Sat.Jan 25, 2020 - Fri.Jan 31, 2020

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Should Your Free Edition … Be Even Free-er?

SaaStr

Aaron Levie and Karen Appelton, his ex-head of partnerships came to the 2018 SaaStrAnnual.com to talk partnerships and one point on “free” deeply resonated with me. Aaron said he wished his API could be 100% free for everyone , for everything. He said he lamented that the reality was that wasn’t practical for Box’s current business — but he wished it could be.

Cloud 270
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Ten Questions Founder CEOs Should Always Be Able to Answer About Their Startups

Kellblog

I’m working with more early-stage companies these days (e.g., pre-seed, seed, seed-plus [1]) and one of the things I’ve noticed is that many founders cannot clearly, succinctly, and confidently answer some basic questions about their businesses. I decided to write this post to help entrepreneurs ensure they have their bases are covered when speaking to angel investors, seed firms, or venture capitalists.

Startup 99
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Has VC Become So Big It Must Be Disrupted?

Tom Tunguz

Nathan Heller published an article called Is Venture Capital Worth the Risk? in the New Yorker. It’s a well-researched critique of the venture industry. The key question he poses is: has the industry become so large that it needs to be disrupted? It’s a thought provoking question and a good opportunity to ask for feedback on how we can imrove.

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How arrogant are VCs in 2020?

SaaStr

Q: How arrogant are VCs in 2020? I’m going to suggest VCs are less arrogant in 2020. When I started my start-up career, VCs had all the leverage. Everything was so condescending, terms were Default Terrible, and raising money just took longer. Almost every pitch, every meeting, every dinner had a weird paternal-condescending element to it. You were the kid, and dad (yes, almost all men) knew best.

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SaaS: How They’re Turning Payments Into Profit Centers

Discover how top SaaS companies are earning up to $700k + and zero upfront cost with Usio Integrated Payments.

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Everything You Need to Know About Freemium Pricing

OpenView Labs

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on August 9, 2018. Special thanks to Ned O’Leary and Laura Rosca who helped compile this research. . Freemium in SaaS is old news. The much-discussed pricing strategy took over the SaaS world and helped fuel the phenomenal success of SaaS pioneers like Dropbox, Evernote, SurveyMonkey and Hootsuite.

Pricing 82

More Trending

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What is Product-Led Growth and Why Is it a Revolution?

SaaSX

If you are in SaaS you already know the days of software vendors pitching monolithic enterprise solutions to corporate executives are quickly giving way to a growth model that centers on the end-user discovering software solutions on their own. This is product-led growth, a grassroots distribution model that scales from the bottom up, instead of from the top down.

Scale 69
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[Guest Post] 5 Ways Intellectual Property Law Coincides with SEO

Incredo

When users interact with the World Wide Web, they tend to be rather lenient with their activity online and consider the consequences of their actions a little less. Whether it’s because they’re not physically doing something or they feel they’re unlikely to be detected, it’s still a risky game to play. Considering just how enormous the internet is, it can actually be relatively easy to get caught from doing something unethical.

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How to Get Press Coverage

The Angel VC

Startup PR for Dummies Public Relations (PR) is not a high priority for most early-stage startups. If you keep in mind how many different hats founders have to wear in the early days to build a product, get customers, hire a team and raise money, you’ll understand why. However, I’ve seen plenty of founders miss out on PR opportunities like a funding announcement due to mistakes that would have been easy to avoid.

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How do you turn coffee meetings into dollars? Sales expert Fabien Pataud shares his secrets

Predictable Revenue

Getting together for coffee: it’s a request that comes to entrepreneurs and salespeople all the time. And it’s enticing – you never know what will come from a chat with a new connection. Fabien talks about turning those coffee meetings into pipeline. The post How do you turn coffee meetings into dollars? Sales expert Fabien Pataud shares his secrets appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Sales 213
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Beyond the Basics of A/B Tests: Highly Innovative Experimentation Tactics You Need to Know

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.

