SaaStr
JANUARY 13, 2022
The late-stage VC firm Meritech put together its annual SaaS report here and it slices the data in a few interesting ways. A few tidbits of particular interest: 1. The average SaaS company hits $225m ARR at IPO. This was about what I expected, but I hadn’t crunched the numbers myself. So that’s the bar. 2. The average SaaS company is growing 55% at IPO (at that $225m ARR).
IT World
JANUARY 10, 2022
The flood of remote workers at the start of the global pandemic in early 2020 had companies scrambling to find new software for communicating and collaborating with remote workers. Many turned to software-as-a-service (SaaS) options. Tech Spotlight: Hybrid Cloud. Hybrid cloud hurdles — and how to address them (CIO). Hybrid-cloud demands new tools for performance monitoring (Network World). 5 top hybrid cloud security challenges (CSO). 16 irresistible cloud innovations (InfoWorld).
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Groove HQ
JANUARY 13, 2022
We've curated the 15 most important customer support skills to help you and your team thrive in this position. The post 15 Most Important Customer Support Skills with Examples appeared first on Groove Blog.
The Daily Egg
JANUARY 8, 2022
Today, if you want to build your business you need to get closer to your customers, show transparency, and build trust. A. The post Best Streaming Software appeared first on The Daily Egg.
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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.
SaaStr
JANUARY 14, 2022
So every day there are more and more massive funding rounds. But where does all that money >come from<? 1/ From "Limited Partners", the ones that give VCs $ to invest. And they had an incredible year. Top endowments and LPs saw a jaw-dropping 62% (!) returns from VC + PE in 2021 pic.twitter.com/ZSjfFQMXYh. — Jason BeKind Lemkin 2⃣0⃣2⃣2⃣ (@jasonlk) January 14, 2022.
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Intercom, Inc.
JANUARY 11, 2022
Today, we’re excited to announce Intercom’s first virtual launch event, New at Intercom , to be held on March 23rd. . We’re witnessing a ??dramatic one-way acceleration in the transition to a primarily online business environment, and that shift is transforming how businesses engage with prospects and customers. Making the most of this opportunity requires the tools of tomorrow.
The Daily Egg
JANUARY 10, 2022
The hardest thing to guarantee is hiring the right person for your team. It’s the biggest fear most of you have. But, The post How to Hire Employees appeared first on The Daily Egg.
SaaStr
JANUARY 11, 2022
Events and trade shows. They’re back, but they’re expensive. You don’t get enough booth traffic. The folks that do come by are too junior. It sucks up days at a time. The air is convention-center nasty. Too much ice cream, too much alcohol, too many almost-all-dudes parties. How can it be worth it? Even just $25,000 for the worst possible booth, plus tickets, hotels, schwag … and taking 3-4 people out of the office for days at a time.
Tom Tunguz
JANUARY 10, 2022
After writing my predictions for the year 2022 , a reader asked how I would measure if this were truly the decade of data. Good question! The market determines which sectors are in favor and which sectors aren’t. Stealing a page from Michael Mauboussin’s Expectations Investing , company value contains information about investors' expectations for a company.
Speaker: Tamara Fingerlin, Developer Advocate
Apache Airflow® 3.0, the most anticipated Airflow release yet, officially launched this April. As the de facto standard for data orchestration, Airflow is trusted by over 77,000 organizations to power everything from advanced analytics to production AI and MLOps. With the 3.0 release, the top-requested features from the community were delivered, including a revamped UI for easier navigation, stronger security, and greater flexibility to run tasks anywhere at any time.
Predictable Revenue
JANUARY 13, 2022
Executive coach Darren Reinke discusses how to recognize and overcome self-limiting beliefs in sales development and how reflection can help you grow as a leader. The post Self-limiting Beliefs in Sales Development appeared first on Predictable Revenue.
Unbounce
JANUARY 13, 2022
After a turbulent 2020, we all probably hoped that 2021 would be a clean slate. (Please, just no more Tiger King.) But as we look back at the past year, it’s clear that we’re still trying to navigate these uncharted waters—especially folks marketing for small businesses. To survive the pandemic in 2020, most companies were focused on simply getting their businesses online.
SaaStr
JANUARY 8, 2022
My general sense is that the overall wave of higher earners leaving CA is just underway. First to go were digital nomads, freed by distributed work. Then folks in tech without families, schools, ties, etc. Next wave of exodus from CA will take 2-3 years to fully see play out. — Jason BeKind Lemkin 2⃣0⃣2⃣2⃣ (@jasonlk) January 7, 2022.
Andreessen Horowitz
JANUARY 14, 2022
Two weeks before the start of our perpetual lockdown, The New York Times columnist and Substack writer Ross Douthat released “The Decadent Society,” a survey of America’s general apathy toward building a more dynamic future. While the book itself isn’t particularly surprising in its critique, the timing of its release was important: it was among. Read More.
Speaker: Alex Salazar, CEO & Co-Founder @ Arcade | Nate Barbettini, Founding Engineer @ Arcade | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO @ Aggregage
There’s a lot of noise surrounding the ability of AI agents to connect to your tools, systems and data. But building an AI application into a reliable, secure workflow agent isn’t as simple as plugging in an API. As an engineering leader, it can be challenging to make sense of this evolving landscape, but agent tooling provides such high value that it’s critical we figure out how to move forward.
Predictable Revenue
JANUARY 10, 2022
The SDR to AE handoff is a crucial part of your outbound sales process. These tips will help you ensure a smooth transition from sales development reps to AE. The post Best Practices for SDR to AE Handoff appeared first on Predictable Revenue.
