) 244

K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) Leadership Technology Business 244

Stax

JANUARY 8, 2024

To establish an effective risk management program as a PayFac, you must establish a dedicated risk management team, utilize the right tools and technology, develop proper risk management policies and procedures, conduct regular risk audits, and stay up-to-date with the latest industry regulations.

Merchant Services 88

Merchant Services Payfac Payment Services SaaS Payments 88

Mucker Capital

APRIL 2, 2024

Four Main Categories Where Pain Can change to Value. Hard Cost This refers to money spent outside the company on materials, software, technology, etc. Examples include buying software licenses, purchasing materials, or investing in technology solutions like cloud services. This approach involves: 1.

Sales Recruiting 52

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Enterprise Cybersecurity 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2022

Often, product-oriented founders think they’ve created a technology business that seeks distribution when in reality they’ve founded a distribution business that makes technology. Are you asking them to choose you from a sea of competitors, or are you trying to convince them to adopt a new, category-defining product?

Sales Hiring 221

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Marketing Market Research 221

IT World

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

The biggest technology-driven trend to affect business in the coming years is synthetic media. This category includes deepfake content, text-prompted AI-generated “art,” virtual content in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) environments, and other new content types.

Artificial Intelligence 130

Artificial Intelligence Business AI Trends 130

Totango

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

TrustRadius, a renowned platform for transparent business technology reviews, announced its 2023 Best of Awards, with Totango emerging as a triple winner. Read full review “Totango can help businesses to improve efficiency, drive customer satisfaction, and ultimately grow their business.

Customer Success 112

Customer Success Software Review Technical Review Enterprise 112

Frontegg

DECEMBER 21, 2022

G2’s Winter 2023 Reports are here and we are thrilled to announce that Frontegg has been awarded a total of 42 badges including Leader rankings in the CIAM (Customer Identity and Access Management) category for Best Support, Easiest To Do Business With, and Highest User Adoption amongst many others.

Technical Review 94

Technical Review Software Review Systems Review New CTO 94

Andreessen Horowitz

DECEMBER 4, 2023

R&D spend is the lifeblood of technology companies—all the more so as companies race to build and incorporate AI into their products to remain competitive. If R&D is so critical to a company’s success, why then do R&D budgets lack the same discipline of other spend categories?

Underperforming Technical Team 125

Underperforming Technical Team Benchmarks CTO Hire New CTO 125

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Being open about mistakes helps others see that you can win at business while still being human-first. Whatever you care about in your business, whether high achieving, innovation, values, or making money, make sure your team feels the same way. Scaling newly acquired raw technology too soon. ARR around 2015.

Scale 228

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Scaling 228

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

A lot of VCs are looking for structural reasons you can win and dominate your category. The reality is though most business process SaaS apps become dominant simply because they are the biggest. Some VCs get this and just want to back the potential winner in a category. What’s your moat? Not hot enough space (yet) risk.

Scale 338

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 338

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 20, 2021

Not just a new product; the start of a whole new product category. What is a product category, and how do you recognize whether your great idea promises to become a new class of its own? The journeys of developing a product and developing a product category usually start from a similar place. Table of Contents.

Scale 96

Scale Development SaaS Education 96

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2023

It brings together industry leaders, innovators, and customers to showcase the latest products and technologies. The SaaS Awards : The SaaS Awards is an annual awards program recognizing excellence and innovation in SaaS products and services across various categories.

ChatGPT 214

ChatGPT AWS SaaS CTO 214

Andreessen Horowitz

NOVEMBER 21, 2023

If they didn’t, start-up companies with breakthrough ideas were going to abandon military defense and move to more fruitful areas of technology. And then just a few months later, that prediction became a moot point: Russia invaded Ukraine and reminded us why defense technology is not merely something to debate in theory.

Venture Capital 75

Venture Capital Technology Investment Strategy 75

Stax

DECEMBER 20, 2023

Interchange is the fee that credit card companies like Visa and Mastercard charge businesses to accept their cards. In this article, we will break down credit card interchange fees so you will know exactly how much you’re spending when running your business. Interchange fees are simply a cost of doing business.

