For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

SEPTEMBER 25, 2018

There is much hand wringing in the startup ecosystem about various forms of signaling between the seed and A rounds. Conventional wisdom, and advice, abounds: entrepreneurs should never include a venture firm in their seed round because it’ll scare other VCs off from pursuing the A. After all, the “insider” VC has more information and. Getting Funded Entrepreneur Funding Raising capital seed deals Venture capital

Venture Capital 352

Venture Capital Startup 352

InsightSquared

MARCH 6, 2018

Sales operations has been around for quite some time, but lately the function has been gaining momentum. Instead of behind-the-scenes sales support, sales ops now acts as a strategic partner for sales VPs and leadership.

Sales 308

Sales Compensation Forecasting Leadership 308

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 18, 2018

Here are some predictions for 2019 and a review of my thoughts for 2018, many of which were wrong. The M&A market slows meaningfully , especially at the multi-billion dollar level. The recent seasickness in the public markets forces most CEOs adopt a more conservative approach to acquisitions.

Blockchain 196

Blockchain Acquisition Machine Learning Startup 196

Incredo

DECEMBER 28, 2018

As technology progresses, it's unavoidable to face the tough turf that consists of your competition. For this reason, many company owners have taken measures to adopt strategies that will help them overcome the competition.

Mobile 207

Mobile Strategy Marketing Technology 207

Speaker: Teresa Torres, Product Discovery Coach, Product Talk, David Bland, Founder and CEO, Precoil, and Hope Gurion, Product Coach and Advisor, Fearless Product LLC

If you want to build what matters, you can't move forward blindly. But to make progress, you can't let things slow to a crawl while you focus resources on gathering data. This is where continuous discovery and experimentation come in. Join Teresa Torres (Product Discovery Coach, Product Talk), David Bland (Founder, Precoil), and Hope Gurion (Product Coach and Advisor, Fearless Product) in a panel discussion as they cover how - and why - to build a culture of discovery and experimentation in your organization.

Data

The Angel VC

MAY 12, 2018

In last week's post I shared some thoughts about Dropbox and why, although Dropbox is unquestionably one of the most amazing SaaS companies ever built, I am a tad less confident in the company's long-term future than I am in other SaaS leaders such as Salesforce.com, Zendesk, or Shopify.

Retention 212

Retention Subscription Revenue Enterprise 212

Aaron Beashel

MARCH 9, 2018

I’ve been fortunate to work in a number of SaaS businesses in my career. Some of them, like InVision and SafetyCulture, seemed to just grow naturally without any help.

B2B 141

B2B Strategy Acquisition Enterprise 141

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 2, 2018

Breaking Down the Ultimate Question – NPS (Net Promoter Score). First, let’s start with the very basics- what is a Net Promoter Score ? Net Promoter Score was first developed by Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company and Satmetrix in 2003.

Churn 117

Churn Metrics Customer Success Branding 117

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 27, 2018

It’s that time of the year again! Time for Sales Hacker’s Annual Top 10 Sales Trends and Predictions for the Future of Sales in 2019. Due to the proliferation of modern sales technology and people’s love of it, I added a new element this time. This new element is, “Companies to watch”.

Trends 113

Trends B2C Sales Machine Learning 113

Inside Intercom

JUNE 15, 2018

There are few issues more important than customer retention when running software-as-a-service businesses. It’s no good acquiring customers for $10, if they only stick around for a month or two.

Retention 114

Retention Trends Data Onboarding 114

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

MAY 8, 2018

One of the exciting aspects of working in an emerging area like sales enablement is that, today, nobody knows or indeed, has all the right answers. In many respects we’re “building the plane while flying it”, as we collectively figure out what good looks like.

Sales Enablement 163

Sales Enablement Sales Consulting Leadership 163

Speaker: Terhi Hanninen, Senior Product Manager, Zalando, and Dr. Franziska Roth, Senior User Researcher, Zalando

It's important to know your users - what are their preferences, pain points, ultimate goals? With user research and usage data, you can get a great idea of how your users act. The tricky part is, very few users reliably act the same way every time they use your product. Join Terhi Hanninen, Senior Product Manager, and Dr. Franziska Roth, Senior User Researcher at Zalando, as they explain how they were able to reach a new level of user understanding - by taking their user research and segmenting their users by point-in-time intent. You'll leave with a strategy to change how your product team, and organization at large, understands your users.

