The Angel VC

APRIL 6, 2019

Back in 2014, I wrote a post titled “Five ways to build a $100 million business”. If you haven’t seen it yet, the central idea of the article was to look at how many customers you need, for a given ARPA, to get to $100 million in annual revenue and what this might mean for your sales and marketing strategy. That post went kind of viral, which led us to create a follow-up piece , an infographic , a poster (which you can order here), and a PlayPlay video.

SaaS 277

SaaS Scale Business SMB 277

ProfitWell

APRIL 10, 2019

On this episode of the ProfitWell Report, David Bj örk , Co-Founder and CEO of Webforum , wants to know the possibility of every company going freemium in the future. To answer the question, we studied a few thousand SaaS and subscription companies, as well as the willingness to pay data from over fifty thousand buyers. **We will only be posting a few of these episodes on the blog, which means if you want to make sure you don't miss an episode of this series you must subscribe separately below *

B2C 92

B2C Retention Acquisition Subscription 92

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 29, 2019

Slack has transformed the way we work. By replacing email with beautiful and simple internal chat, Slack has productized productivity. Founded as a gaming company called Tiny Speck in 2009, the company’s initial product, Glitch, didn’t catch on as expected. So the business pivoted to commercialize an internal tool - a S earchable L og of A ll C onversation and K nowledge, Slack.

Benchmarks 276

Benchmarks Metrics Scale Revenue 276

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2019

It’s never remotely easy until you have a steady stream of leads and a decent 1.0 revenue team. But here are some things that can help in the early days: Always hire at least 2 reps to start. If you just hire 1, you won’t really know what is working, and not working, and why. Don’t expect a sales magician. You ideally need to close the first 10–20 customers yourself, and then hire sales folks to help.

Scale 194

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling SaaS 194

Advertisement

Discover how top SaaS companies are earning up to $700k + and zero upfront cost with Usio Integrated Payments.

Payments

The Daily Egg

APRIL 3, 2019

You have a formidable task ahead of you. How can you make it so that all of your prospective customers really, really hate your website and in turn, despise your company? Why would you want to do that? Isn’t there a competition going on? When you look on the internet, it sure seems like it. […] The post 6 Ways to Make Your Prospects HATE Your Website appeared first on The Daily Egg.

User Experience 279

User Experience 279

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 15, 2019

One of the product design principles we have at Intercom is “What you ship is what matters.” But what do you ship? It’s a fundamental question that every product designer needs to ask themselves. Click to enlarge. There are three potential answers: “I ship design.”. “I ship a product.”. “I ship a business outcome.”. Designers who say that they ship design might often feel frustrated.

Engineering 200

Engineering Management Marketing Business 200

Incredo

APRIL 29, 2019

Having been involved in a number of SaaS companies over the last decade, we’ve noticed a series of recurring trends where growth is concerned. We recently attended SaaStr Annual with 14,000 other SaaS executives to discuss the latest trends in SaaS. In this piece we go through some of the prevailing trends and ideas within the SaaS industry in 2019, which small, medium and large SaaS companies alike should consider as key focus areas this year.

Trends 154

Trends SaaS Strategy Marketing 154

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 4, 2019

Why does growth rate matter so much? Why does growth rate influence valuation so much? I was reading a book recently written by a hedge fund manager who discussed valuation frameworks. His explanation was one of the best I’ve come across. If your business is growing at 100% next year, then 90% the year after, and then about 80% the year after, the business will have grown by 3.4x.

Enterprise 279

Enterprise Revenue Management Business 279

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2019

With Slack’s IPO data and financials finally public, what is left to know about the app we all use and have been reading about for years? What’s interesting to know about Slack … that we didn’t already know? ??. Slack is obviously a rocketship going from $0 to ~$600m+ ARR (!) in 5 years (OMG), growing 80%+ Year-over-Year, and more than 1 billion messages sent a week (!).

Scale 275

Scale Venture Capital SMB Enterprise 275

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.

Innovation

The Daily Egg

APRIL 17, 2019

Oh, that feeling when you see your latest campaign was a big success! Lots of new customers acquired, products sold, and sales revenue made… Now, let’s pause for a moment and take a look at your historical data. What’s the share of first-time buyers who’ve bought from you only once? I’m going to take a […] The post From First-Time Buyer To Loyal Customer: Ecommerce Email 101 appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Revenue 278

Revenue Data Sales Marketing 278

Predictable Revenue

APRIL 4, 2019

On this edition of The Predictable Revenue Podcast, co-host Collin Stewart welcomes Scott Barker, Head Of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. The post Prospecting 101: Sales Hacker’s Scott Barker shares his sales tips and tricks from the trenches appeared first on Predictable Revenue - The Outbound Success Company. We help companies grow faster with Outbound Sales.

Sales 190

Sales Revenue 190

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 8, 2019

Whenever I conduct research with customers on how they onboard users to their product, I’m always fascinated by how often the term “aha” moment comes up. Customers consistently say they want their users to get to their product’s “aha” moment, the interaction that fills their users with a feeling of delight and reveals the true value of the product to them.

Onboarding 188

Onboarding User Experience Metrics Retention 188

InsightSquared

APRIL 3, 2019

Our biases can make us do silly things. Our biases can also be leveraged to influence our decision-making. The best sales professionals and marketers understand how important it is to study human psychology and use that knowledge to create stories, messages and strategies that drive results. Psychological or cognitive biases are subjective perceptions that we fall back on as we process information.

Sales 111

Sales Pricing Advertising Benchmarks 111

Advertisement

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.

Payments

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 1, 2019

In 2014, I published a post called Do Startup Require Less Capital to Succeed than 10 Years Ago ? It’s been five years and time to see how things have changed. In the analysis, I created a metric, the return on invested capital (ROIC). ROIC is the number of revenue dollars that one venture dollar bought. In other words, at IPO, how much revenue per VC dollar did the company generate.

