Expert insights. Personalized for you.
We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to increase the odds your first management team is a success. How to hire a great VP of Sales (tons on that here ). What a great VP of sales really does. What a great VP of marketing really does (tons on that here ). When to hire her (more here ). MORE
Keeping your existing users is much more cost effective that finding and converting new leads. Despite this, the average business mailing list loses 25% of its subscribers every year. Reactivating your lapsed customers is key to preventing them from becoming lost customers. MORE
What can you learn from video games to engage your customers and get them addicted to your products? Gamification is to key to successful engagement MORE
156 
Why Revenue Intelligence? Why Now? Quite possibly one of the most interesting years of our careers. Everything you thought you knew about managing your revenue operations was stamped with a giant question mark. In-person demos were canceled indefinitely. You became virtual sellers overnight. MORE
I held off for 6+ years and 3000+ Quora answers on writing a post on Board Meetings. Because every investor in the world writes lengthy posts on How to Have a Great Board Meeting. How to Have a Great Pre-Board Meeting. How to Have a Great Board Meeting Week. MORE
If someone is looking for another job in Year 1, Even if they don’t take it … You’ve already basically lost them. Do more 1-on-1s Get more 360 feedback Talk more. I know you don’t have time. Make it. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) October 11, 2020. MORE
In 2010 my brother Mike and I took our e-gift card startup, Instagift , through Techstars Seattle. The experience changed my life. We were guided by incredible mentors, worked in an amazing space, and ultimately raised money for the first time in our entrepreneurial careers. My favorite part of my Techstars experience was spending every day, for three straight months, surrounded by other founders fighting for their early stage companies. Those long days and late nights as a group were magical. MORE
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year. MORE
By 2025, we’re projected to produce 463 exabytes (4,630,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data every day. Everything you do online leaves a digital trail. Which is cool and all… but what does that mean for business owners, digital marketers, bloggers, and data engineers? It’s a massive opportunity. MORE
When it comes to sales forecasting , it’s a simple truth: if you can see what’s coming, you can prepare and react accordingly. In many cases, you can even change future results before they become foregone conclusions. . MORE
Almost all industries witness decline in revenue because of the coronavirus crisis. And SaaS companies aren’t exceptions. But human nature and the will to move forward help companies even in the hardest times to come up with creative initiatives to spread the word about their companies. We interviewed tens of SaaS companies worldwide to understand what special campaigns they launched or how they tried to help people in general. MORE
Second-timers know the playbook and can execute against it faster. But often times, they also have a bit of healthy skepticism, a bit of baggage, from the last time. First-timers often know very little, but are baggage free. That can be very powerful. MORE
IME, rough order to make hires in: VPM: $0.2m ARR VPS: $1-$1.5m ARR VPCS: $2m ARR VPP: $3m-$4m ARR VPE: $5m-$6m ARR CFO: $10m ARR COO: $20m ARR. More here: [link]. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 21, 2019. The other day I was meeting with a great CEO who had raised a modest seed round. MORE
Managers waste over 140 hours a year manually creating schedules for their employees. Furthermore, manual scheduling errors can increase your turnover rate by as much as 174%. The good news is that’s not what your scheduling process has to look like. MORE
Co-Founder and CEO of Lemlist, the coolest sales automation platform ever created, shares tips and tricks to grow a SaaS company in a B2B space, from scratch! The post Building a Successful B2B Outbound Sales Strategy From Scratch appeared first on Predictable Revenue. MORE
When you take a more proactive approach, you are able to guide the pace of the sales process to better support your company’s bottom line. You can also ensure you are working with the right decision maker who can move through the sales process with you, resulting in a win. MORE
IMHO and experience, most SaaS CEOs/founders aren’t Killers. They can’t be. They’re Builders. In fact, the two jobs of a founder/CEO are antithetically opposed to zero-sum and attack thinking. MORE
As you scale up in SaaS, one thing I can almost guarantee is that you are going to hire some VPs who were either fired or quit their last role. Especially in Bay Area-centric startups. MORE
