The Angel VC

APRIL 6, 2019

Back in 2014, I wrote a post titled “Five ways to build a $100 million business”. If you haven’t seen it yet, the central idea of the article was to look at how many customers you need, for a given ARPA, to get to $100 million in annual revenue and what this might mean for your sales and marketing strategy. That post went kind of viral, which led us to create a follow-up piece , an infographic , a poster (which you can order here), and a PlayPlay video.

SaaS 277

SaaS Scale Business SMB 277

ProfitWell

APRIL 10, 2019

On this episode of the ProfitWell Report, David Bj örk , Co-Founder and CEO of Webforum , wants to know the possibility of every company going freemium in the future. To answer the question, we studied a few thousand SaaS and subscription companies, as well as the willingness to pay data from over fifty thousand buyers. **We will only be posting a few of these episodes on the blog, which means if you want to make sure you don't miss an episode of this series you must subscribe separately below *

B2C 92

B2C Acquisition Retention Payment Features 92

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 29, 2019

Slack has transformed the way we work. By replacing email with beautiful and simple internal chat, Slack has productized productivity. Founded as a gaming company called Tiny Speck in 2009, the company’s initial product, Glitch, didn’t catch on as expected. So the business pivoted to commercialize an internal tool - a S earchable L og of A ll C onversation and K nowledge, Slack.

Benchmarks 262

Benchmarks Metrics Scale Revenue 262

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2019

It’s never remotely easy until you have a steady stream of leads and a decent 1.0 revenue team. But here are some things that can help in the early days: Always hire at least 2 reps to start. If you just hire 1, you won’t really know what is working, and not working, and why. Don’t expect a sales magician. You ideally need to close the first 10–20 customers yourself, and then hire sales folks to help.

Scale 194

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling SaaS 194

Advertisement

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

The Daily Egg

APRIL 3, 2019

You have a formidable task ahead of you. How can you make it so that all of your prospective customers really, really hate your website and in turn, despise your company? Why would you want to do that? Isn’t there a competition going on? When you look on the internet, it sure seems like it. […] The post 6 Ways to Make Your Prospects HATE Your Website appeared first on The Daily Egg.

User Experience 279

User Experience 279

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 15, 2019

One of the product design principles we have at Intercom is “What you ship is what matters.” But what do you ship? It’s a fundamental question that every product designer needs to ask themselves. Click to enlarge. There are three potential answers: “I ship design.”. “I ship a product.”. “I ship a business outcome.”. Designers who say that they ship design might often feel frustrated.

Engineering 200

Engineering Management Marketing Business 200

Incredo

APRIL 29, 2019

Having been involved in a number of SaaS companies over the last decade, we’ve noticed a series of recurring trends where growth is concerned. We recently attended SaaStr Annual with 14,000 other SaaS executives to discuss the latest trends in SaaS. In this piece we go through some of the prevailing trends and ideas within the SaaS industry in 2019, which small, medium and large SaaS companies alike should consider as key focus areas this year.

Trends 154

Trends SaaS Strategy Marketing 154

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 4, 2019

Why does growth rate matter so much? Why does growth rate influence valuation so much? I was reading a book recently written by a hedge fund manager who discussed valuation frameworks. His explanation was one of the best I’ve come across. If your business is growing at 100% next year, then 90% the year after, and then about 80% the year after, the business will have grown by 3.4x.

Enterprise 274

Enterprise Revenue Management Business 274

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2019

With Slack’s IPO data and financials finally public, what is left to know about the app we all use and have been reading about for years? What’s interesting to know about Slack … that we didn’t already know? ??. Slack is obviously a rocketship going from $0 to ~$600m+ ARR (!) in 5 years (OMG), growing 80%+ Year-over-Year, and more than 1 billion messages sent a week (!).

