The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 18, 2017

Founder salaries are not a topic I’ve had to spend a lot of time with so far. I usually just “OK” them, since the founders we are working with are all super reasonable people who carefully weigh how much they need against the interests of the company – their company. But sometimes founders ask me for a suggestion or some guidance because they are uncertain as to what is fair, and so I thought it might be useful to create a simple model.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review Compensation Company Culture Benchmarks 279

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 10, 2017

Disagree and commit. I first read about this idea in the 2016 Amazon Shareholders letter. But the idea can be traced back to Andy Grove at Intel. Grove wrote about this topic in High Output Management. Disagree and commit is a management technique for handling conflict. There are two parts to it. First, expecting and demanding teammates to voice their disgreement.

Management 230

Management Leadership Engineering Startup 230

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

I gave a talk this year at the 2017 SaaS North conference in Ottawa, where I discuss the fundamentals of building a repeatable, scalable, & profitable growth process for a startup. Building a Repeatable, Scalable & Profitable Growth Process [View on Slideshare].

Startup 189

Startup SaaS Business Model Business 189

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

NOVEMBER 4, 2017

No matter how long the list of amazing features you offer, if you’re marketing a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution, that’s not all you’ve got to sell. You should be talking about the “non-feature” pieces as well. If not, you’re underselling your solution. That’s because prospects are usually thinking about more than just features when they’re evaluating a solution.

SaaS 133

SaaS Finance Data Marketing 133

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Payment Solutions

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes - strategic communication is an integral part of successful sales enablement. Communication matters in business. And the success (or failure) of a sales enablement function is intertwined with its ability to influence a sales organisation and change behaviour. While it may not be immediately apparent, communicating well with and managing stakeholders is a prerequisite for successful sales enablement.

Sales Enablement 112

Sales Enablement Sales Business Consulting 112

The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

While doing some research for another post I just stumbled on this excellent overview from Pacific Crest on the churn rates of publicly listed SaaS companies. I’ve seen posts with churn benchmarks of public SaaS companies before, but this one is by far the most comprehensive collection I’ve seen and I think it’s very useful. What’s maybe even more interesting than taking a look at the numbers themselves is to see how different companies define churn (or the inverse, retention).

Churn 226

Churn SaaS Retention Metrics 226

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

“Evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups.” That’s a shocking statement. Adrian Furnham, a professor of organizational and applied psychology at University College London, said it. It turns out it’s completely true. Participants in interactive brainstorming groups rated their performance quite favorably…[and] felt that interactive group brainstorming was more productive than individual brainstorming…Howev

Management 187

Management Data Business 187

Think Strategies

NOVEMBER 11, 2017

Corporate executives know that if they don’t transform their companies into digital enterprises they are going to be at a significant competitive disadvantage going forward. Yet, many corporate leaders have been unable to make significant progress transforming their organizations. These executives have found that changing their corporate cultures is a lot harder than adopting the new generation of cloud-based applications and services that make the digital enterprise possible.

Development 100

Development Cloud Enterprise Sales 100

InsightSquared

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

Guest blog by Zahra Bukhari, sales operations manager at Localytics. An effective sales methodology is arguably the backbone of a successful sales team. In today’s sellers’ environment, there are many standard sales methodologies your team can use: The Challenger Sale, MEDDIC , BANT , Solution Selling, Value Selling — the list could go on.

Sales 88

Sales Forecasting Data Leadership 88

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Payment Solutions

Totango

NOVEMBER 22, 2017

Get ready for two days of great content, speakers, networking and fun! So much is happening in the world of Customer Success. We’re going to bring the best and the brightest from the field to share latest trends in strategy and innovation so you and your organization can make the BIGGEST IMPACT possible in customer adoption, retention and overall customer engagement.

Customer Success 85

Customer Success Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence AI 85

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 2, 2017

Free trials are a great marketing tactic. Everyone loves free. Signing up for one is easy. A first name here, an email address there, and you have access. But as a business owner, there’s a massive gap between getting names and getting dollars. How many free trial users end up as paying customers? Depends on your conversion model: A Totango study in 2012 found an average of 50% when a credit card was required for the free trial, but only 15% when a credit card wasn’t necessary.

Churn 107

Churn Engagement Pricing Marketing 107

The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

After a Clio Board Meeting last week I received the following email from Jack Newton, the company's amazing co-founder & CEO. Hi everyone, I'd like to experiment with requesting some 1:1 feedback on our board meetings. Please take 5 minutes and provide feedback through this Typeform: [link] Cheers, Jack I thought this was a really great idea and worth sharing here.

Investment 132

Investment 132

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 25, 2017

There’s a parallel between cryptoassets today and the British colonial period predating the US. In the late-1600s, colonies began to print their own money. Today, we’re seeing many startups coin their own money, creating an explosion in the number of new (crypto)currencies. States printed colonial money to pay debts to citizens. During tax collection times, the state accepted citizens’ bills as payment and retired the bills from circulation.

Banking 184

Banking Government Finance Startup 184

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

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

The model for early-stage success in SaaS is shifting. Let's take a look at the shift happening in fundraising, and some of the businesses succeeding from bootstrapped-origins, as well as some different strategies up to and beyond that critical first $1M ARR. What’s enabling bootstrapped SaaS? The concept of bootstrapping a business is nothing new. The term originates from the concept of “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps”.