“To keep you honest, and help the entire company and team keep track of how you are really doing … build a simple, rolling, “L4M” (Last Four Months) model. It just takes minutes.”. The Power and Honesty in a L4M Model. Build One Now. SaaStr [link]. MORE
Raising capital can be one of the most difficult parts of the founder journey. The more you know about cap tables and term sheets, negotiating tactics and letters of intent, the better positioned you’ll be for investor meetings. Techstars cofounder Brad Feld and Techstars mentor Jason Mendelson—partners at the Foundry Group, and authors of Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist —are excited to open enrollment for their Venture Deals, Spring 2020 online course. MORE
199 
Conversational marketing has conquered the SaaS industry long ago. Software companies engage, qualify, and recommend visitors with the help of chatbots who set new rules for improving user experience. After exploring this post, you will know 1) What is conversational marketing and how it works, 2) What is making CM a successful strategy, 3) How to increase conversions through CM, 4) How your SaaS peers leverage CM so far. Stay us till the end. MORE
When users interact with the World Wide Web, they tend to be rather lenient with their activity online and consider the consequences of their actions a little less. Whether it’s because they’re not physically doing something or they feel they’re unlikely to be detected, it’s still a risky game to play. Considering just how enormous the internet is, it can actually be relatively easy to get caught from doing something unethical. The same goes for SEO and using optimisation strategies. MORE
KBCM TECHNOLOGY GROUP SAAS SURVEY – COVID EDITION For the eighth year in a row, we’re proud to work with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities) Thank you to the readers of forEntrepreneurs who participated in taking the survey! MORE
What is the difference between effectiveness and efficiency in sales? When it comes to B2B sales tools, efficiency is prioritized more so than effectiveness. But what do you gain by reps generating more meetings if they are all mediocre at best? Efficiency and effectiveness are both buzzwords popularly used by CEOs and Sales VPs to chart the course of their organization. They are also commonly misused and misinterpreted, not just in the lexicon of business-speak but in daily use. MORE
A mistake many founders make is hiring a VP of Sales who has many strengths — but not at sales per se. A VP of Sales who is smart, polished, and worked at the right place, in a management-level position. That can talk about quota attainment and sales operations and scaling and number. MORE
What elements are necessary for successful college-based entrepreneurship education? The annual ranking by Entrepreneur Magazine and the Princeton Review is based on a survey that includes more than 60 metrics, including the number and reach of mentorship, scholarships and grants for entrepreneurial studies, and the level of support for school-sponsored business plan competitions. MORE
OK so this I think the first negative or at least “bummer” post I think I’ve ever written on SaaStr in 8 years. We’ve been through ups-and-downs in SaaS since 2012 (the start of SaaStr), flash crashes, multiple contractions, as well as the crazy bull run of 2020. MORE
Here’s my list of the best golden advice I was given as a first-time — and second-time — CEO: Manage People — In General, and Earlier. The earlier in your career you can learn how to manage people, the faster you can excel in learning to scale. Managing people isn’t always fun. MORE
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 19, 2020
IME, rough order to make hires in: VPM: $0.2m ARR VPS: $1-$1.5m ARR VPCS: $2m ARR VPP: $3m-$4m ARR VPE: $5m-$6m ARR CFO: $10m ARR COO: $20m ARR. More here: [link]. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 21, 2019. The other day I was meeting with a great CEO who had raised a modest seed round.
The Daily Egg
AUGUST 31, 2020
Managers waste over 140 hours a year manually creating schedules for their employees. Furthermore, manual scheduling errors can increase your turnover rate by as much as 174%. The good news is that’s not what your scheduling process has to look like.
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Predictable Revenue
SEPTEMBER 2, 2020
Co-Founder and CEO of Lemlist, the coolest sales automation platform ever created, shares tips and tricks to grow a SaaS company in a B2B space, from scratch! The post Building a Successful B2B Outbound Sales Strategy From Scratch appeared first on Predictable Revenue.
InsightSquared
OCTOBER 2, 2020
Why Revenue Intelligence? Why Now? Quite possibly one of the most interesting years of our careers. Everything you thought you knew about managing your revenue operations was stamped with a giant question mark. In-person demos were canceled indefinitely. You became virtual sellers overnight.
