The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 22, 2015

If you've followed my blog for a while, you know that I have a bit of an obsession with churn. Having significant account churn doesn't necessarily have to be a big problem and can't be avoided completely anyway. MRR churn sucks the blood out of your business though. That's why I think that SaaS companies should work very hard to get MRR churn down, as close to zero as possible, or even better achieve negative MRR churn.

Churn 161

Churn Startup SaaS Software Review 161

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 10, 2015

In “The Rule of 40% for a Healthy SaaS Company,” Brad Feld shared a simple rule of thumb growth investors often apply to judge the attractiveness of a $50M business. “The 40% rule is that your growth rate + your profit should add up to 40%.” I was curious if this theory were broadly true, applicable for growth stage companies Brad mentioned, but also early stage companies.

Data 132

Data Metrics Acquisition Churn 132

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

FEBRUARY 7, 2015

After months or years of development, your software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution is finally ready. Now you just need to find customers. So you put up a website, attend a tradeshow, and produce a video. Then you host a webinar and post to a blog. On top of that, you toss in a bit of search engine marketing and prepare a couple of press announcements.

Marketing 113

Marketing Acquisition Business Model SaaS 113

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

It's common advice that you should keep your emails short, and in most cases, I agree with it. For example, if you're sending out cold emails, be concise and have a clear call to action.

Marketing 72

Marketing 72

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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.

Payment Solutions

ReSci

FEBRUARY 27, 2015

US consumers spent slightly more in fashion for 2014, but increases were driven by athleisure brands like Nike, Under Armour, and Lululemon. NPD…. The post Millennials, Yoga Pants, and the Future of Retail appeared first on ReSci.

Branding 40

Branding 40

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 5, 2015

In 2011, a team of researchers from Stanford and Harvard led by Teresa Amabile collected daily work journals from more than 250 people at large and small companies in a variety of roles. In each journal entry, an employee described one work event that stood out that day. Over the course of a few months, the study received more than 12,000 responses.

Management 113

Management Government Data Sales 113

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 23, 2015

In The Shape of Things to Come , the New Yorker profiles Sir Jony Ive, the man they call Apple’s greatest product. Ive is iconic. His products have been sold 1.5 billion times. For all of his success, Ive’s personality isn’t well known. Neither is his personal history. Or how he manages the Apple Design Lab. The New Yorker article reveals some of these three things.

Technology 100

Technology Communication Management Marketing 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

If I were asked to create a content marketing strategy for a person or a business from scratch, I would craft a strategy with three dimensions: customer segments, customer lifecycle stage and content type. **Customer Segments: **Product managers/marketers are responsible for identifying the most important customer segments a startup will pursue. Picking the right customer segments increases profitability , maximizes market size and prioritize the most attractive customer for the business.

Content Marketing 100

Content Marketing Startup Strategy Marketing 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

In 2009, the Corporate Executive Board, a consultancy providing expertise to some of the world’s largest companies, studied the distinguishing characteristics of great sales people and well-run sales processes. They surveyed more than 6,000 sales reps across 90+ businesses. The analysis revealed three interesting things. First, most customers don’t perceive a difference between competitive products.

Sales 100

Sales Startup Consulting SaaS 100

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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

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

It’s becoming more and more expensive to scale a startup in San Francisco. In fact, it’s twice as costly to operate a startup in 2014 as it was in 2009. According to data from Jones Lang LaSalle, office prices in San Francisco have nearly doubled in five years from $36 per square foot per year to $63. Typically businesses allocate about 150 square feet of office space per employee.

Startup 100

Startup Scaling Cloud Technology 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

After a SaaS startup has achieved some degree of product market fit, the business will likely ramp the go-to-market teams, and in particular the sales team. Measuring and tracking the performance of a growing sales team is critical to the growth and financial health of a business. The report above is the most effective view of the performance of a sales team I’ve found for SaaS startups.

Sales Hiring 100

Sales Hiring Startup Sales Product Marketing 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

SaaS companies are marvelous businesses. They are more predictable than most other kinds of companies and in addition they demonstrate leverage from technology. The best SaaS companies are able to build strong brands, develop scalable products and hire teams to bring those products to market effectively. To show the power of the convergence of these forces, I’ve analyzed the employee productivity patterns of the 50+ publicly traded SaaS companies.

Headcount 100

Headcount Sales Hiring SaaS Benchmarks 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

Each quarter, Zendesk releases a Customer Satisfaction Benchmark to help companies build more effective customer support teams. The Q4 2014 differs from the previous in an important way. Instead of comparing companies in the same industry, for example, Education, Zendesk clustered companies with similar customer support characteristics, including ticket volumes, product support complexity and a few others, which revealed some important conclusions.