Scale 274

Scale Venture Capital SMB Enterprise 274

Advertisement

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

The Daily Egg

APRIL 17, 2019

Oh, that feeling when you see your latest campaign was a big success! Lots of new customers acquired, products sold, and sales revenue made… Now, let’s pause for a moment and take a look at your historical data. What’s the share of first-time buyers who’ve bought from you only once? I’m going to take a […] The post From First-Time Buyer To Loyal Customer: Ecommerce Email 101 appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Revenue 278

Revenue Data Sales Marketing 278

Predictable Revenue

APRIL 4, 2019

On this edition of The Predictable Revenue Podcast, co-host Collin Stewart welcomes Scott Barker, Head Of Partnerships at Sales Hacker. The post Prospecting 101: Sales Hacker’s Scott Barker shares his sales tips and tricks from the trenches appeared first on Predictable Revenue - The Outbound Success Company. We help companies grow faster with Outbound Sales.

Sales 190

Sales Revenue 190

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 23, 2019

Simply signing up users means nothing if you’re not helping them understand how they can actually achieve what you’ve promised. Even the strongest customer testimonials won’t prevent churn if people don’t understand how to use your product. That’s why we built Product Tours to assist with the job of user onboarding within your product, alongside our best-in-class in-app messaging and knowledge base products.

Onboarding 199

Onboarding Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development 199

Trint

APRIL 25, 2019

What does your business really need? Defining exactly what things your company can’t live without - let alone thrive without - should be a priority for any budding entrepreneur. From project management platforms and collaborative tools to meeting rooms and internal comms for your team, you need to provide the goods to keep things ticking over. For many businesses, audio transcription is an essential part of the daily grind.

Interviewing 140

Interviewing Market Research User Experience Software 140

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

APRIL 1, 2019

In 2014, I published a post called Do Startup Require Less Capital to Succeed than 10 Years Ago ? It’s been five years and time to see how things have changed. In the analysis, I created a metric, the return on invested capital (ROIC). ROIC is the number of revenue dollars that one venture dollar bought. In other words, at IPO, how much revenue per VC dollar did the company generate.

Startup 271

Startup Software Review SaaS Acquisition 271

SaaStr

APRIL 29, 2019

A few signs: Lack of organization. You can get to $5m being only sort of organized. After that, you gotta get really organized. Either by yourself, or with a Sales Ops / Marketing Ops / Some Sort of Ops leader under you. Look for dashboards, strong project management, strong pipeline projection after $5m ARR. If you don’t see things getting more organized, that manager can’t scale.

Sales Recruiting 272

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Management 272

The Daily Egg

APRIL 11, 2019

SMS marketing is gaining more and more traction as a way to communicate important updates to customers about their orders, keep shoppers engaged, and move them through the sales funnel. Not only is SMS quick and easy to set up, but statistics suggest customers prefer text updates over email. Text marketing creates a branded ecosystem […] The post Want 98% Open Rates?

Sales Funnel 276

Sales Funnel Marketing Communication Branding 276

Predictable Revenue

APRIL 8, 2019

This is an excerpt from the 2nd edition of 'From Impossible To Inevitable' by Aaron Ross. The post Build an Outbound Program right the first time appeared first on Predictable Revenue - The Outbound Success Company. We help companies grow faster with Outbound Sales.

Revenue 145

Revenue Sales 145

Advertisement

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

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 8, 2019

Whenever I conduct research with customers on how they onboard users to their product, I’m always fascinated by how often the term “aha” moment comes up. Customers consistently say they want their users to get to their product’s “aha” moment, the interaction that fills their users with a feeling of delight and reveals the true value of the product to them.

Onboarding 188

Onboarding User Experience Metrics Retention 188

Unbounce

APRIL 23, 2019

Lead generation is the number one challenge for marketers today. And it’s only going to get harder now that most Google search results pages have become saturated with promotional lead magnets masquerading as “great” content. There are millions of free resources out there already competing for attention. And customers are quickly catching on to the fact that most of these “Ultimate Guides to Dog Grooming” aren’t really worth giving up their personal information for.

