Kellblog

JULY 24, 2021

I sometimes get asked about how to structure an enterprise software marketing organization and the relative roles of product marketing vs. competitive analysis. My first job in marketing, which served as my bridge from a technical to a sales-and-marketing career, was as a competitive analyst.

Product Marketing 137

Product Marketing Marketing Sales Hiring Payment Services 137

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 18, 2022

Des shares insights from the full range of his career – the chat is packed full of anecdotes and lessons about the origins of Intercom, the most enduring startup myths, his approach to angel investing, the challenge of SaaS product marketing, and much more. ” The Makings of Great Product Marketing.

Enterprise 118

Enterprise Startup Strategy SaaS 118

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2023

I’ve spent the last year working to find product-market fit for my startup, Dock. I’ve used our sales process to iterate our way to product market-fit and wanted to share what I’ve learned along the way. Find 10 people, then 100 people, then 1,000 people who love your product.

Sales Recruiting 88

Sales Recruiting Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring 88

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

Turning a free sign-up into an enterprise logo involves a multi-step process that requires careful planning, design, and execution. Establishing an inside sales team can enhance freemium conversion rates for enterprise-level B2B products by focusing on identifying and directly engaging high-priority leads.

Enterprise 87

Enterprise Scale Generative AI SMB 87

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 8, 2020

Freemium’s a great way to acquire lots of customers relatively quickly and easily, but the job of converting them to using a paid product is where the rubber meets the road. And the challenge is a lot harder in an enterprise context, where the buyer and the user aren’t necessarily one and the same person. Crowning the customer.

Scale 205

Scale Sales Hiring Software Review Technical Review 205

IT World

SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Apple took a rare public slot at Jamf’s JNUC event to summarize its approach to meeting the needs of enterprise IT while enabling the consumer-simple user experiences every employee-choice scheme tells us people want. Management, security, and identity – Apple’s approach to enterprise IT.

Enterprise 58

Enterprise Management Education User Experience 58

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

What should you look for in an Enterprise rep vs. a Mid-Market rep? Solving High Volume, Low Conversion at Lattice Dini Mehta joined Lattice at $3M in revenue when it had just 10 people in seat for Go-To-Market and 7 salespeople. So, Calendly decided to invest in going Enterprise. Can you start and stop a PLG motion?

Scale 228

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 228

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2019

Product-market fit is “ the only thing that matters ” early on in the startup journey, wrote Marc Andreessen in June 2007. Conventionally, product-market fit comes down to early signals that the market has voted your product as the best …

Product Marketing 92

Product Marketing Marketing Startup Enterprise 92

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Closing an enterprise sale in a niche market follows the same sales funnel as any other deal, but a bit more fine tuned. It represents the culmination of ‘art’ and process, where the enterprise sales process is modified to better reflect the client’s unique and specific needs. What Is Enterprise Level Sales? Self Sales.

Scale 95

Scale Enterprise Marketing Sales 95

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2023

Director, Startups @ Zendesk Isabelle Guis, CEO North America & Global CMO @ Brevo Guy Marion, CMO @ Chargebee Erin Gunaratna, VP of Product Marketing @ Chargebee Trinity Nguyen, VP of Marketing @ UserGems Mark Kosoglow, CRO @ Catalyst Andrew Davies, CMO @ Paddle Jessica Hutchinson, VP of Product Marketing @ Paddle And so much more to come!!

Enterprise 274

Enterprise Customer Success Product Marketing Development 274

SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2023

She joined a team of two, and there was a lack of product-market fit beyond small groups of researchers. After that, they released instruction following models, which were the first Enterprise-ready models. The reality was product market fit wasn’t quite there yet. Last week, they launched ChatGPT Enterprise.

ChatGPT 237

ChatGPT AI Search Scale AI 237

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

I t’s been a wild growth experience, and Google Cloud is considered the fourth or fifth-largest Enterprise company in the world. They’re selling from SMBs, especially with Workspace, all the way through some of the largest Enterprises in the world.