Venture Capital 77

Venture Capital Startup SaaS Travel 77

InsightSquared

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

Guest blog by Joe Rodden, Sales Systems Manager at Catalant Technologies. In sales operations, we do a lot. Putting out reactive fires, supporting reps, managing territories, reporting, building new functionality and processes in the CRM, and much more. However, trouble may come in actually measuring our success in these things. A sales team typically has a quota so their success is easily measurable, but how do you measure your success?

Sales 79

Sales Systems Review Technical Review Software Review 79

Totango

NOVEMBER 10, 2017

Customer Health continues to be a hot topic among Customer Success professionals for obvious reasons. Getting your customer health model right is critical to the foundation of a great customer success operation. In part 2 of our customer health webinar series, we tackled “How to Measure the Effectiveness of a Customer Health Model” and discussed a more advanced approach to customer health.

Churn 76

Churn Forecasting Customer Success Technology 76

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

With the rise of AI, new sales technology and automation at the forefront of the sales echo chamber these days, we thought we’d take a moment to bring it back to BASICS – that’s why we’ve rounded up this complete glossary of sales terms and definitions to help you remember where it all started. This practical sales glossary is meant for anyone in sales who needs to refresh their memory on the most commonly used sales terms – especially new reps who are still learnin

Scale 104

Scale Payment Methods Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments 104

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Enterprise

A Smart Bear

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

We’re tired of hearing how small software companies usually fail. The data show that the two most common causes are: (1) Product isn’t useful to enough people, and (2) Problems with the team. But what about the companies that die even though they did sell some copies of software, and where the early team isn’t dysfunctional? I don’t have data for that cohort (tell me if you do!

Payment Solutions 71

Payment Solutions Payments Payment Methods Scale 71

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 8, 2017

Founders often describe their unit economics in terms of their LTV/CAC ratio - the ratio of the Lifetime Value (LTV) of a customer to the Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC). The LTV/CAC metric can be a powerful metric to unpack the health of the go-to-market team of a company, as Netsuite has shown. But this figure is often meaningless for early stage startups.

Startup 180

Startup Forecasting Benchmarks Acquisition 180

Pierre Lechelle

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

Do you have a software business? The first thing that people see about you is your website. Are you investing enough resources on making sure they have the best possible experience? I’m guessing that more than 98% of people coming to your website leave without giving you their email address. You know why? It’s because […]. Cet article Are you ready to optimize your SaaS website for conversion and improve your CAC?

SaaS 65

SaaS Investment Software Growth Hacking 65

InsightSquared

NOVEMBER 10, 2017

Guest post by Adam Honig is the co-founder and CEO of Spiro Technologies. If you work in sales operations, it may seem like the sales reps at your company don’t always see the value you are adding to their daily lives. It sometimes feels like the only thing you have in common is both of your job titles beginning with the word “sales”. Instead of ignoring the divide, see it from the sales side and try to articulate, in their language, your value add.

Sales 78

Sales Compensation Technology Education 78

Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, Terrence Sheflin, and Mahyar Ghasemali

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

Totango

NOVEMBER 10, 2017

Customer Health continues to be a hot topic among Customer Success professionals for obvious reasons. Getting your customer health model right is critical to the foundation of a great customer success operation. In part 2 of our customer health webinar series, we tackled “How to Measure the Effectiveness of a Customer Health Model” and discussed a more advanced approach to customer health.

Churn 72

Churn Forecasting Customer Success Technology 72

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

If you want to learn how to manage a sales team, you’ve come to the right place. You’re about to get actionable insights from top experts who have all been there (and done it) before. Managing a sales team is definitely a challenge, but until you have managed or been on a sales team building revenues at +20% MoM AT SCALE, you may be in for a swift and rude awakening.

Scale 97

Scale Sales Hiring Management Sales 97

CloseSaaS

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

Over the past two months, we've interviewed 50+ top sales leaders to get their best sales advice, tips, and strategies that have transformed the way we sell today.

Sales 64

Sales Interviewing Strategy 64

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

How quickly do the fastest growing software companies build their teams? The answer is incredibly quickly. In fact, this data bolsters the notion that management team’s top priority is recruiting, especially after the business has reached product market fit and capitalized itself well. Above, I’ve charted the headcount growth rate for 10 of the fastest growing software companies in recent history.

Headcount 159

Headcount Scaling Software Business 159

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

FastSpring

NOVEMBER 9, 2017

Image Source: Asia Times. A relative newcomer to the holiday scene, Singles' Day sales are rocketing. How does it compare to the surge of sales that retailers often see on Cyber Monday?

Sales 63

Sales Marketing 63

InsightSquared

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

Earlier this year we teamed up with LinkedIn to highlight the basic characteristics of professionals in three critical operations roles — sales, marketing and business operations. Unlike other specialized professions that require advanced degrees or technology certifications, there is no “typical” career requirements, or career path, in operations.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring Technical Review Sales Banking 59

ITPro

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

News. Analysts find that more choice brings more complexity.

Enterprise 49

Enterprise Cloud 49