Advertisement
In today’s climate, it’s more important than ever for SaaS companies to build rock-solid financial models on which they can operate and make key business decisions. The teams at SaaSOptics and Burkland have teamed up to create a comprehensive guide to the most difficult aspect of financial modeling: revenue forecasting.
TechStars
JANUARY 30, 2020
In 2010 my brother Mike and I took our e-gift card startup, Instagift , through Techstars Seattle. The experience changed my life. We were guided by incredible mentors, worked in an amazing space, and ultimately raised money for the first time in our entrepreneurial careers. My favorite part of my Techstars experience was spending every day, for three straight months, surrounded by other founders fighting for their early stage companies. Those long days and late nights as a group were magical.
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SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
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For Entrepreneurs with David Skok
SEPTEMBER 9, 2020
KBCM TECHNOLOGY GROUP SAAS SURVEY – COVID EDITION For the eighth year in a row, we’re proud to work with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities) Thank you to the readers of forEntrepreneurs who participated in taking the survey!
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 18, 2020
Second-timers know the playbook and can execute against it faster. But often times, they also have a bit of healthy skepticism, a bit of baggage, from the last time. First-timers often know very little, but are baggage free. That can be very powerful.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 25, 2020
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 12, 2020
I held off for 6+ years and 3000+ Quora answers on writing a post on Board Meetings. Because every investor in the world writes lengthy posts on How to Have a Great Board Meeting. How to Have a Great Pre-Board Meeting. How to Have a Great Board Meeting Week.
Advertisement
Does your analytics solution work with your current tech stack and DevOps practices? If not, any update to the analytics could increase deployment complexity and become difficult to maintain. Learn the 5 elements of a DevOps-friendly embedded analytics solution.
SaaStr
OCTOBER 7, 2020
As you scale up in SaaS, one thing I can almost guarantee is that you are going to hire some VPs who were either fired or quit their last role. Especially in Bay Area-centric startups.
SaaStr
OCTOBER 11, 2020
If someone is looking for another job in Year 1, Even if they don’t take it … You’ve already basically lost them. Do more 1-on-1s Get more 360 feedback Talk more. I know you don’t have time. Make it. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) October 11, 2020.
The Daily Egg
AUGUST 21, 2020
By 2025, we’re projected to produce 463 exabytes (4,630,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data every day. Everything you do online leaves a digital trail. Which is cool and all… but what does that mean for business owners, digital marketers, bloggers, and data engineers? It’s a massive opportunity.
Predictable Revenue
SEPTEMBER 9, 2020
Keeping your existing users is much more cost effective that finding and converting new leads. Despite this, the average business mailing list loses 25% of its subscribers every year. Reactivating your lapsed customers is key to preventing them from becoming lost customers.
Advertisement
As a group who provides the software tools necessary to manage the contracts to cash process, Aysling onboards users and projects daily, and has learned some important tips if you want to be successful when onboarding new clients and/or projects.
InsightSquared
MAY 6, 2020
What is the difference between effectiveness and efficiency in sales? When it comes to B2B sales tools, efficiency is prioritized more so than effectiveness. But what do you gain by reps generating more meetings if they are all mediocre at best? Efficiency and effectiveness are both buzzwords popularly used by CEOs and Sales VPs to chart the course of their organization. They are also commonly misused and misinterpreted, not just in the lexicon of business-speak but in daily use.
TechStars
FEBRUARY 18, 2020
Raising capital can be one of the most difficult parts of the founder journey. The more you know about cap tables and term sheets, negotiating tactics and letters of intent, the better positioned you’ll be for investor meetings. Techstars cofounder Brad Feld and Techstars mentor Jason Mendelson—partners at the Foundry Group, and authors of Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist —are excited to open enrollment for their Venture Deals, Spring 2020 online course.
