SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2024

Why do founders leave after their companies are acquired? There are many nuanced answers, but in the short and medium term, it’s incentives. Acquirers use 3 incentives to get founders to stay: Sticks. If you leave, you lose X% of the consideration. Acquirers try to put 30%-40% of the founders’ consideration at risk, if they can get away with it. This sort of works, but it leads to “rest-and-vest” behavior if not thoughtfully combined with Carrots (next point).

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Tom Tunguz

APRIL 3, 2024

The average American attention span has fallen from 150 seconds in 2004 to 75 seconds in 2012 to 47 seconds in 2023 - a 5-6% annual rate of decline. Year Avg American Attention Span (sec) CAGR 2004 150 - 2012 75 -6% 2023 47 -5% How does this compare to these blog posts? In 2013, the average reader dwelled on this site for 47 seconds. Today, it’s 33 seconds, a 3.6% decline - which is a bit better !

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Metrics Data 315

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 26, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Azure Report - Cloud Infra Looks Good! Microsoft kicked off earnings season with a bang! For software, all eyes were on Azure - which grew 31% YoY (ahead of expectations closer to 29%). What was arguably more impressive (and a better indicator of what’s to come for the rest of infrastructure software than overall Azure growth) was the Azure growth excluding

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Azure Cloud Software AI 180

Payrix

APRIL 24, 2024

Andy Meadows, the Head of Partner Success at Payrix joins host Ian Hillis to continue their conversation about building a successful Embedded Payments strategy. As the last episode of a four-part series on the topic, Andy and Ian tackle how software companies can minimize attrition and why it’s important to the payments conversation. Did you miss Parts 1-3?

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Payments Embedded Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions 162

Speaker: Michael Veatch, Senior Director, Implementations & Ella Aguirre, Director of Solution Consulting

Embedding payments can be a transformative step for software companies looking to enhance their platform capabilities, boost customer satisfaction, and drive long-term growth. However, the success of payments hinges on a single thing: implementation. Drawing on real-world insights and experiences, payments implementation experts Michael Veatch and Ella Aguirre will explore actionable strategies that can lead to a transparent, friction-free launch and mitigate potential challenges like technical

Payments

FastSpring

APRIL 17, 2024

Ready to join the leading conference for B2B SaaS founders, operators and investors from pre-seed to series C? If so, join FastSpring at SaaStock USA 2024 at Booth S5! We’d love to talk with you in person! Join us at the Palmer Events Center, in Austin, TX, from May 13th to 15th, for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things SaaS. Since 2016, SaaStock has helped more founders, investors, and operators connect, learn, and grow than any other SaaS conference globally.

Payment Services 139

Payment Services Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 139

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 5 Things I Should Know Before Starting a SaaS Startup? My Top 5: It will take you at least 24 months to really get anywhere. Everyone mentally budgets 10–12 months. It’s never enough. At least, not to get enough paying customers from Code Zero. A little more here: [link] A co-founder not equally committed will blow up on you, and best case, is a disaster you will have to clean up later.

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Tom Tunguz

APRIL 30, 2024

Amazon announced their earnings yesterday. Like Microsoft & Google, Amazon’s Web Service business is seeing a surge of growth, up from 13% annual to 17% annual growth (16% when excluding the leap year). Aside from the overall growth of these clouds increasing, the massive investment in CapEx data centers, power plants, and GPUs is stunning.

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Cloud AWS Azure AI 279

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 11, 2024

Q4 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. The 62 companies that I’ll discuss here (which is not an exhaustive list, but is still comprehensive) all reported quarterly earnings sometime between Jan 24th – March 27th. In this post, I’ll take a data-driven approach in evaluating the overall group’s performance, and highlight individual standouts along the way.

Cloud 180

Cloud Software Azure AWS 180

The Moz Blog

APRIL 2, 2024

Using Google Tag Manager effectively first requires a comprehensive understanding of how it works and what it can be used for. This introductory guide to GTM will clear up any confusion or fears you had about using the tool, arming you with all the knowledge you need to get started.

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Management 137

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Payment Solutions

FastSpring

APRIL 16, 2024

Offering a frictionless checkout experience is essential for digital transaction conversion rates. Today, we’re excited to announce new payment method improvements available on the FastSpring platform: Apple Pay Pix Preferred Payment Method Apple Pay: Seamless Transactions Within the Apple Ecosystem As Apple Pay adoption continues to grow, incorporating Apple Pay into payment options becomes an essential part of your digital strategy.

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Payment Methods Payments Payment Services PayPal 136

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 11, 2024

The electric grid, a vast and complex system of wires and power plants, is essential to our economy and underpins our industrial strength. Currently, we face a critical challenge: our electricity demands — expected to nearly double by 2040 due to factors like AI compute, reshoring , and “electrification” — are soaring, but our grid infrastructure and operations struggle to keep pace.

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Outsourced Development Technical Review Systems Review Scale 140

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Do You Build a Real Exit Strategy? First, bear in mind acquisitions are relatively rare. The vast majority of startups will never get one acquisition offer, let alone a good one. Still, it’s not random. I’ve been through it twice as a founder and about ten times as an investor. At a high level, three things you can do that aren’t very hard will increase the odds you have an “exit”: First, build the best product in an important space.

Strategy 270

Strategy Acquisition Startup Engineering 270

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 28, 2024

What drives the acquisition market of startups? It’s the big deals. In the last decade, the total number of venture backed software M&A by count has remained relatively constant. The black line shows the linear trend across US venture backed companies with disclosed values of $50m or more. The average & median counts by year total 58 & 55 respectively.

