March, 2017

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Lies Managers Tell Themselves to Avoid Firing Someone

Tom Tunguz

There are four lies managers tell themselves to avoid one of the hardest conversations in business. Things will improve. Someone in the seat is better than no one in the seat. Let’s transfer the person to another team where things might improve. The termination will hurt morale in the company or the team. I’ve told myself all of these in the past.

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Don't put your SaaS marketing plan on auto-pilot

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

Imagine that last year I had somehow managed to put together a perfect marketing plan: a perfect message and a perfect mix of tactics delivered perfect results. If that actually happened (not likely, but use your imagination), this would be my first thought as I put together this year’s marketing plan: Let’s do the same thing again. If it worked last year, it should work this year too.

Marketing 113
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Confidence and the Gender Gap: 14 Tips for Women in Tech

Sylvia Ng

Last year I did a talk for DevTO for International Women’s Day (#IWDTO) on the importance of confidence for closing the gender gap. The talk was well received but short, and I promised to publish my full list of tips that I had originally prepped. Since the talk I have been approached by other women with questions on the same topic, so I’m hoping this list is helpful for others out there – or at least useful for discussion.

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3 Tricks to Marketing Unsexy Products: Tips from Industry leaders in SAAS

Entrepreneur - SaaS

When it comes to marketing functional but not particularly exciting products, there is no point trying to pull the wool over people's eyes with buzzwords and sparkle; rather share how it makes their life better.

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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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26 sales email tips to crush 2023 (+ 13 templates)

CloseSaaS

Experts have long predicted that social selling will spell the end of sales emails. Yet, email is still 40 times more effective at getting new customers than social media. What’s worked in the past still works if you're doing it well—here are our best sales email tips.

More Trending

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Customer Operations - An Idea for Maximizing Efficient Growth in SaaS Companies

Tom Tunguz

Over the last year in particular, Revenue Ops is a term that’s gaining some mindshare in the SaaS world. Revenue operations teams combine marketing operations and sales operations into one team. Yesterday, I heard time a further refinement of this idea: Customer Operations. As one SaaS executive described to me, marketing operations teams are the engines of the marketing team.

SaaS 118
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Growth Benchmarks Are (Mostly) Useless

Brian Balfour

Most growth communities, forums, and email lists will inevitably have that thread that goes: “Hey, what are the benchmarks everyone’s seeing for X?” I constantly find people seeking out benchmarks or pointing to benchmarks, and we’ve all been there -- who doesn’t want some normalizing data to understand whether we’re on track or not? The desire is further fueled by many companies releasing “benchmark reports.

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Do You Have a Data Lake Problem?

Rakam

Let’s be aware what does “data lake” means before we start this article. A data lake is a method of storing data within a system or repository, in its natural format, that facilitates the collocation of data in various schemata and structural forms, usually object blobs or files. The idea of data lake is to have a single store of all data in the enterprise ranging from raw data (which implies exact copy of source system data) to transformed data which is used for various tasks including reportin

Data 40
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What a Sales Team From Any Industry Can Learn From Innovative SaaS Companies

Entrepreneur - SaaS

The best of these companies have experienced meteoric growth, not just because of their products, but because of the innovative strategies they incorporate into their sales processes.

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How Clinic Sense Reduced Churn and Unlocked More Revenue

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.

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Is Y Combinator (still) worth it? Yes, but only if you do this 1 thing

CloseSaaS

Is Y Combinator worth it? It’s funny: You can ask two totally different YC alumni that question and get two totally different answers, even if they both attended the same batch.

Startup 52
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Few Thoughts on Machine Learning Agreements or AI Agreements

Aber Law Firm

Machine learning agreements or AI agreements are super new, and actually very interesting. Not much has been written on these agreements, so I thought I would share a few thoughts on the big issues (from the perspective of the AI/machine learning software vendor). So here goes. HOW THE AI SYSTEM WORKS AND WHO DOES WHAT MATTERS. Everything starts and ends with the answers to this question.

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When Should You Sell Your Startup?

Tom Tunguz

When should you sell your business? There is no universal to this answer because the question is multifaceted and unique to each company. But we can answer another related question. Given a declining growth rate, when is my company’s value maximized? Startups strategic value lies within their ability to grow. The faster a company can grow, the more valuable it is.

Startup 110
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Meet the Pros Making Waves in the SaaS World

Saasler

If you are in any way connected to the SaaS world, you are part of a booming industry that doesn’t seem to be slowing down. The rise of cloud-based services and software innovations has reinvented the industry and opened up a completely new line of business for up-and-coming entrepreneurs in the tech space. This new pool of innovators is raising the bar for new generations and bringing a renewed sense of excitement to the industry, which is perfect for all of us techies out there.

Scale 40
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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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A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Your Email Campaign

ReSci

An e-commerce user’s lifecycle can be broken into various discrete stages. Identifying these stages can empower the marketer to target a user based on their current needs. This article breaks down the various stages in an e-commerce user’s lifecycle, and depicts some key performance indicators. The post A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Your Email Campaign appeared first on ReSci.

