Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 27, 2018

We just raised $125M in a round led by Mary Meeker at Kleiner Perkins. Here’s what we’re going to do with it. 2018 is shaping up to be a massive year for the Intercom platform. Historically, we’ve spent proportionately way more on research and development than other software companies we track, and that won’t stop any time soon. This funding will go straight into building great new software at a pace you’ve yet to see from us.

Artificial Intelligence 224

Artificial Intelligence Scale Machine Learning Technology 224

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 24, 2018

The Ideal Customer Profile. The perfect customer. Can you describe it for your startup? The more precisely you can describe it, the better. That will simplify disqualification. But articulating the ICP well isn’t enough. Vague ICPs are problematic. The company will focus on too broad a customer base, waste time and effort with unqualified prospects, and blunt their sales pitch with irrelevant value propositions.

Scale 191

Scale Startup Scaling Communication 191

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

MARCH 2, 2018

Here’s a sorry fact: most of your prospective customers won’t end up buying your software-as-a- service (SaaS) solution. Lots of folks who should buy it, won’t buy it. They have a problem you can solve. But instead of fixing it, they’ll stick with the poor system they already have. Others won’t buy your solution because they’ve never heard of you. Or they’ve found another option that fits their needs, and they feel there’s no need to look any further.

Education 122

Education Pricing Communication Customer Success 122

Think Strategies

MARCH 27, 2018

Cloud Service Intelligently Streamlines the Accounts Payable (AP) Workflow Process. THINKstrategies announced today that Yooz has been named a winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award. This program promotes the measurable business benefits delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. The BoSS Awards is an ongoing program administered by THINKstrategies’ Cloud Computing Showplace to recognize SaaS companies that are delivering measurable business benefits to specific user

SaaS Payments 100

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services Payments 100

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

InsightSquared

MARCH 6, 2018

Sales operations has been around for quite some time, but lately the function has been gaining momentum. Instead of behind-the-scenes sales support, sales ops now acts as a strategic partner for sales VPs and leadership. It’s clear that sales ops plays a critical role in any organization, but creating your own sales operations team can be a daunting task.

Sales Recruiting 119

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Sales 119

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 21, 2018

No matter how good your product is, if you can’t tell a cohesive, compelling story about it, you’re going to have a very hard time getting people’s attention when you actually do take it to market. Companies like Amazon understand this well and are rightly famous for their “work backwards” philosophy. You start by writing the press release, to articulate how the world will see your product, and then work backwards until you get to the minimum set of technology requirements to achieve your goals

Marketing 223

Marketing Banking B2B Technology 223

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 19, 2018

Yesterday, Salesforce announced it will acquire Mulesoft for $6.5B. A recent addition to the list of public software companies, Mulesoft is a tremendous business. The company generated $297M of revenue in 2017 at a 73% gross margin, and grew by 58%. Salesforce is acquiring the business for an astounding 21x enterprise value to trailing twelve months revenue multiple - nearly 2x the next closest.

Acquisition 179

Acquisition Marketing Enterprise Revenue 179

CloseSaaS

MARCH 12, 2018

“Process” is a word that makes a lot of founders freeze. A process feels big. Complex. Overwhelming. It feels like something you document once you’re established. And in the early days, who has time for it?

Sales 81

Sales 81

Think Strategies

MARCH 26, 2018

Anyone who has attempted to adopt Salesforce cloud solutions in an enterprise environment knows that it may not be as easy as expected because of the additional effort typically required to integrate various data sources. This is a common problem that has plagued the enterprise application industry since its inception. In fact, it spawned an entire subsegment of data integration solution vendors and systems integration service providers that have prospered by helping organizations overcome their

Marketplace as a Service 100

Marketplace as a Service Acquisition Cloud Enterprise 100

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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.

Payments

Casey Accidental

MARCH 13, 2018

Many people want to work in product management. One of the most common questions I receive is how to break into product management. It’s a hard question for me to answer, because 1) there is no default path (the same is true for trying to land a business development role), and 2) most of these people really don’t know what they’re asking for.

Scaling 84

Scaling Product Marketing Engineering Leadership 84

Sales Hacker

MARCH 27, 2018

Every business runs like a B2B sales prospecting operation. You head out to a territory (market) where you can mine (generate) something valuable, then sift (qualify) good finds from the bad. You then focus on refining (nurturing) the good finds and attempt to make a hefty profit by selling value to the best buyers. For B2B organizations, customers now represent the new gold to be desired and the sales team’s pipeline the new gold mine to be developed.

B2B 87

B2B Strategy Sales Underperforming Technical Team 87

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 14, 2018

Prior to joining Intercom as a Product Manager, I had never run a structured beta. When it came to finally running my first one, I was surprised to find very little information online that could help me. I’ve run a lot of successful betas now but I learned my craft through tribal Intercom knowledge, built up by other Product Managers over the years.

Benchmarks 223

Benchmarks Metrics Management Communication 223

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 1, 2018

Recently, I met an exceptional marketer. She described the purpose, strategy and tactics of a marketing department remarkably succinctly. Marketing’s methods can seem intangible. But she explained them simply and elegantly. I drew the chart above based on her vision of marketing’s roadmap. At the highest level, marketing articulates a compelling narrative.

