The Angel VC
NOVEMBER 30, 2015
Most fundraising decks contain a slide with a chart that looks roughly like this: Chart #1 Or this: Chart #2 I’ve also seen charts that look like this: Chart #3 Or this: Chart #4 Chart #3 and #4 are good for a LOL (or a “WTF!”, depending on your sense of humour), and fortunately we’re not getting too many of these (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, take another look at the charts).
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 16, 2015
Mark Roberge, the Chief Revenue Officer at Hubspot, has spent 20 years in startups. As he told me a few days ago, he has observed the lack of sales management and sales execution skills as one of the most consistent deficiencies limiting the potential of early stage SaaS companies. Sales execution deficiency manifests itself at roughly the same time as product market fit.
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Practical Advice on SaaS marketing
NOVEMBER 7, 2015
You’d think that as markets became more mature and people already understood what your solution does, it would be easier to promote and sell. Not exactly. It's true that you don’t need to do as much missionary work, educating prospective customers on the basics. Most of them have read enough or seen enough from others in their industry to know what your kind of solution can do.
Chaotic Flow
NOVEMBER 17, 2015
When your SaaS business is well aligned, your SaaS customers consistently take positive actions that lead to positive business outcomes: they try, they buy, they upgrade and they refer you to a friend. When you are poorly aligned, your SaaS customers consistently take negative actions that lead to negative business outcomes: they bounce, they negotiate, they complain, and they churn.
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When test coverage falls behind release velocity, quality suffers, and your team feels the consequences. This guide outlines when it makes sense to outsource quality assurance (QA), the risks to watch for, and how to scale testing without increasing headcount or slowing down engineering. You will learn how leading teams are leveraging external QA partners to expand coverage, enhance defect detection, and remain aligned with CI/CD timelines.
CloseSaaS
NOVEMBER 30, 2015
Your software product is up for renewal. You know it’s a great fit for the company, but the administrator responsible for your software seems uninspired.
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
OnStartups
NOVEMBER 24, 2015
I'm going to tell you a secret. I have a very simple, 4-word strategic plan (devised it a few years ago). Here it is. Do fewer things, better. This has made my life -- and my work, dramatically better. Here's how I execute on my strategic plan: 1. Decide on what matters the most. 2. Say no to everything else. 3. When something falls in the gray area, re-read #2.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 9, 2015
Founded in 2002, the Australian software maker Atlassian is an exceptional company in many regards. But foremost, Atlassian is one of the best examples of flywheel SaaS companies yet. Atlassian counts 1600 employees and sells five products JIRA (bug tracking software), Confluence (project management), HipChat (internal chat/collaboration), BitBucket (code repository) and JIRA Service Desk (help desk software.
Aber Law Firm
NOVEMBER 4, 2015
I have always thought that disclaimers were good things to add to SaaS agreements, but this very recent case demonstrates that they really can make a difference in a legal dispute. By the way, a disclaimer is a statement regarding things you are not liable for. Example , if you provide a medical software service, it is a good idea to state that you are not providing medical advice, and that the doctors are solely responsible for providing medical advice.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 18, 2015
Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. Pete was a Google Associate Product Manager for AdSense and launched Google App Engine. Then he joined his co-founder, Dan Siroker, also an APM at Google to found three companies, the last of which is Optimizely. As Pete shared with us, the idea of Optimizely was borne from a need Dan saw when managing the teams to build Obama’s fundraising websites during his first campaign.
Speaker: Tamara Fingerlin, Developer Advocate
Apache Airflow® 3.0, the most anticipated Airflow release yet, officially launched this April. As the de facto standard for data orchestration, Airflow is trusted by over 77,000 organizations to power everything from advanced analytics to production AI and MLOps. With the 3.0 release, the top-requested features from the community were delivered, including a revamped UI for easier navigation, stronger security, and greater flexibility to run tasks anywhere at any time.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 11, 2015
As the temperament of the fundraising market shifts, particularly in the later stages, the question of how much a startup should burn will become increasingly important. We’re living in a historic period of very inexpensive venture capital. These cheap dollars have fueled spectacular companies with record-setting growth rates. In such an environment, growth at almost any cost is handsomely rewarded.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 2, 2015
What is the optimal quick ratio for your SaaS startup? Is it 4? Quick Ratio = (New MRR + Expansion MRR) /. (Churned MRR + Contraction MRR). The quick ratio measures a SaaS company’s growth efficiency. The formula for quick ratio is above. It’s the new monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in a month plus the expansion MRR divided by the sum of the churned MRR and the contraction MRR.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 1, 2015
Last week, a friend asked me what I thought the future of software would be. At some point, all the workflow processes that still conducted on paper and pencil will be digitized, all of the tasks completed in Excel will be optimized, and the majority of limitations of traditional software will be overcome. It’s not to say that software innovation in its current form will continue to exist for decades, but what is the fundamental shift that resets the ecosystem like the cloud did in the ear
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 30, 2015
Just 25 months ago, Aileen Lee coined the term unicorn in her post Welcome to the Unicorn Club and last week the Economist declared these Unicorns “ Gored.” Over the span of those two years, the Unicorn press cycle has swung from euphoric apotheosis to bleak nadir. The rise and fall of unicorns in the press isn’t a unique phenomenon.
