December, 2015

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A simple tool to improve your 2016 planning

The Angel VC

In my last post I wrote about the problem with month-over-month growth rates. One of the issues I talked about was that when your revenue plan numbers are based on a constant m/m percentage growth figure (i.e. you're projecting to grow exponentially), your short-term objectives are likely too low relative to your longer-term goals. As an example, I showed a (fictional) SaaS startup that wants to grow from $1,000 in MRR to ~ $85,000 in MRR within one year.

Startup 173
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5 SaaS Marketing Myths

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

With 150,000+ people jamming into Dreamforce earlier this year, I think it’s fair to say that this "SaaS thing" is for real. Customers are definitely getting smarter about how to use software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, and vendors are getting smarter about how to build and sell them. But even so, a few persistent myths on how to market SaaS solutions still linger.

Marketing 124
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A Framework to Maximize Your Startup's Hiring Success

Tom Tunguz

After a startup attains product market fit and begins to exceed the first breaking point of the startup management structure around 10 employees, it’s time to codify the company’s values. The values of the company are the most concrete way for a business to determine whether candidates might make good employees. At two separate SaaS Office Hours recently, we heard similar stories from Maia at Greenhouse and Pete at Optimizely.

Startup 111
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30 sales motivation quotes for 30 days of November

CloseSaaS

In case you’ve missed them or are in serious need of sales motivation quotes, here are all 30 videos we published this month. Theoretically, since each video is less than a minute long, you could watch them in half an hour. Although we can’t guarantee what will happen to you if you do!

Sales 59
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How Investors & Strategic Buyers Evaluate Integrated Payment Strategies

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.

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The First Rule Of Disruption

OnStartups

Working on a startup? Have a 800 pound gorilla you're trying to disrupt? That's awesome. But here's a tip: Don't talk about disrupting them. The first rule of disruption is: You do not talk about disruption. Why is this so important? Why shouldn't you declare to the world (and the tech press) that you're going after the big kahuna? Doesn't the media love a great David and Goliath story?

More Trending

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Startup Best Practices 21 - Your Startup's Recruiting Scorecard

Tom Tunguz

Last night, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint welcomed Maia Josebachvilli , the VP of People and Strategy of Greenhouse. Maia is a thought leader in human resources. Specifically, she champions a metrics-based approach for developing world class recruiting teams. Because of her position, Maia has observed recruiting patterns in hundreds of companies, and has developed best practices for startups.

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Building the Machine - Organizational Design in Startups

Tom Tunguz

As a startup scales and surpasses its first organizational breaking point of 8 employees, it’s time to start thinking about organizational design. The strategy a startup chooses in their market should determine their organizational design. In the First Round Review profile of Paul Arnold , the Head of Operations at AppDirect, Paul shares the challenges the initial organizational structure created as the company grew 5x in less than a year.

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A Rich Library of User Onboarding Analysis

Tom Tunguz

When I was at Google, we worked with a user experience team frequently to help us design changes to the AdWords front end. After having reviewed our designs within our product team for weeks, we often thought the design was complete and foolproof. But we were consistently proven wrong by the UX team whose work surfaced face-slapping oversights. At UserOnboarding , Samuel Hulick has taken this approach with more than 40 different on-the-mark and a bit irreverent UX critiques of many top internet

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Is Now a Good Time to Start a Company?

Tom Tunguz

The fundraising markets have infused more cash into startups in 2015 than in any year since 2001. But, the venture backed IPO markets touched five year lows and whispers of a bubble have become a meme in the past six months. What’s really going on? And should that impact when founders start companies? No one can time the financial markets. If you can, you should be trading stocks, bonds and options and retiring very soon.

Startup 100
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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

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.

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Are You Present?

Tom Tunguz

Last week, I was chatting with an old friend who after I told her how busy and ragged I sometimes felt, she asked me, “Are you present?” To which I immediately replied, “At work?” And she laughed, and said, “I meant at home, but I have my answer!” The conversation reminded me of a man at Google named Chade-Meng Tan.

