November, 2015

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The problem with month-over-month growth rates

The Angel VC

Most fundraising decks contain a slide with a chart that looks roughly like this: Chart #1 Or this: Chart #2 I’ve also seen charts that look like this: Chart #3 Or this: Chart #4 Chart #3 and #4 are good for a LOL (or a “WTF!”, depending on your sense of humour), and fortunately we’re not getting too many of these (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, take another look at the charts).

Startup 192
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The Three Questions to Ask When Hiring Your Startup's Head of Sales

Tom Tunguz

Mark Roberge, the Chief Revenue Officer at Hubspot, has spent 20 years in startups. As he told me a few days ago, he has observed the lack of sales management and sales execution skills as one of the most consistent deficiencies limiting the potential of early stage SaaS companies. Sales execution deficiency manifests itself at roughly the same time as product market fit.

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As markets mature, marketing gets tougher

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

You’d think that as markets became more mature and people already understood what your solution does, it would be easier to promote and sell. Not exactly. It's true that you don’t need to do as much missionary work, educating prospective customers on the basics. Most of them have read enough or seen enough from others in their industry to know what your kind of solution can do.

Marketing 113
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Achieving SaaS Customer Alignment | Ebook

Chaotic Flow

When your SaaS business is well aligned, your SaaS customers consistently take positive actions that lead to positive business outcomes: they try, they buy, they upgrade and they refer you to a friend. When you are poorly aligned, your SaaS customers consistently take negative actions that lead to negative business outcomes: they bounce, they negotiate, they complain, and they churn.

SaaS 112
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SaaS Essentials: Failed Payment Solution Guide

For SaaS businesses, improving retention is one of the easiest and most effective ways to drive revenue and profits. With a clear link between failed payments and customer churn, having a robust failed payment recovery solution isn’t optional—it’s essential. Achieving your retention goals starts with the right solution.

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Enterprise sales: How to deal with "lazy" stakeholders

CloseSaaS

Your software product is up for renewal. You know it’s a great fit for the company, but the administrator responsible for your software seems uninspired.

More Trending

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Do Fewer Things, Better

OnStartups

I'm going to tell you a secret. I have a very simple, 4-word strategic plan (devised it a few years ago). Here it is. Do fewer things, better. This has made my life -- and my work, dramatically better. Here's how I execute on my strategic plan: 1. Decide on what matters the most. 2. Say no to everything else. 3. When something falls in the gray area, re-read #2.

Startup 40
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Benchmarking Atlassian's S-1 - How 7 Key SaaS Metrics Stack Up

Tom Tunguz

Founded in 2002, the Australian software maker Atlassian is an exceptional company in many regards. But foremost, Atlassian is one of the best examples of flywheel SaaS companies yet. Atlassian counts 1600 employees and sells five products JIRA (bug tracking software), Confluence (project management), HipChat (internal chat/collaboration), BitBucket (code repository) and JIRA Service Desk (help desk software.

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Why You Need a Disclaimer In Your SaaS Agreement?

Aber Law Firm

I have always thought that disclaimers were good things to add to SaaS agreements, but this very recent case demonstrates that they really can make a difference in a legal dispute. By the way, a disclaimer is a statement regarding things you are not liable for. Example , if you provide a medical software service, it is a good idea to state that you are not providing medical advice, and that the doctors are solely responsible for providing medical advice.

SaaS 40
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How Much Cash Should Your SaaS Startup Burn?

Tom Tunguz

As the temperament of the fundraising market shifts, particularly in the later stages, the question of how much a startup should burn will become increasingly important. We’re living in a historic period of very inexpensive venture capital. These cheap dollars have fueled spectacular companies with record-setting growth rates. In such an environment, growth at almost any cost is handsomely rewarded.

Startup 113
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An Omnichannel Payment Solution––Without the Complexity

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.

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What is the Optimal Quick Ratio for Your SaaS Startup?

Tom Tunguz

What is the optimal quick ratio for your SaaS startup? Is it 4? Quick Ratio = (New MRR + Expansion MRR) /. (Churned MRR + Contraction MRR). The quick ratio measures a SaaS company’s growth efficiency. The formula for quick ratio is above. It’s the new monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in a month plus the expansion MRR divided by the sum of the churned MRR and the contraction MRR.

Startup 113
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The Next Major Technology to Shape SaaS

Tom Tunguz

Last week, a friend asked me what I thought the future of software would be. At some point, all the workflow processes that still conducted on paper and pencil will be digitized, all of the tasks completed in Excel will be optimized, and the majority of limitations of traditional software will be overcome. It’s not to say that software innovation in its current form will continue to exist for decades, but what is the fundamental shift that resets the ecosystem like the cloud did in the ear

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4 Lessons For SaaS Startups From Optimizely's Early Days

Tom Tunguz

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted Optimizely co-founder and CTO Pete Koomen. Pete was a Google Associate Product Manager for AdSense and launched Google App Engine. Then he joined his co-founder, Dan Siroker, also an APM at Google to found three companies, the last of which is Optimizely. As Pete shared with us, the idea of Optimizely was borne from a need Dan saw when managing the teams to build Obama’s fundraising websites during his first campaign.

CTO Coach 101
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The Tech Press Cycle and Unicorns

Tom Tunguz

Just 25 months ago, Aileen Lee coined the term unicorn in her post Welcome to the Unicorn Club and last week the Economist declared these Unicorns “ Gored.” Over the span of those two years, the Unicorn press cycle has swung from euphoric apotheosis to bleak nadir. The rise and fall of unicorns in the press isn’t a unique phenomenon.

