September, 2018

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We’re Overthinking Seed Round Signaling Effects

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

There is much hand wringing in the startup ecosystem about various forms of signaling between the seed and A rounds. Conventional wisdom, and advice, abounds: entrepreneurs should never include a venture firm in their seed round because it’ll scare other VCs off from pursuing the A. After all, the “insider” VC has more information and.

Startup 538
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Access is the Scarcest Commodity in Startupland

Tom Tunguz

The SEC announced last week that it wants to find ways to let Main Street investors access stage private venture companies. This news item underscores an important trend that is reshaping the industry. Today in Startupland, startup access is the scarcest commodity. Everybody wants an allocation, an opportunity to invest in the very best companies. The SEC story highlights how much has changed in Startupland.

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Customer engagement guide: the what, why and how of effective messages

Intercom, Inc.

In the world of recurring revenue, SaaS companies realize they need engaged customers if they are to grow a healthy, sustainable business. This is where having a solid customer engagement strategy comes in. Remember those halcyon days when software was sold through licenses and you only had to win over each customer once to stay profitable? Those days are over.

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The Expectation of Winning

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

Everybody likes to win. And while you undoubtedly learn much about your skills, attributes and character from losses, there’s nothing quite like that sense of satisfaction when your team secures a hard earned victory. I’ve been fortunate, both as an individual contributor and as part of a team to have racked up some important wins (jobs, promotions, new business and awards), but in truth, there’s only been three periods where I’ve been part of teams where there’s been an expectation of winning.

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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Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business.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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Your value proposition: Don’t set it and forget it

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

If you’re marketing your SaaS solution without a compelling and consistent value proposition and messages, you’re doing something wrong. Without a value proposition – a crystal clear explanation of who should buy your solution, what problem it solves for them, and why they should buy it from you – you’re missing an essential foundation for all your marketing efforts.

More Trending

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Onboarding your first Sales Hire as an Entrepreneur

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

In today’s blogpost I would like to introduce my partner for Zero to 100, Stephanie (Schatz) Friedman. Stephanie has been an executive in 3 successful startups and was most recently the SVP of Sales and Customer Success at Xamarin which has since been acquired by Microsoft. Stephanie joined Xamarin as its first non-engineering hire in.

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In Early Markets, Services Can Be a Competitive Advantage

Tom Tunguz

In early markets, customers prefer entire solutions, not best in class point products. These solutions often include significant professional services and education. At the beginning of a new wave, most customers don’t understand the technology well. So, they seek experts to guide them. Companies that provide services and education often win the early market.

Marketing 133
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How Custom Bots can reshape your entire sales cycle

Intercom, Inc.

In many ways, how we do business today is a model of efficiency and convenience – people come to our websites and we sell to them. That interaction is increasingly being conducted over live chat , and at Intercom, we strive to make those interactions as personal as possible. As this mode of business has evolved, however, there are two unavoidable facts that we sometimes prefer to ignore.

Sales 144
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A Scorecard: Should a decision be fast, or slow?

A Smart Bear

We all know that startups should make decisions quickly. Fast decisions leads to rapid action, which accelerates the loop of production and feedback, which is how you outpace and out-learn a competitor, even one that already has a lead. But some decisions should not be made in haste, like a key executive hire , or how to price , or whether to raise money, or whether to invest millions of dollars in a new product line.

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6 Reasons Why Your Integrated Payments Strategy Could Fail

If you're in the software industry grappling with integrating payments into your business model, understanding where others have stumbled can be a game-changer for your revenue goals. Discover 6 key reasons behind the struggles many face. The challenge goes beyond the technicalities of integrating a payment system; it delves into the strategic oversight of revenue shares, negotiations with payment providers, and the full exploitation of potential revenue streams.

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8 Critical Questions to Ask Yourself as You Build a Sales Incentives Program for 2019

Sales Hacker

Good sales leaders are always on the hunt to bring in new talent that can help a business grow. Still, they don’t always nail down the details when it comes to the things that might entice a prospective salesperson — like a well-rounded sales compensation plan , for example. Creating a strong sales incentives program will help you attract and retain A-list sales talent, so it is worth putting in the legwork to create a strong plan. .

