The Angel VC
SEPTEMBER 29, 2012
I've been thinking about a "DOs and DON'Ts" article geared towards early-stage SaaS founders and upcoming SaaS founders for a little while now. I thought it would be a good idea to summarize what I've learned about SaaS in the last few years and put it into a format like this. Problem is, it's a very large topic, and if I try to make it as broad, deep and well-written as I'd like it to be I'll never do it.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 29, 2012
Any number of challenges can arise during a startup’s initial years. Some of these changes could be major and may require rethinking strategy. Competitors enter your target market. New products are released into your market which undercut yours. Customer acquisition costs rise dramatically. If faced with these questions, it’s hard to know where to begin or how to structure an analysis to reach an answer.
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Aber Law Firm
SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
Sixteen Ventures
SEPTEMBER 14, 2012
Hidden VNXe performance statistics « Henriwithani. EnterpriseAdmins.org » Blog Archive » Install VMware Tools in openfiler. CrashPlan packages for Synology NAS « PC LOAD LETTER.
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.
Practical Advice on SaaS marketing
SEPTEMBER 5, 2012
According to a business adage, you need to spend money to make money. According to a SaaS business adage, you need to spend a lot of money to make money. Workday recently made public its S-1 filing in advance of an initial public offering. The document reveals what it takes to succeed in a market dominated by Oracle and SAP. Specifically, it illustrates the need for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to spend money - lots of it - on customer acquisition.
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 25, 2012
Yesterday, I spoke at Columbia Business School. We had a conversation about the role of incubators and accelerators (or the moniker of your choice) within the startup ecosystem. Given the volume of first time entrepreneurs and the broad growth of interest in entrepreneurship, I think these programs are invaluable. To entrepreneurs, these programs offer up to seven value propositions, listed in order of importance, as I see it.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 23, 2012
Every investment requires a leap of faith, an emotional act that’s not pure reason, and that’s got to carry you through in the inevitable many months, sometimes years, of horrific bad stuff that comes with the company. And you’ve got to have that energy, that sustaining belief to carry you through, because if you don’t, then you regret having done it.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 20, 2012
We are in the heyday of SaaS. The conference spanned 20+ buildings, served 60,000+ attendees and was sponsored by more than 300 vendors. Free food everywhere. Skullcandy wireless headphone giveaways. DJs in every corner. Four square play areas on fake grass outside. It is one huge party. Benioff delivered a tremendous keynote. I wish I could speak in public with his confidence, control and passion.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 19, 2012
At a recent meeting, David Barrett, one of the founders of Expensify, drew this diagram when explaining his company’s structure. He has overlaid the core teams of a company with a conversion funnel. It’s brilliantly simple. As every SaaS startup transitions from development to growth, the company must supplement the engineering and product capability with sales, marketing and account management.
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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
SEPTEMBER 18, 2012
The throwaway line in pitches these days is “we’ll sell our data.” Most of the time, this notion is wrong. Data is the most valuable outcome of building a successful product. It’s the insight, the secret , the keys to the kingdom. Don’t sell the keys to the kingdom. Data provides economies of scale and insights used to develop huge barriers to entry and it should be kept within an organization.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 17, 2012
SMB SaaS companies cannot afford to pay for distribution. At 2 to 4% conversion to paid rates and $5 to $10 monthly subscription fees, the breakeven CPC for these products on search is $0.40. The average Google click costs three times this and the iOS average cost-per-install is more than twice as expensive. The most successful SMB SaaS companies (Zendesk, Expensify, Square) build communities to drive distribution.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 16, 2012
Culturally, we tend to associate leadership with extroversion and attach less importance to judgment, vision and mettle. We prize leaders who are eager talkers over those who have something to say. Must great leaders be gregarious? Susan Cain wrote an OpEd this weekend in the Times containing the quote above. In Silicon Valley, the culture seems very much to embrace the idea of introverted leadership.
The Angel VC
SEPTEMBER 15, 2012
If you've read my last blog post I still owe you a small PS. I mentioned that while I was writing the post I've learned two surprising things, so here goes. (Caveat: I usually try to provide some useful advice in my blog. What I'm going to write now doesn't have any practical value so feel free to skip it.) Number 1: Do you know where the term "grandfathering" comes from?
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Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 13, 2012
Last year, I set a goal of adding 100 followers each week starting at 2000. I crossed the 3500 follower mark on Twitter this week. I’ve fallen a bit behind that goal but I have a wonderful group of people who actively engage with me on Twitter who are interested in the same things I am. As I’ve been cultivating this audience and community, I kept asking myself a question: who are most of these followers?
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
When serving B2B customers, your pricing will be dictated by your customers' margins. The more money they make, the more they can pay for new technology. Most businesses fund new initiatives including marketing and technology projects from profits. The more profits a company generates the greater their willingness to pay for services and ultimately the larger the market size for a startup.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 10, 2012
“Facebook has built the cities, they’ve built the town squares”. Dave Morin , founder of Path. Is building a social network is like building a city? I watched Urbanize , a documentary describing urban design and the affordances cities must make to cultivate vibrant communities. The words of urban designers echoed many of the challenges faced by networks as they grow.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 9, 2012
It’s a common refrain that venture backed IPOs have struggled in the past decade. For a long time, I believed and wrote supporting arguments underscoring the idea that the principal causes of this decline were Sarbanes-Oxley costs, decreasing equity coverage and decimalization of exchanges. But that’s wrong. A paper published earlier this year uses statistics to debunk these hypotheses.
As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 6, 2012
There is a Branch called Do platforms need to give users a number to optimize? Most platforms do provide a number to optimize: Twitter followers, Facebook friends and so on. These metrics build liquidity in the platform as @satyap, @ev and @hunterwalk point out. But there isn’t just one type of social metric. There are three. It’s important to distinguish the types of metrics a community can provide for users to optimize, because the community will rally around the metrics the community provides
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 3, 2012
Over the weekend, I watched Page One, a documentary which chronicles the turmoil occurring within the New York Times in 2009 and 2010 when newspapers were going out of business all over the country. Many wondered if the Times would also file for bankruptcy. Three confluent factors spelled imminent demise for the newspaper: the Internet cannibalized subscription revenue, advertising dollars evaporated and news distribution was in upheaval on account of Wikileaks, Twitter, and blogs.
Aber Law Firm
SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
Aber Law Firm
SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
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Aber Law Firm
SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
Aber Law Firm
SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
Aber Law Firm
SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
Sixteen Ventures
SEPTEMBER 18, 2012
Using Microsoft Chart Controls to Report on vCenter Statistics « vscsiStats into the third dimension: Surface charts!
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.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 2, 2012
The most effective financing processes, like the most effective auctions, create scarcity. Of late, many founders have been triggering pre-emptive financing processes for their raises. This is my interpretation of their playbook. Strategy. First, founders build credibility with investors. This can be done in many ways like cultivating a long term relationship with a handful of VCs or in less direct ways like brand building through social media and blogging.
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