Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 16, 2016
A senior SaaS executive once told me, “Reports sell software.” In a top down sale, that’s absolutely true. The CEO wants better predictability of bookings so she’ll buy a CRM tool to gather the data. Classically, software has been built for that mantra. First, a company buys a database. The sales people, marketers or customer care staff continue working as normal.
CloseSaaS
AUGUST 1, 2016
There’s no such thing as a perfect interview question. There’s no one question you can ask to figure out whether someone is the right candidate and will be amazing at sales.
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Aber Law Firm
AUGUST 8, 2016
We represent lots, literally 100s and 100s, of SaaS companies and there are a few nuggets of useful information that we want to share with other SaaS companies when they think about negotiating an enterprise SaaS agreement. Ok, here goes. Setting the Right Expectations. I find that setting the right expectation of what the customer is buying is the #1 issue in any SaaS enterprise agreement negotiation.
ReSci
AUGUST 24, 2016
In simple terms, feature engineering involves feeding knowledge into a Machine Learning model. As a refresher, a machine learning model is an algorithm that takes features as input and produces as output a prediction or classification. A feature itself is the item that…. The post Feature Engineering: A Closer Look, Part 1 [RS Labs] appeared first on ReSci.
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.
Saasler
AUGUST 22, 2016
Onboarding processes are critical to the success of SaaS companies. Check our first blog post of the series to see how high touch onboarding and integrations contribute to customer success. “40-60% of users who sign up for a free trial of your software or SaaS application will use it once and never come back…” – software entrepreneur Patrick McKenzie.
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 28, 2016
Jeff Wiss has managed demand generation and corporate marketing for some iconic software companies. MySQL, the most valuable open-source acquisition; Zendesk*, the $3B leader in customer support software; DataStax, The business commercializing Cassandra; and most recently Duo Security*, an Ann Arbor-based trusted access company that has some of the most sensational SaaS metrics I’ve ever seen.
CloseSaaS
AUGUST 22, 2016
How much do you know about your competitors? Most people spend a lot of time doing online research to find information about their competitors. Truth is, often that time is wasted.
Aber Law Firm
AUGUST 8, 2016
We represent lots, literally 100s and 100s, of SaaS companies and there are a few nuggets of useful information that we want to share with other SaaS companies when they think about negotiating an enterprise SaaS agreement. Ok, here goes. Setting the Right Expectations. I find that setting the right expectation of what the customer is buying is the #1 issue in any SaaS enterprise agreement negotiation.
ReSci
AUGUST 11, 2016
At Retention Science, we are committed on making machine learning and artificial intelligence more accessible and understandable. This blog introduces our process of evaluating the accuracy of two crucial predictive models, Customer Churn Prediction and Customer Future Value (CFV). These two predictions provide invaluable insights. The post Evaluating Machine Learning Predictions: Customer Churn & CLV [RS Labs] appeared first on ReSci.
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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.
Saasler
AUGUST 9, 2016
It takes a lot more than having some strategies for user acquisition in place to guarantee SaaS growth. In fact, the most critical stage in the funnel can easily be retention, not acquisition. The key to a successful retention plan is keeping customers satisfied and avoiding churn. Keep in mind that it’s easier and cheaper to retain a happy customer, than having to go out and find new ones.
Practical Advice on SaaS marketing
AUGUST 6, 2016
Here’s the easiest way to waste your marketing budget: spend money to promote your message… before you know what your message is. Until you’ve developed a compelling and consistent value proposition, there’s no sense in broadcasting anything out to the world. Unfortunately, I see this all the time: a beautifully designed website, a well-produced video, or a clever email campaign that doesn’t clearly convey the company’s message.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 2, 2016
Channel distribution represents one of the biggest and most important changes in customers acquisition for SMB SaaS startups in quite a while. Historically, channel distribution has been reserved for the most expensive software and hardware. IBM, Intel, Cisco and their kin generate more than 80% of their revenues through a universe of resellers and distributors.
CloseSaaS
AUGUST 16, 2016
We’re continuously working towards making Close a better platform for your sales team so that you can focus on closing deals, not doing busywork. Here are the latest developments.
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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.
Aber Law Firm
AUGUST 8, 2016
We represent lots, literally 100s and 100s, of SaaS companies and there are a few nuggets of useful information that we want to share with other SaaS companies when they think about negotiating an enterprise SaaS agreement. Ok, here goes. Setting the Right Expectations. I find that setting the right expectation of what the customer is buying is the #1 issue in any SaaS enterprise agreement negotiation.
ReSci
AUGUST 2, 2016
Pokemon Go has become a cultural phenomenon: “trainers” of all ages are using their smartphones to go on scavenger hunts around the world to find eclectic Pokemon creatures that are seemingly amongst us. They show up at our offices, local bars, landmarks, beaches, railroad tracks. The post What Marketers Can Learn From The Pokemon Go Hype appeared first on ReSci.