Data

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

DECEMBER 5, 2018

Matrix Growth Academy – Zero to 100 was an educational event held in San Francisco, aimed at providing B2B Founders with a road-map for how to get from Zero to a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth process that would take them to $100m in revenue. Please find below the primary videos for They have been. Startup Help

B2B 201

B2B Education Revenue Startup 201

InsightSquared

OCTOBER 15, 2018

If you’ve ever thought about becoming a lawyer, the path is pretty clear: Get a Bachelor’s degree. Take the LSAT. Earn your JD. Pass the bar. The process may not be easy, but at least it’s laid out.

Sales 290

Sales Revenue Business Communication 290

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 26, 2018

Reading the news in the past week made me wonder. Just where are we pricing SaaS companies today? The Nasdaq and the S&P have toyed with a bear market. Many stocks are down 10 to 50%. Absolute valuations are one consideration, but let’s understand it at a deeper level.

Pricing 181

Pricing Investment Enterprise Startup 181

Incredo

DECEMBER 14, 2018

Adapting apps and services to foreign markets is something that many businesses are sleeping on, and it is often the missing link that stops them from really flourishing. That's not an overestimation.

Branding 182

Branding Marketing Business Development 182

Speaker: Richard Cardran, Chief Creative Officer and VP Strategy, HIA Technologies

Innovation is both a process and an outcome. The best way to begin innovating your products is by innovating your internal process. We'll explore the challenges, solutions, and hands-on techniques for becoming a successful "agent of change" within a well-established product culture. We'll examine the importance of UX and user-centric feature analysis, the adaptation of Agile Methodologies to the creative process, as well as a way to drive successful culture change for setting expectations and winning approvals with cross-functional stakeholders. Innovation and Leadership go hand in hand. Join Richard Cardran, Chief Creative Officer and VP Strategy, HIA Technologies, as we assess some case studies to see how to lead with a clear strategy well-defined tactics, and an unbiased understanding of the fundamental question: "why are you innovating?"

Innovation

The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 8, 2018

Understanding the mechanics of founder re-ups in financing rounds This post will likely not make me more popular and might offend some people. But if your core beliefs on how business should be done are at stake, you can’t try to win the popularity contest.

Venture Capital 188

Venture Capital Finance Investment Startup 188

Close.io

DECEMBER 10, 2018

When I first began selling, nervous doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt about sales prospecting.

Sales 104

Sales Pricing B2C B2B 104

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

APRIL 3, 2018

When the lead generation effort is failing and we’re trying to fix it, we marketing pros usually head right into the weeds. Are there too many characters in the subject lines? Should we add more long-tail keywords? Is the call-to-action button the wrong shade of green?

Social Media 171

Social Media B2B Communication Acquisition 171

yoursales

DECEMBER 12, 2018

Sales Tools: Made in Belgium. Tools for sales are flooding the market and the flood seems to increase in strength every year. That said, few know there’s a vibrant community of sales tools and sales tech stack vendors packed together in Belgium. They’re Solving Puzzles in Gent, Belgium.

Sales 101

Sales Onboarding Education Leadership 101

Speaker: Dean Yao, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Logi Analytics

Businesses are run with analytics - but companies continue to struggle with interpreting, analyzing, and distributing data. Operational reports help get information to the people who need it most, in formats they understand, and in a timeframe that matters. Join the webinar to learn how embedding operational reports can give your users a precisely formatted, ready-to-analyze view of their operational activities. World-class software teams are embedding operational reports to empower end users with interactive data visualizations, detailed information, and highly precise formats that can be shared via email, PDF, print, or online.

Data

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 20, 2018

The path to sales enlightenment requires continuous self-learning, but there’s a real problem. Salespeople are BUSY. With the insane rise of text based content, we understand that not all salespeople have time to sit and read articles.

Interviewing 113

Interviewing Social Media Sales Entertainment 113

Inside Intercom

MAY 1, 2018

Convincing potential users to sign up for your product isn’t easy. But what happens next is far more important. The latest batch of billion-dollar companies are built on high customer retention. They help their users be successful, and that means providing great onboarding.

Retention 114

Retention Onboarding Churn Management 114

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

JULY 24, 2018

I’ve been working within the software as a service (SaaS) industry for more than five years now. During this period I’ve learnt more than I ever thought possible about the SaaS business and my personal growth has accelerated with each passing year.

