Sat.May 04, 2024 - Fri.May 10, 2024

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AMA: Hot Takes on SaaS Metrics with SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

Everyone loves Ask Me Anything sessions with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, and for good reason. As a SaaS veteran who built and sold a software company for nine figures, invested in startups since 2013, 10x-ing his fund, and continues to build a powerhouse community of SaaStr fans, he offers some hot takes on the communities’ burning questions.

Metrics 227
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The Fastest Growing Category of Venture Investment in 2024

Tom Tunguz

The fastest growing category of US venture investment in 2024 is AI. Venture capitalists have invested $18.3 billion through the first four months of the year. At this pace, we should expect AI startups to raise about $55b in 2024. AI startups now command more than 20% share of all US venture dollars across categories, including healthcare, biotech, & software.

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Happy Customer Service: What Is It + 12 Ways to Delight Customers

User Pilot

Happy customer service can be the difference between inconsistent revenue and a good bottom line. When users are delighted with your product experience, they engage more and tend to renew and even upgrade their accounts. This article takes a deep dive, showing you what happy service really means and practical steps to keep customers happy throughout their relationship with you.

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The Role of Founders in Sales with Andrew Sykes

Predictable Revenue

In this episode, Andrew Sykes, founder of Habits at Work, re-joined us, this time exploring the pivotal role of founder-led selling. The post The Role of Founders in Sales with Andrew Sykes appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Sales 130
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Demystifying DAPs: A Practical Guide to Digital Adoption Success

Speaker: Pulkit Agrawal

Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) are revolutionizing the way organizations interact with and optimize their software applications. As digital transformation continues to accelerate, DAPs have become essential tools for enhancing user engagement and software efficiency. This session is your guide into the robust world of DAPs, exploring their origins, evolution, and the current trends shaping their development.

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Merchant Credit Card Fee Guide 2024: How Much Does It Cost to Process Credit Cards?

Stax

You’ve heard that cash is king. Not so much anymore! Cashless transactions have dethroned the age-old cash payments. When was the last time you withdrew cash from an ATM? Or paid for your groceries using hard cash? If you’re like most people, then it’s probably been a while. With credit card transaction volume hitting over $9.5 trillion in the US in 2022, accepting card payments is no longer a question of whether to, but how to.

More Trending

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Influence Meets Innovation: How Founders and Cultural Leaders Can Work Together

Andreessen Horowitz

The Cultural Leadership Fund (CLF) team is often asked by portfolio founders how exactly cultural leaders can be a game-changing asset for their companies. On the flip side, athletes, entertainers, and C-level executives also ask what they should expect when investing in technology startups and working with founders looking to build the next big thing.

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You’re an Operator and Maybe Don’t Even Know It

Kellblog

Many concepts in Silicon Valley are defined from the point of view of the venture capitalist (VC), not the employee or founder. For example, the term “exit” is a misnomer when seen from the employee point of view. An IPO is usually anything but an exit for executives who first will be subject to a 6-month lock-up period and restricted to certain trading windows thereafter.

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Why the Checkout Page is Key to Boosting Your Ecommerce Checkout Flow

Subscription Flow

Running an Ecommerce store takes a lot: not only do you have to ensure that you sell top quality products, you also need to invest in having a robust marketing department that keeps your potential customers aware of the products’ existence. Doesn’t it suck then finding out that almost 70% of these visitors who put items they wish to buy in their shopping cart will end up not buying them due to checkout abandonment and, in general, a faulty Ecommerce checkout flow?

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LinkedIn SEO: How to Optimize Your Account in 2024

Buffer Resources

Social media search is growing. Google search results are increasingly filled with results from social platforms. According to this study , 87 percent of social media marketers say social search is vital to their strategy. There’s even an industry inside joke that adding “reddit” or “pinterest” or, of course, "linkedin" at the end of your search terms will more likely deliver exactly what you need.

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Secure SaaS Success: Embedded Finance as a Competitive Advantage

Speaker: Ian Hillis, SVP of Growth at Payrix and Worldpay for Platforms

Join us for an exclusive webinar hosted by Ian Hillis, SVP of Growth at Payrix and Worldpay for Platforms, where he’ll explore the significant impact of embedded finance on the software industry! This session is designed to provide you with the strategic insights needed to navigate the future of SaaS successfully, all while gaining a deeper understanding of how these trends can enhance your competitive edge, boost revenue, and deepen customer loyalty.