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Steady and Persistent Growth to $5.5B in Market Cap - The Ultimate Software Company

Tom Tunguz

The Ultimate Software Company is a $5.5B market cap provider of SaaS Human Capital Management software. Founded in 1996, the company initially sold licensed software and migrated to multi-tenant SaaS in 2002 with a product called UltiPro. Today, more than 82% of revenues are subscription dollars. The company serves the mid-market and enterprise customers with a broad software suite that includes Payroll, Human Resources Management Software (HRIS), Benefits Management, Time Clock and a Self Servi

Software 100
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Pricing for SaaS Enabled Marketplaces - When to Go Free

Tom Tunguz

SaaS Enabled Marketplaces employ elegant business models. They are verticalized SaaS companies that manage a marketplace to create winner-take-all market dynamics. SEMs can generate revenue in four ways: charge the buyer and/or supplier a software fee & charge the buyer and/or supplier a marketplace fee. In addition, a startup must determine what rake to charge.

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Enterprise sales for startups [FREE 1 hour crash course]

CloseSaaS

Want to sell to large organizations but don't know how to navigate the complex sales cycle? Closing enterprise deals can be a lucrative way of growing your SaaS business—or a long, treacherous process, leaving you with nothing to show for it.

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People, Passion & Perfection: The Key Ingredients for an Awesome Product

Need help launching innovative software quickly? Dive into "People, Passion, and Perfection" and unlock the secrets to building excellent products in the digital age. Fast-track your journey with Tech Accelerator: Agile and Cloud-Native for flexibility & scalability AI-powered innovation for faster results Quality at every step for a flawless user experience See real impact across industries: Healthcare: Empower patients and medical professionals with intuitive solutions Education: Transform cla

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3 steps to take the deal home (without a reference)

CloseSaaS

You’ve been on the phone with your prospects for a while, and your sales game is on fire. You’re pumped, and ready to seal the deal. Then they pop the question: “We’d like to get a sense of your business from customers similar to us. Can you provide some references for us?

Sales 52
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3 principles of killer SaaS pricing pages

CloseSaaS

You love your product—it’s been your baby from day one. You pour all your time, energy and money into building it. Sticking a price tag on this effort is harder in some ways: How do you put a number on all of your hard work and energy? How do you communicate enduring value with a dollar sign?

Pricing 52
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Customer development pitfalls that will sink your startup

CloseSaaS

Your product has a bit of traction, but you can already tell it’s not going to push your business to the heights you want to achieve. The feedback you get is positive but lukewarm—not enough to keep your business afloat.

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5 pieces of wisdom that will change the way you sell your SaaS

CloseSaaS

Some people will tell you the secret to driving SaaS sales is a great onboarding experience. Others might tell you that it’s all about customer success. Are they right? Well … yes and no.

SaaS 52
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Driving Growth, Customer Satisfaction, and Retention through Usage-Based Pricing

As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.

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The First Rule Of Disruption

OnStartups

Working on a startup? Have a 800 pound gorilla you're trying to disrupt? That's awesome. But here's a tip: Don't talk about disrupting them. The first rule of disruption is: You do not talk about disruption. Why is this so important? Why shouldn't you declare to the world (and the tech press) that you're going after the big kahuna? Doesn't the media love a great David and Goliath story?

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3 ways to keep customers coming back after the holidays are over

ReSci

Holidays are a good time to understand what your customers really value, and bring the same practices into the new year. Despite being trained for many years to go in-store on Black Friday, this year customers showed a clear preference for shopping online. Despite the success of eCommerce…. The post 3 ways to keep customers coming back after the holidays are over appeared first on ReSci.

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Thanksgiving Weekend Retail Recap

ReSci

Thanksgiving weekend still comprised the biggest shopping days of the year for 2015, but a closer look at this year’s data shows the tide is starting to turn. Black Friday as we know it is already dead; customers are going online…. The post Thanksgiving Weekend Retail Recap appeared first on ReSci.

Data 40
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How to build a local sales machine with Foursquare’s David Greenberger

CloseSaaS

The last field David Greenberger ever thought he would end up in was sales.

Sales 52
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Building User-Centric and Responsible Generative AI Products

Speaker: Shyvee Shi - Product Lead and Learning Instructor at LinkedIn

In the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence, Generative AI products stand at the cutting edge. These products, with their unique capabilities, bring fresh opportunities and challenges that demand a fresh approach to product management. This presentation unveils a comprehensive 7-step framework designed to navigate the complexities of developing, launching, and scaling Generative AI products.