Clouded Judgement

MARCH 31, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. The majority of COGS (revenue less COGS = gross profit) fall in hosting costs (ie AWS), and some customer support. Subscribe now Share Clouded Judgement Leave a comment Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2022

In 2015, SaaS cloud-based content management tool Box went public. We restructured all of our messaging around our Content Cloud to create a simplified go-to-market message that says what it does, and does what it says. At Box, we’ve found a lot of success in getting customers to adopt new features within Content Cloud.

Scale 297

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 297

Groove HQ

NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Your business offers cloud-based software, and everything is running smoothly. The customer subscribed to a monthly plan, and their next month’s payment just went through, but now they want to go elsewhere. You’ve just launched your brand new SaaS startup. Suddenly, you’re hit with your very first refund request.

Customer Support 80

Customer Support Payment Solutions Cloud Startup 80

Stax

OCTOBER 13, 2024

Comparison of both platforms will use the following criteria: Features Ease of use Integrations Mobile app Customer support Pricing User reviews Scalability Security Learn More What is The Major Difference Between Quicken and QuickBooks? You don’t need your login details to get in touch with the phone support team.

Payment Methods 88

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payments Payment Services 88

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 10, 2023

Zendesk AI automates customer support. Salesforce launched AI Cloud. Then draft an email to each prospect using data from their customer support tickets & save them in my drafts folder. That’s a level of automation rarely seen within the enterprise without custom coding.

Software Review 237

Software Review SaaS Systems Review Application Development 237

User Pilot

APRIL 21, 2024

Are you using in-app customer support to resolve your users’ issues faster and streamline the support process? By integrating customer support directly into your software app or website, you can: Boost user retention. Improve customer satisfaction. Book a demo to learn more.

Customer Support 98

Customer Support Software Review Systems Review Mobile 98

SaaStr

MARCH 17, 2021

Due to that convenience, departments and teams tend to seek out best-of-breed cloud applications, streamlining foundational and specialized functions through automation. The problem is that customer data exists across multiple applications and databases, including your CRM, ERP, reporting and analytics, and customer support.

Sales Hiring 319

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Marketplace as a Service 319

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2020

Products include CRMs, customer support, IT management, project management, HR and much more. Join members of their solution engineering team on December 9 at 9 AM PST for a workshop on Stop Losing Customers : 5 Steps to Creating Customers for Life with Freshworks. . Freshworks.

Scale 289

Scale Scaling Outsourced Development compliance 289

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2022

So this year has been rough on SaaS and Cloud stocks, with multiples down 75% from a year ago and the markets overall down 50% or more. 25% of the savings are coming from customer support. But the impact hasn’t been even. And those without both have suffered the most. Add e-commerce, payments and more has pushed it up.

Payments 279

Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods SaaS Payments 279

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2022

2,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue Leaders and VCs will join us for 2 days of tactical content, networking, and epic evening events when the Cloud comes to Barcelona. If you haven’t already, sign up here for tickets before we sell out. And with that, we’re excited to share that the SaaStr Europa Braindates platform is now open.

Scale 245

Scale Engineering Cloud Pricing 245

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

We’re on the cusp of a golden age in AI, and the lesson learned from Cloud was that Cloud sped up the pace of development by a lot. A Case Study: Gorgias Gorgias is a ticketing platform for customer support focused on e-commerce, primarily Shopify. Thinking back through Cloud and mobile, what can you learn from them?

Generative AI 289

Generative AI Outsourcing Services AI Software Review 289

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 6, 2022

Atlassian: Wayne Stewart, Head of CSS Cloud Growth – DevOps & IT. Wayne Stewart, Atlassian’s Head of CSS Cloud Growth – DevOps & IT, led the support team at incident management platform Opsgenie before it was acquired by Atlassian in 2018. In fact, it’s one of their core operating principles”.

Scale 230

Scale Scaling DevOps as a Service Communication 230

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2021

It typically includes things like cloud computing costs, professional services, customer success, and licensing. #3 To improve NDR, dedicate your efforts to cross-selling, upselling, an effective pricing infrastructure, a deep understanding of your customer segment, and top-notch customer support.