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Dear SaaStr: What Should Founders Do To Get Noticed By An Established Company’s M&A Team?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: What Should Founders Do To Get Noticed By An Established Company’s M&A Team? Don’t bother too much with trying to get “corporate development” or the M&A team’s attention. That’s not their job. Probably the most important thing to understand is that in 95%+ of tech companies, the “M&A team” does not drive M&A.

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A Series of Unfortunate Decisions

Tom Tunguz

When a person asks a question of an LLM, the LLM responds. But there’s a good chance of an some error in the answer. Depending on the model or the question, it could be a 10% chance or 20% or much higher. The inaccuracy could be a hallucination (a fabricated answer) or a wrong answer or a partially correct answer. So a person can enter in many different types of questions & receive many different types of answers, some of which are correct & some of which are not.

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Clouded Judgement 5.10.24 - Software Weakness Across the Board

Clouded Judgement

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Q1 Software Earnings Are… Not Good We’re about halfway through Q1 earnings season, and it’s not been pretty. If I had to sum up software earnings in one quote it would be the following from Yamini Rangan, the Hubspot CEO: “Switching gears to macro.

Cloud 154
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Investing in Wiz

Andreessen Horowitz

As more workloads and data move to the cloud and generative AI takes over the enterprise , cybersecurity is more critical today than ever. And that’s because with every new paradigm shift—from the internet to cloud computing—the sheer magnitude of digital threats has exploded and threat vectors have become increasingly sophisticated. Some of the greatest software platforms in history have risen to the occasion in their respective markets to protect the enterprise against these evolving threats.

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Solving the Payments Puzzle: What SaaS Pros Need to Know

From emerging payment technologies to the importance of intuitive software design, the world of embedded payments is rapidly evolving. How do you stay ahead while serving up what merchants really want in your software offerings? The Merchant Insider report is here to help, offering unique insights into the merchant perspective. It analyzes responses from over 500 merchants in the U.S. and spans key industries, so you can understand the challenges, preferences, and expectations that are shaping s

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Dear SaaStr: What’s a Resonable Discount for an Annual Contract? How About a 3 Year Contract?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: What’s a Resonable Discount for an Annual Contract? How About a 3 Year Contract? First — you don’t want a true net discount at all. What I mean what you want is a pricing structure that anticipates discounts so the net effect is revenue positive. Later, when you implement a CPQ and other more sophisticated systems to manage pricing for a large sales team, these processes and systems will be designed to help you do just that, at least in part.

Pricing 246
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Beyond PCI Compliance: Why Data Security is Key to Growth and Success [Webinar Recap]

Stax

When you think about growing your business, improving data security probably isn’t at the top of your list—and that’s understandable. After all, the topic of security doesn’t sound as exciting as that latest Instagram hack and isn’t as immediately impactful as a new sales tactic. However, the last thing you want to do is neglect data security.

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10 Interactive Software Walkthroughs With Examples

User Pilot

Frustrated trying to design interactive software walkthroughs that drive activation? It’s a common experience. But don’t worry—this article will provide some inspiration. We handpicked a few of the best SaaS walkthrough examples and explained what made them great. We also covered best practices to ensure your walkthroughs get high user engagement.

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How to Think About Foundation Models for Cybersecurity

Andreessen Horowitz

In this episode of the AI + a16z podcast , a16z General Partner Zane Lackey and a16z Partner Joel de la Garza sit down with Derrick Harris to discuss how generative AI — LLMs, in particular — and foundation models could effect profound change in cybersecurity. After years of AI-washing by security vendors, they explain why the hype is legitimate this time as AI provides a real opportunity to help security teams cut through the noise and automate away the types of drudgery that lead to mistakes.

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Consumer Subscribers: The Top 5 Ways to Monetize

Learn effective Consumer subscriber monetization strategies with iolo’s guide. Designed for consumer product managers, discover actionable insights and practical tips on upselling premium features to your consumer customers, and more. Sharpen your monetization tactics and unlock new revenue streams. Download your copy and start expanding your business today!