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Acquisition Startup Venture Capital Software 259

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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

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 5, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Hype Rounds vs Fundamental Rounds The show Silicon Valley is one of my favorites - just so many nuggets of humor in that show. A favorite clip of mine is when Russ Hanneman is talking about how pre-revenue businesses are the best kind of businesses.

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Cloud Scale Revenue Pricing 164

Sparktoro

APRIL 3, 2024

It’s an exciting, relieving, high-anticipation day for all of us at SparkToro. Today’s launch—which we call “V2″—is the culmination of more than a year of work, including a complete rebuild of the infrastructure and data sources for our product.

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Content Marketing Marketing Data 136

FastSpring

APRIL 17, 2024

Ready for an immersive exploration of the pressing real-world challenges confronting the gaming industry? If so, join FastSpring at GamesBeat Summit 2024! We’d love to talk with you in person! Join us at the Marina del Rey Marriott, in Los Angeles, CA, on May 20th and 21st, for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things video gaming. This year’s theme is Resilience and Adaptation, where we will all delve into the strategies needed to adapt and thrive.

Merchant Services 109

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Methods Payment Facilitation 109

Nimble - Sales

APRIL 12, 2024

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The post Protected: Maximizing Sales Outreach: Unleashing Nimble CRM and PhoneBurner Power Dialing Together appeared first on Nimble Blog.

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Sales 128

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

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2024

Dear SaaStr: A Big Tech Co Launched a Competitive Product. How Can I Tell How Serious They Are About It? In SaaS at least, I’ll give you one metric that is fairly reliable: How many dedicated sales professional do they have, just 100% selling the competitive product? If it’s none yet, it’s an experiment. If they’ve just made a “Head of” hire, it’s an experiment, but one that is getting budget.

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Sales Hiring Engineering Metrics Sales 269

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 21, 2024

In “Do software companies actually have good margins?”, Benn Stancil makes a case for a counterintuitive point : Software companies are much less profitable than they might seem. Why? Because the research & development costs associated with software should be part of their cost of goods sold. Software companies don’t invest once in R&D & then sell copies of the software as we did in the 90s on CDs.

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Software Business Construction Government 236

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 19, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Rubrik IPO Update This week Rubrik launched their IPO with an initial pricing range of $28 - $31 / share. This range represents roughly a $6B valuation at the midpoint ($29.50 / share), with a ~6.5x NTM revenue multiple.

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Cloud Scale Payment Features Subscription 143

Sparktoro

APRIL 22, 2024

I don’t mind the generative AI craze. While some folks rail about the AI-generated comments that dominate their LinkedIn feed, I say, thank you for the engagement boost. Do these comments make social media a better place? Not really. But neither do the human-written, “Nice post, totally agree,” comments.

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Social Media Generative AI AI Engagement 126

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Enterprise

FastSpring

APRIL 26, 2024

Ready to join Europe’s biggest startup and tech event with the leading startups, investors, executives, and media from 174 countries? If so, join FastSpring in Paris at VivaTech 2024 at Booth C45! We’d love to talk with you in person! Join us at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, in Paris, France, on May 22nd – 25th, for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things tech.

Merchant Services 108

Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payment Methods Artificial Intelligence 108

The Moz Blog

APRIL 15, 2024

For those embarking on a website migration, keep in mind the importance of meticulous planning coupled with flexibility and constant communication with stakeholders. This will let your migration unlock new potential and achieve unparalleled growth.

Communication 122

Communication 122

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do When Your Startup is Not Growing Anymore? First, be honest about why. You can blame it on macro issues if you want, but if growth has radically decelerated, it’s likely because you are less competitive than you were before. You probably have fallen out of product-market fit, partially or entirely. Be honest. And go close those feature gaps, and get back to being ahead of the competition — not behind.

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Startup B2B Metrics Product Marketing 255

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 22, 2024

On Friday May 3rd at 9:30 Pacific time, Office Hours will host Jordan Tigani, CEO of MotherDuck. Jordan’s path through data starts with being the founding tech lead on Google Big Query to SingleStore’s Chief Product Officer to MotherDuck’s CEO. He wrote the Big Data is Dead , explaining that a power law applies to most companies’ data.

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Data Innovation Cloud Marketing 229

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

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 12, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now March Inflation (CPI) Update CPI: March CPI YoY was +3.5% vs expectations of +3.4% (and +3.2% in February) March CPI MoM +0.4% vs expectations of +0.3% (and +0.4% in February) March Core CPI (ex Food/Energy) YoY +3.8% vs expectations of +3.7% (and +3.8% in February) March Core CPI (ex Food/Energy) MoM +0.4% vs expectations of +0.3% (and +0.4% in February) We̵

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Cloud Subscription Payment Features Revenue 143

Buffer Resources

APRIL 8, 2024

There’s a narrative among marketers that I’m tired of hearing, and it’s that X (formerly Twitter) ads don’t work.  I admittedly started experimenting with X ads for my marketing consulting business somewhat out of desperation after a series of unfortunate events locked me out of my Facebook account. But, I quickly realized how much untapped potential this platform offered for me and other small business owners.

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Social Media Advertising Education Branding 121

FastSpring

APRIL 8, 2024

Background: As part of our ongoing commitment to providing you with the best possible experience, we’re streamlining our payment methods to ensure the highest standards of safety and compliance. In alignment with this commitment, certain payment methods are being carefully evaluated and, where necessary, removed. This proactive measure enables us to maintain a robust security framework, protecting both your interests and the integrity of our services.

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Payment Services Payments Payment Methods Payment Solutions 102