The Angel VC

AUGUST 26, 2015

Yesterday I argued that SaaS founders and investors shouldn’t worry about short-term movements of SaaS stocks and said that there are a lot of reasons to be bullish about the Cloud. Here are some of them. 1) SaaS is quickly becoming the norm In the last years there’s been a dramatic shift in deployment preferences of software buyers. According to a survey by technology evaluation business Software Advice , 88% of buyers with a deployment preference preferred on-premise solutions in 2008.

SaaS 173

SaaS Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Construction 173

Chaotic Flow

AUGUST 18, 2015

SaaS businesses develop intimate, long term relationships with their SaaS customers. Keeping that relationship positive and aligned over the years is a real challenge. In fact, many public SaaS companies have yet to turn a profit. If they don’t keep their customers around for years, then all that capital invested in customer acquisition will have gone to waste.

Customer Success 138

Customer Success Underperforming Technical Team Scale SaaS 138

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

AUGUST 8, 2015

Bravo! You’ve landed a new customer. You've successfully lead someone through the tortuous process from a lead to a qualified opportunity, maybe to a free trialer, and finally to a paying customer. And you’ve been racking up customer acquisition costs all along the way. Whatever tactics you use - search engine marketing, events, email, webinars, etc. - they all cost money.

Payment Solutions 124

Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payment Features Payment Services 124

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 16, 2015

While culture may seem an ambiguous and fuzzy concept, strong cultures are the best way for leaders to manage their companies throughout their evolution. One founder/CEO described his company’s rapid growth to several hundred employees in just a few years this way. First, I was one of a few founders. As we grew, I became a manager of people. Then a manager of managers.

Scaling 160

Scaling Startup Interviewing Technology 160

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Payments

OnStartups

AUGUST 5, 2015

The following is a guest post by William Griggs. William is the Founder of Startup Slingshot , the resource for battle-tested startup strategies. Access the audio interviews of today’s featured growth practitioners, the full 43 page guide, and tons of resources here (free for now). “ A startup is a company designed to grow fast.”. Growth is what founders and investors alike are constantly searching for.

Acquisition 71

Acquisition Startup Interviewing Business Model 71

The Angel VC

AUGUST 24, 2015

If one looks at the stock price development of public SaaS companies in the last few weeks, one could come to the conclusion that SaaS is over the hill. Salesforce.com: 17% down from its 52 week high. Veeva: 30% down from its 52 week high. Workday is 29% down, Box 47%, Hubspot 22%. Everyone got hit, as you can see in Tomasz Tunguz' post about the topic.

SaaS 121

SaaS Cloud Pricing Marketing 121

ReSci

AUGUST 28, 2015

As you may know, we at Retention Science have taken our RetailPlus Series cross-country in the last few months. We've hit Los Angeles, San…. The post Insights from LA’s Top Marketers: Drink & Learn Event Recap appeared first on ReSci.

Marketing 40

Marketing Retention 40

Aber Law Firm

AUGUST 26, 2015

The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) has some very useful info in their 2015 Code of Conduct , that you should be aware of regarding SaaS privacy if you are in the online third party ad business. The NAI is a self regulatory governing body of third parties in the online advertising ecosystem. This group may be useful group not only for ad networks, but for anyone dealing in third party ads (for example, platforms, aggregators, yield optimization firms, etc).

SaaS 40

SaaS Advertising Government Data 40

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 29, 2015

During their fundraising processes, founders often tell me “I’d really like to get back to building the business.” I’m certain it’s true. Every founder surely would certainly rather be building their product and company than fundraising. Nevertheless, a founder skilled in fundraising can create enormous leverage for their business and develop unassailable competitive advantages.

Sales Hiring 113

Sales Hiring Investment Technology Engineering 113

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

OnStartups

AUGUST 5, 2015

The following is a guest post by William Griggs. William is the Founder of Startup Slingshot , the resource for battle-tested startup strategies. Access the audio interviews of today’s featured growth practitioners, the full 43 page guide, and tons of resources here (free for now). “ A startup is a company designed to grow fast.”. Growth is what founders and investors alike are constantly searching for.

Acquisition 40

Acquisition Startup Interviewing Business Model 40

CloseSaaS

AUGUST 11, 2015

We've got three exciting webinars coming up for you in the following weeks: On sending cold emails, making cold calls and an effective framework for turning prospects into buyers.

Sales 52

Sales 52

Software Platform Consulting

AUGUST 6, 2015

The two questions I’m most often asked are: 1. How do you keep your hair looking so lush and luxurious? 2. How much can a B2B Marketplace or Multi-Sided Platform charge for its services? (Some folks call this the platform’s “take rate” ). The answer to the former question will need to remain a mystery, but the answer to the latter follows.

Marketplace as a Service 40

Marketplace as a Service Payment Services B2B Merchant Services 40

ReSci

AUGUST 25, 2015

When trying to keep a customer engaged and happy, it's important to keep in mind what their interaction with your brand has been so far - meaning, are they a brand new customer or have they been purchasing from you for years. Tailoring your content and messaging to the customer lifecycle stage a customer…. The post How to use Lifecycle Marketing tactics for customer retention appeared first on ReSci.

Retention 40

Retention Marketing Branding Engagement 40

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Payments

Aber Law Firm

AUGUST 26, 2015

The Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) has some very useful info in their 2015 Code of Conduct , that you should be aware of regarding SaaS privacy if you are in the online third party ad business. The NAI is a self regulatory governing body of third parties in the online advertising ecosystem. This group may be useful group not only for ad networks, but for anyone dealing in third party ads (for example, platforms, aggregators, yield optimization firms, etc).