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4 Ways Enterprise Software is Failing Businesses

Entrepreneur - SaaS

The absence of progress with current enterprise software is having a negative impact on businesses, according to a new survey.

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Why this $15M revenue startup trains all their Account Managers with Close’s Product Demo book

CloseSaaS

Smartly.io is a fast-growing Facebook ad optimization solution for agencies and performance marketers. I joined them as employee #32 in the summer of 2015. A few months later, our team had grown to double that size. Now, we’re almost 120 people, and we’re looking to hire 80 more.

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How to Find Your User Acquisition Channels

Ramp Ventures

When your startup is first launching, the pressure to “be everywhere” online is significant. “You’ll fail without investing in Facebook Ads,” one article claims. “The most engaged buyers are on Instagram,” argues another. Given this onslaught of conflicting advice, it’s no surprise that the average B2B marketer creates eight types of content and is active on six different social networks , according to data from the Content Marketing Institute: ( B2C marketers share similar numbers.).

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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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The Best Content Marketers in the World

Tom Tunguz

I once asked a VP of Marketing at a top SaaS company how she thought of content programming. What is the right type of content to create? I asked her. She replied with a brilliant little insight, “I look at way the best content marketers in the world do it. The TV networks.” News dominates the early morning. Then, daytime television takes over targeting those who stay at home.

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Few Thoughts on Machine Learning Agreements or AI Agreements

Aber Law Firm

Machine learning agreements or AI agreements are super new, and actually very interesting. Not much has been written on these agreements, so I thought I would share a few thoughts on the big issues (from the perspective of the AI/machine learning software vendor). So here goes. HOW THE AI SYSTEM WORKS AND WHO DOES WHAT MATTERS. Everything starts and ends with the answers to this question.

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The complexity of financial systems in the postmodern ERP era

SaaSOptics

"I knew there were expensive enterprise software programs that could handle the problem, but we were a startup and very careful with our expenditures," Wilkins said. "I looked everywhere for a solution that could meet our needs and, fortunately, I found SaaSOptics. It was the perfect mix of functionality and affordability. It has been a great solution and has only gotten better.".

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Secret To SaaS Success: Recognize That You're Not Selling Software

OnStartups

I've been working in the software industry for over 25 years. Pretty much my entire professional career (if you don't count that stint as a night clerk at Red Roof Inn). Back in the late 1900s, when you sold software, you sold software. What your company produced was a large set of properly aligned bits (software). You then got those bits to your customers somehow (floppy disk, DVD, FTP, whatever).

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

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.

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These 3 mistakes when choosing angel investors WILL sabotage your startup

CloseSaaS

Selecting angel investors is a minefield: Play the game right and you’ll win. One wrong step and it’ll blow up in your face. But the dream of riches and Techcrunch-fame distracts many founders from the truth until it’s too late.

Startup 52
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3X Boost in Sales with Incentive Emails

ReSci

E-commerce businesses send a variety of incentive emails (e.g. 10% discount, free shipping, etc.) to attract users to purchase items. Incentive emails can boost sales in the short term but it may lead to undesirable consequences in terms of margins. For example, it would be. The post 3X Boost in Sales with Incentive Emails appeared first on ReSci.

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When to Innovate With Your Sales Process

Tom Tunguz

Most startups go to market with the intent to differentiate their product. Each one of us has an idea what might make a better CRM, marketing automation suite or customer support. Other startups prefer to combine a product innovation with a reinvention of the sales process. The four key innovations in SaaS sales strategies I’ve observed so far are: Bottoms-up.

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Few Thoughts on Machine Learning Agreements or AI Agreements

Aber Law Firm

Machine learning agreements or AI agreements are super new, and actually very interesting. Not much has been written on these agreements, so I thought I would share a few thoughts on the big issues (from the perspective of the AI/machine learning software vendor). So here goes. HOW THE AI SYSTEM WORKS AND WHO DOES WHAT MATTERS. Everything starts and ends with the answers to this question.

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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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The Most Important Thing I've Learned about Writing

Tom Tunguz

The most satisfying compliment the reader can pay this to tell me they feel personally addressed. Think of your favorite authors and see if that isn’t precisely one of the things that engages you, and often at first without noticing it. A good conversation is the only human equivalent. Christopher Hitchens, a famous journalist, wrote this in his book Mortality.

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Creating Tension in Your Startup's Marketing Positioning

Tom Tunguz

When I first met Jen Grant, Looker’s CMO, she told me a story from early days of Box, where she was SVP of Marketing. Jen spoke about the importance of creating tension in the marketing message. Aaron Levie, Box’s CEO and founder, spoke at conferences about the future of collaboration. His message: Box will transform the way employees work.

Startup 100
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5 Charts on the State of the Seed Market in 2017

Tom Tunguz

In 2016, the number of seeds has fallen by a 27.6% reduction in the number of seed rounds. But as the chart above shows, the median amount invested in seed rounds continues to increase at about 40% annually. This trend started in 2014 and has continued through the first quarter of 2017. These two forces in opposition netted a 10% increase in total dollars in 2016.

Marketing 100