Marketing 157

Marketing Education Startup Software 157

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Development

Outseta

MARCH 21, 2018

By Geoff Roberts 5 min read As I’ve been engaging with SaaS start-ups across industries this year, one thing has become certain; real estate tech is hot in 2018. The real estate tech start-ups listed below range from companies that are still developing their products to venture-backed businesses that have already found significant traction and revenue.

Outsourcing Services 75

Outsourcing Services New CTO Outsourced Development CTO 75

Think Strategies

MARCH 22, 2018

Salesforce.com’s definitive agreement to acquire MuleSoft for approximately $6.5 billion represents the company’s biggest acquisition yet and a calculated move to consolidate it’s position as the leading enterprise software company in the Cloud. The move also illustrates that the real power in the market is quickly shifting to those vendors that can facilitate the most cost-effective flow of data across applications in an increasingly connected and complex world.

Data 100

Data Acquisition Cloud Enterprise 100

CloseSaaS

MARCH 14, 2018

So you're looking to systematize your inside sales process so it's easier to onboard new talent and give them the steps they need to succeed.

Sales 78

Sales Onboarding 78

Sales Hacker

MARCH 29, 2018

This is part 2 of a 5-part series to help you develop the right approach to sales coaching. While part 1 focused building the right coaching mentality , this article covers how you can take a data driven sales coaching approach. . Using Data to Inspire Commitment. There are dozens of tools to stimulate conversations between salespeople and sales leaders.

Underperforming Technical Team 81

Underperforming Technical Team Data Sales Software Review 81

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

Pricing

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 16, 2018

Sometimes your customers really want to use your feature or product, but they also want something else that simply isn’t compatible with it. People really want to be slim and healthy, but they also really want soft drinks and fast food. McDonalds and Weight Watchers are selling wildly different products, but they’re competing for the same customers.

Payment Solutions 219

Payment Solutions Payments Sales Hiring Payment Services 219

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 31, 2018

A dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. This statement underpins all of finance. The idea has a fancy name: the Time Value of Money. It applies to all types of investments, including startups. Time Value of Money is the economic argument for startups to raise money when it’s available. If I give you a million dollars today, you can invest it.

Startup 154

Startup Finance Investment Engineering 154

FastSpring

MARCH 28, 2018

The line between the “real” world and the digital one is becoming more blurred by the day. Virtual reality and augmented reality (also known as mixed reality) are changing the way we experience the world.

Trends 61

Trends 61

The SaaS CFO

MARCH 7, 2018

Five Year Financial Projection Template – Solving My Pain Creating a five-year financial projection or any long-term financial forecast greater than two years is a time intensive effort. You need to add X number of managers per staff, you need enough sales reps to support bookings, you need more technical support specialists as your customer […].

Forecasting 71

Forecasting Technical Support SaaS Management 71

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

Chart Mogul

MARCH 20, 2018

Join industry leaders as we share how subscription businesses can drive predictable business growth. The consumerization of enterprise software is a trend that we at ChartMogul are proud to be part of. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have started ChartMogul if it wasn’t for this trend — the old school world of enterprise software just doesn’t get us excited (sorry, SAP).

Subscription 68

Subscription Payment Features Trends Mobile 68

Sales Hacker

MARCH 22, 2018

I run a European-based sales agency for software and technology companies. In this article, I will summarize what I’ve learned about B2B sales outsourcing. W hat is Sales Outsourcing? Sales outsourcing gives parts of your own sales process to others (individuals or agencies). Reasons to outsource include: Lack of expertise and experience in some sales functions (e.g.

Outsourcing Services 78

Outsourcing Services Sales Outsourcing Outsourced Development Scale 78

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 15, 2018

As a startup scales, the importance of infrastructure engineers simply can’t be overstated. They’re the ones making sure your app is secure, that uptime looks good, and that the rest of your engineering org has the right tools to build features your users need and want. Will Larson has managed infrastructure teams for some of the biggest names in software.

Engineering 214

Engineering Management Merchant Services DevOps as a Service 214

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 17, 2018

Recently, people have been asking just where are we in the SaaS valuation cycle. I last updated the chart above more than six months ago. The answer is close to ten year highs. The chart above shows the median enterprise value to forward revenue multiple to multiple. Enterprise value is the market of a publicly traded company minus the available cash the company holds.

SaaS 147

SaaS Healthcare SMB Enterprise 147

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

ReSci

MARCH 20, 2018

Each new season brings new marketing challenges. Creating the perfect email shouldn’t be one of them. Think of all the questions you go through when creating emails around each season’s new styles: –How can I combine new products in the best way possible? –What’s the. The post The danger of your branding-first email strategy appeared first on ReSci.

Branding 67

Branding Strategy Marketing 67

Casey Accidental

MARCH 5, 2018

Analytics has become a critical role at tech companies. A common question I receive is how to hire analysts and where they fit into an organizational structure. Below I share some tribal knowledge around common team structures, options I think work best and hiring tips that leverage this talent. Functional vs. Embedded Teams. One of the first questions organizations face when hiring analysts is how they should structure the team.

Sales Hiring 65

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Scale Interviewing 65

Chart Mogul

MARCH 5, 2018

If you’re like me, you’ve got a lot of ideas. Some of them might get off the ground, others might stay permanently on the backburner — but eventually, one of those ideas might take flight, accidentally find traction with an audience and you wind up with a bunch of customers! Late last year, I started building reCharged , a daily briefing and community designed as the antithesis of traditional news.

Startup 63

Startup Branding Churn Metrics 63