SaaS 40

SaaS Advertising Government Data 40

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 23, 2015

The public markets are down more than 10% from their highs in the last few months. Public SaaS companies have been particularly hard hit. The chart above shows the enterprise value of publicly traded SaaS companies. Many of them are down substantially more than 10%. Let’s dig in a bit more. While there are five companies who currently sit at their all time highs, as of August 21, more than 90% of the SaaS companies are below at a median decline of 40%.

Marketing 113

Marketing SaaS Enterprise Pricing 113

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 13, 2015

In a book called The Outsiders - Eight Unconventional CEOs and their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success , the author William Thorndike asks the question, who have been the best CEOs ever? And what metric should be used to gauge them? Thorndike doesn’t choose Jobs or Welch or Gates. Instead, he selects the 8 CEOs whose company’s share price appreciated the most compared to the S&P 500.

Acquisition 113

Acquisition Investment Startup Pricing 113

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 12, 2015

No matter the stage of the business, startups need to manage the size of their Employee Stock Option Pool or ESOP. The ESOP contains the shares set aside by the company for hiring and retaining employees. Like a financial budget, ESOP budgets help a startup plan how to finance its growth. Most Series A companies create pools of 15-25% of outstanding stock.

Startup 113

Startup Compensation Finance Benchmarks 113

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Revenue

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 27, 2015

Much has been written about the consumerization of IT , the movement fueling many SaaS startup’s growth by targeting individuals in a target customer called B2C2B , rather than selling top down. But until yesterday, I hadn’t found anyone who had quantified the size of the movement. In mid-2014, CEB published Harnessing Business-Led IT to answer this question.

SaaS 100

SaaS Finance Startup Trends 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 25, 2015

The SaaS ecosystem has been evolving incredibly quickly. Most of the time, the changes in the ecosystem are embodied in one particular company which grows exceptionally quickly. Focusing on these fast-growers, the macro shifts can be hard to discern. Last week, Okta released a report Business at Work sweeps across SaaS to reveal these recent evolutions.

Sales Recruiting 100

Sales Recruiting SaaS Data AWS 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 24, 2015

Over dinner, a veteran product manager argued most SaaS products’ onboarding practices miss a crucial step: create value for the user in the first session. After that conversation, I signed up for many brand-name SaaS products pretending it was for the first time, and I couldn’t help but agree with him. Most SaaS products guide a user through three steps.

Onboarding 100

Onboarding Startup SaaS Education 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 19, 2015

I’ve been to many YC Demo Days and I always look forward to them. This year was no exception. There are so many wonderful ideas and companies founded by terrific entrepreneurs. In addition to the pitches themselves, the types of companies presenting forbear trends in the startup world more broadly. To get a better sense of those trends, I’ve categorized more than 250 startups in 3 recent classes and plotted the evolution of the classes.

Trends 100

Trends Startup Social Media Healthcare 100

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

Pricing

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 17, 2015

The most potent weapon in sales is understanding a buyer’s perception of time. As Mark Roberge wrote , “At HubSpot, this lacking sense of urgency is the number one objection we face in the sales funnel.” To succeed, SaaS startups’ sales teams must consistently create urgency in the sales process. Time is scarce. Either the seller’s time is scarce or the buyer’s time is scarce.

Sales Funnel 100

Sales Funnel Sales Hiring Sales Finance 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 10, 2015

In a recent First Round Review article, former Google President of Enterprise Apps Dave Girouard voiced the importance of speed in making decisions. “Deciding on when a decision will be made from the start is a profound, powerful change that will speed everything up.” I believe this statement is broadly true, and no where else is it more tangible for me than in managing daily email.

VP of Engineering 100

VP of Engineering Engineering Enterprise Engagement 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 8, 2015

When we say a startup has raised a big round, we often mean the round is big in two dimensions - total amount invested and valuation. And when we say a big valuation, more precisely we imply the round was priced at a high revenue multiple. A SaaS company that will generate $400M in revenue next year that raises $200M at $1B valuation has raised a big round, but at low valuation-to-revenue multiple of 2.5x.

Pricing 100

Pricing Startup Investment Revenue 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 6, 2015

Startups today are growing faster than they have in the past. US VC backed startups in 1998 grew revenue 63% per year on average. In 2014, the median startup grew at 85% CAGR before going public. More impressively, newer startups must be 5x larger than 15 years ago before going public. In 1998, the median IPO-bound startup reported $11.8M in revenue in their S-1 (inflation adjusted dollars).

Startup 100

Startup Acquisition Trends Enterprise 100

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

Product Marketing

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 5, 2015

We all build products based on assumptions - assumptions about our users, who they are, how they think, what they expect. When the underlying assumptions underpinning product design no longer holds, new opportunities are created. Jakob Nielsen, a [famed user experience researcher]( [link] ), writes about one such secular dislocation of UX assumptions in the Anti-Mac interface.

Startup 100

Startup Entertainment Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 100

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 4, 2015

The prevailing wisdom for hiring the first VP of Sales is roughly $1M in ARR, or whenever the company has figured out some repeatable sales process. The rationale behind this advice is, at this point, the company needs someone to build recruit, incentivize, coach and manage the team that will grow to acquire more and more business. While that all makes sense, I was curious to see if startups do this in practice, and whether the timing of the VPS differs by ACV.

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Startup 100

CloseSaaS

AUGUST 26, 2015

FULL-TIME EMPLOYMENT OR FREELANCE (Work remotely from anywhere you want) Are you enthusiastic about entrepreneurship, the hustle, startups, and excited about the prospect of diving deep into the world of sales, SaaS and building businesses?

Entrepreneurship 52

Entrepreneurship Startup SaaS Sales 52