SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What is The Biggest Difference Between Running a 10 Person Startup and a 100 Person Startup? The biggest structural difference is you have to hire all the VPs by employee 50–100. You won’t be able to scale this far without a full management team — VPs of Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Customer Success at least. But the toughest personal challenge for many CEOs is letting go.

Sales Hiring 270

Sales Hiring Startup Scale Scaling 270

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2023

Last week, Databricks announced their Series I financing at $43b. At the same time, they released quarterly figures similar to a public company’s reporting. Those numbers provide the first public view into one of the most valuable private companies in the world. It’s also an opportunity to compare Databricks to Snowflake. Two mammoths competing for customers’ workloads offer different architectures.

Business 279

Business Cloud Finance AI 279

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

A decade ago my partner (and SaaS legend) David Skok wrote about “Time to Wow!” – which helped you highlight how powerful it can be when the buyer experiences a Wow! moment, when they fully see the value of your … The post Permissionless Pilots – the fastest way to Wow! appeared first on For Entrepreneurs.

SaaS 265

SaaS Growth Hacking Startup Marketing 265

The Daily Egg

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

If you use WooCommerce to run your online store, you need quality tools to take your business to the next level. That’s. The post StoreApps Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Business 279

Business 279

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Payment Solutions

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Rates Keep Going Up Rates continue to push higher, as the aftershock of the Fed’s “Higher for Longer!!” messaging reverberates through the markets. Yesterday the 10Y hit 4.7% which was up from it’s high of ~4.5% last week.

Cloud 187

Cloud Government Banking Software Review 187

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2023

Dear SaaStr: We Don’t Need It. Should We Go After Venture Capital, and When? There are only two reasons to raise Venture Capital: You need it. If the only way you can get to the next level is to raise capital, then do it. I needed to for both my start-ups, up to a point, for different reasons. Whatever the dilution, cost, headaches — if you need VC to thrive, and you can raise it, then raise it.

Venture Capital 284

Venture Capital Investment Leadership 284

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

Historically, software-as-a-service (SaaS) has been built on databases with structured data, as you might find in an Excel spreadsheet. But the ability of large language models to extract insights from unstructured information changes this architecture : data repositories like data lakes are becoming essential parts of modern SaaS stacks. For example, next generation marketing software might ingest structured data from Google Analytics and lead capture software as before.

Artificial Intelligence 279

Artificial Intelligence Software Data Scale 279

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

It’s been 9 months since ChatGPT was released and 7 months since it became the fastest consumer application to reach 100 million monthly active users , ushering in a new era of generative AI. But other than ChatGPT, how are consumers interacting with generative AI (GenAI) products? In which categories do incumbents dominate—and where are new companies breaking out?

Generative AI 145

Generative AI AI ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence 145

The Daily Egg

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

The times, they are a-changing, and so are work schedules. As a result, a lot of business owners are having trouble keeping. The post ClickTime Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Business 282

Business 282

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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.

Payments

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Are Software Companies Over or Undervalued? Today I wanted to dig in to this question and its implications: “Are software companies fairly valued today?” Every week I post a number of charts and tables, but the most popular chart shows the software universe’s median revenue multiple, the long term average, and the 10Y (below).

Software Review 187

Software Review Cloud Software Revenue 187

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

On Tuesday, Sept. 6, a tentative settlement was reached in a class action lawsuit brought by 37 U.S. states against Alphabet’s Google. Here are some key details about the case and what it could mean for businesses that sell a digital product via Google’s U.S. Play Store. What is the Google antitrust lawsuit about? In Utah v. Google , 37 attorneys general maintain that Google uses illegal, anticompetitive, and/or unfair business practices that restrict competition, drive up prices, and limit choi

Payment Methods 134

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payments Merchant Services 134

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Is It Ridiculous To Call Yourself the CEO When Your Startup is Tiny? I used to feel that way, at least a bit. I used to look at tiny little startups and wince when a founder went around talking about himself as “CEO”. But then I had to learn how to Sell to Big Customers, and Sell to Power. And what I learned is customers care. Customers and prospects want to talk to the CEO.

Startup 278

Startup Innovation Customer Success Retention 278

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Last week at Saastr 2023, I had the privilege of hosting a panel with Maggie Hott , GTM leader at OpenAI, Sharon Zhou , cofounder & CEO of Lamini, & Jordan Tigani , founder & CEO of MotherDuck talking about the implications of AI for the software industry broadly. Four themes resonated throughout the session. First, large language models like GPT-3 are making AI accessible to the masses.

AI 268

AI Artificial Intelligence Technical Cofounder Education 268

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

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

In enterprise healthcare, there are many “Jobs to be Done” (JTBD) for AI. To this end, we present the first part of the 6th episode of the Digital Health Go-to-Market Playbook series –Commercializing AI in Healthcare. This piece, Part A, uses Clay Christensen’s Jobs to be Done lens, along with an assessment of viable product wedges and business models, to share what we see as the most promising applications of AI in enterprise healthcare.

