February, 2022

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Your VCs Are Worried About Public Multiples. Do You Need To Worry, Too?

SaaStr

So we’re in the 5th or so “SaaS crash” since I’ve been doing SaaS. This one is the worst, not because SaaS companies aren’t’ doing well. No, they are doing better than ever. Not because valuations are terrible. No, they are still decent, in absolute terms. No, this SaaS Crash is so tough on VCs and public market investors because the market was just so, so high for Cloud stocks from mid-2020 to late 2021: You can see above in the BVP Nasdaq Cloud Index that while these are still Great Times

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How to Set Up a Virtual Phone System

The Daily Egg

Virtual phone systems turn rigid, traditional phone communication into a bold new way of interaction and collaboration. The limitless power of VoIP. The post How to Set Up a Virtual Phone System appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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How To Close The Deal With Sales Presentations

Predictable Revenue

AlexAnndra Ontra joins the Predictable Revenue podcast to discuss the role of presentations in the outbound sales process and how to use them to close the deal. The post How To Close The Deal With Sales Presentations appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Sales 278
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Why Early Valuations Might Surge in 2022

Tom Tunguz

Will year-end Series A and B valuations top or trail those of January? This question sits atop most founders' lips and boardroom agendas. The broad market sentiment is they will be lower. Public-market software valuations have withered more than 60% from their highs. Alarm about interest rates, QE ending, and geopolitical risk have swirled around public technology companies, kinking the valuation curve.

Finance 363
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Build the Case: Quantify the Real Costs of In-House Testing and QA Gaps

Underinvesting in software testing costs more than you think, and now you can prove it. This guide helps you quantify hidden costs like developer time, support overhead, tech debt, and lost revenue. Use the companion calculator to model your own data, and present your findings with a ready-to-edit presentation template. Whether you're making the case to leadership or validating outsourcing, this toolkit gives you the numbers and tools you need.

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Infrastructure at speed: 5 lessons learned from building Intercom in Europe

Intercom, Inc.

In December, we announced European data hosting , the result of one of Intercom’s biggest ever infrastructure projects. We’re continuing to expand Intercom globally, and the lessons we learned while building out the infrastructure will be invaluable. Until now, Intercom has been a multitenant application hosted in a single region in AWS.

Scale 234

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20 Interesting PLG Learnings from The Leaders in SaaS

SaaStr

We’ve been doing the 5 Interesting Learnings at SaaStr for quite a while, looking at many of the public SaaS leaders and pulling out the top learnings for founders and SaaS execs. I think it would be interesting and helpful to pull out the Top 20 PLG / Self-Serve learnings from the series. If you read the list of learnings, you may well find a few to learn from.

Scale 363
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Best Payment Methods for Ecommerce

The Daily Egg

Making money online takes more than a store. Customers want flexible payment options, or you’ll be another domain with a catchy name, The post Best Payment Methods for Ecommerce appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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Step by Step Guide to Outbound Sales Call Mapping

Predictable Revenue

Learn the five key steps of outbound sales call mapping so you can put together an effective plan to help you and your outbound sales team close more deals. The post Step by Step Guide to Outbound Sales Call Mapping appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

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The Sales Sandwich

Tom Tunguz

The most consistent sales leader I’ve worked with hit plan 27 consecutive quarters. How can a sales leader develop similar repeatability? Much goes into it here are the reports he used to manage his team at the board level. The PQR (pipeline-to-quota) funnel is first. Pipeline is the total value of the accounts within a stage or later. Quota is the aggregate quota on the street for the quarter.

Scale 331
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What’s New in Apache Airflow® 3.0—And How Will It Reshape Your Data Workflows?

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.

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CX expert Jay Baer on creating experiences that get your customers talking

Intercom, Inc.

Sometime in the 1980s, businesses started outsourcing their call centers to specialized companies in lower-cost locations to reduce operational costs. And further along the line, customer support started being treated as a cost center – a necessary, but non-profitable part of a business. Today, more and more businesses are realizing the true bottom-line impact of creating great customer experiences.

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Building for the 99% Developers

Andreessen Horowitz

Should you move to serverless? Is GraphQL the answer to your API woes? Should you follow the latest DevOps playbook to increase your system reliability? In the world of tech tools, there’s a lot of buzz. But it doesn’t always reflect the daily reality of programmers. As the founder of a developer tools startup, I’ve. Read More. The post Building for the 99% Developers appeared first on Future.

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As You Scale, About Half Your Team Will Be in Sales and Marketing

SaaStr

Sales-driven SaaS startups end up with about half their headcount in sales and marketing. It sounds high at first, until you realize that's just how the math works. Software itself and other departments get leverage. Sales doesn't. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) February 17, 2022. One thing that sneaks up on you in SaaS is just how many sales, marketing and revenue professionals you are going to need: First it sneaks up on you in the early days because the initial tiny team becom

Scale 351
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How to Set Up a Virtual Call Center

The Daily Egg

Setting up a virtual call center is the perfect way to conduct business for many companies. By connecting work-from-home agents all over. The post How to Set Up a Virtual Call Center appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Business 309
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Agent Tooling: Connecting AI to Your Tools, Systems & Data

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.

