The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 23, 2014

More than two years ago I wrote about what we look for in early-stage SaaS startups. Since then we've looked at hundreds of SaaS startups and have gained additional insights through the work that we've been doing with the SaaS startups that we have invested in. Therefore I thought it would be time for a follow-on post with some additional thoughts. In the original post I focused primarily on early metrics as an indicator of product/market fit and of a favorable CAC/CLTV ratio in the future.

Startup 152

Startup SaaS Acquisition Scale 152

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 2, 2014

What should the optimal revenue per customer be for a SaaS company? I could say million dollar contracts typical of enterprise sales provide more long-term stability and total revenue opportunity. On the other hand I might contend larger customer bases paying smaller license fees enable more predictable growth. Which is the correct argument? First, lets examine the relationship between average customer value and total revenues, to see if smaller customers create a glass ceiling for total revenue

Startup 110

Startup SaaS Revenue Enterprise 110

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

FEBRUARY 5, 2014

Companies get more from software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions than just lower cost. So says a recent study conducted by IBM. It reveals that companies find that the greatest benefits from SaaS solutions are more collaboration, a better customer experience, and faster time-to-market. For anyone that’s been marketing SaaS solutions for any amount of time, those finding aren’t terribly surprising.

SaaS 100

SaaS Business Model Marketing Development 100

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 28, 2014

When selling on the phone, oftentimes sales reps don't understand how to structure a call. If you don’t have the right plan going into a sales call, it’s going to be much harder to close the deal.

Sales 52

Sales 52

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Simplify omnichannel payments with a solution that unifies every channel through your platform. By integrating front-end systems like online, mobile, and in-store payments with robust back-end infrastructure, you can deliver a seamless payments experience without the need for heavy engineering. Omnitoken technology enhances security by tokenizing card transactions for reuse, enabling merchants to drive cross-selling opportunities.

Payment Solutions

Aber Law Firm

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

Every software app developer needs to know about the latest software app privacy issues, so I thought I would provide a brief summary of some of the best published privacy guidelines for app developers. You may have missed it, but the Federal Trade Commission (aka FTC), the Attorney General for the State of California, and the Future of Privacy Forum and Center for Democracy & Technology (aka FPF and CDT), have each created a great privacy guideline document for app developers.

Development 52

Development Software Review Technical Review Mobile 52

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

I recently participated in Marco Montemagno's SuperSummit and gave a webinar about the topic "Measuring your SaaS success". Thanks, Marco, for inviting me! Below are the slides of my talk. Since some of the slides aren't self-explanatory I've added some notes, see the yellow bubbles. If you want to dive in deeper, check out this post , which the talk was based on.

SaaS 108

SaaS Metrics Software 108

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 27, 2014

Raising capital from venture capitalists at any stage can seem like a very strange, ambiguous and amorphous process. I’ve written about the way Redpoint diligences/researches a startup and its market and what questions we tend to ask at each stage. In this post, I’ll focus on the process from entrepreneur’s point of view. When raising capital, entrepreneurs will see potential investors move through four phases of investment decision-making process: screening, socialization, dil

Startup 102

Startup Finance Investment Data 102

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2014

The process of creating the right culture in a startup has always been mysterious to me. Each company’s culture evolves in its own way. I’ve wondered whether the culture is set by the personalities of the founders, or prominently displayed value statements and mission, or biases purposely imposed in the hiring processes like Google’s googliness filter.

Startup 100

Startup Marketing 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

A few days ago, Simply Business published an infographic and data on the acquisition patterns of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Yahoo. Looking at that data, I wondered which acquirers pay the most for startups. Ideally, this data provides some negotiating leverage to founders selling their businesses. I’ve prepared three charts and a table to tell the story.

Startup 100

Startup Acquisition Pricing Innovation 100

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ClinicSense is a SaaS platform that supports over 7,000 massage therapists who use it for appointment management, payments, scheduling, marketing activities and more. Despite having a relatively low payment failure rate, the company discovered that the failures disrupted the customer experience. This often led to churn as customers decided to cancel or abandon their account, preventing ClinicSense from realizing the full lifetime value (LTV) of its users.

