SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2023

Non-founder CEOs get fired all the time — and these days, are quitting more often than ever. Founder-CEOs getting fired seems rarer these days, though. Ubers and WeWorks aside. Two that would be hard to imagine happening today: Pushing Steve Jobs out of Apple. Pushing Sergey Brin + Larry Page “down” to bring in an Outside CEO. A few that we don’t hear about too much: Elon Musk pushing out the first CEO of Tesla.

SaaS 267

SaaS Technical Review CTO Scaling 267

User Pilot

OCTOBER 26, 2023

What is software ROI and how to measure it? Why is important for business growth ? These are the main questions the article tackles, so if you’re after the answers, you’re in the right place! We also share benchmarks, important metrics to track, and best practices. Let’s get right to it. TL;DR Software ROI, or Return on Investment , represents the financial and business benefits of implementing a software application while factoring in the cost of the investment.

SaaS 106

SaaS Software Outsourcing Services Onboarding 106

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 23, 2023

Yesterday, both Google and Microsoft announced their earnings for their cloud businesses. I’ve been tracking the growth rates of these companies and product lines for the last 18 months to develop a broad gauge of enterprise buying patterns after the downturn. In the chart, it’s immediately evident that Mongo has seen dramatic increase in growth rate last quarter.

AI Search 264

AI Search AI Cloud Azure 264

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. We recently hosted the Point Nine Founders Summit, featuring several panels and presentations from founders, CFOs, COOs, and sales execs on building early sales teams and hiring your first successful sales leaders.

Sales Hiring 124

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 124

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Navigate the complex world of integrated payment partnerships with this essential guide, a treasure trove of insights for software companies. It unveils ten critical red flags to watch out for, from the dangers of hidden fees to the constraints of restrictive contracts. This guide is crucial for identifying potential pitfalls and aligning with the right partners.

Payments

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Most weeks, I stare blankly at my LinkedIn channel, wondering what on earth I should post. It's hard. Coming up with new content on a weekly or even daily basis isn’t just time-consuming, it can be infuriating. Fortunately, Buffer’s AI Assistant can help. But there’s a secret you need to know if you want to get the most out of it: adding the right prompts.

AI 118

AI Social Media Engagement Trends 118

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2023

So a question for the ages of marketers — is a bigger booth worth it? I had my doubts after 9 years of SaaStr Annuals. I assumed they’d all perform kind of the same. But, I was wrong. The data: Qualified Leads this year ranged from 95 at lowest-yielding of almost 200 sponsors, to 1597 at the top — a wide range But on average, each Gold got 207 Qualified Leads Next up?

Data 294

Data Investment Marketing Branding 294

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 31, 2023

Why can’t we connect with 911 operators on FaceTime or WhatsApp, to easily share photos and videos from the scene? Why do we wait for an emergency vehicle to arrive at an accident site to understand what’s happening when drones can get there faster and provide “eye in the sky” perspectives for first responders en route? According to the FBI, a car is stolen every 23 seconds in the United States, and 40% are never recovered — a shockingly high number given all of the data and technology available

Artificial Intelligence 136

Artificial Intelligence Technology Software Data 136

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Last week, Office Hours hosted Oliver Jay, former CRO at Asana to talk about Avoiding the PLG Trap. More than 900 people registered for the event. The full recording is here or embedded below on the web. Oliver shared some trenchant insights about his experience leading the GTM teams to success. These are three of the lessons that stood out to me espcially managing the transition from product to sales-led growth (PLG -> SLG).

Benchmarks 242

Benchmarks Revenue Engineering compliance 242

Sparktoro

OCTOBER 26, 2023

I’ve told this story only once before. Never in writing. Never on video. My voice was shaky and I barely stumbled through it. But with a few years of distance I think I’m finally ready. Here goes… For 17 years I had one job.

Startup 125

Startup 125

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

Pricing

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 4, 2023

I wanted to nail my personal brand on LinkedIn — but I had no idea where to start. Over the past few years, I’ve watched as the platform evolved from a job seekers' hub to a playground for entrepreneurs and creators looking to become industry authorities and drive sales. There’s no doubt doing so is incredibly powerful. LinkedIn is 277 percent more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter.

Branding 131

Branding Social Media Underperforming Technical Team Engagement 131

The Daily Egg

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Acquiring customers is a challenge. If you can use sales and marketing data to help you tell which products attract a potential. The post Salespanel Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Sales 290

Sales Data Marketing 290

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2023

Dear SaaStr: My Startup Doesn’t Have a Free Trial or Freemium Option. We require payment right away. Should we change this? Free trials and freemium options work well — if you can support them well. Ask yourself: Can someone deploy your app in minutes? If they can, does it work well self-deployed? Or does it need a ton of data in it to work well and show value?

Startup 281

Startup Payment Solutions Enterprise Business Model 281

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 4, 2023

This article is the third of four installments in our new series, How Fintech Companies Can Simplify Their Funding Strategy. Read part 1 on Choosing the Right Funding Structure here. Read part 2 on Trade-offs Across Terms here. In this series, we have explored a variety of funding options for startups looking to launch a new financial product as well as terms to consider when negotiating your first warehouse facility.

Software Review 130

Software Review Outsourcing Services Scale Banking 130

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.

Enterprise

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 26, 2023

In 2021, Amazon announced they had reduced prices on Amazon Web Services 107 times since launch. This drop in prices has grown AWS into a $90b revenue business in 17 years. As storage & compute became less expensive, the economic viability of new use cases became increasingly apparent & developers built software on the cloud. The same cost-reduction phenomenon is occurring with blockchains, though it’s not nearly as well publicized.