Metrics 271

Metrics Banking Benchmarks Investment 271

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Welcome to the latest installment of our “ What’s New ” series where SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with some of the top leaders and founders in SaaS and Cloud to discuss What’s New and what should be top of mind for fellow founders. More and more info is entering the Cloud, creating more exposure and risk.

AWS 276

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 276

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

Suddenly, the turning tide has become a tsunami; discussing the impact of COVID-19 on retail, Vaughan Fergusson, founder and director of the cloud-based point-of-sale and retail management software Vend , says, “In the space of nine months, we’ve had 10 years of industry acceleration.”. Redefining retail.

Payment Methods 240

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payment Services Scale 240

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

She watched the SaaS and Cloud wave ride and thought there’d be a huge pullback in markets this year. The easiest example is always customer support. Of course, it’s down from 2021, but there has been a tremendous amount of innovation in the last year, with a lot of that driven by AI and what’s possible.

AI 309

AI Generative AI Venture Capital SaaS 309

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 28, 2020

Resilient companies are built in the cloud. While older legacy companies have struggled to adapt to working at home, agile modernists like Aircall have taken advantage of total integration with the cloud to seamlessly make the switch. It could be a help desk if it’s for a customer support department.

Marketplace as a Service 186

Marketplace as a Service Cloud Government Retention 186

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

Ian MacLean is the Global Head of Customer Care at Aircall , the cloud-based phone system for modern business. With a mission to bring value to voice, Ian’s team of customer care specialists focus on building strong, lasting relationships with their customers, going far beyond just offering a plug-in phone system.

Customer Support 212

Customer Support Onboarding Cloud Customer Success 212

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 29, 2024

HG Insights has been writing market reports for years as the pioneer of tech adoption and market insights and is trusted by GTM leaders at the likes of Snowflake Five9 and Google Cloud to improve GTM efficiency. Read the free and ungated report.

Investment 110

Investment Technical Review Development Team Review Scale 110

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

LLMs are fantastic first-pass filters and phenomenal classifiers that extract insight or build machine learning features from unstructured data like customer support conversations or sales calls. 80% of data is unstructured within organizations. Looker did this within the context of a BI system.

Artificial Intelligence 228

Artificial Intelligence Trends Data Software Review 228

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 26, 2020

We are dedicated to supporting you and your customers at all times, and we are confident in our ability to continue delivering the highest levels of performance, availability, and security. AWS is the leading cloud provider in the industry, and we leverage their portfolio of globally redundant services to ensure Intercom runs reliably.

AWS 193

AWS Business Scale Cloud 193

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 10, 2020

From reactive to proactive customer support. That’s where customer success differs from customer support. Traditional customer support is reactive; something has to stop working before the customer reaches out with an issue. On the other hand, customer success is proactive. “You

Scale 224

Scale Customer Success Scaling B2B 224

SaaStr

JULY 2, 2024

Software businesses, for the most part, require heads to grow a business through sales reps or customer support. You can see the word cloud of different terms from the 2023 YC batch, and we’ll likely see more over the years as these businesses mature. Not having those people in place also leads to profitability.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital Management Scale AI 297

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 25, 2024

If it wasn’t clear before, AI is the single biggest revenue driver in cloud. ” Much of the AI spend is at the enterprise, where a 50% reduction in customer support cost or a 75% increase in engineering capacity filters billions to the bottom line. Microsoft’s Azure is winning share directly from Amazon.

Azure 213

Azure AI Search Marketing ChatGPT 213

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 12, 2018

Render : Render is a new cloud provider. Plus, they have terrific customer support. Initially, I used Jekyll, but now I’m Hugo, which runs faster because it’s written in go instead of ruby. I moved because of the seamless deployment, free https certificates, and a lightning fast network.