Payment Services 167

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 167

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2021

We’ve through a quiet revolution in sales processes now, where a combination of specialization, technology, and segmentation are making the next generation of SaaS founders far better at figuring out and scaling sales than I or my peers ever were a generation ago in SaaS. Outbound will definitely work.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Scale Outbound Sales Team Sales 280

SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2023

There are two approaches you can take with the platform layer: Developer Tool/API Managed Enterprise Service Large businesses will gravitate toward bespoke models to their specs. A lot of these technologies aim to reduce the amount of low-level work so we can focus on a higher level.” Agents remember your actions and emulate them.

Generative AI 175

Generative AI AI Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 175

Kellblog

AUGUST 27, 2022

. “Sell high” is the old sales rule, and the business of Silicon Valley marketing strategy books is no exception. In extreme distillation, Play Bigger argues: Category kings (companies who typically define and then own categories in the minds of buyers) are worth a whole lot more than runner-ups. So, off you go.

Strategy 136

Strategy Marketing Startup Customer Success 136

Totango

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

we’re accelerating the motion to customer success-led growth by introducing two new partnerships and nine technology integrations into the Totango software and ecosystem. CS has the multi-pronged connection with customers to understand and nurture their path to business outcomes—over time.

Enterprise 113

Enterprise Revenue Scale Innovation 113

Kellblog

JANUARY 7, 2022

Stop worrying about category creation , and worry about proving product-market fit [2]. Analysts name categories, not vendors. At a larger company, the product marketer typically works in an existing category and needs to clearly message what their offering does and how it is different from the competition. Just be clear.

Entertainment 123

Entertainment Startup Technology Market Research 123

ChurnZero

JULY 27, 2021

ChurnZero is a finalist in the 2021 SaaS Awards Program in the category of Best SaaS Product for Customer Service/CRM. Categories for 2021 include Best Enterprise-Level SaaS and Best Data-Driven SaaS, alongside new categories including ‘Bespoke SaaS Solution’. ChurnZero helps subscription businesses fight customer churn.

SaaS 98

SaaS Innovation Cloud AI 98

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. The US poses numerous, often unique, challenges for a European technology startup.

Startup 118

Startup Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Compensation 118

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 26, 2019

First , for early customers to generate value from a novel technology, that technology must solve a business problem completely. Second , in early markets, most of the buyers don’t understand the nuances of the technology, whether it’s IoT platforms, or machine learning infrastructures, or data lakes.

Machine Learning 195

Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Scale Marketing 195

Kellblog

JULY 17, 2022

We run on the modern stack with modern technology (e.g., This is a high-level, one-line statement about why to do business with your company. Startups who are alone in defining their category need to focus on the first question. Technology leader — are we seen as a technology leader? We rebuilt it.

Branding 132

Branding Startup Software Sales Recruiting 132

Stax

MARCH 14, 2024

The EMV standard has now become a global standard for cards equipped with computer chips and the technology used to authenticate chip-card transactions. Yet, while time has provided customers and businesses with more education on the security benefits of EMV card chips, many businesses and consumers are still confused about key components.

Payment Methods 88

Payment Methods Merchant Services Payment Services Stax 88

Trint

DECEMBER 1, 2020

Trint will focus its 2021 strategy on rapid product innovation as it continues to build out a new market category it calls StoryTech. Spanning video, audio and the written word, Trint is a truly modern company solving a decades-old problem, and is poised to dominate its category.” The product uses A.I.

Investment 130

Investment Artificial Intelligence Banking Entertainment 130

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 18, 2018

Blockchain technology finds its second killer application. This will occur in all major SaaS categories, products serving VPs of Marketing, Sales, Engineering, and Customer Support. There were no VPs of CS in most software businesses. A cost of doing business. 1% of Salesforce’s revenue makes a unicorn.

Blockchain 193

Blockchain Technical Review Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 193

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 27, 2024

Dropping into your inbox with a Saturday special today, and here’s why: this week was a particularly busy one, capped off by our first GTMfund dinner of the year. In today’s market, where technological moats are declining, this becomes even more crucial, especially for early-stage companies fighting to carve out their niche.

Technical Review 88

Technical Review Venture Capital Generative AI Social Media 88