Sat.Aug 17, 2019 - Fri.Aug 23, 2019

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The Next Generation of Cloud Security Startups

Andreessen Horowitz

The recent Capital One data hack and breach that compromised sensitive information for 106 million people, including 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers, was executed by a single hacker who exploited a well-known vulnerability in cloud-based SaaS …

Cloud 78
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The Full Guide to ARPU for SaaS Companies

Chart Mogul

Average revenue per user (ARPU) is one of the most important measures needed to understand the quality of revenue SaaS companies generate. At first glance, ARPU looks like a weird metric to track — why should I care about the average customer and the price they pay? Shouldn’t we be more interested in specific (groups of) customers? In fact, ARPU (or ARPA, or ARPC) is one of the most important metrics you should be looking at every stage of your company’s journey.

SaaS 65
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The Customer That Needs a Champion: Your Free Customers

SaaStr

I am a big believe in Free editions — when they work. At EchoSign, we launched not only with a Free edition, but we launched 100% Free. We thought it was a great marketing strategy, back in the day. It really wasn’t for a B2B product. At least, not at first. Just having a “Free” version doesn’t get millions of folks to use your product.

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How SaaS Is Changing the Way We Work

Entrepreneur - SaaS

Business operations are constantly evolving, and Software as a Service has spurred a great leap in the right direction.

SaaS 110
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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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Your 7-Step Essential User Onboarding Checklist

Cobloom

Your user onboarding process can make-or-break your SaaS business. Done well, it positions your service as the ideal solution to a problem your user is experiencing by providing real, demonstrable value from first use. Done poorly, it fails to show the value of your service, by focusing on all the different functionality your service offers instead of what the new user can achieve with it.

More Trending

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The Essential Driver Behind Product Adoption, Retention and Growth

OpenView Labs

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on Userlane’s blog here. . A successful SaaS business model that leads to product adoption revolves around three basic principles: value, retention and advocacy. Providing customers with value is the initial trigger of product adoption. Customer retention and advocacy generate growth without forcing companies to increase customer acquisition costs (CAC) over time.

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The Sendgrid Journey: Scaling From Growth Stage to $2B Acquisition in 4 Years (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

Since Sameer joined SendGrid at CEO in 2014, the company has quadrupled its revenue, more than doubled its employees, experienced a successful initial public offering and was recently acquired by Twilio in a transaction valued at approximately $2 billion. In this session, Anna and Sameer will highlight SendGrid’s journey from growth stage through acquisition and why focusing on people and culture is mission critical to success as a company goes through the scaling process.

Scale 137
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The critical role of sales development in your conference and event strategy with Tenbound’s David Dulany

Predictable Revenue

Effective event outreach takes alignment with marketing, an age-old hurdle for sales teams, and a keen focus on your buyer personas. We'll teach you how to craft a solid event strategy – including sales development tactics to either invite people or book meetings. The post The critical role of sales development in your conference and event strategy with Tenbound’s David Dulany appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

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Intercom’s Jonathon Colman on why content designers should do less

Intercom, Inc.

I’m excited to be joined today by Intercom’s own Jonathon Colman, a senior designer who came to us by way of the Nature Conservancy, REI and five and a half years at Facebook, where he most recently worked as a UX Content Strategy Lead for Marketplace. Since coming aboard in December, he’s influenced us with his thinking about the possibilities within the nascent field of content design.

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Monetizing Analytics Features

Think your customers will pay more for data visualizations in your application? Five years ago, they may have. But today, dashboards and visualizations have become table stakes. Turning analytics into a source of revenue means integrating advanced features in unique, hard-to-steal ways. Download this white paper to discover which features will differentiate your application and maximize the ROI of your analytics.

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SEO Doesn’t Have to be a Long-Term Game: There Are Quicker Ways to Get Results

Neil Patel

Everyone thinks SEO is a long-term game… that you have to wait months if not years to see results. And, maybe that was the case a few years ago when content was still king. With Google making 3200 algorithm changes in just one year , their goal isn’t to make a website wait a year or two before they are able to achieve a top spot. Instead, they want to show the user the right site as quick as possible.

