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According to a business adage, you need to spend money to make money. According to a SaaS business adage, you need to spend a lot of money to make money. Workday recently made public its S-1 filing in advance of an initial public offering. The document reveals what it takes to succeed in a market dominated by Oracle and SAP. Specifically, it illustrates the need for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to spend money - lots of it - on customer acquisition.
I've been thinking about a "DOs and DON'Ts" article geared towards early-stage SaaS founders and upcoming SaaS founders for a little while now. I thought it would be a good idea to summarize what I've learned about SaaS in the last few years and put it into a format like this. Problem is, it's a very large topic, and if I try to make it as broad, deep and well-written as I'd like it to be I'll never do it.
Any number of challenges can arise during a startup’s initial years. Some of these changes could be major and may require rethinking strategy. Competitors enter your target market. New products are released into your market which undercut yours. Customer acquisition costs rise dramatically. If faced with these questions, it’s hard to know where to begin or how to structure an analysis to reach an answer.
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
If you're running a SaaS startup it's likely that sooner or later you'll want to increase your prices. The reason is simple: It's impossible to find the perfect pricing right off the bat, so most startups launch with a pricing scheme that's on the low end to make sure that they don't scare away potential customers. "In the beginning, err on the side of being too cheap", was also one of the tips that I gave in my previous blog post about SaaS pricing.
If you're running a SaaS startup it's likely that sooner or later you'll want to increase your prices. The reason is simple: It's impossible to find the perfect pricing right off the bat, so most startups launch with a pricing scheme that's on the low end to make sure that they don't scare away potential customers. "In the beginning, err on the side of being too cheap", was also one of the tips that I gave in my previous blog post about SaaS pricing.
Yesterday, I spoke at Columbia Business School. We had a conversation about the role of incubators and accelerators (or the moniker of your choice) within the startup ecosystem. Given the volume of first time entrepreneurs and the broad growth of interest in entrepreneurship, I think these programs are invaluable. To entrepreneurs, these programs offer up to seven value propositions, listed in order of importance, as I see it.
Every investment requires a leap of faith, an emotional act that’s not pure reason, and that’s got to carry you through in the inevitable many months, sometimes years, of horrific bad stuff that comes with the company. And you’ve got to have that energy, that sustaining belief to carry you through, because if you don’t, then you regret having done it.
We are in the heyday of SaaS. The conference spanned 20+ buildings, served 60,000+ attendees and was sponsored by more than 300 vendors. Free food everywhere. Skullcandy wireless headphone giveaways. DJs in every corner. Four square play areas on fake grass outside. It is one huge party. Benioff delivered a tremendous keynote. I wish I could speak in public with his confidence, control and passion.
At a recent meeting, David Barrett, one of the founders of Expensify, drew this diagram when explaining his company’s structure. He has overlaid the core teams of a company with a conversion funnel. It’s brilliantly simple. As every SaaS startup transitions from development to growth, the company must supplement the engineering and product capability with sales, marketing and account management.
Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments
Most integrated payments providers share a percent of the payment revenue with their software partners. But, oftentimes, that revenue share is only a fraction of the true income potential software providers can realize. If you want to maximize income opportunities from your payments program, check out Wind River Payments’ webinar-on-demand.
The throwaway line in pitches these days is “we’ll sell our data.” Most of the time, this notion is wrong. Data is the most valuable outcome of building a successful product. It’s the insight, the secret , the keys to the kingdom. Don’t sell the keys to the kingdom. Data provides economies of scale and insights used to develop huge barriers to entry and it should be kept within an organization.
SMB SaaS companies cannot afford to pay for distribution. At 2 to 4% conversion to paid rates and $5 to $10 monthly subscription fees, the breakeven CPC for these products on search is $0.40. The average Google click costs three times this and the iOS average cost-per-install is more than twice as expensive. The most successful SMB SaaS companies (Zendesk, Expensify, Square) build communities to drive distribution.
