The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 18, 2017

Founder salaries are not a topic I’ve had to spend a lot of time with so far. I usually just “OK” them, since the founders we are working with are all super reasonable people who carefully weigh how much they need against the interests of the company – their company. But sometimes founders ask me for a suggestion or some guidance because they are uncertain as to what is fair, and so I thought it might be useful to create a simple model.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review Compensation Company Culture Benchmarks 279

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

DECEMBER 6, 2017

I’ve seen hundreds of startup pitch decks in my time at Matrix, and have found total addressable market (TAM) slides to be among the most frequently mis-executed. I get the sense they are often included as a formality in an attempt to get VCs to check a mental box and continue on hearing about other.

Marketing 279

Marketing Startup Venture Capital Business Model 279

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2017

How much should a SaaS startup invest in sales and marketing at different stages of the business? This is a very nuanced question, but benchmarks do provide some guidance for what is reasonable. Sales and marketing investment depends on many different factors including establishing product market fit, the business’s sales model (inside, field, freemium), and not least, cash balance and fundraising capacity.

Investment 274

Investment Startup Marketing SaaS 274

Hitenism

JANUARY 9, 2017

Building a company is a lot like trying to predict the future. You’re looking through a crystal ball to see where the market is moving, and how you can adapt your product accordingly. You have limited cash, which means that you only have a finite amount of time and resources to scale your business. The longer you take to make decisions about your company, the more time and money you burn.

Startup 167

Startup Payment Methods Payment Solutions SaaS Payments 167

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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?

Generative AI

FastSpring

OCTOBER 30, 2017

Experts are predicting that 2017 will be the strongest holiday shopping season ever for ecommerce. Why? Because even last year, when many people were feeling uncertain about the U.S. economy in the post-election season, they still spent 13% more online than the previous year.

Software 120

Software Business SaaS 120

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 18, 2017

Selling to c-level executives is a different ball game. You have to be concise, respectful of their time, and really think about how to differentiate yourself in order to break through the clutter and earn the right to ask for something. Here is a message to sellers from a real c-level buyer: Outbound tactics without strategy are sheer lunacy. We must lead with an insight-driven value narrative (‘hypothesis of value’), otherwise hammering away in blended channels is worthless.

Interviewing 107

Interviewing Leadership Engagement Education 107

InsightSquared

DECEMBER 29, 2017

There are different uses of cement such as to make cement mortar, cement concrete which are used in various types of masonry and concrete structures.

Technology 110

Technology 110

A Smart Bear

OCTOBER 17, 2017

Forget work/life integration for a minute. How much time do you have, regardless of partitioning? From your 24-hour daily allotment, the 1950s-style break-down is 8 hours for work, 8 for home and commute, and 8 for sleep and ablutions. So, “work” and “home” are the two things in which you can spend 40+ hours per week. This is the amount of time it takes to tackle something huge.

Startup 102

Startup Investment 102

Totango

OCTOBER 2, 2017

Every company, especially a large enterprise, builds an organizational structure around their customer operations. Whether by region, product, vertical, or any other business parameter they define, Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are broken into teams to give them focus, tailored processes, and specific metrics that make sense for their line of business.

Customer Success 87

Customer Success Leadership Enterprise Technology 87

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Payments

The SaaS CFO

DECEMBER 8, 2017

Net negative churn occurs when your expansion revenue from existing customers totals more than your lost revenue from existing customers. This SaaS metric does not factor in any revenue from new customers, just existing customers. As Nathan Latka puts it in his “The Top” podcast, this is the holy grail of SaaS. Your recurring revenue […]. The post What is Net Negative Churn in SaaS appeared first on The SaaS CFO.

Churn 89

Churn SaaS Revenue Metrics 89

The Angel VC

JANUARY 10, 2017

Today is January 10, 2017. That means that in ten days, this jerk will become the leader of the free world. Ugh. It still feels surreal to me. In less earth shattering news, the fact that it's 2017 also means that my "SaaS Funding in 2016" napkin needs an update. As a reminder, in the original post I tried to give a "back of a napkin" answer to this question: What does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in 2016?

SaaS 262

SaaS Marketplace as a Service Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 262

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

DECEMBER 13, 2017

Intro Many potentially great companies fail each year because, while they have an incredible product, they don’t figure out how to get it to market fast enough. Figuring out how to reach customers and break through to Product-Market-Fit remains one of the hardest parts of building a successful startup. This post introduces a four stage.

Product Marketing 263

Product Marketing Marketing Startup Sales 263

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 10, 2017

Disagree and commit. I first read about this idea in the 2016 Amazon Shareholders letter. But the idea can be traced back to Andy Grove at Intel. Grove wrote about this topic in High Output Management. Disagree and commit is a management technique for handling conflict. There are two parts to it. First, expecting and demanding teammates to voice their disgreement.

Management 225

Management Leadership Engineering Startup 225

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.

Innovation

Entrepreneur - SaaS

APRIL 21, 2017

How hiring our first salesperson led me to recognize that cluelessness is at the heart of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship 111

Entrepreneurship 111

FastSpring

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

How do you keep customers happy? Long-term customer satisfaction and retention begins with knowing your customer. You should understand their wants and needs. You may not know the specific motivations for each customer, but there are some traits that nearly all customers have in common. Here's a tip to help you keep customers happy and coming back for more.