Saasler
AUGUST 1, 2016
Sooner or later, all SaaS companies come to the realization that in great measure, the success of their business depends on setting up an effective onboarding process. In fact, the initial interactions with an application, have been proven to determine the course of the overall user experience. In the words of Lincoln Murphy , chief customer evangelist at Gainsight: “The first in-app experience your customer has with your product sets the tone for your relationship, and if it’s confusing, overwh
Hacking Revenue
AUGUST 4, 2016
We don’t know how to code, yet we built and sold online businesses. We’re a business person and a product person who always wanted to learn how to program, but just never gave it enough effort (that’s what we like to think). We can put together a WordPress website and we have some fancy badges in CodeAcademy, but no CTO in his right mind will let either of us touch their production environment and/or keyboard.
As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 24, 2016
It’s no secret I believe speech is the next input mechanism. We are in the Voice-to-Text Era. I wrote in late 2014 that speech is the fastest user interface , and the newest speech recognition experiments confirm it. Andrew Ng, a luminary in the world of machine learning, and his teammates at Baidu, Stanford and University of Washington have developed Deep Speech 2 , a neural network based speech recognition system.
CloseSaaS
AUGUST 31, 2016
At Close, our CEO Steli Efti preaches on the power of the follow up, and our Success team lives by these words too. Here's how the Close Success team built a reputation as a trusted advisor for sales teams around the globe.
Aber Law Firm
AUGUST 8, 2016
We represent lots, literally 100s and 100s, of SaaS companies and there are a few nuggets of useful information that we want to share with other SaaS companies when they think about negotiating an enterprise SaaS agreement. Ok, here goes. Setting the Right Expectations. I find that setting the right expectation of what the customer is buying is the #1 issue in any SaaS enterprise agreement negotiation.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 23, 2016
Success has 1000 fathers and failure is an orphan. I heard this aphorism in my first year as a venture capitalist having forgotten it. There’s a lot of wisdom to it and I think it’s most applicable when interviewing. I remind myself of the same each time I speak with a candidate for a role. When I see a sterling resume, I know that I am susceptible to confirmation bias.
Advertiser: Data Robot
The buzz around generative AI shows no sign of abating in the foreseeable future. Enterprise interest in the technology is high, and the market is expected to gain momentum as organizations move from prototypes to actual project deployments. Ultimately, the market will demand an extensive ecosystem, and tools will need to streamline data and model utilization and management across multiple environments.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 21, 2016
I met an entrepreneur last week with an amazing command of technology history. He spoke about the way the Xerox Alto has influenced graphical design over the past forty years. I learned a lot. For this first computer’s monitor has a portrait orientation, not a landscape orientation? His knowledge of history provides him a huge competitive advantage because he understands why things have evolved a certain way and the assumptions that underpinned previous decisions.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 18, 2016
In February, public SaaS companies had fallen 57% from their highs. The enterprise value to forward revenue more than halved from 7.7x to 3.3x. This ostensibly random valuation correction has triggered a flurry of consolidation in software, with nearly $70B+ worth of exits year to date in 2016. Over the last six months, however, forward multiples have reverted to the mean.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 14, 2016
Sales teams are the tip of the spear for SaaS companies. They close accounts and book the revenue. Many sales teams often find themselves confronting the same issues. Mike Anello and Kane Hochster, two HBS students, researched this topic by surveying more than 30 VPs of Sales. The survey included both rising and seasoned leaders across a range of revenue ranges but with a concentration in earlier stage startups.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 3, 2016
When you’re selling a SaaS product to a potential customer, you have to convince them switching is worth the effort. And once you’ve sold the product, you have to do the opposite: convince the customer that switching to anything else isn’t worth it. In chemistry, there’s a notion of an activation energy. A Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius coined the term to describe the minimum amount of energy required to start a chemical reaction.
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.
CloseSaaS
AUGUST 24, 2016
Monroe Systems for Business has a legacy like few other companies. The inventor, manufacturer, and supplier of commercial calculators was founded in 1912 by Jay R. Monroe. Today, the 104-year-old company is a household name to accounting professionals.
CloseSaaS
AUGUST 18, 2016
Calling is a central part of your day. That’s why we work hard on improving the experience. We’ve updated the phone settings page to give you a better way of managing your phone numbers and give you more visibility and control over your numbers.
CloseSaaS
AUGUST 15, 2016
Arguments. Politics. Tension. Your salespeople hate each other. They hate their workplace. They want to see everyone else fail. Perhaps you say to yourself, “Maybe things will get better.” No.
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