Blockchain 206

Blockchain AWS Pricing Cloud 206

Sparktoro

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Today, Google’s search results still look (mostly) like lists of snippets and links, e.g. But, plenty of search marketers and industry observers suspect we’re in the closing days of this format, and the future holds something closer to how AI-tools like ChatGPT and Bard answer user-inputted prompts, e.g.

AI Search 127

AI Search AI ChatGPT Marketing 127

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Sharing our mental model on gen AI in SaaS Over the past twelve months, like many others, I’ve been diving deep into generative AI and its implications for SaaS companies, as well as what it means for us as early-stage SaaS investors. I’ve already shared some of my thoughts before (e.g., here , here , here , and here ), and Louis Coppey summarized his learnings exploring GPT/LLMs in this great post.

Startup 116

Startup AI Artificial Intelligence SaaS 116

The Daily Egg

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Call center dialers are integral tools of efficient call centers. They automate the dialing process so that agents can connect with more. The post The 5 Types of Dialers for Call Centers + When To Use Each appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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278

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Data

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2023

We’re hiring at SaaStr!! We’ve got at least 6 roles open: Director of Email / Growth Marketing. Take over our complex email campaigns to drive event attendance and ticket sales, as well as our 4 weekly newsletters. VP/Director of Events. Own the Annual + Europa, or at least a big piece of them. Director of Sponsor Success. Make 50+ of our top 200 sponsors more successful and happy.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring SaaS Growth Marketing Healthcare 284

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 13, 2023

If one thing is certain about generative AI, it’s that no one knows exactly how it will play out from a product or user experience perspective. Which interfaces will win out? Which tasks will be augmented by large language models (LLMs), and which ones will be completely upended by them? How will creative AI models change our expectations of what we can do with computers?

AI 127

AI Enterprise Artificial Intelligence VP of Engineering 127

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 30, 2023

The Federal Trade Commission’s focus on technology has transfigured the M&A market for startups. The Google anti-trust lawsuit & Amazon anti-trust cases may stifle those companies’ ability to acquire startups for significant sums. Facebook has faced a similar suit for illegal monopolization, which resulted perhaps indirectly in the divestment of two of its more recent acquisitions.

Acquisition 214

Acquisition Startup Pricing Software 214

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Many social media platforms are rethinking the way they reward their top creators.  A blue tick or badge on social media used to mean you were someone to watch — whether that meant a creator with a growing following or a recognized public figure. But with Meta’s new verification subscription and X Premium , getting the social stamp of approval requires a lot less by way of expertise (if you’re willing to spend a bit of money every month, that is).

Branding 119

Branding Social Media Engagement AI 119

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

Totango

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Brent Cogswell, Head of Customer Success at Schneider Electric, shares the organization’s principles and milestones for building a customer success strategy that unites the company and their customers around a shared mission. “It became our mission to get rid of the spreadsheets and bring all the data and telemetry into one tool, so customer success could control outcomes for our customers and positively affect recurring revenue and growth.

Customer Success 109

Customer Success Onboarding Data Enterprise 109

The Daily Egg

OCTOBER 5, 2023

When you need inbound telephone capabilities to help you appear like a larger professional company to customers, the 800.com business phone number. The post 800.com Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Business 289

Business 289

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Does A Salesperson Need To Do To “Earn Your Business”? Solve my problem. Just truly solve my problem. The beauty to sales in SaaS is as sales professionals, for the most part, you aren’t selling a commodity or a fungible product. You can’t just go down the street, or to another website, to get a better deal on the Ford F-150.

SaaS 287

SaaS Business Sales Pricing 287

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 17, 2023

We hear a lot of discussion around the best practices for launching a mobile game, and one particular topic that often comes up is: whether or not to do a soft launch. And if you do soft launch, how can you tell if your game will be successful? Much of the mobile games industry has taken the tactic of soft launching seriously – in September alone, there were more than 100 games soft launched on the Apple App Store and over 600 on the Google Play Store.

Mobile 116

Mobile Scale Retention Metrics 116

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Payment Solutions

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 22, 2023

On November 8th, I’ll share my 10 Top Trends in Data & AI at the IMPACT Summit. Last year, I covered 9 topics: Cloud data warehouses will process 75% of workloads by 2024. Data workloads segment into in-memory, cloud data warehouse, & cloud data lakes. Metrics layers unify the data stack. LLMs change the roles of data engineers. WASM becomes an essential component of web applications.

Trends 203

Trends AI Data Cloud 203

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 23, 2023

The beauty of short-form video is that it allows anyone to become a creator. With a phone and the Internet, you can start growing a platform for yourself. The other side to this, however, is that the bar for quality has been reduced, and you’ll need to put in extra effort to see meaningful growth.  This is as true for YouTube Shorts as for any other platform.

Trends 116

Trends Social Media Engagement Branding 116

Sixteen Ventures

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Customer Success teams continually strive to advocate for their significance, often finding themselves undervalued by other departments. Heads of Customer Success are no strangers to this feeling, and while the importance of their roles is crystal clear to them, they sometimes feel isolated in this perspective. This sentiment isn’t a reflection of their desire to […] The post Every Department Must Recognize the Value of Customer Success appeared first on Customer-centric Growth by Li

Customer Success 115

Customer Success Growth Hacking Churn Retention 115