SaaStr
MARCH 23, 2023
Here's the thing about venture right now Seed stage remains vibrant, similar to any of past 5-6 years Series A and later has gotten over 2021, and is back in market … but … Has moved back to Default No Pacing is far slower because of it — Jason Be Kind Lemkin (@jasonlk) March 19, 2023 So folks in venture are back to business. 2022 was a year of dealing with the fallout of fallen unicorns, terrible deals, and slashed valuations.
Tom Tunguz
MARCH 23, 2023
The hardest round to raise so far in 2023 is the Series B. Although, all the early & mid-stage rounds have fallen to levels not seen for 5-10 years. Q1 volumes by year show broad declines across early-stage venture capital. Seeds peaked at 1500 in Q1 of 2020 falling to 155 in Q1 of 2023. Seeds fell 64%; As 68%; Bs 86% & Cs 80% of last year’s round counts.
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The Daily Egg
MARCH 21, 2023
What is a good conversion rate for your online business? And how do your company’s conversion rates stack up against the competition? The post What Is a Good Conversion Rate? The Answer Might Surprise You appeared first on The Daily Egg.
Clouded Judgement
MARCH 24, 2023
Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Fed Update This week the Fed hiked rates 25bps. The current fed funds target is 4.75-5%. While the expectation was for a 25bps hike, there was some doubt given the banking crisis. I read a couple articles that stated the effects of a tighter credit market given the banking crisis would have a similar effect in the economy as a 50-150bps hike in rates.
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Generative AI is upending the way product developers & end-users alike are interacting with data. Despite the potential of AI, many are left with questions about the future of product development: How will AI impact my business and contribute to its success? What can product managers and developers expect in the future with the widespread adoption of AI?
SaaStr
MARCH 21, 2023
Dear SaaStr: What’s Changed in SaaS Today? What’s Harder Now? My list: You have to go twice as far on each dollar of venture capital as in 2021. With public market valuations down 70%+ from their peaks, for startups, that means going twice as far on each dollar. It’s 3x-5x harder to raise a Series A, and 4x-10x harder to raise a Series B, C or D, than it was at the peak.
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
The Daily Egg
MARCH 21, 2023
You’ve likely heard the phrase, “If you’re not doing A/B testing, you’re guessing” many times while reading various marketing blogs. This is. The post Start A/B Testing Today with 6 Simple Steps appeared first on The Daily Egg.
IT World
MARCH 24, 2023
Some Microsoft customers were unable to access the company’s Azure and Microsoft 365 services on Thursday due to an issue with Microsoft’s geolocation services. Just after 12 p.m. GMT, the Microsoft 365 Status Twitter account posted a tweet alerting customers to the fact that it was “investigating an issue where users with specific conditional access policies applied may be unable to access any Microsoft 365 service,” adding that Microsoft was attempting to reverse a recent change in order to m
SaaStr
MARCH 20, 2023
Dear SaaStr: How Do You Become Successful at Enterprise Sales? If you haven’t done enterprise sales before, the biggest thing to understand: you can do it. But, you’re going to have to hustle. Really, really hustle. Many founders want the customers and leads and users to come to them. They want to focus on the product, then on the funnel, A/B testing, optimization, SEO, SEM, etc. etc.
Tom Tunguz
MARCH 19, 2023
“Our analysis indicates that approximately 19% of jobs have at least 50% of their tasks exposed to GPTs when considering both current model capabilities and anticipated GPT-powered software.” That’s the conclusion from OpenAI’s recent paper “ GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models.
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Andreessen Horowitz
MARCH 21, 2023
Travel is a trillion-dollar industry stuck in the past. The last major breakthrough came in the 1990s, with the emergence of online Travel is a trillion-dollar industry stuck in the past. The last major breakthrough came in the 1990s, with … The post “Adventure is out there!”: Opportunities in AI x Travel appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
Buffer Resources
MARCH 23, 2023
What do creators like Mr. Beast and Ali Abdaal have in common? Not much, actually, other than the ‘Creator’ label and being YouTubers. They serve distinctly different audiences and create very different types of content. However, no matter how you look at it, they’re both pretty successful in their own rights. For content creators , one of the biggest debates is whether or not to "niche down" and focus on a specific topic or audience.
SaaStr
MARCH 24, 2023
Dear SaaStr: Why Don’t More VCs Replace Founders That Don’t Deliver? Yes, it did seem like in the old days, VCs replaced founder CEOs pretty often. It happened at Apple, Google, Cisco, and more. But it’s rare these days. In fact, ~90% of SaaS companies that IPO still have their founder as CEO! And when founders do step down as CEO these days, most often I see it as voluntary, when the company really hits scale and the founders know they’ve personally hit a wall they ca
IT World
MARCH 24, 2023
OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company that developed ChatGPT, on Thursday announced support for plug-ins designed to allow companies to more easily embed chatbot functionality into their products. The first plug-ins have been already been created by Expedia , FiscalNote , Instacart , KAYAK , Klarna , Milo , OpenTable , Shopify , Slack , Speak , Wolfram , and Zapier , OpenAI said.
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.
