Chaotic Flow

MARCH 25, 2014

My first serious lesson in the criticality of SaaS metrics was about six years ago when I was unexpectedly stumped in a board of directors meeting. I had just presented the booking plan for the year and one of the Director’s in the meeting said that the plan was good, but we really needed to increase our booking rate. My first reaction was something like: “Well our current booking rate is pretty strong and we’re a SaaS business, so even with no immediate improvement to bookings we’ll continue to

Metrics 156

Metrics Business SaaS Scale 156

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 26, 2014

Earlier this week, I attended the Spring YCombinator Demo Day. I’ve been attending for six years now. Each time, I’m impressed by the intelligence, ambition and the polish of the founders presenting companies only a few weeks or months old. As I listened to the pitches, I wondered if the types of startups founders decide to build at YC has changed over time and whether those trends are lagging or leading indicators of the market as a whole.

Scale 100

Scale Marketing Trends Education 100

CloseSaaS

MARCH 26, 2014

When you're talking with prospective clients, they'll sometimes ask you for references. They want to talk with someone other than you to get a real customer's perspective on your product and service.References of happy customers are one of the most powerful sales tools you have.

Startup 52

Startup Sales 52

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 24, 2014

Yesterday, Box filed for its IPO and released its S-1. I enjoy going through S-1s because quite a bit about a private company is revealed and though only a subset of information is released, the S-1 discloses some very important details about the business operations. Over the past several months, I’ve analyzed the basket of the roughly 40 public SaaS companies many different ways.

Benchmarks 100

Benchmarks Metrics SaaS SMB 100

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Tom Tunguz

MARCH 23, 2014

Imagine a city council meeting with three agenda items: a $100M power plant zoning approval, a request to build a $10,000 bike rack for city sidewalks and and a $100 proposal to buy refreshments for the annual picnic. The power plant discussion takes all of 3 minutes to reach approval, as does the refreshment budget. But the $1000 bike rack debate drags on for hours as council members debate the right materials, the best color scheme and the right way to announce the project.

Startup 100

Startup Management 100