Healthcare 140

Healthcare AI Artificial Intelligence Payment Solutions 140

The Daily Egg

SEPTEMBER 23, 2023

For this software, you’re going to need two things: one, be an online coach, trainer, or course creator, and two, know how. The post AccessAlly Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Software Review 273

Software Review Software 273

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

Q2 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. The 62 companies that I’ll discuss here (which is not an exhaustive list, but is still comprehensive) all reported quarterly earnings sometime between July 27th – September 8th. In this post, I’ll take a data-driven approach in evaluating the overall group’s performance, and highlight individual standouts along the way.

Cloud 173

Cloud Software Benchmarks Retention 173

Buffer Resources

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Having a strong LinkedIn game is no longer an option. What we’re witnessing in today’s tough economy is the inevitable rise of social selling. This trend leverages social media platforms to build connections and establish meaningful relationships with potential business prospects — and when it comes to social selling, LinkedIn is the MVP.

Sales Recruiting 138

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Social Media 138

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Enterprise

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

So tougher times aren’t over for everyone that has had them. But we’re lapping tougher times for many, and for many others, it’s just plain time to hire again. So many Cloud and SaaS leaders kept hiring flat for the past 12-18 months, and yet still grew. That works for a while, but you end up with not enough headcount if you do freeze hiring but still want to grow.

Sales Hiring 279

Sales Hiring Headcount Scale Cloud 279

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Yesterday at TechCrunch Disrupt, Harrison Chase , founder of LangChain , Ashe Magalhaes founder of Hearth , & Henry Scott-Green , founder of Context.ai , & I discussed the future of building LLM-enabled applications. We assembled the panel as a three layer cake : Hearth, the application ; Langchain, the infrastructure ; Context.ai, the product analytics.

Artificial Intelligence 240

Artificial Intelligence AI Social Media Application Development 240

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Investing in Instacart was perhaps the hardest decision I had to make as a venture capitalist. It was April 2014, and the company was raising its Series B. And by the time we saw the pitch, they already had multiple term sheets. We pulled from my prior marketplaces experience and dove into their business quickly to develop a point-of-view on the opportunity.

Marketplace as a Service 140

Marketplace as a Service Underperforming Technical Team Scale Construction 140

The Daily Egg

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

If you are struggling to achieve your marketing goals because of difficulties keeping everyone involved in content creation on the same page, The post How To Use Pepper Content appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Marketing 278

Marketing Business 278

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.

Trends

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Q2 Earnings Recap Preview We’re now through Q2 earnings season! I’ll post a much longer recap soon, but today I wanted to post the highlights. Overall, I’d describe Q2 as “Buying environment didn’t get worse, but we’re not out of the woods yet.” We saw some green shoots in AWS and a few other consumption names, and overal

Cloud 173

Cloud Software Review AWS Trends 173

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

Looking to leverage FastSpring’s subscription capabilities and want to try out reports for yourself? Sign up for a demo or check out our free trial. Trials are the gateway to growth for many SaaS and software companies. Understanding the dynamics of those trials is at the heart of optimized trial conversion rates — which helps you achieve product-led growth.

Merchant Services 109

Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions Payments 109

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

So I’ve been doing SaaS for a while, and the costs of doing business have just gone up. Inflation is everywhere. Salaries have gone up. Marketing expenses have gone up. And expectations for OTE have gone way up. The net effect I see this happening today is a squeeze in U.S.-based SMB sales positions. SaaS sales execs with even a little bit of experience at other SaaS companies are looking for higher and higher OTEs, often with lower effective attainment and high support costs.

SMB 264

SMB Scale Sales Hiring Sales 264

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 9, 2023

I recently stumbled across a book that profoundly impacted me over 20 years ago. Called the Art of Possibility by Rosemary Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, there it was in the sharing library of a local cafe, nestled underneath a few spy novels. There it was the bright yellow cover, a banner of optimism contained within the pages.

Management 235

Management Business 235

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

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

The foundation models we use today aren’t just beating humans at Jeopardy, or playing Go at a supernatural level, or powering better recommendation engines—they’re changing and creating new user behavior across art, design, games, medicine, coding, and even human relationships. And the broad impact of this wave of AI is already creating the sort of massive value we’ve seen with other platform shifts, like the internet, mobile, cloud.

Artificial Intelligence 139

Artificial Intelligence AI Scale ChatGPT 139

The Daily Egg

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

If you’re worried that massive tech conglomerates are spying on your data and using your information for world domination, then this software. The post Internxt Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Technical Review 268

Technical Review Software Review Software Data 268

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Rates! Rates! Rates! This week was quite interesting. We had the FOMC meeting on Wednesday, and it wasn’t a surprise that the Fed did not hike rates any further. However, we saw the 10Y spike to 4.5%. This continues a trend from April that has seen the 10Y steadily rise from 3.3% to 4.5%.

Cloud 154

Cloud Revenue Subscription Payment Features 154