Cloud 237

Cloud Scale AWS AI 237

Andreessen Horowitz

JANUARY 29, 2019

For consumer companies, often when the holy grail of product-market fit is achieved, the company takes off: magic happens, growth unlocks. Enterprise B2B companies face a different challenge. Sometimes, despite achieving product-market fit (and knowing when you’ve achieved it) and …

Enterprise 83

Enterprise Marketing Product Marketing B2B 83

Kellblog

JULY 8, 2020

Mark’s a seasoned startup executive, he’s go-to-market oriented, and he has some large-company chops that he developed earlier in his career. Here’s an edited version of Mark’s top ten enterprise software startup mistakes list, along with a few comments prefaced by DK. Ignoring churn greater than 15%.

Sales Hiring 139

Sales Hiring Startup Software Review Enterprise 139

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 6, 2020

Editor’s Note: This article is part three of a four-part series that covers the most crucial product marketing activities for an early-stage startup. Ok, we tested the product out with a few potential customers. The easiest answer is a B2B startup selling into enterprise-level companies. Sales and Product Marketing.

Scale 52

Scale Product Marketing Sales Hiring Scaling 52

CustomerSuccessBox

APRIL 19, 2022

So, as an enterprise, you’d require an ‘ Enterprise Customer Success Management ‘ system in place! Many softwares are widely available and it becomes important to choose one that is compatible with the enterprise domain. Why is CSM necessary for an established Enterprise? Enterprise-Customer Association.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Enterprise Management User Experience 52

OpenView Labs

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

Enterprise sales is not a simple switch to make from SMB sales—it’s a completely different beast. I recently caught up with a founder I talked to last year who didn’t have the time (or desire) to deal with sales and wanted to hire someone to ‘”validate the market” for him. Product-market fit is key.

Sales Hiring 74

Sales Hiring Enterprise Scale Startup 74

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2024

It’s one of the top 3 pain points of mid-market and enterprise CFOs. This is not suitable for the mid-market and lower enterprise segments, which remain underserved. Be that in the early stages when one iterates on product market fit and finding the right ICP or later on when you scale your GTM.

Payments 204

Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions Scale 204

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

You will need a VP of Engineering to manage these processes, recruit and build the team, and make your product more secure and enterprise-ready. Once you have true product-market fit, for real (say 100+ happy, high-NPS customers) … it really is a formula in SaaS. You’ll need more than 5–10 engineers to go big.

Scale 250

Scale Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Fractional VPE 250

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 2, 2019

One of the toughest challenges for founders — and especially technical founders who are used to focusing so much on product features over sales — is striking “product-market fit” The concept can be defined many ways , but the simple …

Product Marketing 81

Product Marketing Marketing Sales Enterprise 81

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2023

Jessica Gilmartin is the Chief Marketing Officer at Calendly, where she leads all aspects of marketing including brand awareness, creative, demand generation, and product marketing. Jessica brings nearly 20 years of marketing and leadership experience to Calendly. Ada is a secret gem I’ve recently discovered.

Marketing 252

Marketing Leadership Engineering Enterprise 252

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 2, 2022

They imply strong product market fit. User signs up for a product & pays. AE engages a VP or C-level executive to upsell the whole company, an enterprise-license agreement (ELA). In other cases, cross-selling products drives expansion. I’ve only seen a handful of companies achieve that mark.

Enterprise 304

Enterprise Startup Retention Engagement 304

Kellblog

JANUARY 14, 2021

The number one question go-to-market question in any enterprise software startup is: “do you have a repeatable sales process?” Do you have a working product? Have you established product-market fit ? (This is the first in a three-part restructuring and build-out of the prior post. 1M in ARR)?

Sales Hiring 91

Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales Startup 91

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

If you’re a new startup, maybe you have your first couple of AEs, or you’re figuring out product market fit, or you just don’t have a big enough brand or cash in the bank to sell to big companies, you need to strike a balance. Big Enterprises are taking a risk on you. If you exaggerate too much, you’ll get caught.

Sales Hiring 231

Sales Hiring SaaS Banking AI 231

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 12, 2023

Both these companies also focus on enterprise accounts - in contrast to Bill.com at the bottom, which targets small businesses. Datadog tops the list, likely driven by their tremendous cross-selling ability. Snowflake is second, pushed by their best-in-class net dollar retention (NDR). Compare that to the benchmarks in 2013!