Speaker: Alex Salazar, CEO & Co-Founder @ Arcade | Nate Barbettini, Founding Engineer @ Arcade | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO @ Aggregage
There’s a lot of noise surrounding the ability of AI agents to connect to your tools, systems and data. But building an AI application into a reliable, secure workflow agent isn’t as simple as plugging in an API. As an engineering leader, it can be challenging to make sense of this evolving landscape, but agent tooling provides such high value that it’s critical we figure out how to move forward.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 29, 2015
In 2015, startups benefitted from a vibrant fund raising market. In 2016, I believe they will enjoy a very active acquisition environment. The roughly 60 or so publicly traded software companies hold more than $380B in cash and short term investments on their balance sheets. Though Microsoft, Google, Cisco and Oracle possess 75% of that cash, 14 other companies have cash reserves of greater than $500M.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 23, 2015
It’s the end of the year, time for performance reviews, self-reflection, and planning for next year. In addition to preparing our goals for our teams and our businesses, we should prepare goals for ourselves. Oftentimes, it’s easy to let the company’s ambitions drive our OKRs. But there’s something more to consider. In 1999, Peter Drucker, the greatest management thinker of the twentieth century, wrote short book called Managing Oneself.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 22, 2015
On December 2, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Maia Josebachvilli , VP of Strategy and People at Greenhouse, a fast growing recruiting software company. Before Greenhouse, Maia founded Urban Escapes, a DC-based startup she sold to LivingSocial. Maia is especially well known for her thought leadership in developing best in class recruiting metrics.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 14, 2015
In 76 years, the British cycling team have recorded only one gold medal. In 2002, pushed by new head coach named Sir Dave Brailsford, the team implemented philosophy of continuous incremental improvement. And the results were astounding. In the last two Summer Olympics, the British cycling team has won seven of a possible 10 gold medals at each event, a remarkable transformation.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 8, 2015
In the last 22 months, there have been 4 $1B+ software IPOs and 3 $1B+ software acquisitions. But compared to 2014, 2015 was a meager year for startups looking to go public or be acquired. The chart above plots the M&A activity over this period. The M&A market halved in activity. In 2014, $11B of disclosed M&A occurred. I’m excluding take-private transactions of public companies like SAP/Concur, Bain/BlueCoat, Oracle/Responsys, etc.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 5, 2015
On November 18, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Pete Koomen, Co-Founder and CTO of Optimizely, the incredibly fast growing AB testing and personalization company Pete founded with Dan Siroker. Numbering more than 400 people, Optimizely has built an amazing business since 2009, serving thousands of customers. Before Optimizely, Pete was a product manager at Google building Google App Engine which grew to support 150,000 developers.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 4, 2015
Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted go-to-market guru Kenny van Zant. Kenny is a serial entrepreneur started his career as founder and COO at BroadJump, a broadband software company that grew to $100M in bookings. He was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002. After BroadJump, Kenny built the go to market organization at Solarwinds, a $4B market cap infrastructure software company, and Asana, a fast-growing productivity company, both of which exemplify a unique go-to-mar
CloseSaaS
NOVEMBER 29, 2015
We're happy to announce a new integration for our sales CRM, this time with LeadFuze. LeadFuze is B2B lead generation software that allows you to search for prospects and automatically find their emails, domains, and social media profiles.
Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments
Most integrated payments providers share a percent of the payment revenue with their software partners. But, oftentimes, that revenue share is only a fraction of the true income potential software providers can realize. If you want to maximize income opportunities from your payments program, check out Wind River Payments’ webinar-on-demand.
CloseSaaS
NOVEMBER 19, 2015
When you make mistakes in sales, your propsects likely won't tell you. Instead, they'll let their money do the talking—and close the deal with a competitor. You don't want this to happen and neither do we.
CloseSaaS
NOVEMBER 17, 2015
Like most SaaS businesses, you offer a free trial for your product. Through the trial, you've done your best to drive customer engagement.
CloseSaaS
NOVEMBER 12, 2015
Want to learn how to fill your sales pipeline with qualified B2B leads, set appointments and close deals? Here's the full recording of our 1 hour B2B cold email course—Steli shares some of his best tips and strategies on using emails to make sales.
CloseSaaS
NOVEMBER 10, 2015
You’ve got a great self-serve SaaS product. You have leads coming through your funnel, signing up for a trial and upgrading—without you having to lift a finger.
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For SaaS businesses, improving retention is one of the easiest and most effective ways to drive revenue and profits. With a clear link between failed payments and customer churn, having a robust failed payment recovery solution isn’t optional—it’s essential. Achieving your retention goals starts with the right solution.
CloseSaaS
NOVEMBER 9, 2015
According to founder Jay Gibb (@circuitfive [[link] CloudSponge [[link] is a SaaS business responsible for “connecting the world’s address books and creating a single point of integration.” Ever been on a content-sharing site and had to manually input all your friends’ email addresses?
CloseSaaS
NOVEMBER 2, 2015
Ever wanted to get some one-on-one sales coaching by Steli?
CloseSaaS
NOVEMBER 1, 2015
In case you’ve missed them or are in serious need of sales motivation quotes, here are all 31 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!
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