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Top 2 LinkedIn Strategies To Generate More Revenue

Predictable Revenue

Digital marketing expert Shiv Gupta shares two outbound sales strategies for LinkedIn that helped his company generate an additional 25-30% in revenue. The post Top 2 LinkedIn Strategies To Generate More Revenue appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Revenue 317
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The Next Key Innovation in the Shift-Left Movement

Tom Tunguz

Microservices has become the default architecture for many companies. By breaking down large codebases into smaller pieces, microservices empower engineers to ship code faster. Continuous integration, the process of constantly folding new code into production (live on the website or service), further accelerates the software velocity. There’s a cost to this speed: coordination.

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Transform the way you share your work: Tricks from Hollywood’s publicity playbook

Intercom, Inc.

At Intercom, we believe in the power of sharing cross-functionally. Seeking feedback at various stages of a project helps avoid bottlenecks and silos, and ultimately drives business impact. Diving into a new project is an exciting challenge, but it takes time to develop context, address stakeholder needs, and meaningfully understand the problem. Without even realizing it, we begin to work with blinders on.

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Decentralized Science Is Gaining Momentum

Andreessen Horowitz

A growing number of scientists and entrepreneurs are leveraging blockchain tools, including smart contracts and tokens, in an attempt to improve modern science. Collectively, their work has become known as the decentralized science movement, or DeSci. Still in its infancy, DeSci lies at the intersection of two broader trends: 1) efforts within the scientific community.

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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

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.

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Why There Is a 50/50 Chance You’ll Tilt Upmarket in SaaS

SaaStr

#1. Eventually, most of us go upmarket. SurveyMonkey was relatively slow to go enterprise, which suited it well for a long time. But since it started to march into bigger deals more recently, growth >re-accelerated< … from 17% at IPO to 20% today pic.twitter.com/pZKC8xMCGt. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) January 10, 2021. When you’re starting off in SaaS, it’s very tempting to target small businesses.

SMB 339
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8 Counterintuitive Marketing Strategies That Actually Work

Sparktoro

Cold outreach is typically seen as a numbers game: hit as many inboxes as you can, assuming 5% or fewer will convert. But I’ve never agreed with that approach because I believe my reputation is on the line when I message a stranger.

Strategy 145
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15-Minute Summary of Predictable Revenue

Predictable Revenue

Predictable Revenue has been called “The Sales Bible of Silicon Valley”. This summary outlines key strategies to grow revenue without relying on cold calls. The post 15-Minute Summary of Predictable Revenue appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Revenue 262
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1/9/90 in Crypto

Tom Tunguz

Distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs) are one of the most vibrant areas of crypto. DAOs are groups of people with the right to vote to change how a crypto company operates. DAOs pop up for many different reasons: to form a social club that requires a token to join, to buy a copy of the Constitution , to manage open source software. Almost any group of people can organize a DAO to pursue a shared purpose.

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5 Ways to Improve Revenue from Integrated Payments

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.

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2022 customer support trends: How support leaders are adapting

Intercom, Inc.

Customer support has never been a walk in the park. But with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that disrupted entire industries, forced many of us into working remotely, and brought about unprecedented digital transformation, the last two years have been particularly demanding. To keep up with these changes, last year we released our first Intercom Customer Support Trends Report.

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The Sales/Marketing Expense Ratio

Kellblog

Question: how much does a $15M SaaS company spend on sales and marketing as a percent of ARR? Answer: 35% (with 45% and 15% as the top and bottom quartiles). Charts like this, from OpenView’s 2021 Financial & Operating Benchmarks survey , help us answer questions like that all the time. Good SaaS executives keep these metrics in mind, regardless of whether they get them from KeyBanc , RevOps Squared , OpenView , Opex Engine , or any other quality source.

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Dear SaaStr: How Many More Junior Marketers Should you Hire Before Hiring a VP of Marketing?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: How Many More Junior Marketers Should you Hire Before Hiring a VP of Marketing? Unlike many positions, I say 0 if possible. In fact, one of the 10 most unforced errors I see founders make is hire someone too junior to get marketing going. If you are say $500k in ARR, you can’t hire a CMO that needs a team of 15-20 around her/him. You just don’t have the capital or infrastructure.

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Is This a Twitter Thread or a Blog Post?

Sparktoro

Eureka! I just had a great idea for a blog post… or wait. maybe it’s short enough to be a Twitter thread. Y’know what? Twitter’s easier. I’ll just post it there. The instant dopamine hit of likes and retweets. The mystery of whether and when I’ll get replies.

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SaaS Essentials: Failed Payment Solution Guide

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.

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Go-To-Market Strategies to Reach Revenue Targets

Predictable Revenue

Christina del Villar joins the Predictable Revenue podcast to discuss how a go-to-market strategy can help you boost outbound sales and hit your revenue target. The post Go-To-Market Strategies to Reach Revenue Targets appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Revenue 252
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10 Lessons Learned after $5B of M&A

Tom Tunguz

Over the last few years, I’ve been lucky to work with founders and management teams to sell about $5b of startups. During that time, I’ve observed a few things about M&A. Here are 10 of my learnings: Most acquirers have built a relationship with the acquisition target. Suitors introduced during a sale process wrestle with doubts of understanding what they don’t know about the space, the team, and the business.

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Velocity’s Doug Kessler on bringing the mojo back to content marketing

Intercom, Inc.

And no, we’re not talking about Austin Powers! Doug Kessler is the co-founder and creative director at Velocity Partners , a B2B Marketing Agency with a laser-sharp focus on content strategy, and the writer of articles such as The Search for Meaning in B2B , Crap , and Insane Honesty. Although he started his career as a suit on Ogilvy & Mather in Madison Avenue back in the 80s, it wasn’t until he shifted to B2B that he found his true calling.