Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 25, 2018

Salesforce is worth $113 billion. 1% of $113 billion is $1.13 billion. ServiceNow is worth $34B and Workday is worth $33B. 3% of $33-34B is $1B. Atlassian is worth $20.5B. 5% of $20.5B is $1B. Why am I doing all this simple math you might ask? We have reached a point in SaaS where a small fraction of an incumbent is a billion-dollar company. If you start a business tomorrow that is able to cleave 1% of revenue from Salesforce, you will have built a billion-dollar business. 1% is not that much.

Revenue 274

Revenue Blockchain Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 274

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 14, 2018

The first law of content marketing is that publishing is an expensive business. No matter how hard you try to circumvent it, the first law will always come back and bite you. One common approach is to outsource content production, which can be cheaper in pure monetary terms. But unless someone, preferably an editor or with some editorial skills, is closely managing that process you’ll end up paying more for it in the long run.

Content Marketing 182

Content Marketing Technical Review Travel Software Review 182

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

AUGUST 1, 2018

Churn is bad for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. Very bad. But knowing there’s a churn problem is one thing; fixing it is something else. To bring down churn, we need to understand what’s behind the numbers. Why are customers leaving? Different causes will point toward different fixes. Poor product performance Sometimes the solution simply doesn’t deliver as advertised.

Churn 122

Churn Metrics Compensation Software Review 122

Sixteen Ventures

AUGUST 1, 2018

Churn… ya boring. Yawn. Time to move on. I’m so over talking about churn and if you really understand what Customer Success is all about , you should be, too. Churn is so easy to get rid of… you just have to do five simple things. If churn is a problem for you, this post will change that (if you’ll let it) and then you can move onto bigger and better things.

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Churn Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Customer Success 129

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

The SaaS CFO

AUGUST 27, 2018

How to Calculate the Rule of 40 in SaaS The rule of 40 in SaaS is simple financial framework that balances revenue growth versus margins. It’s a rule of thumb to quickly determine the health and/or attractiveness of a SaaS company. You’ve probably heard of the rule of 40, but the application of the formula […]. The post How to Apply the Rule of 40 for Your SaaS Company appeared first on The SaaS CFO.

SaaS 96

SaaS Revenue 96

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 18, 2018

Startups are business machines engineered to grow quickly. The forces of hypergrowth exert enormous strain on every aspect of the company. Internal break all the time as the company moults into a new skin. This is one of the most important things to keep in mind when hiring. Every lead hired today, whether marketing , sales, engineering or product, will have a very different job nine months from now, much less two years from now.

Sales Recruiting 262

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Headcount 262

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 13, 2018

Growing up, I was surrounded by video games. In my house, we had the NES, Nintendo 64, Game Boy and a bunch of PC games. I would play video games for hours on end, only stopping for the odd toilet break. But as my love of gaming grew, it became obvious that I wasn’t drawn to the typically popular action or racing games. Instead of Half-Life or GoldenEye, I was drawn to simulation games such as SimCity , The Sims and Theme Hospital – titles that rewarded strategy over speed, patience over practic

Strategy 163

Strategy Management Benchmarks Leadership 163

Groove HQ

AUGUST 1, 2018

Solve complicated scenarios with great communication. There are a few main difficult scenarios you’ll most likely face as a support representative. In customer service, every interaction matters, and there is no 100% right or wrong way to deal with any situation. Even though the ability to think on a case-to-case basis is one of the […]. The post 5 Customer Service Email Templates for Tough Situations appeared first on Groove Blog.

Communication 75

Communication Customer Support 75

FastSpring

AUGUST 28, 2018

Whether you’re creating ebooks, music, or software, you need to be able to sell your digital products on your website powered by WordPress. However, many businesses often realize that is easier said than done—especially when it comes to scaling globally. There are plenty of third-party tools out there to help you get an online store up and running on WordPress, however, your business can only get so far with piecemealed point solutions managing the ecommerce experience. .

Payment Methods 64

Payment Methods Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Solutions 64

Advertisement

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.

Payments

Sixteen Ventures

AUGUST 8, 2018

If you missed it, I’m done talking about churn. If you have a churn problem, read this post and follow my directions. Churn won’t be an issue for you anymore. Now we can move onto GROWTH ! And the first order of business is understanding the difference between Sales and Expansion and why knowing the difference is so important. I’ve said that Sales is part of Customer Success before , and by that I mean Sales – like every other part of the company – should be governe

Sales 69

Sales Government Churn Customer Success 69

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 6, 2018

Finding the best live chat software in a crowded marketplace can be tricky. Fortunately, this just means there’s bound to be an option that fits perfectly with your business model. If you owned a store, you could directly interact with the customers who come in each day. The same principle doesn’t traditionally work with websites. Sure, you can see the visitors who pop in, thanks to tools that gather data on where they’re coming from.

Sales Hiring 80

Sales Hiring Software Review Technical Review Sales 80

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 11, 2018

How long should you let a customer use your software before they sign a contract? You could offer them a 7 day free trial. Or 14 or 21 or 30 or 90. Longer trials might be better. The customer could delve deeper into the product, become more committed and sign a larger contract. Shorter trials drive urgency, weed out the uncommitted, and result in shorter sales cycles.

Payment Solutions 181

Payment Solutions Software SaaS Acquisition 181

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 20, 2018

The phrase “cross-functional” is most commonly used to describe a team made up of of people with different functions or skills. At Intercom for example, our product teams include designers, programmers and product managers , unique roles working together as one. Or you might hear the term used when teams from different parts of a business work together on a big project, like the launch of a new product or release.

Scale 162

Scale Education Sales Hiring Communication 162

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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.