Incredo
JANUARY 21, 2020
Conversational marketing has conquered the SaaS industry long ago. Software companies engage, qualify, and recommend visitors with the help of chatbots who set new rules for improving user experience. After exploring this post, you will know 1) What is conversational marketing and how it works, 2) What is making CM a successful strategy, 3) How to increase conversions through CM, 4) How your SaaS peers leverage CM so far. Stay us till the end.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 20, 2020
IMHO and experience, most SaaS CEOs/founders aren’t Killers. They can’t be. They’re Builders. In fact, the two jobs of a founder/CEO are antithetically opposed to zero-sum and attack thinking.
Advertiser: Amplitude
As part of our goal to continue helping our community during these times, we wanted to share with you this critical data on the state of digital products across industries and provide context on how businesses are responding to the changing winds.
SaaStr
OCTOBER 27, 2020
“To keep you honest, and help the entire company and team keep track of how you are really doing … build a simple, rolling, “L4M” (Last Four Months) model. It just takes minutes.”. The Power and Honesty in a L4M Model. Build One Now. SaaStr [link].
SaaStr
AUGUST 17, 2020
Here’s my list of the best golden advice I was given as a first-time — and second-time — CEO: Manage People — In General, and Earlier. The earlier in your career you can learn how to manage people, the faster you can excel in learning to scale. Managing people isn’t always fun.
SaaStr
AUGUST 14, 2020
A mistake many founders make is hiring a VP of Sales who has many strengths — but not at sales per se. A VP of Sales who is smart, polished, and worked at the right place, in a management-level position. That can talk about quota attainment and sales operations and scaling and number.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 21, 2020
We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to increase the odds your first management team is a success. How to hire a great VP of Sales (tons on that here ). What a great VP of sales really does. What a great VP of marketing really does (tons on that here ). When to hire her (more here ).
Advertiser: Data Robot
DataRobot together with Snowflake – a leading cloud data platform provider — is helping data scientists stay current with the latest technology and data science best practices so that they can excel in an increasingly AI-driven workplace. Five Things a Data Scientist Can Do to Stay Current offers data scientists guidance for thriving in AI-driven enterprises.
SaaStr
AUGUST 5, 2020
OK so this I think the first negative or at least “bummer” post I think I’ve ever written on SaaStr in 8 years. We’ve been through ups-and-downs in SaaS since 2012 (the start of SaaStr), flash crashes, multiple contractions, as well as the crazy bull run of 2020.
The Daily Egg
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
What if you could send a handful of emails on autopilot (without lifting a finger) and generate more than $40,000 in revenue without annoying your audience? That’s exactly what Yaro Starak does year after year.
Predictable Revenue
AUGUST 4, 2020
When you take a more proactive approach, you are able to guide the pace of the sales process to better support your company’s bottom line. You can also ensure you are working with the right decision maker who can move through the sales process with you, resulting in a win.
InsightSquared
NOVEMBER 30, 2020
When it comes to sales forecasting , it’s a simple truth: if you can see what’s coming, you can prepare and react accordingly. In many cases, you can even change future results before they become foregone conclusions. .
Advertiser: UserTesting
Up to 80% of new products fail. The reality is harsh and the reasons why are endless. Perhaps the new product couldn’t oust a customer favorite. Maybe it looked great but was too hard to use. Or, despite being a superior product, the go-to-market strategy failed. There’s always a risk when building a new product, but you can hedge your bets by understanding exactly what your customers' expectations truly are at every step of the development process.
TechStars
FEBRUARY 5, 2020
What elements are necessary for successful college-based entrepreneurship education? The annual ranking by Entrepreneur Magazine and the Princeton Review is based on a survey that includes more than 60 metrics, including the number and reach of mentorship, scholarships and grants for entrepreneurial studies, and the level of support for school-sponsored business plan competitions.
Incredo
APRIL 8, 2020
Almost all industries witness decline in revenue because of the coronavirus crisis. And SaaS companies aren’t exceptions. But human nature and the will to move forward help companies even in the hardest times to come up with creative initiatives to spread the word about their companies. We interviewed tens of SaaS companies worldwide to understand what special campaigns they launched or how they tried to help people in general.
DeepStream
AUGUST 16, 2020
What can you learn from video games to engage your customers and get them addicted to your products? Gamification is to key to successful engagement
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