Andreessen Horowitz
MARCH 23, 2023
The first time I tried Character.AI , it completely hijacked my husband’s birthday dinner. What had started as a party of 12 friends conversing quietly around the table quickly turned into picking Elon Musk’s brain on Mars, getting the Queen’s … The post Investing in Character.AI appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
Buffer Resources
MARCH 22, 2023
A slate of writing tools powered by artificial intelligence (AI) have recently made headlines as a new and more effective way to produce content. Most tech companies have even been implementing AI into their own tools as well, like we did earlier this year when we launched our AI assistant. I’ve written about my conflicted feelings about these very AI writing tools , but I’ve been making an effort to push past my hesitation and add AI into the articles I write for the Buffer blog.
SaaStr
MARCH 22, 2023
So few Cloud software companies have had a more interesting history than UiPath. It took them a full 10 years to get to $1m in ARR (!). And then after that, explosion. Robotic Process Automation took off, and they rocketed toward $1 Billion in ARR. Growth then slower after a take-off like we’ve almost never seen before. So now it’s a new world, where profitable growth is what’s valued.
IT World
MARCH 21, 2023
Reality? What reality? Soon, apparently, everything from brand assets to corporate videos to illustrations will be created differently using Adobe’s creative and enterprise apps and its generative AI tool Firefly. You’ll literally be able to speak to paint (or make video). If you can say it, you can draw it At Adobe Summit, the company also announced Adobe Express for Enterprise , a new tool to create, share, and collaborate on high-quality brand content such as multimedia assets, social posts
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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.
Andreessen Horowitz
MARCH 22, 2023
Starting a gaming company is like playing one of the most difficult video games out there. It’s an expensive and time-consuming grind with the vast majority of games never making it to launch. But what if there was a hack … The post SPEEDRUN Your Gaming Startup appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
Sixteen Ventures
MARCH 21, 2023
When you’re working with customers, whatever your role (CSM, Sales, Account Management, Consultant, etc.), you may find yourself acting as a coach. To be an effective coach, you need to strike the right balance between motivation and discipline. Which means we need to explore the differences between motivation and discipline, and how to apply them effectively to engage your human customers.
SaaStr
MARCH 23, 2023
Dear SaaStr: I’m an Early Employee and Have a Chance to Sell Some of My Startup Shares. Should I? Goodness. Congratulations on the change for some liquidity. It’s both exciting — and confusing. Marc Benioff sold a huge amount of his Salesforce stock before its run from $2b to $100b+ in market cap. Today, he only owns a few percent of Salesforce.
IT World
MARCH 22, 2023
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has opened the door to endless opportunities across hundreds of industries, but privacy continues to be huge concern. The use of data to inform AI tools can unintentionally reveal sensitive and personal information. Chatbots built atop large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 hold tremendous promise to reduce the amount of time knowedge workers spend summarizing meeting transcripts and online chats, creating presenations and campaigns, performing d
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Start-ups & SMBs launching products quickly must bundle dashboards, reports, & self-service analytics into apps. Customers expect rapid value from your product (time-to-value), data security, and access to advanced capabilities. Traditional Business Intelligence (BI) tools can provide valuable data analysis capabilities, but they have a barrier to entry that can stop small and midsize businesses from capitalizing on them.
Andreessen Horowitz
MARCH 23, 2023
General Partner Connie Chan on how leading brands are using AI and other technology to combine the serendipitous discovery of offline shopping with the infinite options of online shopping. Today, most of the Western world revolves around search-based online commerce … The post The Future of Ecommerce: How a Product Becomes a Purchase appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
Buffer Resources
MARCH 20, 2023
The value of sending snail mail is something that was ingrained in me from a very young age. After birthdays or Christmas, my parents would expect me to send thank-you cards to friends and relatives who gave me presents. When I started working, I stuck with it: I sent cards after job interviews and to colleagues who had especially impacted my career, and I realized it was a quick way to stand out in a world where most people don’t send snail mail.
SaaStr
MARCH 18, 2023
Q: Dear SaaStr: Is it Ethical For a Startup CEO to Accept a Sales Commission for Deals They Close Themselves? It’s a bit odd, because you want the CEO’s incentives to be aligned with the whole company’s, not just her or his individual efforts. An annualized bonus for meeting the stretch plan is a great idea for a CEO. But not a deal-by-deal commission like a sales rep.
IT World
MARCH 21, 2023
One reason artificial intelligence-based chatbots have taken the world by storm in recent months is because they can generate or finesse text for a variety of purposes, whether it’s to create an ad campaign or write a resume. These chatbots are powered by large language model (LLM) algorithms, which can mimic human intelligence and create textual content as well as audio, video, images, and computer code.
As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.
Andreessen Horowitz
MARCH 21, 2023
Years before the first blockchain was created, the sci-fi space MMO EVE Online proved out many of the core principles that define web3 today. This is why we are excited to be partnering with CCP on a new project set … The post Investing in CCP Games appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
Sales Hacker
MARCH 23, 2023
Sales is the transfer of conviction and inspiration: The person who is most certain during the interaction will win. Why? Because your prospect is uncertain. Which means your sales conversation will either inspire in them the certainty to say yes — or it will reinforce their uncertainty, and they will say no. As a seller, your success rests in your attitude: your complete conviction that your solution is the best in the world for your customer.
SaaStr
MARCH 18, 2023
Almost buried in Facebook’s last announcement of its workforce changes was its data on in-person vs remote work: In-person time helps build relationships and get more done We’re committed to distributed work. That means we’re also committed to continuously refining our model to make this work as effectively as possible. Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on ave
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