Hitenism

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

In 2006, after Amazon Web Services (AWS) helped pioneer what we now call the cloud, product development changed forever. What once took millions of dollars and a team of engineers to create, a lone developer could suddenly hack together in half an hour. Today, one-third of daily internet users visit websites built on top of AWS. AWS is now an $11.5B run rate business and has made up for an incredible 67% of Amazon’s operating revenue last quarter.

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Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 15, 2016

Imagine you’ve just been named the head of a bustling New York City restaurant challenged by one issue - customers complain about the customer service. A data-driven person, you search for a metric to evaluate the current customer service to validate the complaint and then track as you experiment with the restaurant’s operations. What metrics would you employ?

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Metrics Startup Customer Lifetime Value Finance 177

The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 23, 2016

(As you can see, I really like placeit.net :) ) In case you haven't started to think about your plan for 2017 yet, now's the time. To help you a little bit with your planning, here are three little tools that you might find useful. If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you may have seen them before. 1. Growth Calculator This little tool allows you to enter your MRR as of the end of 2016 and a target growth factor for 2017.

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Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

NOVEMBER 5, 2016

No matter how wonderful your proprietary algorithms, the priceless virtues of your state-of-the-art platform, or the brilliance of whatever other sophisticated technologies you’ve got under the hood of your software-as-a service (SaaS) solution, here’s an unpleasant truth: Lots of your customers don’t really care. Most of your them only want to know what your solution does, not how it works.

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Sales Recruiting Technical Review SaaS Healthcare 100

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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

CloseSaaS

NOVEMBER 28, 2016

If you managed to land your first 100 customers, congratulations! You’ve already made it further than the majority of startups ever will.

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Scale Startup Scaling Metrics 52

Hitenism

NOVEMBER 14, 2016

Most people approach content marketing like a black box. Ideas go in one end. Hours and days are spent doing something creative. And content comes out the other end. In a survey I ran of 2,203 companies, I was shocked to find that only 35% had a documented content marketing strategy. People measure and analyze all other aspects of marketing, but they don’t take that mindset and apply it to the actual practice of content creation.

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Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 30, 2016

In June, Frank Bien and I published our book, Winning with Data. It describes through case studies how some of the most successful startups use data to create sustainable competitive advantage. Since then, we’ve sold thousands of copies. Today, we’re releasing an Audible version of the book. I have 8 free copies to give away to readers. If you’d like to throw your hat in the ring for one of the codes, please answer a one question survey about SaaS startups.

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Hacking Revenue

NOVEMBER 24, 2016

Far too many founders fall into the trap of thinking their products are too good to not be noticed. Here’s a fair warning for you: Your product will not be noticed. This optimistic misconception is likely a large contributing factor to the 14% startup failure rate, due to poor marketing. That myth isn’t alone. There are plenty of other misconceptions founders make and end up regretting.

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Rakam

NOVEMBER 27, 2016

The story begins…

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Payment Solutions

CloseSaaS

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Any great salesperson knows that you want to make it as simple as possible for your prospect to take the next step. Yet, so many reps send out sales emails that make their prospects do all the heavy lifting. (Most of the time, prospects won’t. They just delete the email. Opportunity lost.

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Sales 52

Sixteen Ventures

NOVEMBER 23, 2016

Sponsored: 64% off Code Black Drone with HD Camera. Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!

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ReSci

NOVEMBER 10, 2016

As marketers, you know that personalization and relevancy are crucial to reaching today’s audience. There’s a lot of emphasis on 1-to-1 personalization, and it’s a concept everyone seems to understand. But what does the concept really mean when it’s time to deliver…. The post Customer Segmentation Strategy: The Importance of The Right Message appeared first on ReSci.

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Strategy Marketing 40

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 29, 2016

Bookings, MRR, Revenue. All these metrics form part of the financial statements of SaaS companies. For as long as SaaS companies have existed, we’ve used one way of counting revenue, called GAAP. Starting in 2017, revenue recognition for SaaS companies will change, and SaaS startups will have more flexibility in the way they record revenue than in the past.

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SaaS Consulting Benchmarks 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

SaaSOptics

NOVEMBER 9, 2016

SaaSOptics, a cloud-based subscription platform, steps into the limelight as they announce a newly closed $1.8 million funding round, prepare to present at Venture Atlanta, and add new executive leadership. Tim McCormick, a B2B software industry veteran, will now serve as the company’s new CEO. Read more.

