Chaotic Flow
APRIL 8, 2014
We are witnessing a dramatic change in the way SaaS businesses are managed. While SaaS financial metrics , such as recurring revenue, acquisition cost, service cost, churn, growth and lifetime value have dramatically increased our understanding of the economics of SaaS businesses, they have proven inadequate for managing them. As useful as they may be, SaaS financial metrics look at the past, not the future.
Practical Advice on SaaS marketing
APRIL 14, 2014
"Eighty percent of success is showing up." — Woody Allen. For most companies, buying a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to address a critical business need isn't a decision they take lightly. Evaluating a solution to support HR, CRM, finance, marketing, or any other important part of the business takes a good amount of deliberation. It could involve a demo or a trial.
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Tom Tunguz
APRIL 30, 2014
What a difference three weeks make! Since I wrote “ The Correction in SaaS Company Valuations ”, SaaS company valuations have continued to fall. As a basket, SaaS companies have fallen 33% from their highs (median), wiping all the gains for the last year. To make that point more explicit, below I’ve charted the total value of public SaaS companies over the last ten months.
CloseSaaS
APRIL 28, 2014
I was talking to a good friend of mine who founded a very successful SaaS (Software as a Service) startup a few years ago and is currently considering a major new direction in their product.
Speaker: Timothy Chan, PhD., Head of Data Science
Are you ready to move beyond the basics and take a deep dive into the cutting-edge techniques that are reshaping the landscape of experimentation? 🌐 From Sequential Testing to Multi-Armed Bandits, Switchback Experiments to Stratified Sampling, Timothy Chan, Data Science Lead, is here to unravel the mysteries of these powerful methodologies that are revolutionizing how we approach testing.
Aber Law Firm
APRIL 15, 2014
What to Know About the ‘Combination Exception’ to Infringement Indemnities. As a software licensing attorney I run into the issue of infringement indemnities all the time. These risk shifting contractual clauses can be very confusing for clients, so I thought I would explain (with a real live case and a graphic) what is called the ‘combination claim exception.’ Contractual indemnities are in essence insurance policies , and the customer is asking for insurance if your software
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 27, 2014
The chart above compares the contribution of two hypothetical inside sales people with $400,000 quotas to an early-stage startup’s finances. In this case, contribution is the 18 month revenue of sold customers tallied cumulatively minus the salary costs of $100k annualized of the sales person. I’ve modeled a six month linear ramp for the sales person to reach 100% of quota.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 22, 2014
One of the key metrics that I don’t think gets enough notice when reviewing the health of a SaaS business is revenue-at-risk or RaR. For SaaS businesses with quarterly or annual contracts, each month some subset of the customer base’s contracts must be renewed. The RaR is the sum of the revenue from these customers in a given month or quarter.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 20, 2014
Pricing is one of the hardest things for startups to get right because there is no universal and constant price optimum. As a SaaS startup’s product evolves and offers more features, the product’s price points should increase. As a sales team or marketing team engages different customer segments, price points may vary wildly. The contract for a F500 should have very different pricing than a startup , because of the stark contrast in the different companies’ willingness to pay a
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 16, 2014
Tien Tzuo, the founder and CEO of Zuora* and former CSO/CMO at Salesforce, knows SaaS businesses better than most. So when he pens an opinion about the subscription economy, a term which I believe he coined, I read it with great interest. Yesterday, Tien wrote “These Numbers Show That Box CEO Aaron Levie Is A Genius” , explaining Box’s business and growth in great detail.
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Explore how integrated payment strategies impact investor and buyer evaluations. Payments are more than a feature — they’re a key to long-term success and market differentiation. They help SaaS companies offer seamless user experiences and efficient operations. Investors and strategic buyers assess these integrated payment strategies as a measure of a company's growth potential and sustainability.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 15, 2014
When the meeting first appeared on my calendar, I incredulous at the idea of a management coach. “A business shrink who would sap another hour from my frenetic day,” I thought. I was a few months into being a product manager at Google and stressed because I was in over my head. Most difficult of all, I lacked any type of formal authority.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 14, 2014
Last week, we proved SaaS startups are raising more than they have in the past and newer SaaS companies seem to be generating more revenue per dollar invested. But do newer SaaS companies actually spend less on sales and engineering than their older counterparts? In fact, the 2014 cohort of public SaaS companies spend more on sales & marketing and engineering than previous IPO cohorts.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 8, 2014
If you visit Yahoo Finance today, type in the ticker of every SaaS stock, copy and paste the image into a document, you might create a chart that looks like the one above. A cursory glance at the plunging lines in most of these names might send you into a panic, only to tweet in alarm that the bottom is falling out of the SaaS market. Chicken little.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 7, 2014
I’ve been following Casey Johnston’s journey on Ars Technica to switch keyboard layouts from the ubiquitous Qwerty layout to the Dvorak layout with great interest and empathy. ( part 1 and part2 ). About six years ago, I went through the same process to learn Dvorak. It took me five tries to succeed. Judging by the volume and passion of the comments in that series, keyboard layouts are a topic many people are pretty passionate about.