Software Review 268

Software Review Trends Revenue Software 268

User Pilot

APRIL 17, 2024

Mixpanel provides insights into customer journeys to help businesses refine product-market fit and drive growth through data-driven strategies. Hotjar enhances user experience and product development with features like heatmaps and custom integrations, delving deep into user behavior. Enterprise : Contact for custom pricing.

AI Search 103

AI Search Social Media Cross-platform App Design (Application) Systems Review 103

SaaStr

JULY 26, 2022

So in theory, SMB SaaS is better than enterprise, at least 9 times out of 10: Deals close much faster. But beyond all the other Pros and Cons of SMB vs enterprise, there’s one looming issue with SMB SaaS: Churn. Enterprises take decades to go under. This gets addressed in the enterprise with high levels of staffing.

SMB 356

SMB Churn Payment Services SaaS 356

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2022

The y-axis is sales efficiency: a proxy for product-market fit (PMF). Enterprise startups should be between 18-28 months. The company likely needs 1-2 quarters to develop a product and then 2 quarters to book business. Minimize burn to lengthen runway and develop both the product and go-to-market efficiently.

Startup 323

Startup Outsourced Development Scale Banking 323

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2023

You Might Lose Product Market Fit How does that happen? The world, your customers, and the market are constantly shifting. At PlanGrid, they nailed it with product market fit. Their sweet spot was the carpenters, superintendents, and product engineers, not enterprises. The reason? Everything changes.

Startup 231

Startup Communication Leadership Engineering 231

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Sydney pulled someone from Salesloft with a product marketing background who understands operations, running programs, and being strategic. This person has built out a partnership marketing team within the product marketing team. Product marketing and product owners have specific KPIs on adoption that they track.

AWS 207

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 207

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

The team, led by Deepinder Singh Dhingra, has deep enterprise SaaS experience and truly understands their customer’s needs. I have known Deepinder for several years, and he has great product instincts and hustle. Pouring money into go-to-market will not solve for product market fit. Why did you do the deal?

Innovation 243

Innovation Wireless Acquisition Technology 243

SaaStr

JANUARY 22, 2023

SaaStr 623: Removing Friction: How to Turn More Than 40% of Your Prospects Into Long Term Enterprise Customers with Attentive Co-founder and CEO Brian Long                  Top Videos This Week: 1. 5 Signs You Need to Hire a Product Marketing Manager — Yesterday! with Brex’s VP Product Marketing 5.

Scale 197

Scale Customer Success Venture Capital Sales Hiring 197

SaaStr

JUNE 30, 2023

Braze didn’t find a true product-market fit until around 2014-2015. The other enduring changes Braze believed were coming included: Enterprise would be transformed by mobile. If you’re struggling to see product-market fit, it can be nerve-wracking. But if the market isn’t ready, it isn’t ready. And it was.

Scale 200

Scale Mobile Venture Capital Scaling 200

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Go-to-Market matters because sales and marketing spend remain the biggest proportion of SaaS spend, so honing in on that spend to build an engine and drive growth is paramount. But to develop a GTM strategy, you must have Product Market Fit. Those familiar with ICONIQ’s work will recognize the ICONIQ Growth Enterprise 5.

Scale 234

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 234

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

Transitioning from mid-market selling to enterprise selling isn’t easy. In our first post we focused on how to be product- and market-ready, but that’s still only part of the solution. 1) Marketing: Does your marketing appeal to enterprise orgs? Customer and channel partnerships.

Sales Hiring 71

Sales Hiring Enterprise Technical Review SMB 71

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2023

If you don’t want your company defeated by change, you need to adapt your Go-To-Market strategy at every stage of growth. Managing Partner of CIPIO Partners, Rolan Dennert, shares how companies need to readjust and rethink GTM fit — and even product market fit — from time to time. The sales cycle at this stage may be very short.

Scale 231

Scale Scaling Strategy Outbound Sales Team 231

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 2022

Not everyone wants to use your product—internalize this first. Not all products are made for enterprise customers. Instead, focus on understanding your target market. . The best way to achieve product-market fit is to study your audience as early as possible and comprehensively overview customer segments in your niche.

Scale 201

Scale Scaling Revenue Enterprise 201