The Angel VC
NOVEMBER 1, 2014
Inspired by Ben Horowitz’ excellent “Good product managers, bad product managers” post and Stefan Smalla’s “Good leader, bad leader” masterpiece I’ve tried to put together my thoughts on what I think makes a great venture capital investor. Thanks go to my colleagues at Point Nine Capital for their invaluable feedback, in particular Michael, Mathias and Rodrigo, who reviewed an early draft of this post and provided lots of great comments.
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 28, 2014
Bill Gurley and Fred Wilson have focused on burn rates as an important topic for startups. The immediate question that follows this commentary is: How much does the typical startup burn throughout its life? And what is a “risky” burn rate for a company? I use a rule of thumb to evaluate the burn rate of a Series A startup. I multiply the number of employees by about $10-12k, depending on the location of the company.
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Chaotic Flow
MARCH 25, 2014
My first serious lesson in the criticality of SaaS metrics was about six years ago when I was unexpectedly stumped in a board of directors meeting. I had just presented the booking plan for the year and one of the Director’s in the meeting said that the plan was good, but we really needed to increase our booking rate. My first reaction was something like: “Well our current booking rate is pretty strong and we’re a SaaS business, so even with no immediate improvement to bookings we’ll continue to
Practical Advice on SaaS marketing
JULY 6, 2014
"If we just dump enough names in the top of the funnel, some paying customers are bound to come out at the bottom of the funnel!" Wrong. This approach to customer acquisition - sucking in as many suspects as possible - is costly and inefficient. In other words, it's a very bad fit for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. For one thing, collecting all those names isn't free.
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Neil Patel
JUNE 5, 2014
Social media is critical. I doubt anyone would argue with me about that. But social media is also misunderstood in some ways. One of those misunderstandings is which social media sites a business or individual should be on. If you read this article, you’re going to understand which social media sites are best for your brand or business. You won’t have to waste your time messing around on social media sites that have no ROI, and you even might do better at gaining leads on the social media sites
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Aber Law Firm
JUNE 30, 2014
These Words are ‘Dangerous’ in Any SaaS or Software Agreement. I have seen wording like this in SaaS or software agreement orders or templates, and it has always bothered me. A case from 2014 addressed this issue head on, so I thought I would share the outcome of the case with you (and some suggestions to avoid this messy legal issue). Summary of the Facts: The following language was included in a software agreement.
The Angel VC
NOVEMBER 3, 2014
It seems like my recent post about five ways to build a $100 million business resonated very well with a lot of people. I also got some really good comments and suggestions, and so I'd like to follow-up with another post on the topic. Introducing: the Brontosaurus! A reader by the name of " Vonsydow" commented that another way to get to $100 million is by having 100 customers, each paying you $1 million per year, and mentioned Veeva as an example.
Tom Tunguz
JANUARY 28, 2014
Aside from a startup’s internal considerations about the right time to raise money, founders should weigh the seasonality of the fund raising market when planning their raise. There’s a rule of thumb batted around the valley that the worst times to raise capital are in the dog-days of summer and after Thanksgiving. As it turns out, this aphorism is only a half-truth.
Tom Tunguz
OCTOBER 21, 2014
Bill Macaitis, the former CMO of Zendesk, articulates how a SaaS marketing team should operate better than anybody else I’ve met. At a recent Point9 conference, Bill outlined the 9 marketing disciplines of great SaaS companies and how they fit together to create a marketing powerhouse. I’ve copied my notes from Bill’s talk below. Ops & Analytics Team.
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The Angel VC
MARCH 13, 2014
My colleague Nicolas wrote a great guide with tips and tricks on how to do cohort analyses which I'd like to share with the readers of this blog. Thanks, Nicolas, for allowing me to guest publish it here. Without further ado, here it is! - - - - - - - - - - At Point Nine we believe that the only way to get a real sense of user retention and customer lifetime is doing a proper cohort analysis.
The Angel VC
MAY 15, 2014
Today is a very special day for me as as an entrepreneur and investor. About an hour ago, Zendesk went public on the New York Stock Exchange. The last time I watched an IPO so carefully was when Shopping.com, the company that had bought my price comparison startup, went public – almost ten years ago. Here are a few visual impressions of my love affair with Zendesk, which began six years ago: Huge congrats and thanks to the entire Zendesk team – I couldn't be more proud of you guys!
The Angel VC
DECEMBER 12, 2014
Picture taken by "nlmAdestiny" One of the things that inevitably happens when you're in the angel or VC investing business for a couple of years is that besides a hopefully healthy portfolio, you're also building a growing anti-portfolio. As far as I know, the term "anti-portfolio" has been coined by Bessemer. Its meaning is described very well on Bessemer's website , and because it's so hilarious I want to quote it in its entirety: "Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation's oldest ventu
The Angel VC
SEPTEMBER 16, 2014
In a Wall Street Journal interview that was published yesterday, Bill Gurley , General Partner at Benchmark and one of the smartest and most successful VCs of all time, said that the current environment reminds him of the tech bubble of the late 1990s: “Every incremental day that goes past I have this feeling a little bit more. I think that Silicon Valley as a whole or that the venture-capital community or startup community is taking on an excessive amount of risk right now.
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The Angel VC
JANUARY 17, 2014
Who ever said only startups love vanity metrics? Here's our revenge for all those misleading stats that we have to muddle through almost on a daily basis when startups pitch us! Yesterday I saw this post on the blog of Karlin Ventures. In response to a tweet by Paul Graham which was highlighted in Danielle Morrill's excellent Mattermark Daily newsletter, the guys at Karlin Ventures revealed the "days since last contact" numbers for their portfolio.