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Usage-Based Monetization Musts: A Roadmap for Sustainable Revenue Growth

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

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The Biggest Buyers of Software Companies in 2016

Tom Tunguz

In 2015, startups benefitted from a vibrant fund raising market. In 2016, I believe they will enjoy a very active acquisition environment. The roughly 60 or so publicly traded software companies hold more than $380B in cash and short term investments on their balance sheets. Though Microsoft, Google, Cisco and Oracle possess 75% of that cash, 14 other companies have cash reserves of greater than $500M.

Software 100
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Startup Best Practices 20 - Managing Oneself

Tom Tunguz

It’s the end of the year, time for performance reviews, self-reflection, and planning for next year. In addition to preparing our goals for our teams and our businesses, we should prepare goals for ourselves. Oftentimes, it’s easy to let the company’s ambitions drive our OKRs. But there’s something more to consider. In 1999, Peter Drucker, the greatest management thinker of the twentieth century, wrote short book called Managing Oneself.

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SaaS Office Hours with Maia Josebachvilli on Strategic and Tactical Recruiting Metrics

Tom Tunguz

On December 2, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Maia Josebachvilli , VP of Strategy and People at Greenhouse, a fast growing recruiting software company. Before Greenhouse, Maia founded Urban Escapes, a DC-based startup she sold to LivingSocial. Maia is especially well known for her thought leadership in developing best in class recruiting metrics.

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The Right Kind of Mania

Tom Tunguz

In 76 years, the British cycling team have recorded only one gold medal. In 2002, pushed by new head coach named Sir Dave Brailsford, the team implemented philosophy of continuous incremental improvement. And the results were astounding. In the last two Summer Olympics, the British cycling team has won seven of a possible 10 gold medals at each event, a remarkable transformation.

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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

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?

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2015 Software Startup IPOs and M&A - What Does the Data Imply for 2016?

Tom Tunguz

In the last 22 months, there have been 4 $1B+ software IPOs and 3 $1B+ software acquisitions. But compared to 2014, 2015 was a meager year for startups looking to go public or be acquired. The chart above plots the M&A activity over this period. The M&A market halved in activity. In 2014, $11B of disclosed M&A occurred. I’m excluding take-private transactions of public companies like SAP/Concur, Bain/BlueCoat, Oracle/Responsys, etc.

Startup 100
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SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint with Pete Koomen

Tom Tunguz

On November 18, SaaS Office Hours at Redpoint will welcome Pete Koomen, Co-Founder and CTO of Optimizely, the incredibly fast growing AB testing and personalization company Pete founded with Dan Siroker. Numbering more than 400 people, Optimizely has built an amazing business since 2009, serving thousands of customers. Before Optimizely, Pete was a product manager at Google building Google App Engine which grew to support 150,000 developers.

CTO 100
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3 Go-to-Market Insights from Kenny van Zant at SaaS Office Hours

Tom Tunguz

Last night, SaaS Office Hours hosted go-to-market guru Kenny van Zant. Kenny is a serial entrepreneur started his career as founder and COO at BroadJump, a broadband software company that grew to $100M in bookings. He was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002. After BroadJump, Kenny built the go to market organization at Solarwinds, a $4B market cap infrastructure software company, and Asana, a fast-growing productivity company, both of which exemplify a unique go-to-mar

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Integration: Build a list of prospects with LeadFuze

CloseSaaS

We're happy to announce a new integration for our sales CRM, this time with LeadFuze. LeadFuze is B2B lead generation software that allows you to search for prospects and automatically find their emails, domains, and social media profiles.

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Prepare Now: 2025s Must-Know Trends For Product And Data Leaders

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.

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4 dumb sales mistakes that smart people make

CloseSaaS

When you make mistakes in sales, your propsects likely won't tell you. Instead, they'll let their money do the talking—and close the deal with a competitor. You don't want this to happen and neither do we.

Sales 52
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3 ways to nurse lost trial leads into activation

CloseSaaS

Like most SaaS businesses, you offer a free trial for your product. Through the trial, you've done your best to drive customer engagement.

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B2B cold emailing [FREE 1 hour crash course]

CloseSaaS

Want to learn how to fill your sales pipeline with qualified B2B leads, set appointments and close deals? Here's the full recording of our 1 hour B2B cold email course—Steli shares some of his best tips and strategies on using emails to make sales.

B2B 52
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Should you move from self-serve to sales-supported SaaS?

CloseSaaS

You’ve got a great self-serve SaaS product. You have leads coming through your funnel, signing up for a trial and upgrading—without you having to lift a finger.

SaaS 52
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Launching LLM-Based Products: From Concept to Cash in 90 Days

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.

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Sales coaching session with Steli: CloudSponge

CloseSaaS

According to founder Jay Gibb (@circuitfive [[link] CloudSponge [[link] is a SaaS business responsible for “connecting the world’s address books and creating a single point of integration.” Ever been on a content-sharing site and had to manually input all your friends’ email addresses?

Sales 52
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Sales coaching session with Steli: AutoUncle

CloseSaaS

Ever wanted to get some one-on-one sales coaching by Steli?

Sales 52
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31 sales motivation quotes for 31 days of October

CloseSaaS

In case you’ve missed them or are in serious need of sales motivation quotes, here are all 31 videos we published this month. Theoretically, since each video is less than a minute long, you could watch them in half an hour. Although we can’t guarantee what will happen to you if you do!

Sales 52