The Angel VC
FEBRUARY 20, 2013
Last week we announced the closing of our new fund, Point Nine Capital II. The most important information about the new fund is included in our official press release , but I wanted to write a brief blog post to give you some additional background and share some personal thoughts. When we set out to create the new fund last year, the goal was to raise €30 million.
Practical Advice on SaaS marketing
FEBRUARY 6, 2013
Lots of things about software-as-a-service (SaaS) are new: the business model, the delivery model, the development model. But that doesn't always mean that the marketing tactics need to be new too. You're not obligated to use only the latest tools and techniques. Sometimes the "old" tactics will work just fine. Not everyone lives on Facebook Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social media are certainly more glamorous than print media.
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Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 12, 2013
Peter Thiel and Gary Kasparov wrote in the Financial Times about “Our dangerous illusion of tech progress”. The main point of the article is quoted below: [We are living in an era of] cautiousness far too satisfied with incremental improvements. Our ability to do basic things such as protect ourselves from earthquakes and hurricanes, to travel and to extend our lifespans is barely increasing [since the 1960s].
Chaotic Flow
FEBRUARY 12, 2013
Sales professionals are some of the earliest adopters and most annoying users of social networking. The problem is that most sales reps treat LinkedIn like a prospecting database for cold calling. It’s just too enticing when all your target prospects are out there showing off their company names, titles, areas of expertise, blogs, and opinions.
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CloseSaaS
FEBRUARY 22, 2013
Close can automatically record all calls that occur within the application. Recording calls is great for monitoring, training, and reviewing call activity between your employees and customers.
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 21, 2013
Marketing is one of those words without meaning. Or at least a consistent meaning for most people. Recently, I met a very bright marketer who broke down a few of the different marketing disciplines and matched them to a freemium sales funnel. His framework is a stroke of genius. I’ve drawn it below. The Four Disciplines of Funnel Marketing. The triangle on the left is a standard freemium customer conversion process.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 7, 2013
When interviewing product managers at Google, we ranked candidates on four metrics: technical ability, communication skills, intellect and Googliness. A Googley person embodies the values of the company - a willingness to help others, an upbeat attitude, a passion for the company, and the most important, humility. In the past week, I asked two heads of engineering to identify the most important characteristic in new hires.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 25, 2013
Amazon operates its businesses at very close to break-even, zero net margin, to win the greatest share and prevent competition from undercutting them. This is as true for their books business as their infrastructure business, AWS. Bezos has explicitly stated this strategy and it’s the one that has led to Amazon’s massive success in many different lines of business.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 24, 2013
“Blades square,” the coach yelled from the Boston Whaler as he increased the speed on his outboard motor, pursuing the eight man boat as we gained speed. I sat in four-seat, right in the middle of the engine room, the place for the taller, heavier rowers. The eight man team reluctantly complied with the coach’s order and rowed across the Long Island Sound, NYAC jerseys on our backs and the muggy, humid early summer morning sun reflecting in the water, practicing for national championships.
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Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 18, 2013
In HBR this month, two British researchers reported on their study of the impact of competition on startups. In a study of over 2M companies spanning 10 years, the researchers determined that if a startup faced competition in its first year, it was more likely to fail. But if the startup survived its first year, it’s survival rate jumped nearly 30%.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
Successful startups are money machines: they ingest a dollar of investment and produce more than a dollar in revenue. There are three steps to build a money machine: Find or create a product many people will use. Convince customers to buy the product. Mechanize the two processes above, reducing costs and increasing profitability to finance growth. Startups repeat these three steps many times during their lifespans.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 13, 2013
For sales people, social proof is one of the most powerful forms of influence, as Robert Ciadini proved in his seminal book on the topic. It’s no secret that the best leads are referrals. Second best is the friend who is a customer in common: “Oh, Peter chose Salesforce for his CRM. Maybe I should consider them too.” Social proof confers the trust of a relationship to the salesperson improving close rates.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 11, 2013
On a Saturday morning in August of 2006, Sergey Brin and a team of Googlers flew to Los Angeles to meet Tom Anderson and his MySpace team. By the next afternoon, the two founders shook hands on a three year $900M contract. About twelve months later, I found myself as the product manager for the team in Marrakesh, Google’s executive board room, reporting the state of affairs to Eric, Larry and Sergey.