The Angel VC
MAY 6, 2014
I've just added three new charts to my Excel template for cohort analysis. The first one shows the MRR development of several customer cohorts over the cohorts' lifetime: Each of the green lines represents a customer cohort. The x-axis shows the "lifetime month", so the dot at the end of the line at the bottom right, for example, represents the MRR of the January 2013 customer cohort (all customers who converted in January 2013) in their 9th month after converting.
The Angel VC
NOVEMBER 26, 2014
Yesterday I posted a brief review of Mikkel’s excellent book “Startupland”. For me, the book is also a good opportunity for some reflections and to share some thoughts in relation to Zendesk’s journey. The first date When I stumbled on Zendesk in 2008 I knew absolutely nothing about enterprise software, B2B or SaaS. I had always been a consumer Internet guy, having founded comparison shopping engine DealPilot.com back in 1997 and personalized homepage Pageflakes in 2005.
The Angel VC
JANUARY 3, 2014
First of all, a Happy New Year to all readers of this blog. I hope you've had a great start into the new year, and I wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous (and of course SaaSy ) 2014. I've done a bit of reflection on what I've learned in the last couple of months. Here are six things that I think SaaS founders should keep in mind in 2014. This is obviously not meant as a definite or comprehensive list by any means.
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The Angel VC
DECEMBER 16, 2014
When we start to work with a new portfolio company, one of the things we always suggest is that in addition to (sometimes lots of ) ad hoc communication via eMail, Skype, Basecamp, etc. we set up a standing meeting or call, at least during the first 9-12 months following our investment. Typically it's a one-hour monthly call, and the purpose of these calls is to get us updated and to talk through current issues.
Tom Tunguz
MAY 7, 2014
Some of the best content to be found about startups is locked in books. Thomas Kjemperud asked me yesterday for a 140 character recommendation of one book for founders. Reducing my list to just one and condensing an argument for why founders ought to read it in just 117 characters was just too great a challenge for me. Instead I’ve written a blog post about the nine favorite books I’ve read over the last five years have helped me understand startups and the processes that make them s
The Angel VC
DECEMBER 1, 2014
This is part two of my post about the early days at Zendesk. The first part is here. Small, fragmented and no potential for differentiation As mentioned in the first part of this post, the seed round was only $500,000 and it was clear that we’d need much more money soon. That’s why Mikkel and I started to work on a pitch deck and a financial plan almost immediately after the closing of the seed round and started to pitch to VCs shortly thereafter.
The Angel VC
NOVEMBER 25, 2014
As some of you may know, my friend Mikkel , founder and CEO of Zendesk , wrote a book. It’s called “Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business” and you can learn more about it here. The hardcover version will be released in about two weeks, but the Kindle version just became available on Amazon and I was lucky enough to get my hands on a draft a few weeks ago.
As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.
Tom Tunguz
JANUARY 1, 2014
Like many others, during my work day I fall into the firefighting trap, a time mis-allocation problem that leaves me focusing on urgent, but not necessarily important tasks. Firefighting is addictive because it’s fast-paced, nonstop and fun. But firefighting is exhausting and leaves me feeling as if I haven’t made progress toward my goals.
Tom Tunguz
JUNE 30, 2014
A terrific SaaS VP of Marketing once told me, “If the sales team is focused on hitting this quarter’s revenue target, then the marketing team ought to be focused on next quarter and the following quarter.” In SaaS companies, one of the marketing department’s primary responsibilities is generating sufficient customer interest to enable the company to achieve their revenue targets.
Chaotic Flow
JUNE 17, 2014
The SaaS community has gained a solid understanding of SaaS financial metrics, as well as many of the operational principles required to achieve them. However, there has always been an obvious gap between what happens on the top line and what happens on the ground. This is about to change! The SaaS industry is maturing beyond simple, historical SaaS financial measures toward sophisticated operational measures in the form of new SaaS customer success metrics and predictive analytics.
Tom Tunguz
MAY 11, 2014
Predictability is sexy. Startups that have tuned their growth engines well enough to accurately forecast their growth, presuming these growth rates are attractive, will command much higher valuations in the market, simply because there is less risk in the company. As a result, investors prize these companies disproportionately. The challenge with predictability is predictability isn’t an end state.
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Tom Tunguz
OCTOBER 19, 2014
Of the ten most important metrics on a startup’s financial statements , revenue might seem to be the most important. But it isn’t. Gross margin matters more because it is directly tied to a company’s ability spend to grow and achieve profitability. Imagine two startups, both selling products at $1M price points. The first has 5% gross margins and the second has 95% gross margins.
Chaotic Flow
MAY 13, 2014
Becoming a Metrics-driven SaaS Business is no easy task. It takes time, commitment and plenty of customers. However, the financial rewards of moving beyond standard SaaS financial metrics to SaaS customer success metrics and ultimately to sophisticated predictive analytics are significant. Each step toward SaaS metrics greatness builds upon the last.
The Angel VC
AUGUST 7, 2014
Product/market fit is a topic that I've touched on a few times on this blog. It's that extremely crucial but somewhat hard to define (and even harder to measure) step which every startup needs to cross as it goes from an idea to a product to a real, scalable business. It's also a very important concept for us at Point Nine Capital since we tend to look for some level of proof of product/market fit when we evaluate potential investments.
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