Payments

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 22, 2014

From zero to $19B of business value in five years; WhatsApp’s sale to Facebook is an important moment in the history of the consumer web. The deal proves distribution, reach and large user bases aren’t the competitive moats they once were. Apple’s App Store and Google Play have leveled the playing field to such an extent that a startup can command 10% of the market cap from a $200B company.

Acquisition 100

Acquisition Scale Mobile Innovation 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

When a startup is confronted with the prospect of hiring a head of marketing, founders heads often spin. What should be the day-to-day tasks for this person? What skill sets are important? Because of the seeming abstract nature of marketing, founders sometimes delay finding a head of marketing until they feel acute pain, at which point they can clearly identify the attributes of the right candidate.

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Startup Growth Hacking Marketing 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 17, 2014

Great entrepreneurs can come from anywhere. But do the locations of startups affect their ability to raise follow on capital? Do seed stage companies in the Bay Area face lower likelihoods of raising a Series A because of more competition? Or is it that New York based startups, because of a smaller ecosystem, face more difficulty? Using Crunchbase data , I charted the financing follow-on rates across the 12 US cities in which at least 10 seeds, 3 Series As and 3 Series Bs have occured in the Cru

Startup 100

Startup Finance Investment Data 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 12, 2014

When presented with figures and numbers and statistics, it’s easy to take the conclusions as fact. Numbers in a spreadsheet carry a finality, a exactitude that belies how inaccurate they can be. In 2005, Stanford professor Johannes Ioannidis turned the world of research and statistics on its head. He published “ Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.

Data 100

Data Data Analysis Startup Management 100

Speaker: David Warren and Kevin O’Neill Stoll

Transitioning to a usage-based business model offers powerful growth opportunities but comes with unique challenges. How do you validate strategies, reduce risks, and ensure alignment with customer value? Join us for a deep dive into designing effective pilots that test the waters and drive success in usage-based revenue. Discover how to develop a pilot that captures real customer feedback, aligns internal teams with usage metrics, and rethinks sales incentives to prioritize lasting customer eng

Revenue

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

Has it become harder to raise money? is a question I hear all the time. On one hand, the total dollars invested by VCs is relatively flat at just under $30B per year, according to the NVCA. On the other hand, the stories of difficulty raising series As and Bs have become a steady drumbeat. To get some sense of the patterns, I analyzed 917 companies from seed through Series B over the past 14 years, using Crunchbase data.

Startup 100

Startup Venture Capital Finance Investment 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 8, 2014

The average seed stage startup has a 20% chance of raising a Series A according to Crunchbase data for IT startups who raised seed and Series A rounds between 2006 and 2013. But this figure varies significantly sector by sector. Below is a chart of the different startups’ sectors and their rates of raising Series A capital net of the mean of 20%.

Transportation 100

Transportation Startup Finance Innovation 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

Naming your startup can be one of the hardest things to do when starting a company. Each founder must agree. The domain must be available to buy. Last and perhaps most importantly, investors need to like it because the first letter of startup’s name has meaningful impact on how easily the company will be able to raise money. Whatever you do, don’t pick a name that starts with the letter J.

Startup 100

Startup Data Investment Marketing 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 5, 2014

How large of a seed round should founders raise to maximize their chances of raising a Series A? Smaller seed rounds are simpler and faster to raise because they typically require fewer investors. They may also require less dilution because of the smaller investment size. On the other hand, to raise a Series A, the startup needs enough runway to hire a team and prove certain milestones to Series A investors.

Investment 100

Investment Startup Product Marketing Data 100

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Large enterprises face unique challenges in optimizing their Business Intelligence (BI) output due to the sheer scale and complexity of their operations. Unlike smaller organizations, where basic BI features and simple dashboards might suffice, enterprises must manage vast amounts of data from diverse sources. What are the top modern BI use cases for enterprise businesses to help you get a leg up on the competition?