Revenue

Chart Mogul

AUGUST 10, 2018

This week: An analysis of Slack's landing page copywriting, why SaaS content marketing sucks and is it time to rethink freemium? In SaaS Roundup, we comb through the noise to find you only the best SaaS-flavored reads of the week — just our top three. You can also receive SaaS Roundup in your email inbox every Friday — just drop your email here and you’ll receive the next issue.

SaaS 67

SaaS Content Marketing Subscription Payment Features 67

FastSpring

AUGUST 30, 2018

After months of planning, strategizing, and hard work—we are thrilled to announce our new and improved blog is live on the Fastspring site. When we started this project, we had a lot of big ideas for improving the look and feel of the blog. However, we decided to focus our efforts on making sure the FastSpring blog is a go-to resource for the latest ecommerce news, trends, and how-tos to help digital businesses around the world succeed.

Entertainment 60

Entertainment Education User Experience Trends 60

Intello

AUGUST 2, 2018

This is the first of a four-part series -- written by Dani Hao at Procurify. Cultivating a ‘good’ company culture has already been written to death in the form of academic literature, business publications and ‘best practices’ white papers alike. Silicon Valley firms often tend to boast about their culture within their job descriptions as a way to attract top talent, for example highlighting perks such as gaming consoles, unlimited time off - or showcasing fun videos of parties within the office

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Company Culture Finance Investment Metrics 64

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 28, 2018

This article outlines the results of a B2B Buyer Experience survey by TimeTrade. Make no mistake: we live in a digital world. For many of us, that’s also the primary channel through which we make an increasing number of purchases. Industry research consistently shows that buyers want the same easy experience they now routinely enjoy in their private life.

B2B 79

B2B B2C Banking Engagement 79

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 29, 2018

In a post earlier this week, I argued 1% of Salesforce’s revenues creates a unicorn. More broadly, I said that the biggest SaaS companies are so large, that they must have underserved customer segments. And there is an opportunity for a startup to identify that underserved segment, build a product to serve it better, and build a unicorn. I received a lot of comments about this post, but not the kind that I expected.

SaaS 118

SaaS Enterprise Startup Revenue 118

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 22, 2018

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”. – Peter Thiel. People in tech commonly overestimate the impact of big things and underestimate the power of small things. We constantly talk about the next big thing that will change everything, the next revolution that will inevitably happen. In the past few years it has been AI, chatbots, VR, blockchain and whatnot.

Blockchain 151

Blockchain AI Banking Innovation 151

Audacix

AUGUST 3, 2018

Software testing has often been an afterthought for CIOs , software engineering managers and software development teams. The accelerated adoption of Agile, DevOps and digital has ensured that if you remain ignorant to the value of fast and effective software testing, your program will bleed money and leave users frustrated by their user experience. As software testing cost surge closer and closer to 50% of the overall software development, I often find that the other (and potentially more damagi

Software 63

Software Underperforming Technical Team Software Delivery Cloud 63

FastSpring

AUGUST 16, 2018

So it’s been a few months, and we’ve all had some time to process the details of Mary Meeker’s latest Internet Trends report. Some of the revelations were expected, while others seemed to raise a few eyebrows. In case you have been living under a rock or the constant barrage of breaking news has led you to forget about this annual report all together—we’re sharing five key trends from Meeker’s report that every digital business should know.

Trends 60

Trends Business 60

Advertiser: Data Robot

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.

Generative AI

SaaSOptics

AUGUST 15, 2018

Out of 5,000 companies in the US, SaaSOptics earned a place in the top third of the 2018 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America. SaaSOptics secured a position of #1596 on the list with a 292 percent growth over three years. In addition, 41 of SaaSOptics’ customers also ranked in the Inc. 5000 list. and six of those ranked in Inc. 500.

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Sales Hacker

AUGUST 22, 2018

On this 1×1 interview with Mark Cranney, the Chief Commercial Officer of SignalFx, we chat about the key elements of sales leadership and his journey to being a top VP of Sales. Tune in! If you missed episode 20, give it a listen here: PODCAST 20: How to Negotiate More Effectively to Close More Deals. What You’ll Learn. How to find success in sales management.

Scale 71

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Venture Capital 71

ChurnZero

AUGUST 24, 2018

This week we hosted a well-attended webinar on – Customer Success & Finance: Get Aligned! Getting a customer to retention and its financial impact. The webinar discussed the process and impact of the renewal from both the Customer Success and Finance point of view. Topics discussed included: • Processes that can help drive customer retention. • SaaS metrics the CFO and CS leader both need to know. • The total financial impact of customer retention.

Finance 61

Finance Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 61

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 27, 2018

In sales, it’s normal to spend hours rehearsing for an upcoming demo and fine-tuning the deck. But when it comes to the discovery call, many of us assume we can wing it. It’s strange because the discovery call is how we uncover critical information early in the sales cycle. Details like use case and a prospect’s fit for our solution help us prioritize our deals.

B2B 150

B2B Sales Revenue Pricing 150

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.

Strategy

Incredo

AUGUST 31, 2018

Development 111

Development SaaS 111

FastSpring

AUGUST 14, 2018

Since their start in 2003, WordPress has become the leading content management system for individuals and businesses alike. In fact, WordPress currently runs 31% of all websites around the world. Odds are some of your favorite sites on the internet are powered by WordPress.

Business 60

Business Management 60

Chart Mogul

AUGUST 16, 2018

What should we build next? SaaS companies face this question on a day-to-day basis, and it's a tough one. How do you balance customer feedback with your high level vision for the product? I spoke to Hannah Chaplin, founder of Receptive, who's made this her mission as founder of the company. “I think people can be quite fearful of asking customers in particular for feedback.

Scale 60

Scale Scaling B2B SaaS 60