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. Getting Funded Startup Help Business Model Funding SaaS TAM TAM slide Total Addressable Market Venture capital

Venture Capital 219

Venture Capital Business Model Marketing Startup 219

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. Here it is.

Compensation 219

Compensation Benchmarks Company Culture Leadership 219

Hitenism

JANUARY 6, 2017

It was 2008, and I was having a classic founder moment. I had no idea what I was doing. But at least I was doing! I was founding a SaaS business, KISSmetrics. Like any startup, we were flailing, failing, and on fire, all at the same time. It was a wild, insane, and ridiculously exhausting experience. I was in charge of product development, operations, finance, funding, and probably 44 other things. At that point in 2009, I was also responsible for marketing.

Startup 155

Startup Marketing Engagement Growth Hacking 155

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. Building Materials Building Technology Guide Buildings Cement

Technology 89

Technology 89

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A Smart Bear

AUGUST 22, 2017

Product teams have been repeating the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) mantra for a decade now, without re-evaluating whether it’s the right way to maximize learning while pleasing the customer. Well, it’s not the best system. It’s selfish and it hurts customers. We don’t build MVPs at WP Engine. The motivation behind the MVP is still valid: Build something small, because small things are predictable and inexpensive to test.

Transportation 87

Transportation Investment Engineering Startup 87

Brian Balfour

JUNE 28, 2017

This post is an introduction to a five part series where I explain for frameworks you need to align to grow to a $100M+ company. Subscribe to receive the rest of the series. I’ve been lucky to have been part of building, advising, or investing in 40+ tech companies in the past 10 years. Some $100M+ wins. Some, complete losses. Most end up in the middle. One of my main observations is that there are certain companies where growth seems to come easily, like guiding a boulder down hill.

Product Marketing 87

Product Marketing Growth Hacking Construction Marketing 87

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

NOVEMBER 4, 2017

No matter how long the list of amazing features you offer, if you’re marketing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, that’s not all you’ve got to sell. You should be talking about the “non-feature” pieces as well. If not, you’re underselling your solution. That’s because prospects are usually thinking about more than just features when they’re evaluating a solution. They’ve got other questions that you need to address: Can the solution be implemented successfully?

SaaS 123

SaaS Finance Acquisition Data 123

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

I run a European based sales agency for software and technology companies. In this article, I will summarize what I’ve learned about the most important ingredients for a successful outbound sales process. The Key to Outbound Sales Success – Understand the Problems & Pain You Are Solving With Your Product. Sounds basic and redundant, I know. But we often present our product as a solution. Be frank! What solution? And for what problem/pain/need?

Sales 85

Sales B2B Education Technology 85

Tomasz 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 83

Investment Startup Benchmarks Revenue 83

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Onboarding

Totango

OCTOBER 14, 2017

Customer Health Score takes multiple dimensions of customer data metrics and classifies them into a single representation of green, yellow or red. It is a consolidation of all the information the company has about the customer, from all probes, people and systems, past and current. Companies use customer health to speed up and scale communication, prioritization, decision making and forecasting of their customer success operations.

Forecasting 82

Forecasting Engagement Metrics Customer Success 82

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. Startup Help PMF product market fit SaaS sales Sales and Marketing

Product Marketing 208

Product Marketing Marketing Startup Sales 208

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. 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? Today I'd like to take a stab at the (early) 2017 answer to that question.

Venture Capital 208

Venture Capital SaaS AI Machine Learning 208

Hitenism

APRIL 24, 2017

Back in 2010, on a Monday at 5 PM, I found myself at a bar called Memphis in Southern California in a heated discussion with two close friends. Patrick Vlaskovits was cheerfully drinking a mint julep while Sean Ellis and I were each enjoying a cold beer. At the time, Patrick was working on a startup and a book. Sean was advising a handful of high-growth tech startups including Dropbox, Eventbrite and my own company, KISSmetrics.

Growth Hacking 151

Growth Hacking Startup Machine Learning Mobile 151

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Customer Success

Entrepreneur - SaaS

APRIL 21, 2017

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

Entrepreneurship 80

Entrepreneurship SaaS 80

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. A career. A parent. A startup.

Startup 81

Startup Investment 81

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

DECEMBER 4, 2017

Without doubt, one of the most exciting parts of being a marketer today is the perpetual challenge of finding new channels and tactics to leverage. There’s a whole host of marketing arbitrage opportunities out there - if you know where to look and spend your time. Identifying opportunities that we think will create business value is not only a lot of fun, it's key to driving future growth. For that reason, organisations need to invest in the discovery and cultivation of such opportunities.

Sales Enablement 120

Sales Enablement Marketing SaaS Sales 120

Brian Balfour

OCTOBER 13, 2017

This post is the HubSpot Sales case study that illustrates the concepts of the 4-Fits Framework, a 5 post series in which I explain the four frameworks you need to align to grow to a $100M+ company. Subscribe to receive the rest of the series. When I joined HubSpot in January 2014 the mission was clear. One, help build the foundation for a new $100M line of business. Two, do it with a freemium and touchless model.

Marketing 87

Marketing Growth Hacking Retention Sales 87

Speaker: Tracie Poland and Ted Vandeburg

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Payment Services

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

OCTOBER 7, 2017

If you think your customers subscribe to your software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution only because they love the features or the price, think again. Of course, customers look at the solution’s features, the fact that it’s easy to use, or the attractive price… but that’s not all they look at. They’re also figuring out if they can trust you.

Advertising 121

Advertising Pricing Subscription Acquisition 121

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 85

Churn Engagement Pricing Branding 85

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.

Forecasting 79

Forecasting Metrics Data Market Segmentation 79

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 74

Customer Success Enterprise Leadership Technology 74

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Customer Success

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 Help Business Model Growth SaaS SaaS business Sales & Marketing Machine

Business Model 159

Business Model Business Startup SaaS 159

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 201

Venture Capital Product Marketing Startup Investment 201

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. Optimizing your startup for speed is the only way to keep your head above the water.

Startup 144

Startup Advertising Acquisition Payment Solutions 144

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 Nathan Latka Net Negative Churn

Churn 72

Churn Revenue Metrics SaaS 72

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