Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 15, 2016

Imagine you’ve just been named the head of a bustling New York City restaurant challenged by one issue - customers complain about the customer service. A data-driven person, you search for a metric to evaluate the current customer service to validate the complaint and then track as you experiment with the restaurant’s operations. What metrics would you employ?

Metrics 177

Metrics Startup Customer Lifetime Value Finance 177

CloseSaaS

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

We are excited to share a few recent product improvements to Close, in addition to the recently announced Send Email Later feature.

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52

Brian Balfour

NOVEMBER 14, 2016

Part of every team’s identity is how they measure success, and each team measures their success in different ways. Product teams might be measured by NPS, feature output, or possibly by metrics. An engineering team’s success may be measured by uptime and reliability among other things, and a design team’s success could be measured on usability. But measuring the success of the growth team is a tougher question.

Technical Review 46

Technical Review Engineering Acquisition Retention 46

Hitenism

NOVEMBER 14, 2016

Most people approach content marketing like a black box. Ideas go in one end. Hours and days are spent doing something creative. And content comes out the other end. In a survey I ran of 2,203 companies, I was shocked to find that only 35% had a documented content marketing strategy. People measure and analyze all other aspects of marketing, but they don’t take that mindset and apply it to the actual practice of content creation.

Content Marketing 138

Content Marketing Marketing Consulting Interviewing 138

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When test coverage falls behind release velocity, quality suffers, and your team feels the consequences. This guide outlines when it makes sense to outsource quality assurance (QA), the risks to watch for, and how to scale testing without increasing headcount or slowing down engineering. You will learn how leading teams are leveraging external QA partners to expand coverage, enhance defect detection, and remain aligned with CI/CD timelines.

Scale

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2016

Earlier this week, I published benchmarks on What Percentage Of Revenue Should SaaS Startups Spend On operating expense? Several founders asked to see this data broken down further. What fraction of operating expense is spent on sales & marketing, and what fraction of op is spent on engineering? Most businesses spend 2x more on sales & marketing than engineering.

Engineering 100

Engineering Scale Startup Sales 100

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 13, 2016

What percentage of revenue should be spent on payroll? In 2001, Salesforce spent $35.6M on payroll and generated $5.4M in revenue. NetSuite spent $38M on payroll generated $17M in 2004. as both of these companies scaled and approached IPO, the operating expense ratio (OER) or operating expense divided by revenue, asymptotes to 0.8. For every dollar of revenue, both of these companies spent $0.80 in payroll at scale.

Revenue 100

Revenue Startup SaaS Benchmarks 100

CloseSaaS

NOVEMBER 16, 2016

You’ve qualified a prospect and know they’re a good fit. It would be in their own interest to buy from you, because no other product or service will provide as much value to them as yours.

Sales 52

Sales 52

CloseSaaS

NOVEMBER 14, 2016

We’re happy to announce that a much requested feature is now available to all Close users. Write your sales emails whenever you want, and schedule them to arrive in your prospect’s inbox at just the right time.

Sales 52

Sales 52