Startup 279

Startup Software Review SaaS Acquisition 279

SaaStr

APRIL 6, 2019

Much has been written about Zoom’s impressive financials as it prepared to IPO, growing > 100% at $425m+ in ARR! But as part of our new 5 Interesting Learnings series, I thought it might be helpful to go beyond the top line growth and pick out 5 learnings of particular interest to SaaStr founders: Zoom has a classic “Small-Medium-Large” customer distribution, currently about 20:50:30.

SMB 228

SMB Acquisition Scaling Engineering 228

The Daily Egg

APRIL 11, 2019

SMS marketing is gaining more and more traction as a way to communicate important updates to customers about their orders, keep shoppers engaged, and move them through the sales funnel. Not only is SMS quick and easy to set up, but statistics suggest customers prefer text updates over email. Text marketing creates a branded ecosystem […] The post Want 98% Open Rates?

Sales Funnel 276

Sales Funnel Marketing Communication Branding 276

Predictable Revenue

APRIL 8, 2019

This is an excerpt from the 2nd edition of 'From Impossible To Inevitable' by Aaron Ross. The post Build an Outbound Program right the first time appeared first on Predictable Revenue - The Outbound Success Company. We help companies grow faster with Outbound Sales.

Revenue 145

Revenue Sales 145

Advertisement

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.

Revenue

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 16, 2019

As your sales organization scales up, there’s one function that becomes crucial to your ability to drive revenue efficiently – sales operations. Until Xerox created the first team in the 1970s, sales operations didn’t exist. Fifty years later, it’s still one of the hardest functions to nail. On the surface, their mission is simple: enable the sales organization to run better and faster.

Scale 177

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 177

Neil Patel

APRIL 30, 2019

There’s a formula to SEO and as long as you follow it, you’ll get rankings. So, what’s this formula? Well, you write amazing content, optimize your code, create a great user experience, and you mix in some backlinks. Sounds simple, right? Well, the formula isn’t too complicated, but it does require hard work and patience. Now what makes SEO challenging isn’t the formula, or the time, or the patience.

Software Review 111

Software Review Compensation User Experience Revenue 111

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 8, 2019

In a world where there are no secrets, where innovations are quickly imitated or become obsolete, the theory of competitive advantage may have had its day. Realistically, ask yourself, If all your competitors gave their strategic plans to each other, would it really make a difference? In 1986, Amar Bhide wrote “ Hustle as Strategy ” for the Harvard Business Review.

Strategy 236

Strategy Venture Capital Banking Software Review 236

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to find a great VP of Sales, what the risks are, what risks to take, etc. We’ve also summarized a few critical factors that will tell you, within 30 days, if your VP of Sales won’t work out. This post was pretty controversial originally, but I think most folks now agree with its conclusions: If Your VP Sales Isn’t Going to Work Out — You’ll Know in 30 Days.

Sales Hiring 197

Sales Hiring Sales Retention Revenue 197

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

Pricing

The Daily Egg

APRIL 30, 2019

Welcome to Episode 2 of Quick Hits CRO Tips! In this video resource series, we share advice, best practices, and strategies for how to boost your conversions, increase your revenue, and turn your visitors into customers, all in 2 minutes or less. One piece of feedback we hear from a lot of customers about why […] The post Quick Hits CRO Tips Episode 2: How to Use Google Analytics with Visitor Recordings appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Strategy 274

Strategy Revenue 274

Predictable Revenue

APRIL 22, 2019

Check out this list of Collin Stewart's favorite books. The post Collin’s 2018 Reading List appeared first on Predictable Revenue - The Outbound Success Company. We help companies grow faster with Outbound Sales.

Revenue 133

Revenue Sales B2B 133

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 22, 2019

Some think customers will see the advent of AI as a welcome way to get self-help quickly and get back to their task. Others worry that AI will worsen the customer experience as more and more companies use it to save costs. For Rick Nucci, customers will win as long as AI empowers employees to do more of what they do best – that is, dealing empathetically with other humans – while skipping tedious busywork that could be handled just as well by a bot.

Scale 156

Scale Scaling AI Search Underperforming Technical Team 156

Neil Patel

APRIL 17, 2019

Please note that you may have to clear your browser cache to see the latest version of Ubersuggest. Do you want to know how many people are linking to you? Do you want to find more link opportunities? Well, I created a free backlink tool that will allow you to do that (and much more). I decided to call it Backlinks. And, as you may have guessed, I integrated it within Ubersuggest so that way you can do more within one simple tool.

Data 112

Data 112

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.

Generative AI

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 14, 2019

Since writing The AI Agency: A Novel GTM for Machine Learning Startups , I’ve been meeting many companies who operate this way. These startups use machine learning to disrupt an industry traditionally dominated by agencies: law, accounting, recruiting, translation, debt collection, marketing…the list is long. I will publish a landscape soon on the area.

AI 192

AI Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Machine Learning 192

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2019

The best start-up CEOs are: driven. unhappy if they are not building. truly enjoy doing great things with their team. are grateful for those on the journey with them. want very happy employees. incredibly proud of the crazy things everyone has pulled off. are usually pretty excited to get to work on Monday. but … happy themselves? It’s just … a bit too hard for “happy”.

Startup 190

Startup Engagement 190

The Daily Egg

APRIL 1, 2019

Marketing for the greater good gives me the warm fuzzies, so today I’m very pleased to be running a homepage analysis for Ele and Phant — an ecommerce company that donates 30% of its profits to saving the elephants in Kenya. Before we dive in, I’m going to provide a little context. Here’s what their […] The post Converting More Customers For The Elephants: A Homepage Analysis appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Marketing 273

Marketing 273