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SaaStr Podcast 259 with Pipedrive SVP of Global Sales Tara Bryant — August 23, 2019

SaaStr

Ep 259: We often focus on the positive sides of growth—but what about taking a look at the ugly sides? Even what we could consider “good problems” need preparation, and it starts by understanding your team and your goals, including knowing when and how to recruit members of your team, and building in a way that compliments your growth. Pssst Loving our podcast content?

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How to Collaborate With Your Team More Effectively Than Ever

Nimble - Sales

Collaboration is hard in itself. Every time your team grows, the team members start working in silos. This means two teams are working on the same project, but neither of them is aware of what the other is doing. They don’t communicate effectively with each other – and productivity suffers. Organizations are finding it increasingly […]. The post How to Collaborate With Your Team More Effectively Than Ever appeared first on Nimble Blog.

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Persuasive Words and Phrases: the Good, the Bad, and the Silent

Sales Hacker

The right words have the power to overcome most of the objections faced by every salesperson , and the best salespeople know the words that sell. They also know which words work against them… and which moments call for no words at all. “ What you do and say during sales conversations is the most decisive separator between mega-successful salespeople and average salespeople,” says Gong CEO Amit Bendov.

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How to Achieve Product-Market Fit

Speaker: Dan Olsen - Product Management Trainer and Consultant, Author, and Speaker

Everyone working on a product is trying to achieve the same goal: product-market fit. But most products fail to do so. In this webinar, product management expert Dan Olsen will share his simple but effective framework for achieving product-market fit from his book The Lean Product Playbook. He will explain his Product-Market Fit Pyramid and The Lean Product Process, a 6-step methodology that guides you through how to: Determine your target customer Identify underserved customer needs Define your

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Guide to SaaS Project Management Systems and Top Solutions

SaaS Metrics

What is a PM Software? Project management software are designed to improve efficiency of project management teams through tools including progress tracking and collaboration tools. Compared to traditional/on-premises PM software, SaaS PM solutions are more versatile because of their cross-platform compatibility, scalability, flexibility and low initial cost.

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“5 Steps to Launching a Product” Cloudflare Head of Products Jen Taylor (Video + Transcript)

SaaStr

The vision of exceeding sales, establishing credibility and successfully launching a product is no small task, especially when striving for that perfect introduction into the world of consumers. With so many articles, investors, and outside opinions, the true, simple tasks of launching can get lost in the noise. In this session, Jen Taylor, Head of Products at Cloudflare, will share her expertise and teach you to forget the noise, stick to the basics, and use 5 easy steps to turn that idea into

Scale 125
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3 Simple Ways to Collect Honest Feedback for Effective Relationship Management

Nimble - Sales

These days, 86% of shoppers actively search for reviews before making a purchasing decision. With this in mind, most companies are highly motivated to gather and publish reviews to help boost future sales. This is by no means the only purpose of customer feedback. Although no one loves to receive criticism, we can all agree […]. The post 3 Simple Ways to Collect Honest Feedback for Effective Relationship Management appeared first on Nimble Blog.

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A 6-Point Checklist to Foolproof your SaaS Pricing Experiments

Chargebee

The first rule of SaaS pricing is to keep testing. Here's a checklist that will make sure that no pricing experiment ever plays out to be an afterthought.

Pricing 89
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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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Avoiding the Ten-Year Stock Option Trap (and Other Stock-Option Considerations)

Kellblog

I’ve increasingly spoken to startup employees who find themselves in a difficult trap. Let’s demonstrate it via an example: Say you joined a startup in September 2009 as an early employee and immediately received a stock-option grant of 400,000 shares with a strike price of $0.10 when you joined. The company, while having experienced some ups and downs over the years, has done very well.

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What are the biggest mistakes first-time startup founders make, and how can they be avoided?

SaaStr

Here’s my list in SaaS: Being reluctant to go up-market. Not everyone should go up-market. But if you have a bunch of $5 a month customers, and then a few offer to pay you $500 a month, at least seriously consider it. Even if you don’t like sales, or big companies, or whatever. A bit more here: Why There Is a 50/50 Chance You’ll Tilt Upmarket in SaaS | SaaStr.