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Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 3, 2014
Last week, we analyzed the fund raising history of billion dollar SaaS companies and determined SaaS startups are raising nearly twice as much capital as 16 years ago before going public. Given that trend, I wondered if there is there any truth to the idea that startups today require less capital than before to succeed. To answer that question, I’ve taken the same basket of public SaaS companies and computed a revenue-on-invested-capital (ROIC) across the four 4-year IPO cohorts from 1998-
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 2, 2014
One of the cloud’s great promise has been cost-reduction and for a while, we’ve chanted a mantra that startups require less capital than before to get started and ultimately succeed. As the number of publicly traded SaaS companies has grown with time, it’s possible today to examine whether those statements are proven in the data, at least for those 41 publicly traded companies.
CloseSaaS
APRIL 21, 2014
Entrepreneurs often struggle when they start doing cold calls. They hate calling others to drum up business and they're not good at it either. Their approach is too timid and they give up too soon when they encounter resistance. They don't manage objections well.
Aber Law Firm
APRIL 15, 2014
What to Know About the ‘Combination Exception’ to Infringement Indemnities. As a software licensing attorney I run into the issue of infringement indemnities all the time. These risk shifting contractual clauses can be very confusing for clients, so I thought I would explain (with a real live case and a graphic) what is called the ‘combination claim exception.’ Contractual indemnities are in essence insurance policies , and the customer is asking for insurance if your software
As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.
CloseSaaS
APRIL 10, 2014
If you've ever tried to print a page from the web version of Close you've undoubtedly run into issues. Today we added a print stylesheet so that printing anything from Close – such as a list of your Opportunities or a list of Leads – just got a lot better.
CloseSaaS
APRIL 9, 2014
I recently spoke at Alchemist Accelerator (video of the talk coming soon). Afterwards, a founder approached me with a specific challenge: they had a highly technical product and no customers yet.
Aber Law Firm
APRIL 4, 2014
What to remember about Saas Reseller Agreement and SaaS OEM Agreement Models! There are essentially 3 different SaaS channel models: referral, reseller and OEM, which are documented in a referral agreement, SaaS reseller agreement and SaaS oem agreement. I discuss these three reseller models a lot with clients, so I thought this topic deserved a brief outline of the differences between the models (here is another post on the types of SaaS reseller agreement models ).
Aber Law Firm
APRIL 4, 2014
. What to remember about Saas Reseller Agreement and SaaS OEM Agreement Models! There are essentially 3 different SaaS channel models: referral, reseller and OEM, which are documented in a referral agreement, SaaS reseller agreement and SaaS oem agreement. I discuss these three reseller models a lot with clients, so I thought this topic deserved a brief outline of the differences between the models (here is another post on the types of SaaS reseller agreement models ).
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CloseSaaS
APRIL 2, 2014
If your startup is selling to the enterprise, always make sure to identify and understand all the stakeholders involved in the deal.As a founder of a technology company, you might find yourself faced with a new challenge: breaking into enterprise sales.
CloseSaaS
APRIL 1, 2014
We're happy to announce that we've launched a new version of the Opportunities page in Close. This page—now with a better layout and filters—is designed to help you see which deals are in your current pipeline, as well as report on past won/lost deals.
CloseSaaS
APRIL 13, 2014
“Do you know the best thing about startups?” - “What?” - “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.
CloseSaaS
APRIL 5, 2014
In the spirit of being as open as possible and giving you complete freedom over your own data, we improved the exporting capabilities of Close.
Speaker: John Mansour - President, Product Management University
You know that sinking feeling. You’ve come up with a winning product strategy, everyone’s on board and energized, and you’re halfway down the path to execution only to have it submarined by something someone convinced your leadership was more strategic! It’s a scenario that’s all too familiar, and it exemplifies one of the biggest struggles with individual product strategies.
Aber Law Firm
APRIL 15, 2014
What to Know About the ‘Combination Exception’ to Infringement Indemnities. As a software licensing attorney I run into the issue of infringement indemnities all the time. These risk shifting contractual clauses can be very confusing for clients, so I thought I would explain (with a real live case and a graphic) what is called the ‘combination claim exception.’ Contractual indemnities are in essence insurance policies , and the customer is asking for insurance if your software
Aber Law Firm
APRIL 15, 2014
What to Know About the ‘Combination Exception’ to Infringement Indemnities. As a software licensing attorney I run into the issue of infringement indemnities all the time. These risk shifting contractual clauses can be very confusing for clients, so I thought I would explain (with a real live case and a graphic) what is called the ‘combination claim exception.’ Contractual indemnities are in essence insurance policies , and the customer is asking for insurance if your software
Aber Law Firm
APRIL 15, 2014
What to Know About the ‘Combination Exception’ to Infringement Indemnities. As a software licensing attorney I run into the issue of infringement indemnities all the time. These risk shifting contractual clauses can be very confusing for clients, so I thought I would explain (with a real live case and a graphic) what is called the ‘combination claim exception.’ Contractual indemnities are in essence insurance policies , and the customer is asking for insurance if your software
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