Customer Success 100

Customer Success Benchmarks Customer Support Startup 100

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

FEBRUARY 2, 2015

At Google, Product Reviews were held on Fridays at 130pm in a big room with a long table, two projection screens at one end and red couches along the walls called Marrakesh in Building 42. Each week, Eric, Larry and Sergey invited three product and engineering teams to present their progress each for about 30 minutes. On several occasions, I updated the executive team on the status of our team’s project, social network monetization.

Engineering 100

Engineering Data Sales Management 100

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 1, 2015

How much should your startup budget for its employee stock option pool? One way of answering this question is a blanket addition per year, say a 2% renewal. Another way is to look at the cash based cost of the stock based compensation. We’re going to examine the second one today by looking at the basket of 50+ SaaS companies. The chart above shows the average stock-based compensation (SBC) per employee by years since founding across the basket of publicly traded SaaS companies.

Compensation 100

Compensation Startup Benchmarks SaaS 100

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

About us. At Close, we’re building the sales communication platform of the future. We’ve built a next-generation CRM that eliminates manual data entry and helps sales teams close more deals.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring Communication Sales Data 59

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 26, 2015

This post is part of a new series featuring 3rd-party integrations with Close. Want to build a Close integration into your own app? Check out our API. Drip is lightweight marketing automation built for startups.

Marketing 52

Marketing Software Startup 52

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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

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

There are a lot of great resources to learn about drip emails, but one of the best ways to see what’s working now is to steal fromstudy what successful, fast-growing companies are doing now.

Startup 52

Startup Sales 52

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Here's an interview I did with Noah Kagan, one of my favorite hustlers on the world wide web. We talk about sales and marketing tactics, business strategies, regrets and most importantly: the inner game of hustling.

Marketing 52

Marketing Sales Interviewing Strategy 52

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 13, 2015

Do you sometimes wonder which of your marketing efforts have the highest ROI?

Marketing 52

Marketing 52

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 11, 2015

Maybe you're a bootstrapping startup, or you're a single founder, or your just burning through your funding so fast that you urgently have to cut expenses. and hiring someone is just completely out of question.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring Sales Startup 52

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.

Trends

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 5, 2015

Do you know these prospects that are great fit for your offer, yet they don't buy? They're engaged during the sales process. There are no insuperable objections in the way of closing the deal. Yet, they postpone their buying decision until next quarter. again and again.

Engagement 52

Engagement Sales 52

CloseSaaS

FEBRUARY 4, 2015

We had just completed Y Combinator and were flying high during Demo Day. Investors lined up in front of our proverbial door, eager to invest in Swipegood, the name of our startup at the time.

Marketing 52

Marketing Startup Investment 52

ReSci

FEBRUARY 27, 2015

Who cares what color you see? We care about what color you like. The Dress. Dressgate. The dress that broke the Internet. Ruiner of friendships and starter of fights. Whatever you're calling it, and whatever colors you see, The Dress has set the Internet ablaze. It's a testament to…. The post What retailers can learn about personalization from #TheDress appeared first on ReSci.

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40

ReSci

FEBRUARY 26, 2015

The Bronto Summit starts next Monday, and we're so excited to participate - in Miami, no less! Our partners at Bronto have put together a jam-packed four days of speakers, workshops, and keynotes that will engage and inspire. We had a hard time not picking every session to highlight, but here are…. The post Marketer’s Guide: Top Picks for the 2015 Bronto Summit appeared first on ReSci.

Engagement 40

Engagement Marketing 40

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

ReSci

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

This article first appeared on Forbes.com on November 19, 2014, where our CEO Jerry Jao is a regular contributor. You can find the original version as well as his other pieces here.…. The post Why Customer Retention Is King: The Evolution Of Retention Marketing appeared first on ReSci.

Retention 40

Retention Marketing 40

ReSci

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

Happy Lunar New Year! While there's been some debate on whether it's the year of the Sheep or the Goat, we're calling it as irrelevant: in our book, it's definitely the year of mobile. 58% of American adults…. The post Move aside, Sheep/Goat – 2015 is the Year of Mobile appeared first on ReSci.

Mobile 40

Mobile 40

ReSci

FEBRUARY 19, 2015

Move over, Content Marketing - the new buzzword for 2015 is Contextual Marketing. While Big Data and Content Marketing reigned as the top marketing topics last year,…. The post Why You Should Optimize Content to Get More Sales appeared first on ReSci.

Sales 40

Sales Content Marketing Data Marketing 40