SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2023

Non-founder CEOs get fired all the time — and these days, are quitting more often than ever. Founder-CEOs getting fired seems rarer these days, though. Ubers and WeWorks aside. Two that would be hard to imagine happening today: Pushing Steve Jobs out of Apple. Pushing Sergey Brin + Larry Page “down” to bring in an Outside CEO. A few that we don’t hear about too much: Elon Musk pushing out the first CEO of Tesla.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review CTO SaaS Scaling 279

User Pilot

OCTOBER 26, 2023

What is software ROI and how to measure it? Why is important for business growth ? These are the main questions the article tackles, so if you’re after the answers, you’re in the right place! We also share benchmarks, important metrics to track, and best practices. Let’s get right to it. TL;DR Software ROI, or Return on Investment , represents the financial and business benefits of implementing a software application while factoring in the cost of the investment.

Outsourcing Services 95

Outsourcing Services Software Outsourced Development SaaS 95

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 23, 2023

Yesterday, both Google and Microsoft announced their earnings for their cloud businesses. I’ve been tracking the growth rates of these companies and product lines for the last 18 months to develop a broad gauge of enterprise buying patterns after the downturn. In the chart, it’s immediately evident that Mongo has seen dramatic increase in growth rate last quarter.

AI Search 295

AI Search AI Cloud Azure 295

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. We recently hosted the Point Nine Founders Summit, featuring several panels and presentations from founders, CFOs, COOs, and sales execs on building early sales teams and hiring your first successful sales leaders.

Sales Hiring 124

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 124

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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

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Most weeks, I stare blankly at my LinkedIn channel, wondering what on earth I should post. It's hard. Coming up with new content on a weekly or even daily basis isn’t just time-consuming, it can be infuriating. Fortunately, Buffer’s AI Assistant can help. But there’s a secret you need to know if you want to get the most out of it: adding the right prompts.

AI 135

AI Social Media Trends Engagement 135

SaaStr

OCTOBER 9, 2023

So a question for the ages of marketers — is a bigger booth worth it? I had my doubts after 9 years of SaaStr Annuals. I assumed they’d all perform kind of the same. But, I was wrong. The data: Qualified Leads this year ranged from 95 at lowest-yielding of almost 200 sponsors, to 1597 at the top — a wide range But on average, each Gold got 207 Qualified Leads Next up?

Data 316

Data Investment Branding Marketing 316

The Daily Egg

OCTOBER 9, 2023

Whether you’re a designer busy creating work presentations or you’re crafting sleek websites and mobile apps, you understand the importance of icons. The post Flaticon Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Mobile 277

Mobile Business 277

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Last week, Office Hours hosted Oliver Jay, former CRO at Asana to talk about Avoiding the PLG Trap. More than 900 people registered for the event. The full recording is here or embedded below on the web. Oliver shared some trenchant insights about his experience leading the GTM teams to success. These are three of the lessons that stood out to me espcially managing the transition from product to sales-led growth (PLG -> SLG).

Benchmarks 274

Benchmarks compliance Engineering Pricing 274

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 13, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now August Inflation Update We got August inflation this week, here’s where it came in: Headline CPI 3.7% YoY vs +3.6% consensus and +3.7% YoY in Aug Core CPI 4.1% YoY vs +4.1% consensus and +4.3% in Aug Morgan Stanley CIO Survey Morgan Stanley came out with their quarterly CIO survey, and I wanted to highlight some points they made.

Cloud 169

Cloud Artificial Intelligence Payment Features Subscription 169

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Payment Solutions

FastSpring

OCTOBER 12, 2023

Dave Gowans loves that testing allows opinions and preconceptions about conversion to be set aside in favor of numbers and measurability. And what is one of the key conversion factors he uses those numbers to measure? Love. As wild as that sounds, it makes perfect sense. Dave, Founder and Director of Conversion at conversion optimization agency Browser to Buyer , explains that there are two fundamentals underlying the research his agency does for clients: barriers and motivators.

