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Product/market fit is a topic that I've touched on a few times on this blog. It's that extremely crucial but somewhat hard to define (and even harder to measure) step which every startup needs to cross as it goes from an idea to a product to a real, scalable business. It's also a very important concept for us at Point Nine Capital since we tend to look for some level of proof of product/market fit when we evaluate potential investments.
Though the term k-factor, a measure of the virality of an application, has waned in popularity since Facebook’s sheep-throwing glory days, the idea of spreading a product through referrals lives on. We all know a good referral mechanism when we see one. Dropbox’s invite-a-friend feature which awards free storage for both the inviter and the invited is the canonical example and resulted in torrid growth for the company.
Lots of smaller software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses are tempted to try to sound “corporate” or hide their real personality when they talk to prospective customers. They act impersonal, like some alien borg. They think that “sounding bigger” makes them more credible. It's a bad idea that usually doesn’t work. How can I trust you? It’s hard to gain the trust of prospective customers if the provider is faking it.
Here's a recent interview Justin Mares did with me. Justin wrote Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers, together with DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg.
ZoomInfo customers aren’t just selling — they’re winning. Revenue teams using our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform grew pipeline by 32%, increased deal sizes by 40%, and booked 55% more meetings. Download this report to see what 11,000+ customers say about our Go-To-Market Intelligence platform and how it impacts their bottom line. The data speaks for itself!
Following this week’s post Benchmarking HubSpot’s S-1, Josh and Nikos raised an interesting question on Twitter. What are the right ways to benchmark SaaS companies from their early days through IPO? I have always used years-since-founding as the time axis to compare companies, because if I were a founder, that’s how I might think about benchmarks.
One of the best ways I’ve found to understand SaaS companies is to pore through their public filings. A few months ago, I analyzed Box’s S-1. In this post, we’ll look at HubSpot’s IPO filing and compare their journey to a public company with a basket of about 40 other publicly traded companies, in the hopes that this data will help other founders chart their path to IPO.
One of the best ways I’ve found to understand SaaS companies is to pore through their public filings. A few months ago, I analyzed Box’s S-1. In this post, we’ll look at HubSpot’s IPO filing and compare their journey to a public company with a basket of about 40 other publicly traded companies, in the hopes that this data will help other founders chart their path to IPO.
Does a startup’s location impact its M&A prospects? We’ve already determined there is no material difference between the follow-on financing rates by geography. But do acquirers behave similarly to investors? To answer the question, I’ve prepared three charts used Crunchbase data and focused on the seven states with more than 20 acquisitions since 2010.
Earlier this week, Google celebrated the tenth anniversary of its IPO. I re-read the Founder’s IPO Letter and found this passage which captured so much about Google’s values: Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one…We will not shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects because of short-term earnings pressure.
Consumer companies on the whole tend to grow faster and do so will less spending on sales and marketing, and research and development than SaaS companies. The chart above shows the revenue growth rates of 60 or so recent consumer and enterprise IPOs by years since founding. Enterprise/SaaS companies in the sample achieved very small revenue in their second year and grew consistently through year 8, at which point there’s a decline.
If you’re a founder or potential founder and looking to raise seed capital, you’re entering possibly the most attractive period in a decade to start a business. A few weeks ago, we analyzed the impact of Series A and later stage VCs in the seed market. In the past four years, traditional VCs began to invest in seed-stage companies, which led to a rise in the number and size of seeds.
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.
Earlier this week in a post on Quartz Mark DeCambre asks the question, Are IPOs Dying Because of Huge Growth Rounds? The chart above shows the 36 year trend in the number of tech IPOs. And as DeCambre points out, so far through 2014, the ten largest startup financings have yielded about twice as much capital as the ten largest IPOs. To paraphrase Mark’s question, can startups raise just as much capital in the private markets as in the public market, without the hassle of public market regu
Yesterday, I spoke to a small group of people at Google. By coincidence, the presentation was held in the same building I used to work in, and a wave of nostalgia swept over me. Participating in Google’s speaker series brought back memories of when I was in the audience seven or eight years ago. I’ll never forget the first time I met Paul Graham in that very same room right after the first Startup School.
When I started in the venture business and met software companies, I never heard the words customer success during pitches or throughout diligence or in board meetings. A few years later, customer success has become equal in importance to sales and marketing and engineering and product within SaaS companies. The steady increasing drumbeat of the Customer Success mantra is reflected in Google search traffic, whose volumes have tripled since 2009.
More than 100B mobile applications have been downloaded since the launch of the Apple iOS and Google Play stores. As the number of users, downloads and apps have exploded, the dynamics of the app store have also changed. During the past 18 months, the competitive behavior within the Free Apps section of these app stores has evolved substantially in four meaningful ways: First, the Android Play store has become substantially more welcoming to startups/new entrants than 18 months ago.
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
When starting a company, founders often decide between two structures: the S-Corp and the LLC. But, as James Surowiecki writes in “ Companies with Benefits, ” there is a new option called the B-Corporation, the Benefit Corporation. The Benefit Corporation became an option in 2010 when Maryland’s legislature signed it into law. Subsequently, nearly twenty states have followed suit including California and Delaware.
For consumer products, the power of mobile distribution is hard to overstate. Facebook serves more than 1B mobile users each month. Angry Birds reached 50M users in 35 days , a feat that took Instagram 18 months and Facebook more than 3 years. But the distribution advantages of mobile app stores hasn’t been observed as powerfully in SaaS or enterprise software for driving revenue.
Through last week, 80% of fast-growing technology companies who reported Q2 earnings had met or exceeded expectations, on average by 4%. As the earnings season has progressed , the tech sector is showing impressive signs of strength and predictability in the underlying companies’ business. Startups benefit from a booming public market for three reasons.
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.
Want to get a free cold calling coaching session with one of Silicon Valley's leading sales experts? Get on a call with Steli Efti, deliver your pitch and get direct one-on-one coaching. Completely free and strictly limited.
Every founder, every entrepreneur, everybody who works in a startup knows the burden of the to-do list. I love to-do lists. They are a beautiful thing. They help me get things done.
As the CEO or founder of a startup, you'll someday make a decision to either grow an internal outbound sales team, or outsource it. Outsourcing sales to people who really know how to do outbound sales is a good choice. but only if the time is right!
This might just be the fastest way to get your inbound sales kung fu up to speed. Schedule an hour of undistracted time, switch off your phone, close the other open tabs, take notes and learn.
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.
A lot of salespeople start pitching way too early in a sales call. This almost always shuts down your chances of closing a deal. Want to know how to work your way to the perfect time to pitch? And a failproof method to find out exactly how to customize your pitch for every prospect?
Want to reduce unproductive interruptions in the workplace, and improve the impression you make on others? Just avoid lazy communication, which basically means: think before you speak.
Imagine you're talking with a prospect that loves your product, and they would be willing to buyif only [insert objection X]. Objection X can be anything, but most commonly in sales, it's pricing. So let's use that as an example.
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
Social sales is the hot new thing in the world of B2B sales. And with good reason—most prospects have online profiles that can be a valuable source of insights for sales reps. However, most salespeople are using social sales the wrong way—and are missing out on a lot of sales because of that.
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