Marketing 145

Marketing Interviewing Branding Consulting 145

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 8, 2019

In a world where there are no secrets, where innovations are quickly imitated or become obsolete, the theory of competitive advantage may have had its day. Realistically, ask yourself, If all your competitors gave their strategic plans to each other, would it really make a difference? In 1986, Amar Bhide wrote “ Hustle as Strategy ” for the Harvard Business Review.

Strategy 217

Strategy Venture Capital Banking Software Review 217

SaaStr

APRIL 6, 2019

Much has been written about Zoom’s impressive financials as it prepared to IPO, growing > 100% at $425m+ in ARR! But as part of our new 5 Interesting Learnings series, I thought it might be helpful to go beyond the top line growth and pick out 5 learnings of particular interest to SaaStr founders: Zoom has a classic “Small-Medium-Large” customer distribution, currently about 20:50:30.

SMB 226

SMB Acquisition Scaling Engineering 226

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

The Daily Egg

APRIL 30, 2019

Welcome to Episode 2 of Quick Hits CRO Tips! In this video resource series, we share advice, best practices, and strategies for how to boost your conversions, increase your revenue, and turn your visitors into customers, all in 2 minutes or less. One piece of feedback we hear from a lot of customers about why […] The post Quick Hits CRO Tips Episode 2: How to Use Google Analytics with Visitor Recordings appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Revenue 274

Revenue Strategy 274

Predictable Revenue

APRIL 22, 2019

Check out this list of Collin Stewart's favorite books. The post Collin’s 2018 Reading List appeared first on Predictable Revenue - The Outbound Success Company. We help companies grow faster with Outbound Sales.

Revenue 133

Revenue Sales B2B 133

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 16, 2019

As your sales organization scales up, there’s one function that becomes crucial to your ability to drive revenue efficiently – sales operations. Until Xerox created the first team in the 1970s, sales operations didn’t exist. Fifty years later, it’s still one of the hardest functions to nail. On the surface, their mission is simple: enable the sales organization to run better and faster.

Scale 177

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 177

Unbounce

APRIL 2, 2019

We’ve all had frustrating experiences browsing the web on our phones: load times that seem to carry on forever; pages that are cluttered and difficult to navigate; long, rambling blocks of text that make it tough to understand what you’re even looking at. Well, at Unbounce, we’re putting our foot down. We’re tired of junky mobile landing pages. We want to celebrate the pages that do mobile right, with easy-to-follow copy, super-sleek designs, and crazy-fast load times.

Mobile 145

Mobile Social Media Marketplace as a Service Branding 145

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

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 25, 2019

Bernie Munger is famous for championing the idea of mental models. Mental models help us think about the world by simplifying very complex topics into more digestible and tractable ideas. The challenge with mental models is first learning about them and second figuring out which model applies when. We use mental models in our daily lives. The 80 ⁄ 20 rule is the Pareto Principle.

Sales Hiring 196

Sales Hiring Startup Revenue Strategy 196

SaaStr

APRIL 23, 2019

We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to find a great VP of Sales, what the risks are, what risks to take, etc. We’ve also summarized a few critical factors that will tell you, within 30 days, if your VP of Sales won’t work out. This post was pretty controversial originally, but I think most folks now agree with its conclusions: If Your VP Sales Isn’t Going to Work Out — You’ll Know in 30 Days.

Sales Hiring 197

Sales Hiring Sales Retention Revenue 197

The Daily Egg

APRIL 1, 2019

Marketing for the greater good gives me the warm fuzzies, so today I’m very pleased to be running a homepage analysis for Ele and Phant — an ecommerce company that donates 30% of its profits to saving the elephants in Kenya. Before we dive in, I’m going to provide a little context. Here’s what their […] The post Converting More Customers For The Elephants: A Homepage Analysis appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Marketing 265

Marketing 265