Cloud 170

Cloud Customer Support Metrics Engagement 170

BetterCloud

JANUARY 15, 2025

When configurations often change, like in cloud productivity suites, risks grow. An incorrect setting, like excessive privileges to an end user, can expose vulnerabilities, leading to unauthorized access and data loss. Thus, there needs to be continuous monitoring, an immense task without automation. Cross-site scripting (XSS).

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Methods 52

SaaStock

JANUARY 25, 2019

Omie is a management platform in the cloud for small and midsized companies, bringing together ERP, Financial Services, Entrepreneur Education and a vibrant Marketplace for vertical 3rd party solutions, all combined in an easy to use environment. Its core product is AgentBot, which is an automated platform for omnichannel customer support.

SaaS Payments 257

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods Payments 257

Neil Patel

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

They offer a wide range of hosting options, plans at different price points, and phenomenal customer support. SiteGround also supports your WordPress website with their specifically designed features (which we’ll discuss below) and their 24/7 WordPress wizard customer support team. SiteGround: The Pros and Cons.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Systems Review Scale Cloud 140

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

Today, Veeva is at $45B Cloud juggernaut dominating pharma and life science Cloud applications. We’re building the industry cloud for life sciences, so our customers are people like Pfizer and Novartis, etc., We provide a variety of cloud solutions for them. that are making medicine to help improve life.

Sales Hiring 338

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Headcount 338

SaaStr

JUNE 17, 2023

Achieving these results though requires an organization-wide commitment towards continuous improvement across all aspects of operations, ” from product development to customer support, ” thus creating a culture that embraces efficiency at every level within the organization.”

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Scale Technical Review Software Review 270

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 27, 2022

Build context-relevant, action-oriented apps directly on top of Intercom with ease – whether you’re publicly integrating your service with ours, or you’re building for your own team’s private usage, our open API allows our customers and partners to build fully customizable integrations with other tools and services.

Enterprise 206

Enterprise Headcount Engineering Cloud 206

Neil Patel

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020

Customer Service. Customer support piggybacks on our last point, especially true if you’re on a fully managed plan. If your site crashes at 10:00 PM on Friday night, waiting to contact a customer support representative at 9:00 AM Monday morning isn’t going to cut it. What happens if something goes wrong?

Technical Review 145

Technical Review Systems Review Software Review Cloud 145

Neil Patel

SEPTEMBER 16, 2020

Generally speaking, there are two main ways to deploy a phone system for your business—cloud or on-premises. However, cloud systems and VoIP technology have been growing in popularity. If you don’t want your phone system tied to physical landlines, offices, and specific devices, then cloud deployment is definitely your best option.

Systems Review 145

Systems Review Business Software Review Technical Review 145

Frontegg

JUNE 9, 2025

Authentication as a Service (AaaS) is a cloud-based solution that provides authentication functions for users, applications, and devices. By leveraging cloud technologies, AaaS offers scalability and reliability, ensuring that authentication services can handle spikes in demand, such as during a mass login event or a new application rollout.

Outsourcing Services 52

Outsourcing Services Technical Review Outsourced Development Cybersecurity 52

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

While SmartKarrot’s UI is simple and easy to use, the lack of training content available is something customers still struggle with. Catalyst (recently acquired by Totango) Best for : Customer support teams looking to improve their revenue-generating strategies. Main features : Unified view of customer interactions.

Customer Success 105

Customer Success Enterprise Software Review Startup 105

Incredo

JUNE 25, 2019

With Slack’s basic plan you can create unlimited channels, share files and send messages but with paid plans, you will get customer support, full archive and much more. 3 Dropbox is a cloud storage provider and helps store and share your files. Freemium-to-paid conversion rate is commonly a figure around 2-5% !

SaaS 236

SaaS Pricing Software Review Acquisition 236

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 14, 2022

Welcome Declan Ivory, VP of Customer Support. Declan is joining us from Google where he was Director, Cloud Technical Support for EMEA. Prior to Google, Declan also held senior support roles with both Tableau Software and Amazon Web Services. Welcome, Laurie Borgen, VP of Digital Marketing.

Technical Support 130

Technical Support Leadership Acquisition Customer Support 130