SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

Just like filing your income tax returns or hanging that state-mandated safety poster up in your break room, sales tax is a back-office pain point, not a profit center. . That makes sales tax compliance easy to ignore… until it becomes a problem. . This post will walk you through what SaaS companies need to know about sales tax compliance, how to know when and from which customers you should collect sales tax, and best of all, how to automate sales tax so you can check “Do something about sales

Merchant Services 169

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 169

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 22, 2020

When I started in venture capital, one of the questions I learned to ask very early on was competition. Founders would often reply that competition validates the opportunity. At the time, I thought it was a canned response, a clever parry, to avoid answering the question directly. I’ve since realized I was wrong. Let’s say you’re creating a category.

Venture Capital 273

Venture Capital Innovation Education Technology 273

BetterCloud

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

Many of the existing ways of managing IT are no longer applicable to environments dominated by SaaS. Gartner analysts Manjunath Bhat and Roger Williams recently released a new report describing how Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) leaders must transform the roles and skills of IT teams as they shift to SaaS. We found that Gartner’s insights validate many of the components of BetterCloud’s SaaSOps framework.

Scale 64

Scale SaaS Government User Experience 64

Cobloom

FEBRUARY 24, 2020

Most free trial users never become customers. In fact, the average SaaS company sees an end-to-end conversion rate (from visitor to paying, retained customer) of between 0.6 and 1.2%. Thankfully, it isn't all doom-and-gloom. We've already covered a dozen strategies for improving your customer onboarding process , and in the case of many free trial users, a simple, well-timed follow up email is enough to nudge them towards customer status.

Onboarding 73

Onboarding Strategy SaaS Sales 73

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.

Innovation

Sujan Patel

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

I’ll be straight with you. SEO for SaaS isn’t that different than SEO for other companies — it’s not as if Google changes the rules based on the type of business you run. That said, I see a lot of SaaS founders out there who are brilliant developers or innovators, but who don’t have the […]. The post How to Get Started With SEO for SaaS appeared first on Sujan Patel.

SaaS 95

SaaS Innovation Development Business 95

Chart Mogul

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

Reilly Chase knew that raising prices would not sit well with all of his customers. But he also realized he had to focus on the best ones if his business was to continue developing. I’m the founder of HostiFi. We’re a managed cloud hosting provider for Ubiquiti UniFi and UNMS servers. The majority of our customers are IT/MSP service providers and WISP operators.

Outsourcing Services 131

Outsourcing Services Revenue Outsourced Development Scale 131

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

By Shane Murphy-Reuter, Intercom SVP of Marketing. Most marketers I know struggle over the same competing messaging challenges: to what degree should we focus our messaging on the function of what our product can do, versus the emotion of how it makes me feel when I use it? The benefits of both approaches are clear. We’re all human, so if brands can tap into a higher, more emotional meaning for us, we reward that with loyalty.

Marketing 212

Marketing Interviewing Communication Branding 212

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

As a sales manager, your job is to drive growth. The best way to do that is to develop the right behaviors in your sales reps. In other words, you can’t just be a sales manager. You have to be a sales LEADER. How do you do that? There are many things that can drive revenue growth within your company, but as a sales leader, it all starts with your team.

Underperforming Technical Team 96

Underperforming Technical Team Development Revenue Sales Hiring 96

Predictable Revenue

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

People leave managers, not jobs. So how do you avoid being that manager? Learn how good leaders keep top talent engaged and inspired. The post Leading from the front: How Zendesk’s Jamie Buss trains and transforms leaders appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Engagement 191

Engagement Revenue Management 191

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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.

Payments

Totango

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

We all want to believe that we have a strong relationship with our customers. However, the truth is that we’re only as important to them as the value we offer their businesses. The digitization of business has created a customer-centric economy, and people switch services until they find the solution that suits them. So when you get the customer’s attention, you have to maximize every conversation and engagement to prove you are the right partner to nurture their long-term growth.

Engagement 93

Engagement Strategy Customer Lifetime Value Customer Success 93

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

If you’re looking for a primer on many of the responsibilities of being a startup CEO, read The Great CEO Within. Matt Mochary wrote the book. He founded a company which he sold to MCI and now coaches startup CEOs, amongst other philanthropic efforts. The best part of this book is that it combines descriptions of the key jobs to be done and the frameworks to accomplish them.

Leadership 286

Leadership Startup Management 286

The Daily Egg

FEBRUARY 24, 2020

We share the 3-step process for the website usability testing we recommend to our customers, plus the tools to pull actionable insights out of the process. The post Comprehensive Guide to Website Usability Testing (With Tools and Software to Help) appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Software 357

Software User Experience Mobile 357

Predictable Revenue

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

In sales, the common misconception is that by saying the right thing you’ll win the deal. But what we started to realize after introducing Question-Based Selling (QBS) to our sales organization is that it’s impossible to know what to say without understanding the person and/or organization we were selling to. The post How Question-Selling Can Triple the Value of Your Service appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Revenue 312

Revenue Sales 312

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Revenue

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

The other day I had a whiplash moment as a customer of a Unicorn SaaS company. I had a large problem with a piece of software with a lot of integrations in it, and it really wasn’t clear whose problem it was. But one of the vendors stepped up and said they’d solve the problem. They worked over the weekend and fixed it! Beyond above and beyond.