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The 20 Trending VC Sessions at 2020 SaaStr Annual!!

SaaStr

It’s still early — the 2020 SaaStrAnnual.com isn’t until March 10-11-12 in the SF Bay Area — but we can already start seeing some of the hottest VC sessions at Annual. There will be almost 1,000 (!) VCs at Annual and folks will be handing out term sheets! A bunch of sessions aren’t even up yet — for example, we just added David Wadwani, ex-CEO of Appdynamics, now the newest partner at Greylock — so take these trends with a grain of salt.

Trends 212
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How GetAccept uses all of Intercom to grow its revenue by 450%

Intercom, Inc.

Gone are the days of sales deals being closed with a handshake in a face-to-face meeting. Nowadays, digital solutions like CRMs have made it easier for sales teams to manage their pipelines online but that doesn’t always result in the best experience for the end buyer. . This rapid shift to the world of online sales has created an engagement gap between sales reps and buyers for many companies, resulting in an estimated 60 percent of all contracts being lost to indecision or simply going una

Scale 138
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How to Check if Google Manually Reviewed Your Site

Neil Patel

Do you know how Google decides what website should be ranked number 1, 2, 3 and so on for any given keyword? Well, they have an algorithm for that. But as you know, algorithms aren’t perfect. That’s why Google continually tries to improve it. One way that they try to improve their algorithm is through Search Quality Raters. What’s a Search Quality Rater?

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How Ecommerce Company Packlane Delivers On-Brand, Targeted Campaigns with Custom Landing Pages

Unbounce

Step inside the marketer’s brain and you’re likely to find some healthy skepticism. Does this $50 Airbnb come with a three-digit cleaning charge? Will “free shipping” require my firstborn to clear customs? Why does this anonymous benefactor need a credit card number to give me my millions? (And how did he get my email?) Do “fully customized” landing pages secretly mean slower launches, a bulkier building process, or not-totally-customizable-but-hey-close-enough?

Branding 143
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How Investors & Strategic Buyers Evaluate Integrated Payment Strategies

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.

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Q&A with Maria Pergolino, Anthony Kennada, Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

Jason Lemkin moderates a panel of some greatest-of-all-time SaaStr speakers taking questions from the audience and over Twitter. The panel discussed navigating a future recession, building great office culture, app exhaustion and more. Want to see more content like this? Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020. Jason Lemkin | CEO and Founder @ SaaStr, Inc. Maria Pergolino | Former CMO @ Anaplan.

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How to Prepare for Preliminary SaaS Due Diligence

The SaaS CFO

You’ve decided that it’s time to take on investment or sell your SaaS company. Or maybe that cold email from a private equity associate finally has you thinking about the next steps for your business. What’s next? Preliminary SaaS due diligence. Depending on your role and what side of the table you’ve been on, the […]. The post How to Prepare for Preliminary SaaS Due Diligence appeared first on The SaaS CFO.

SaaS 131
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Flipsnack 4x’ed Revenue by Running Growth Experiments Faster

Chart Mogul

Product and marketing use ChartMogul to gather data, run better campaigns, improve the product, and learn faster. What is Flipsnack? Flipsnack is an online publishing tool that can be used by anyone to create flip page digital catalogs directly in their browser. Flipsnack allows you to quickly and easily create a digital magazine, brochure, or similar document.

Revenue 129
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Investing in Neighbor

Andreessen Horowitz

As my partner, Marc Andreessen, often says, “there are no bad ideas in tech, only bad timing.” This can sound a tad crazy at face value, but let me elaborate. Marc and a16z cofounder Ben Horowitz started a company called … The post Investing in Neighbor appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

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What are some of the most common techniques used by salespeople?

SaaStr

Q: What are some of the most common techniques used by salespeople? In SaaS, I think the most common one I see is simply lying to a buyer that doesn’t know software. I see this all the time: For example, a little while back, someone on our events team bought a piece of software that the sales rep promised him integrated with everything in our stack.