Culturally, we tend to associate leadership with extroversion and attach less importance to judgment, vision and mettle. We prize leaders who are eager talkers over those who have something to say. Must great leaders be gregarious? Susan Cain wrote an OpEd this weekend in the Times containing the quote above. In Silicon Valley, the culture seems very much to embrace the idea of introverted leadership.
If you've read my last blog post I still owe you a small PS. I mentioned that while I was writing the post I've learned two surprising things, so here goes. (Caveat: I usually try to provide some useful advice in my blog. What I'm going to write now doesn't have any practical value so feel free to skip it.) Number 1: Do you know where the term "grandfathering" comes from?
Speaker: Ben Epstein, Stealth Founder & CTO | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO, Aggregage
When tasked with building a fundamentally new product line with deeper insights than previously achievable for a high-value client, Ben Epstein and his team faced a significant challenge: how to harness LLMs to produce consistent, high-accuracy outputs at scale. In this new session, Ben will share how he and his team engineered a system (based on proven software engineering approaches) that employs reproducible test variations (via temperature 0 and fixed seeds), and enables non-LLM evaluation m
Last year, I set a goal of adding 100 followers each week starting at 2000. I crossed the 3500 follower mark on Twitter this week. I’ve fallen a bit behind that goal but I have a wonderful group of people who actively engage with me on Twitter who are interested in the same things I am. As I’ve been cultivating this audience and community, I kept asking myself a question: who are most of these followers?
When serving B2B customers, your pricing will be dictated by your customers' margins. The more money they make, the more they can pay for new technology. Most businesses fund new initiatives including marketing and technology projects from profits. The more profits a company generates the greater their willingness to pay for services and ultimately the larger the market size for a startup.
“Facebook has built the cities, they’ve built the town squares”. Dave Morin , founder of Path. Is building a social network is like building a city? I watched Urbanize , a documentary describing urban design and the affordances cities must make to cultivate vibrant communities. The words of urban designers echoed many of the challenges faced by networks as they grow.
It’s a common refrain that venture backed IPOs have struggled in the past decade. For a long time, I believed and wrote supporting arguments underscoring the idea that the principal causes of this decline were Sarbanes-Oxley costs, decreasing equity coverage and decimalization of exchanges. But that’s wrong. A paper published earlier this year uses statistics to debunk these hypotheses.
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.
There is a Branch called Do platforms need to give users a number to optimize? Most platforms do provide a number to optimize: Twitter followers, Facebook friends and so on. These metrics build liquidity in the platform as @satyap, @ev and @hunterwalk point out. But there isn’t just one type of social metric. There are three. It’s important to distinguish the types of metrics a community can provide for users to optimize, because the community will rally around the metrics the community provides
Over the weekend, I watched Page One, a documentary which chronicles the turmoil occurring within the New York Times in 2009 and 2010 when newspapers were going out of business all over the country. Many wondered if the Times would also file for bankruptcy. Three confluent factors spelled imminent demise for the newspaper: the Internet cannibalized subscription revenue, advertising dollars evaporated and news distribution was in upheaval on account of Wikileaks, Twitter, and blogs.
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
Hidden VNXe performance statistics « Henriwithani. EnterpriseAdmins.org » Blog Archive » Install VMware Tools in openfiler. CrashPlan packages for Synology NAS « PC LOAD LETTER.
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.
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
Ok, let me explain what I mean. Enterprise customers too often want to make up their own terms (i.e rules) regarding how they use your software service. As a result, you really need to think about linking price with terms (in your SaaS agreement). How does this work, well let’s go through it. 1). De-Linking Price and Terms. Most enterprise customers try to de-link price and terms (negotiate price first and later hit you up for a bunch of custom terms), and I have even seen them have separa
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
The most effective financing processes, like the most effective auctions, create scarcity. Of late, many founders have been triggering pre-emptive financing processes for their raises. This is my interpretation of their playbook. Strategy. First, founders build credibility with investors. This can be done in many ways like cultivating a long term relationship with a handful of VCs or in less direct ways like brand building through social media and blogging.
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