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A Remarkably Large Portion of Businesses Are Still Reluctant to Embrace Cloud Computing

Entrepreneur - SaaS

Even the smallest businesses can benefit from readily available technology, so why won't they use it?

Cloud 105
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We’re Overthinking Seed Round Signaling Effects

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

There is much hand wringing in the startup ecosystem about various forms of signaling between the seed and A rounds. Conventional wisdom, and advice, abounds: entrepreneurs should never include a venture firm in their seed round because it’ll scare other … The post We’re Overthinking Seed Round Signaling Effects appeared first on For Entrepreneurs.

Startup 130
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Elastic S-1 Analysis - Another Open Source Monster

Tom Tunguz

Last week, Elastic filed their S-1 to go public. Elastic is a Dutch company founded in 2012. Just five years later, the company generated $159.9M in revenue. Elastic commercializes open source software called the Elastic Stack, a set of different products that enable users to search and store data in many different sources and formats. This software is used for application search, website search, enterprise search, application performance monitoring, and analytics for business and security data.

Scale 130
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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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The 3 core skills to master real-time selling

Intercom, Inc.

For a long time, many companies had only one way to capture visitors to their website: contact forms. Lengthy lead forms became the lifeblood of modern customer acquisition. But more and more businesses are starting to ask, why do we make people fill out forms just to talk to us? Why aren’t we trying to connect and speak with them when we have their attention?

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When “fits and starts” is the most efficient path

A Smart Bear

You roll down the windows and wear a helmet when you take your car to the track. This does not make me less terrified of a fiery death. The American Autocross champion was sitting in my passenger seat screaming at me to not let my foot off the pedal until I bounced off the RPM limiter. She was properly intense. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it’s fun to power through curves in a high-speed tenuously-controlled skid in my Mini Cooper S (plus Cooperworks).

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The GTM Learning Loop: How to Optimize Your Funnel with Applied Learning

InsightSquared

Kaizen. The Japanese term “Kaizen” stands for the continuous improvement of a process. Adopted by Japanese manufacturing companies after World War II as a way to reduce waste and create competitive advantage, kaizen evolved beyond the assembly line in manufacturing to all business processes and became the precursor to lean manufacturing. “Kaizen is a daily process, the purpose of which goes beyond simple productivity improvement.

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5 Digital Marketing Tips You Need to Try for a Successful SaaS Launch

FastSpring

Thanks to the pervasive presence of the internet, digital marketing has become an increasingly popular tactic in the go-to-market strategy for many SaaS businesses. In fact, over half of the world’s population now has access to the internet, according to Mary Meeker’s 2018 Internet Trends report. When done well, digital marketing allows your business to tap into both organic and paid channels to place memorable marketing campaigns in front of your ideal audience.

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How to Achieve Product-Market Fit

Speaker: Dan Olsen - Product Management Trainer and Consultant, Author, and Speaker

Everyone working on a product is trying to achieve the same goal: product-market fit. But most products fail to do so. In this webinar, product management expert Dan Olsen will share his simple but effective framework for achieving product-market fit from his book The Lean Product Playbook. He will explain his Product-Market Fit Pyramid and The Lean Product Process, a 6-step methodology that guides you through how to: Determine your target customer Identify underserved customer needs Define your

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Onboarding your first Sales Hire as an Entrepreneur

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

In today’s blogpost I would like to introduce my partner for Zero to 100 , Stephanie (Schatz) Friedman. Stephanie has been an executive in 3 successful startups and was most recently the SVP of Sales and Customer Success at Xamarin … The post Onboarding your first Sales Hire as an Entrepreneur appeared first on For Entrepreneurs.

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How the Economics of Professional Services Have Changed in Software

Tom Tunguz

A founder asked me recently if there were any trends in professional services across public SaaS companies. I had examined the gross margins and share of revenue from professional services about 3 years ago. Professional services are consulting fees software companies charge to customers for software configuration, customization and education. What has changed over the past 3 years?