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7 Reasons to Use Localization in Your Digital Strategy

Nimble - Sales

More companies are reducing spending on traditional advertising in order to spend more on digital marketing efforts. There are many reasons for this. For one, customers are finding traditional advertising less compelling. They’re also engaging with brands on social media platforms, apps, websites, and messenger services: all places that are not served by traditional advertising. […].

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The rise, fall, and future of Evernote

ProfitWell

Welcome back for episode two of Tradeoffs, the show where Hiten Shah of FYI and I take a look at how popular companies make decisions and the impact of those decisions. This week, we’re investigating a company that both Hiten and I have looked up to in the past — note-taking and organization powerhouse Evernote. They’re an established leader in the market and one of the first movers in the space, but the tradeoffs they’ve made to get there have put the company in dire straits.

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6 Reasons Why Your Integrated Payments Strategy Could Fail

If you're in the software industry grappling with integrating payments into your business model, understanding where others have stumbled can be a game-changer for your revenue goals. Discover 6 key reasons behind the struggles many face. The challenge goes beyond the technicalities of integrating a payment system; it delves into the strategic oversight of revenue shares, negotiations with payment providers, and the full exploitation of potential revenue streams.

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3 Experts Advise on How to Integrate Salesforce CPQ with Cloud Financials

Sage Intacct

As firms purchase Salesforce CPQ to bring efficiency and controls to their quoting process, they look for ways to streamline entering order information into their financial system. Particularly with land-and-expand subscription business models, they need to track upsells and renewals against the performance obligations from the original sale, in order to track and increase CLTV.

Cloud 74
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I just received a Series A term sheet from a VC. Another VC is considering making a competing offer and has asked me for the details of the first term sheet. What are the expectations and etiquette around sharing this info?

SaaStr

I think sharing your expectations, at a minimum, will likely save time. Most VCs have a range they are comfortable investing at, both in an absolute sene (e.g., “$3m is my biggest check” or “$20m pre is the highest we do), and also relative to a set of progress, risks, and metrics. If you tell them a price they either have to beat, or meet … they’ll quick go into Price Mode.

Pricing 101
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5 Great Tips on Quality Link Building for SEO in 2019

Nimble - Sales

Link building is the heart and soul of digital marketing success. It is simply the process of getting other websites to link back to your website. This helps improve the status of your website or business in search engine results. The SEO status of your website depends on a number of factors and one of […]. The post 5 Great Tips on Quality Link Building for SEO in 2019 appeared first on Nimble Blog.

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My Six Month Paternity Leave

Zuora

by Steve Warren, EMEA Customer Support, Zuora I’ve recently returned from benefiting from Zuora’s amazing Parental leave policy and thought […]. The post My Six Month Paternity Leave appeared first on Zuora.

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Embedded Analytics: A Force Multiplier for Business

The possibilities for embedded analytics to drive real value for businesses, end users, and society are as fascinating as they are limitless. No matter the industry, brand after brand is finding that analytics can be the solution to a multitude of business challenges. Go deep with five insightsoftware customers as they share the details of their analytics journeys and discuss the transformative power of data.

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Sales Enablement Best Practices: 5 Dos and Don’ts for Peak Results

Sales Hacker

61% of organizations had a dedicated sales enablement person, program, or function in 2018, according to data from CSO Insights. Just five years ago, that number was 19.3%. This explosive growth comes as no surprise, as successful programs are proven to have a large, quantifiable impact on sales success, specifically: The percentage of reps achieving quota improving by 22.7%.

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Should I introduce a paying plan for my startup services from Day 1 or should I start with just the free plan and introduce the paying plan(s) at a later date?

SaaStr

There are many exceptions, but I found launching with a 100% free product was a huge mistake. Why? Free helped get a handful of early users testing the product and talking about it, for sure. But you don’t learn anything about what paid customers want from free users. You mostly only learn what free customers want. The things our free customers asked for (localizations, integrations, uses cases) turned out to have very little in common with what paid customers valued.

Startup 100
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Why a CRM is Critical for Your Content Marketing Strategy

Teamgate

Business is always focused on customers aka those, who use it and pay for it. And every person can tell you that a company will not survive without their customer base, be it IT technology developer or movie production, bakery or a coffee shop chain. Yet, with all the technologies coming up and taking over our lives, everything is changing rapidly, and marketing is included in this process.