Business 158

Business Churn Headcount Acquisition 158

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

NOVEMBER 6, 2018

I presented on two topics at WebSummit 2018 in Lisbon on November 6th. The slides and videos of those two presentations can be found below.

Business Model 187

Business Model B2B Product Marketing Metrics 187

Speaker: Sam McAfee, Product Development Consultant, Startup Patterns

You know what they say: what's measured improves. As product managers we're in a golden age of being able to get all sorts of metrics and run all sorts of experiments. But what are your measurements and analytics focused on? Are they really truly objective? Do they contribute to the ultimate vision of your product? And is everybody clear on that vision? Join Sam McAfee, Product Development Consultant, as he takes you through a two-part measurement audit. First, you'll learn how to make sure your measurements actually align with your product strategy. And second, you'll learn how to evaluate your culture of using measurements, so future experiments will more consistently provide high-value results.

Metrics

InsightSquared

JANUARY 29, 2018

During a recent analysis of the available “operations” jobs on LinkedIn, we discovered a significant number of “revenue operations” jobs — 59,110 to be exact. It sparked the question, “Is revenue operations just another word for sales operations, or are the roles fundamentally different?”.

Revenue 273

Revenue Sales Data Metrics 273

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 11, 2018

If you have one marketing dollar to spend on your startup’s growth, should you spend it on acquiring a new customer or on expanding an existing customer? Mining the existing customer base for customer expansion seems very logical.

Acquisition 178

Acquisition Scaling Marketing Product Marketing 178

Incredo

DECEMBER 19, 2018

Does your business have everything it needs? With new demands and even newer technology, it’s much harder for a business to develop its own mobile app or website interface. Finding a good software development team in North America for a reasonable budget is a rare occurrence.

Development 168

Development Mobile Pricing Software 168

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 14, 2018

A few days ago I wrote that there’s more than one path to $100 million. I argued that while it’s awesome to see that some companies are able to get from 0 to $100 million in ARR in 7-8 years or even less, trying to grow that fast may not be the best choice for most companies. That raises the question: What are your chances of growing a little slower and still achieving massive success?

Revenue 154

Revenue Data Subscription Scaling 154

Speaker: Sari Harrison, Product Management Instructor, Product School

As a product manager, it's your job to realize your product’s vision by executing your chosen strategy. It’s also your job to deliver value to the business. Ultimately, these two outcomes are aligned so the temptation is to focus primarily on business metrics. Doing this can cause you to lose focus on the real value you are trying to achieve, in favor of moving the vanity metrics such as launches and time spent. Join Sari Harrison, Product Management Instructor at Product School, as she explains how to use immeasurable success criteria along with your more standard KPIs to deliver products that don't just get used a lot, but deliver real value.

Metrics

Ryan Berg

NOVEMBER 7, 2018

Want to drive more search traffic to your SaaS? In this case study, we’ll step outside the usual content marketing tactics most SaaS companies use. And look at how Zapier leverages SEO to drive millions of high intent searchers to their product every month.

Strategy 100

Strategy Content Marketing Marketing 100

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

OCTOBER 1, 2018

I get it. You’ve finally built a working product and now you’re ready to get it out into the market. You want to crank out a press release, put up a website, offer a free trial, execute an email campaign, buy adwords, or do whatever else you can think of or afford. Don’t do it.

Marketing 141

Marketing B2B Communication Acquisition 141

CloudKettle

OCTOBER 29, 2018

This blog post was born out of an off-hand tweet written by our President and Founder. The post Why Excel is a Startup’s Worst Enemy appeared first on CloudKettle. SaaS Sales and Marketing B2B B2B SaaS excel Saas SaaS sales Salesforce startup killer subscription revenue

Startup 97

Startup B2B Revenue Subscription 97

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 30, 2018

Welcome to Sales Hacker’s first-ever Influential Women in Sales list! In this exclusive list, we wanted to honor not just female leaders that promote their own sales platform (no shame in that!)

Sales 113

Sales Leadership SMB Consulting 113

Speaker: John Little, Head of Product Marketing, Centercode

When it comes to delivering a solid product/market fit, customer validation is key. After all, you want to provide customers with a product that not only fills the need, but is delightful -- right? To get there, you need to commit to a vital blend of market research, strategy, and user testing. Join John Little, Head of Product Marketing at Centercode, as he explains a two-part approach to customer validation. First, how do you strategically identify your top product areas that need attention prior to release. And second, how do you turn user data into strategic priorities that help the right teams make the right decisions.

Product Marketing