Enterprise

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

In What’s Up with the Series A , Nikhil Basu Trivedi documents the bifurcation in the Series A market. While there are a handful of startups that raise blockbuster Series As of greater than $10M, the average Series A investment size remains relatively constant over the past 6 years just around $5.3M for US technology companies according to Crunchbase data[1].

Finance 100

Finance Startup Investment Technology 100

Aber Law Firm

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

Every software app developer needs to know about the latest software app privacy issues, so I thought I would provide a brief summary of some of the best published privacy guidelines for app developers. You may have missed it, but the Federal Trade Commission (aka FTC), the Attorney General for the State of California, and the Future of Privacy Forum and Center for Democracy & Technology (aka FPF and CDT), have each created a great privacy guideline document for app developers.

Development 52

Development Software Review Technical Review Mobile 52

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 18, 2014

When we launched Bulk Email a little over 2 months ago, we initially launched it on our highest tier (Business) plan. We wanted to first test the new feature with a smaller audience and to gather feedback and work out any kinks. The feedback has been clear: it's a game changer!

Business 52

Business 52

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

One of the biggest challenges in B2B sales is reaching the right person, the person who can (a) understand the value your software can provide for their company and (b) make a buying decision.

Sales 52

Sales B2B Software 52

Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, and Terrence Sheflin

As we look ahead to 2025, business intelligence and data analytics are set to play pivotal roles in shaping success. Organizations are already starting to face a host of transformative trends as the year comes to a close, including the integration of AI in data analytics, an increased emphasis on real-time data insights, and the growing importance of user experience in BI solutions.

Trends

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 4, 2014

Dare to charge more and then live up to the challenge. It’s not about becoming so affordable that everybody can get some value out of you. It’s about creating so much value that the right customers are happy to pay you a fair price in exchange.

Pricing 52

Pricing SaaS Sales 52

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 3, 2014

How does Close save you time or increase your sales? The streamlined interface allows for clearer thinking and entering of key data and info while on a call. More time = more calls, and better data.

Data 52

Data Sales 52

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 12, 2014

We're happy to announce we've just launched one of the many changes we're working on to allow you to better see your sales data in more meaningful ways.

Data 52

Data Sales 52

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 20, 2014

Just recently, I had a sales office hour with a bright founder, and it was not about how to sell to customers, but how to sell to investors.

Sales 52

Sales Startup 52

Speaker: Christophe Louvion, Chief Product & Technology Officer of NRC Health and Tony Karrer, CTO at Aggregage

Christophe Louvion, Chief Product & Technology Officer of NRC Health, is here to take us through how he guided his company's recent experience of getting from concept to launch and sales of products within 90 days. In this exclusive webinar, Christophe will cover key aspects of his journey, including: LLM Development & Quick Wins 🤖 Understand how LLMs differ from traditional software, identifying opportunities for rapid development and deployment.

Artificial Intelligence

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

37signals recently announced that they will change their name to Basecamp and focus the entire company on that one product.

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52

Aber Law Firm

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

Every software app developer needs to know about the latest software app privacy issues, so I thought I would provide a brief summary of some of the best published privacy guidelines for app developers. You may have missed it, but the Federal Trade Commission (aka FTC), the Attorney General for the State of California, and the Future of Privacy Forum and Center for Democracy & Technology (aka FPF and CDT), have each created a great privacy guideline document for app developers.

Development 40

Development Software Review Technical Review Mobile 40

Aber Law Firm

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

Every software app developer needs to know about the latest software app privacy issues, so I thought I would provide a brief summary of some of the best published privacy guidelines for app developers. You may have missed it, but the Federal Trade Commission (aka FTC), the Attorney General for the State of California, and the Future of Privacy Forum and Center for Democracy & Technology (aka FPF and CDT), have each created a great privacy guideline document for app developers.

Development 40

Development Software Review Technical Review Mobile 40