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Leadership Cloud B2B Payment Features 40

yoursales

NOVEMBER 9, 2016

A NUDGE TO SaaS COMPANIES’ GENUINE SOCIAL SELLING A NUDGE TO SaaS COMPANIES’ GENUINE SOCIAL SELLING A NUDGE TO SaaS COMPANIES’ GENUINE SOCIAL SELLING W e’re consuming all this content that talks about how SaaS companies’ genuine social selling is the future of selling, and how nobody ever has to do any cold calls anymore. Because we know we should find time in busy schedules – in-between making and keeping stakeholders happy – to educate ourselves and redefine our sales process

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CloseSaaS

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

We are excited to share a few recent product improvements to Close, in addition to the recently announced Send Email Later feature.

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Ramp Ventures

NOVEMBER 1, 2016

“The reality is, you’ll never retain all of your customers, and some of those reasons you can’t control.” That solid advice comes from former ConversionXL editor Tommy Walker. Even if you improve free trial signups , you won’t save them all — and you will waste a lot of time trying. Because the fact is, some things are simply out of your hands, like budgetary issues, or the possibility that your solution doesn’t quite fit the customer’s needs.

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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

ReSci

NOVEMBER 2, 2016

This blog takes a small dive into one of our internal monitoring tools that overlooks our entire ETL pipeline and helps us stay on top of our machine learning models. Background: Imagine if what viral polite grandma was thinking when she was typing in her. The post Automating Machine Learning Monitoring [RS Labs] appeared first on ReSci.

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Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 27, 2016

As a SaaS startup begins to reach critical mass, the business generates more of its revenue from upsells and expansions, reaching about 30% at between $40-75M in revenue, which is in line with some of the models we’ve created. Many times startup teams ask how to compensate a sales team for renewals and upsells. The 2016 PacCrest Survey contains a wealth of information about these types of go to market questions.

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Compensation Scale Sales SaaS 100

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 20, 2016

Numbers provide us a certain certainty. With their precision, they offer a sense of black and white, in or out. But, metrics alone aren’t enough. All the quantitative analysis in the world won’t lead me to the next great idea for startup. Those figures can’t create empathy, develop the right culture, or hire the right people. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit because in both the recent Software Engineering Daily podcast I did with Jeff, and the presentation I gave

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Benchmarks Sales Recruiting Data Sales Hiring 100

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 16, 2016

Earlier this week, I published benchmarks on What Percentage Of Revenue Should SaaS Startups Spend On operating expense? Several founders asked to see this data broken down further. What fraction of operating expense is spent on sales & marketing, and what fraction of op is spent on engineering? Most businesses spend 2x more on sales & marketing than engineering.

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Engineering Scale Startup Sales 100

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

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 13, 2016

What percentage of revenue should be spent on payroll? In 2001, Salesforce spent $35.6M on payroll and generated $5.4M in revenue. NetSuite spent $38M on payroll generated $17M in 2004. as both of these companies scaled and approached IPO, the operating expense ratio (OER) or operating expense divided by revenue, asymptotes to 0.8. For every dollar of revenue, both of these companies spent $0.80 in payroll at scale.

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Revenue Startup SaaS Benchmarks 100

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 9, 2016

A few weeks ago, I had my first customer support experience of the future. I was in a meeting when my Android’s caller ID told me American Express was calling. I stepped of the conference room and answered the call. A machine-generated woman’s voice identified itself as the American Express fraud department. “Do you have a bluetooth headset or headphones you can use with your phone?

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Customer Support Payment Methods Payment Solutions Systems Review 100

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 8, 2016

Public companies are often required to disclose the process of their acquisition. LinkedIn’s sale to Microsoft is described step by step in an SEC disclosure and it offers both a peek into how these massive acquisitions are consummated, and also illustrates the best practices for how to run a process, both acquisitions and fundraisings. The timeline above shows how the deal progressed.

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Acquisition Finance Development Team Review Pricing 100

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 6, 2016

About $1B has been invested in early stage SaaS startups as of November 1. Over the last nine months, marketing startups have raised more dollars in aggregate than any other segment. The chart above shows the early-stage investment dollars by buyer within the organization. Operations teams following second, with human resources focused startups in third.

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Artificial Intelligence Trends Marketing SaaS 100

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

NOVEMBER 1, 2016

At my first programming job, I met a colleague who took all his notes in XML. He liked the fact he could structure them well, create programs to search and process them, and display them in many different ways. Most importantly, he future-proofed his notes. Because they were structured, he could transform his notes into any new format. That was my first exposure into the world of productivity hacking.

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Innovation Software 100

CloseSaaS

NOVEMBER 17, 2016

Getting an entire sales team to follow a consistent process is always a challenge. So, to make things easier, we've devised a clever way to integrate Process Street with Close using Process Street's new Run Link feature, Close's Integration Links feature and Zapier.

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CloseSaaS

NOVEMBER 16, 2016

You’ve qualified a prospect and know they’re a good fit. It would be in their own interest to buy from you, because no other product or service will provide as much value to them as yours.

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Sales 52