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Break point: Product engineers and the pursuit of speed and safety

Intercom, Inc.

As engineers, one of the fundamental things we have to learn is the extent to which we can break things – how do we get the right balance between shipping safely and shipping fast? Before I joined Intercom, I thought of shipping as somebody’s else concern – I built things, but other people shipped them. It was a slow process, requiring a full team merging branches and deploying to production.

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How InVision Built a Billion Dollar SaaS (Without Losing Its Soul)

Ryan Berg

Is it possible to build a billion dollar SaaS without focusing on traditional marketing channels like paid advertising, using high pressure sales tactics, or relying on manipulative growth hacks? After spending several weeks reverse engineering and dissecting InVision’s growth marketing strategy I can say the answer is: yes! InVision’s un-orthodox approach to growth marketing is not only.

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Addressing Top Enterprise Challenges in Generative AI with DataRobot

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.

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Dreamforce 2018: Top 10 Must-Attend Sessions for Sales Ops Pros

InsightSquared

With less than two weeks until Dreamforce ‘18 , it’s time to plan how you will spend your four days in San Francisco. With more than 3,000 in the agenda builder to choose from, planning which sessions you will attend can be overwhelming. The potential to develop new skills, network with thousands of attendees, and elevate your career are endless, so planning your days strategically is the key to success.

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From SDR to VP of Sales at One of the Best Companies Outside the Valley w/Dan Cook

Sales Hacker

Have you ever dreamed of becoming a VP of Sales? This is the podcast for you. This week on the Sales Hacker podcast, we speak to Dan Cook, SVP of Sales & Success at LucidChart, one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the US, about what it takes to become a sales executive at a top company. If you missed Episode 24, check it out here: PODCAST 24: Building a Tier 1 Saas Company From the Investor Perspective.

Scale 74
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Missed Call to Action Conference 2018? Get the Top Takeaways, Speaker Videos, and More

Unbounce

Ah, they grow up so fast. The fifth annual Call to Action Conference has now come and gone and it was a helluva time, as always. Having been at Unbounce for 4 years now, I’ve seen CTAConf grow from a grassroots sproutling with 300 attendees to a 1,000-person event taking over the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. This year’s theme was “The Marketing Revolution” in response to the fact that marketing has changed.

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Three Observations About the Adobe/Marketo Acquisition

Tom Tunguz

About two years ago, Marketo was publicly traded and valued at roughly $1.1B. Vista Equity paid $1.8B to take the company private, a 64% premium. At the time it was taken private by Vista, Marketo generated $241M in trailing revenue, growing at 35% annually. Its net income margin was -31%. Last week, Adobe announced they acquired Marketo for $4.75B.

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Software Composition Analysis: The New Armor for Your Cybersecurity

Speaker: Blackberry, OSS Consultants, & Revenera

Software is complex, which makes threats to the software supply chain more real every day. 64% of organizations have been impacted by a software supply chain attack and 60% of data breaches are due to unpatched software vulnerabilities. In the U.S. alone, cyber losses totaled $10.3 billion in 2022. All of these stats beg the question, “Do you know what’s in your software?

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What we shipped: 8 new features to increase conversions and grow your business

Intercom, Inc.

Volume and capacity are always top of mind for sales, support and marketing teams. At Intercom , we’re helping all three teams do more with their time to increase their performance. For sales and support, the volume of prospects and customers they handle, and their capacity to scale up that volume, is the reason they are so focused on efficiency and output.

Scale 123
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[Infographic] What You Need to Know about Online Payment Processing

FastSpring

It doesn’t matter if you’re an established digital business or an up-and-coming online store looking to sell software, digital downloads, or digital content, a key part of selling online is making sure you’re familiar with how online payment processing works. However, many businesses quickly realize that is easier said than done. Especially since there is a lot of technical jargon and terminology within the payment ecosystem.

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Customer Success Content Will Save Your SaaS

Inturact

All successful business owners know that the key to their success is due to the customer’s satisfaction. The customer always comes first. Being proactive about the customer’s needs by going out of your way to anticipate them will undoubtedly provide you with a satisfied and consistent customer base.