IT World
JANUARY 13, 2022
The US PC market saw its second consecutive quarter of double-digit decline during the fourth quarter of 2021, with shipments dropping 24.2% year-over-year. Worldwide PC shipments totaled 88.4 million units in Q4 2021, a 5% decrease from the fourth quarter of 2020, according to Gartner's preliminary results. The decline marked the first year-over-year drop following six consecutive quarters of growth, according to Gartner Research, which just released a report on PC sales.
SaaStr
JANUARY 12, 2022
On both SaaStr University and Twitter, we had 30+ founders, CEOs and execs share their top, tough learnings from losing one of their top customers. There are some great teachable moments here, and also some deja-vu if you’ve been through it! “I should have been onsite with them + made sure they had my cell number.” — Tyler Hogge, SVP Product, Divvy.
Sparktoro
JANUARY 9, 2022
There’s a marketing tactic you’ve never heard of. It barely has a name yet. But, many of the best marketers are already practicing it. It’s called Permissionless Co-Marketing. It is the deliberate effort of aligning yourself with other brands by promoting them in your work. It’s the inverse of earned media — where you’re the one organically mentioning someone else.
Advertiser: ZoomInfo
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
Andreessen Horowitz
JANUARY 14, 2022
Last year when we announced Katherine joining the team, we used the term “American Dynamism” but left it largely undefined. Today, she has published our thesis: “Building American Dynamism”. It explains why we believe there’s never been a better … The post Investing in American Dynamism appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
IT World
JANUARY 14, 2022
Over the past year or so, Microsoft has added a host of new capabilities to Teams, its chat and videoconferencing hub, focused on improving video meetings with co-workers and other colleagues. Here's a rundown of the key new features to know and how to use them. Note that this guide refers to the Microsoft Teams desktop app for Windows and macOS included with Microsoft 365/Office 365 business and education subscriptions.
SaaStr
JANUARY 14, 2022
Q: Dear SaaStr: When Can Angel Investors Sell Their Shares? There’s isn’t that much “liquidity” for startup shares, but there’s more than there used to be. There are 2 basic ways for angel investors to sell their shares before an IPO or a sales (a so-called liquidity event): When the startup is oversubscribed in a subsequent venture round. If the startup raises VC capital and there’s more demand than shares, angels can often sell their shares to the new and sometimes the existing VCs.
Neil Patel
JANUARY 11, 2022
Are you looking to gain an edge in SEO? If your image optimization isn’t up to snuff, you could be missing out on traffic, user engagement, and sales. Google looks at more than 200 factors when deciding which website to rank for a specific search query. While having a well-optimized image won’t help sub-par content rank number one, it can help you stand out from other sites that don’t optimize their images.
Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments
Most integrated payments providers share a percent of the payment revenue with their software partners. But, oftentimes, that revenue share is only a fraction of the true income potential software providers can realize. If you want to maximize income opportunities from your payments program, check out Wind River Payments’ webinar-on-demand.
Andreessen Horowitz
JANUARY 11, 2022
Over the past decade, an explosion of digital design tools and apps has made design more accessible than ever. Now anyone can build a website on Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, or Cargo and easily populate a pre-designed template with stock imagery and illustrations. Everyone can create a logo with Squarespace’s logo generator, then extend it to. Read More.
IT World
JANUARY 11, 2022
Today, many of us think of the five-day workweek as being the way things have always been done. It’s not. It only became a standard in the United States when the labor unions got the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) passed in 1938. Before that, most people worked a 48-hour, six-day-per-week job—and were glad to have it. Are we less productive now? We are not.
SaaStr
JANUARY 9, 2022
Top Blog Posts This Week: Why a Great Rep Can Close 9x More Than a Poor Rep, and Even 2.5x More Than a Good Rep. 15+ of The Top Sales & Marketing Mistakes SaaS Startups Make. Pretty Much Every App With an Enterprise Edition Uses “Contact Me” Pricing. Your (Belated) SaaS New Year’s Resolution: Add a Layer. Why The Greatest Sales Teams Just Kill It On Dec 31.
Neil Patel
JANUARY 12, 2022
If you want to succeed in online marketing, your website needs to be effective. How do you tell if it’s actually working? Website performance metrics are the key. The problem is there are so many metrics available through Google Analytics and other tracking platforms. It can be overwhelming to determine how your site is performing — or even which metrics you should track.
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For SaaS businesses, improving retention is one of the easiest and most effective ways to drive revenue and profits. With a clear link between failed payments and customer churn, having a robust failed payment recovery solution isn’t optional—it’s essential. Achieving your retention goals starts with the right solution.
Andreessen Horowitz
JANUARY 10, 2022
I am excited to announce that we have promoted Sarah Wang to General Partner on the Growth investing team. When we started the Growth Fund in 2019, we set out to back founders executing on unusually big visions for emerging … The post Sarah Wang appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
IT World
JANUARY 10, 2022
An ever-expanding universe of cloud platforms, services, and applications have become fundamental to business and IT operations.
SaaStr
JANUARY 8, 2022
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales, and how you have to close the first 10 or so customers yourself, and how when you do go to hire your first sales rep — make sure you hire two. But how do you get those first few reps right, when you haven’t made the hire before? We’ve talked about how to make sure your first reps actually work out , as well as The Top 10 Mistakes made hiring reps , but we haven’t put a list together of what to do.
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