Retention 120

Retention Marketing 120

Brian Balfour

JULY 12, 2017

This is part 3 in a series about the growth frameworks companies need to grow to $100M+ Part One: Introduction & Why Product Market Fit Isn't Enough. The Road to a $100M Company Doesn’t Start with Product. Subscribe to get the rest of the series. This is part three in a series about 4 Frameworks To Grow To $100M+. Subscribe to get the rest of the series In the introduction I explained there are two types of companies : Tugboats, where growth feels like you have to put a ton of fuel in to get

Strategy 90

Strategy Growth Hacking Mobile Product Marketing 90

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

Free trials are a great marketing tactic. Everyone loves free. Signing up for one is easy. A first name here, an email address there, and you have access. But as a business owner, there’s a massive gap between getting names and getting dollars. How many free trial users end up as paying customers? Depends on your conversion model: A Totango study in 2012 found an average of 50% when a credit card was required for the free trial, but only 15% when a credit card wasn’t necessary.

Churn 103

Churn Engagement Pricing Marketing 103

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Payments

InsightSquared

DECEMBER 11, 2017

As a sales leader, you’re only as good as your team, and it starts by managing a team effectively. It’s important to create a process to systematize the way your reps generate, manage and close opportunities. To encourage the right behaviors, you must provide evidence that shows your process is effective, and straightforward. A team of some of our top customers recently brainstormed ideas for how a sales leader can institute an effective, data-backed rep management process within their organizat

Forecasting 95

Forecasting Metrics Market Segmentation Management 95

Pierre Lechelle

JANUARY 23, 2017

CEOs moving past Product / Market Fit often have issues to grow. They struggle to find more channels to acquire new leads. When I met Ryan, his problems were radically different… They were growing quickly. His team was doing a fine job. They implemented Growth Processes, but after a few months, they realized that they […]. Cet article Why Companies are Failing to Implement Growth Processes est apparu en premier sur Pierre Lechelle.

Product Marketing 78

Product Marketing Marketing 78

Totango

NOVEMBER 22, 2017

Get ready for two days of great content, speakers, networking and fun! So much is happening in the world of Customer Success. We’re going to bring the best and the brightest from the field to share latest trends in strategy and innovation so you and your organization can make the BIGGEST IMPACT possible in customer adoption, retention and overall customer engagement.

Customer Success 84

Customer Success Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence AI 84

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

The model for early-stage success in SaaS is shifting. Let's take a look at the shift happening in fundraising, and some of the businesses succeeding from bootstrapped-origins, as well as some different strategies up to and beyond that critical first $1M ARR. What’s enabling bootstrapped SaaS? The concept of bootstrapping a business is nothing new. The term originates from the concept of “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps”.

Venture Capital 77

Venture Capital Startup SaaS Travel 77

As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.

Pricing

The Angel VC

JULY 5, 2017

In the first part of this post , I looked at what some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry said about Product/Market Fit (PMF) and how they try to define and measure it. While everybody seems to agree on the broad concept of PMF there is (unsurprisingly) no consensus on how exactly it can be defined and measured, and some people set the bar much higher than others.

Venture Capital 252

Venture Capital Product Marketing Startup SaaS 252

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

I gave a talk this year at the 2017 SaaS North conference in Ottawa, where I discuss the fundamentals of building a repeatable, scalable, & profitable growth process for a startup. Building a Repeatable, Scalable & Profitable Growth Process [View on Slideshare].

Startup 189

Startup SaaS Business Model Business 189

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 28, 2017

Starting in January, public software companies will report their financials using ASC 606. Normally, accounting changes are not that interesting, but ASC 606 will change several of the key attributes and benchmarks SaaS startups use. The two most important changes are changes to revenue and profitability. Today, all software revenue is recognized ratably over the contract period.

Revenue 222

Revenue Benchmarks SaaS Finance 222

Sylvia Ng

MARCH 14, 2017

Last year I did a talk for DevTO for International Women’s Day (#IWDTO) on the importance of confidence for closing the gender gap. The talk was well received but short, and I promised to publish my full list of tips that I had originally prepped. Since the talk I have been approached by other women with questions on the same topic, so I’m hoping this list is helpful for others out there – or at least useful for discussion.

Sales Recruiting 75

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team PayPal 75

Advertiser: Data Robot

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Generative AI

Entrepreneur - SaaS

MARCH 6, 2017

When it comes to marketing functional but not particularly exciting products, there is no point trying to pull the wool over people's eyes with buzzwords and sparkle; rather share how it makes their life better.

Marketing 72

Marketing SaaS 72

CloseSaaS

SEPTEMBER 13, 2017

Whether you’re just getting started or you’ve built a career in the world of inside sales, you already know first-hand that sales tactics aren’t just learned in the classroom and immediately applied to driving real business results.

Sales 64

Sales Business 64

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 22, 2017

Modern sales teams need competent professionals with a variety of talents, skills and abilities. But in a hyper changing landscap e, which are the most crucial sales skills and traits that reps must possess (or develop) in order to exceed targets and deliver consistent sales success? We’ve done our research and compiled the top 30 sales skills you need to master if you want to achieve complete sales enlightenment.

Underperforming Technical Team 102

Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development Development Social Media 102