Scale 244

Scale Onboarding Pricing Customer Support 244

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 24, 2020

This is the theoretically ideal organizational chart of a startup. There’s a CEO at the top in red, VPs in orange, senior contributors in dark gray, team leads in green, and junior individual contributors in light gray. This is the org chart of the typical startup. It’s a very different in reality. The departments are lopsided and scraggly.

Startup 257

Startup Scale Underperforming Technical Team Scaling 257

Neil Patel

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

There are a lot of tools out there and a ton of SEO reports. But when you use them, what happens? You get lost, right? Don’t worry, that’s normal (sadly). And maybe one day I will be able to fix that. But for now, the next best thing I can do is teach you how to grow your SEO traffic using Ubersuggest. This way, you know exactly what to do, even if you have never done any SEO.

Mobile 145

Mobile Underperforming Technical Team Engineering Data 145

Unbounce

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

It’s the kind of mega-growth story anyone starting a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company dreams about. You and a couple of friends have an idea for a product that fits a clear gap in the market. You pitch at a local startup event, which lands you in a growth accelerator, which also leads to your first seed funding. You spend that money hiring and building out the software.

Scale 136

Scale SaaS Advertising Sales Hiring 136

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

Pricing

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

Q: How do you pull your SaaS competitor’s customers to your SaaS instead? You have to be where your competitors are. You have to show up. Many startups try to avoid the places their larger competitors are. They avoid the same tradeshows. They don’t sponsor the same newsletters and services. They try to stake out their own marketing white space. While that’s a good idea, you also want to be exactly where your competitors are.

SaaS 241

SaaS Enterprise Innovation Branding 241

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

One of the first challenges I faced when I joined Credit Karma’s product team four years ago was adapting my more generalized product management experience to the specificity of fintech and financial services. In that first year, I learned (sometimes … The post Three Questions for Fintech Product Managers appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

Management 135

Management 135

ProfitWell

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

Episode five of RevOps and Hops is all about measuring the effectiveness of your RevOps strategy with Founder of Adespresso and MailUp , Armando Biondi. You can listen to episodes of RevOps and Hops on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Google Podcasts , or wherever you get your podcasts. There's also a full video version below so you can pick and choose your own journey.

Underperforming Technical Team 111

Underperforming Technical Team Travel Metrics Revenue 111

Totango

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

A successful organization operates in much the same way as a prestigious orchestra. Both are made up of individuals with a specialization—say, playing the clarinet or managing a Customer Success team. While individual success is important in both cases, you also need overall harmony. Just as the individual musicians and sections of an orchestra must work well together to make good music, the employees and departments of an organization must work well together to do good business.

Customer Success 101

Customer Success Communication Data Analysis Trends 101

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.

Generative AI

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

Q: Does valuation play into how likely anyone would want to acquire the business from the founders? There is no question “too high” of a valuation can discourage an acquisition. Acquirers will generally assume they have to pay more than the last round price to buy you, and often 2x-3x more: Plaid at $5b was 2x the last round price. Credit Karma at $7b was ~2x the last round price.

Business 205

Business Pricing Acquisition 205

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 22, 2020

Many in the crypto community and beyond have been closely watching the SEC’s case against Telegram as another regulatory test for the fast-growing space. In a complaint filed in October 2019 in federal court, the SEC alleged that the company’s … The post Reading Between the Lines: SEC, Telegram, and Rule 144 appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

Blockchain 117

Blockchain 117

Kellblog

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

I just reached out to the CEOs I work with with on this topic and figured I should also do a quick post to speak to the CEOs who follow Kellblog as well. The primary purpose of this post is to remind busy startup CEOs that an important part of your job is to be out ahead of things. Usually that means customer needs, market trends, and competitors. I’d argue it also includes potential epidemics, such as the one threatened by COVID-19.

Startup 103

Startup Travel Software Review Trends 103

Groove HQ

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

We went from overwhelmed to well-oiled machine using the magical power of tags. The post Customer Service Ticketing System Magic: We Cut Response Time by 50% Using This Feature appeared first on Groove Blog.

Customer Support 98

Customer Support 98

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Payments

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2020

Q: Is 27 too late to start a SaaS business? Nah, it’s pretty young. In Aileen Lee ’s original post on Unicorns, she noted “the average age on our list of founders at founding is 34”. It’s possible that’s come down a bit, but probably not much. At SaaStr Annual, this year, we have 7,000 folks who say they are “founders”. The average age is about 37 : More here: Who’s Coming to the 2020 SaaStr Annual: Stage, Role, Countries, and More | SaaStr.

Business 177

Business SaaS 177

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

Gaming has gone from a niche hobby to a massive global industry across all demographics and well beyond outdated, narrow stereotypes of “gamers”. In fact, games are not even just “games” any longer, but a form of entertainment — the … The post Investing in Roblox appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.

Investment 114

Investment Entertainment Education 114

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 27, 2020

FastSpring’s Employee Spotlight is a Q&A series that features the hardworking, intelligent, and fun people that make FastSpring great. Get to know the fantastic team behind the ecommerce platform! In this post, we’re featuring our Staff Accountant, German Torres: What is your current role at FastSpring? I am currently a Staff Accountant. A lot of the time, my job will change depending on the time of the month.

Interviewing 79

Interviewing Engineering Sales 79