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Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 10, 2013
If you’re a Netflix subscriber, in all likelihood you’re a big fan of “House of Cards.” Netflix designed it that way. With the release of “House of Cards” Netflix began the Moneyball-era of content production. The majority of Netflix subscribers watch Kevin Spacey, political thrillers and David Fincher’s movies. Guess what? “House of Cards” has all three.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 6, 2013
Kenny Van Zant is a marketing wizard. Before his current role at Asana, Kenny managed products and marketing for Solarwinds , a publicly traded company that sells networking equipment to the mid-market. Solarwinds pioneered the low-friction, high-velocity sales model in their segment to great success. SolarWinds offered free products to their customers to gain usage data that informs their sales and marketing efforts.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 5, 2013
David Brooks has a great op-ed this morning on the Philosophy of Data. He argues that data offers one major advantage and one major drawback. Data enables humans to discover patterns otherwise unobservable by our senses/intuition or patterns that violate human intuition. But the religion of data engenders a fallacy: that everything can and should be measured; and with this data, the best answer will emerge.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 4, 2013
With a litany of articles in recent months highlighting the number of companies with valuations greater than $1B , I’ve started to wonder about the valuation trends for the highest profile venture backed companies. Venture capitalists are increasing market prices in Series A and Series B rounds aggressively in effort to reap disproportionate returns.
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Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 2, 2013
Even the greatest minds fear missing out. Nobel laureate Richard Feynman who assisted in the development of the atomic bomb, contributed substantial advances to quantum mechanics and particle physics, discovered the cause of the Challenger Shuttle disaster and popularized science as a witty and successful author, faced this fear when confronted with a menu.
CloseSaaS
FEBRUARY 19, 2013
In creating Close software for salespeople, we rely on a number of other startups and services to do what we do. While there are alternatives to using each of the following, we have chosen them for specific reasons because we think they’re the best.
CloseSaaS
FEBRUARY 12, 2013
This article was written by our very own Phil Freo, Elastic’s Lead Engineer/Hacker. After months of development, two weeks ago we finally launched our product, Close.
CloseSaaS
FEBRUARY 22, 2013
Earlier this week, we released a new and improved Bulk Import Tool. Importing your leads, contacts and sales data has never been easier.
As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.
CloseSaaS
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
Great news: You now have the ability to view and track who has opened emails you’ve sent from Close.
The Angel VC
FEBRUARY 3, 2013
Following some advice on choosing the right market ( here and here ), building a team with product/tech DNA and the importance of an awesome product and an awesome marketing website I would now like to turn to the topic of getting your pricing right: 5th DO for SaaS startups Get your pricing right If you're following this blog for a little while, a part of this post won't be new for you because I wrote about the topic before and will repost a large part of it here.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 20, 2013
Last night I spoke at the Enterprise Tech VC Panel. We discussed five trends in the seed market and the outlook for 2013. These are the five most important trends for 2013, in my view. MicroVC Funds Have Doubled Their Assets. Call it micro-VC or mega-seed fund, there’s a new investor class which raises funds between $50 and $100M to invest in seed-stage companies.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 19, 2013
If asked to describe the characteristics of a successful freemium business, I might highlight three things: effective community marketing, command of new distribution platforms, and a paid product users love that is priced by usage. Look no further than ZenDesk, Evernote, Expensify, Dropbox. Each of them has built a vibrant user base using freemium products.
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Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 27, 2013
Writing on the web is undergoing a renaissance. What started in the late 90s as mass-market adoption of blogging has given way to high production quality, curated magazines. Despite all the innovation in blogging, there’s one part of the magazine that hasn’t been reinvented: the Letter to the Editor. If you’ve ever read the Economist, you might have breezed past this section.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
Tracing the arc of Facebook’s user sharing model is to identify the biggest case of frog boiling in history. Contrast Facebook’s origins as a dating site limited to students attending a particular college to an exhibitionist’s dream syndicating every detail of a life across of 1000+ friend networks and potentially many more followers. The question for users is: what is the quid pro quo?
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