The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

The conventional wisdom is that starting a web business is (at least) 10x less expensive today than it was 10-15 years ago. It’s said that a decade ago, you needed millions of venture capital in order to launch an Internet startup whereas today, thanks to open-source software, cheap hardware and new ways to acquire users for free (in particular virally via Facebook/Twitter and with SEO via Google), you can do the same with a small fraction of that.

Startup 103

Startup Venture Capital Investment Software 103

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

NPR's Fresh Air host, Terry Gross, recently interviewed Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter. She asked him, once the founders created Twitter, how did it catch on. Stone's candid answer, "Well, it didn't at first." He explained that for the first nine months of the product's existence, the only people using it were friends and family. Most people they talked to about it decided that "Twitter is not useful" and "it's the most ridiculous thing we've ever heard of.

Social Media 100

Social Media SaaS Government Acquisition 100

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

I’m thrilled to announce that together with Robin Klein at Index Ventures , Dave McClure ’s 500 Startups fund and my friend and former Atlas Venture partner Alexander Bruehl I’ve made an investment in Geckoboard. Geckoboard is a beautiful real-time status board that lets businesses keep an eye on all the indicators that matter to them. It’s a bit like “Pageflakes for businesses” (although “Chartbeat for everything else” is probably a better analogy), which is one of the reasons why investing in

Business 100

Business Investment Startup Payment Features 100

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

I hear this question often from software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers: "How much should we spend on marketing?" If these marketers have experience working in the traditional, on-premise licensed software world, they're usually familiar measuring marketing spend as a percentage of annual revenue. That metric is often used to allocate and track marketing budgets for licensed software companies, and they typically spend somewhere between 5 and 8 percent of annual revenues on marketing.

Marketing 100

Marketing SaaS Benchmarks Acquisition 100

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