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There Are Only ~58 Acquisitions of $50m+ or More in Software a Year per Theory Ventures

SaaStr

So long time friend of SaaStr Tomasz Tunguz, now heading his own VC fund Theory Ventures, has again summarized a lot of data into a few great charts. This time, on Mergers & Acquisitions. My biggest take-away: there are barely more than 50 acquisitions of $50,000,000 or more, at least disclosed one, in software of U.S.-based startups each year.

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Welcome to the Google "Big Brand" Update

Inturact

Know the aftermath of Google's March 2024 Core Update on SEO, content marketing, and digital landscapes. Discover winners, losers, and strategies for navigating this transformative shift.

Branding 103
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Top 12 Product Adoption Software in 2024

User Pilot

Product adoption software is the lifeblood of the modern product management process. It is the key to making your product unforgettable and ensuring it gains traction in a difficult market. In this article, we explore what product adoption software does and identify 12 of the best product adoption tools on the market. TL;DR Product adoption software drives users to adopt a product through carefully curated product experiences.

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7 Ways AI-Native Companies Can Improve Retention

Andreessen Horowitz

For consumer products, the rubber hits the road at retention. It’s the lifeblood of an app and the hardest metric to move, as I learned viscerally during my time running the growth team at Snap. To attract repeat users, companies can’t just fill a product with the latest and greatest tech — they must intentionally craft each product feature to ensure their users come back again and again and again.

AI Search 104
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Generative AI Deep Dive: Advancing from Proof of Concept to Production

Speaker: Maher Hanafi, VP of Engineering at Betterworks & Tony Karrer, CTO at Aggregage

Executive leaders and board members are pushing their teams to adopt Generative AI to gain a competitive edge, save money, and otherwise take advantage of the promise of this new era of artificial intelligence. There's no question that it is challenging to figure out where to focus and how to advance when it’s a new field that is evolving everyday. 💡 This new webinar featuring Maher Hanafi, VP of Engineering at Betterworks, will explore a practical framework to transform Generative AI pr

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5 Interesting Learnings from Datadog at ~$2.5 Billion in ARR

SaaStr

So Datadog remains one of the most iconic Cloud and SaaS leaders of this generation. Growth is still epic at almost $2.5 Billion — it’s still growing 27% a year (!). But like Snowflake, it’s a bit less of a mind-bending rocketship that it used to be, and has focused on efficiency as well. Today its non-GAAP operating margins are 27%, and it’s generating almost $800m of free cash flow a year!

Cloud 239
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GTM 93: Mastering the Generalist Specialist Role and Decoding the CEO Dashboard with Noah Marks

Sales Hacker

Noah Marks is a transformative growth leader focused on building GTM engines and scaling organizations for sustainable growth. He has been in the strategy & operations world for the last decade (with Udemy, WalkMe, Okta and Salesforce), and has spent almost the entirely of his career in the B2B technology market (with the lone exception being a slight deviation into the world of M&A investment banking).

Banking 105
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5 Best No-Code Tools for Product Managers

User Pilot

Using no-code tools for product managers allows you to build, iterate, and deploy software products without any coding knowledge. But what is the best tech stack for product management? Let’s review the top five no-code tools tailored for product teams, including their key features and usage in product management. TL;DR A no-code platform is a type of software that allows you to create applications, automate tasks, and manage product development cycles without any prior coding knowledge.

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Investing in Yellow

Andreessen Horowitz

If history is a guide, transformative breakthroughs emerge when powerful creative tools reach the masses. That’s why we’re thrilled to lead the $5M seed round for Yellow, a company focused on revolutionizing 3D character creation through generative AI. The potential impact is immense. Despite rapid progress in 2D image generation and control, 3D has remained stubbornly difficult and expensive due to challenges like maintaining clean topology and requiring numerous intermediate repres

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Leading the Development of Profitable and Sustainable Products

Speaker: Jason Tanner

While growth of software-enabled solutions generates momentum, growth alone is not enough to ensure sustainability. The probability of success dramatically improves with early planning for profitability. A sustainable business model contains a system of interrelated choices made not once but over time. Join this webinar for an iterative approach to ensuring solution, economic and relationship sustainability.