Software 190
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Steal Our Marketing Persona Template (And the Customer Research Process That Goes With It)

Groove HQ

A marketing persona template and research process to help your business grow. Before coming to Groove, I worked as a full-time freelance writer and marketing consultant, mostly working in the B2B space. Many of the companies I worked with sent me their marketing personas (sometimes called “customer avatars”) as we started working together. Most (almost […].

Marketing 113
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Looking at the Correct Priorities in a Payment Gateway Integration?

Agile Payments

We're continually surprised at the differing perspectives and priorities that various organizations and companies have for integrating to a Payment Gateway. However, there is one constant; each and every integrating organization or their client using base sells a service or product. To put it simply, they are looking to make a profit from their sales via electronic transactions.

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a16z Podcast: The Truth about a 1000 True Fans (and Our Attention)!

Andreessen Horowitz

The idea of “ 1000 true fans ” — first proposed by Kevin Kelly in 2008 and later updated for Tools of Titans — argued that to be a successful creator, you don’t need millions of customers or clients, but … The post a16z Podcast: The Truth about a 1000 True Fans (and Our Attention)! appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

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Driving Growth, Customer Satisfaction, and Retention through Usage-Based Pricing

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

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Things to Consider When Buying Shared Hosting Services on a Tight Budget

SaaS Metrics

Finding a quality hosting services provider can be a daunting task, especially when you are on a tight budget and not very well versed with terminologies related to the industry. It takes time and some effort to compare different hosts, the features they are offering and the best price. However, with each service provider claiming to be the best, it’s not always easy to find the best deal.

Pricing 105
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You’ll outgrow your company’s core values. Here’s what to do next.

Groove HQ

It wasn’t working, and I was frustrated. Four years ago, we put hundreds of hours into developing our company’s core values, and they now felt broken. The things we used to do because they were “scrappy” were beginning to strain our infrastructure. The things we used to do because they were “fun” led to stagnation […]. The post You’ll outgrow your company’s core values.

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How does a Software Platform make money from Payment Facilitation As A Service?

Agile Payments

For SaaS applications with payment needs, eg Rentlee, a landlord platform offering rent collection, Payment Facilitation as a Service allows the platform to act as a master merchant account. This allows landlords to be set up as sub-accounts and begin accepting rent payments instantly. In the past Rentlee would have had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and 6+ months to register with the card associations to act as a true Payment Facilitator.

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Fintech Newsletter: January 2020

Andreessen Horowitz

To receive this monthly update from the a16z fintech team, sign up here. Neobanks compete with bundles; Visa to acquire Plaid; Shopify launches $200 loans, and more. Visa to acquire Plaid . The Visa-Plaid deal made international headlines a few … The post Fintech Newsletter: January 2020 appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

Mobile 106
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Addressing Top Enterprise Challenges in Generative AI with DataRobot

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.

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Why Every Startup Needs an Inverted Demand Generation Funnel, Part III

Kellblog

In part I of this three-part series I introduced the idea of an inverted funnel whereby marketing can derive a required demand generation budget using the sales target and historical conversion rates. In order to focus on the funnel itself, I made the simplifying assumption that the company’s new ARR target was constant each quarter. . In part II, I made things more realistic both by quarterizing the model (with increasing quarterly targets) and accounting for the phase lag between opportunity

Startup 98
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5 Mistakes to Avoid if You Want to Reap the Benefits of Marketing Automation

Nimble - Sales

Marketing automation is using software to streamline and simplify your marketing strategy. You can implement it on channels such as email, social media, websites, and ad campaigns. By automating repetitive tasks like posting on social media or sending promotional emails through preset instructions (workflows), you can reduce the time spent on marketing, while having the […].

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The Top Podcasts for Tech and Modern IT Enthusiasts

Intello

Podcasts have become the standard for staying up on your industry, news, how to solve cold case murders and more. But who’s got time to suss out which ones are worth listening to?

SaaS 95