Payment Methods 161

Payment Methods SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payments 161

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 16, 2023

You live in a deranged age — more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing. Walker Percy Our species is 300,000 years old. For the first 290,000 years, we were foragers, subsisting in a way that’s still observable among the Bushmen of the Kalahari and the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands.

Underperforming Technical Team 29

Underperforming Technical Team Artificial Intelligence VP of Engineering Technical Review 29

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2023

This year has been tougher for almost everyone — hiring freezes, budget cuts, layoffs, and macroeconomic headwinds. For those in the business of getting customers for their companies, you might be expected to cut down on spend, yet you’re still expected to grow the company and find ways to sell. Datadog CMO Alex Rosemblat took the stage at SaaStr Annual 2023 to share how marketing teams can get more deals done with less budget.

Sales Hiring 307

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Engineering Sales 307

The Daily Egg

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Acquiring customers is a challenge. If you can use sales and marketing data to help you tell which products attract a potential. The post Salespanel Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Sales 277

Sales Data Marketing 277

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

OCTOBER 26, 2023

In 2021, Amazon announced they had reduced prices on Amazon Web Services 107 times since launch. This drop in prices has grown AWS into a $90b revenue business in 17 years. As storage & compute became less expensive, the economic viability of new use cases became increasingly apparent & developers built software on the cloud. The same cost-reduction phenomenon is occurring with blockchains, though it’s not nearly as well publicized.

Blockchain 237

Blockchain AWS Pricing Innovation 237

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 20, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now 10Y Keeps Climbing The 10Y hit 5% this week, which sets a new high water mark. In general economic data has continued to come in strong (a data point suggesting inflation could stay sticky, and the economy can absorb rates staying higher for longer).

Cloud 161

Cloud Azure AWS Software Review 161

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 18, 2023

Instagram is one social media platform that is evolving at a rate of knots. Remember when all you could do on Instagram was share oversaturated images of your food? (Love you, Lo-Fi filter.) Now the social network lets you do everything from broadcasting to your followers to creating your own stickers with AI , with a host of new features only hitting the Meta-owned app in the last few months.

AI Search 143

AI Search Social Media AI Payment Features 143

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 18, 2023

Nearly all of our electricity is generated from heat powering a steam turbine. Historically, this energy conversion has been achieved through burning wood or fossil fuels. However, while these sorts of reactions release a large amount of chemical energy, they are nothing compared to the energy of a nuclear reaction. Here is the specific energy, or the amount of energy (megajoules) per kilogram, in common fuel types.

Scale 28

Scale Scaling VP of Engineering Construction 28

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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

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2023

Dear SaaStr: My Startup Doesn’t Have a Free Trial or Freemium Option. We require payment right away. Should we change this? Free trials and freemium options work well — if you can support them well. Ask yourself: Can someone deploy your app in minutes? If they can, does it work well self-deployed? Or does it need a ton of data in it to work well and show value?

Startup 305

Startup Payment Solutions Business Model Enterprise 305

The Daily Egg

OCTOBER 5, 2023

When you need inbound telephone capabilities to help you appear like a larger professional company to customers, the 800.com business phone number. The post 800.com Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Business 265

Business 265

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 30, 2023

The Federal Trade Commission’s focus on technology has transfigured the M&A market for startups. The Google anti-trust lawsuit & Amazon anti-trust cases may stifle those companies’ ability to acquire startups for significant sums. Facebook has faced a similar suit for illegal monopolization, which resulted perhaps indirectly in the divestment of two of its more recent acquisitions.

Acquisition 236

Acquisition Startup Pricing Technology 236

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Cloud Giants Report Q3 ‘23 Not a great signal for software this week from the Cloud Giants (AWS, Azure and Google Cloud)…After Q2 (3 months ago), the tone from the Cloud Giants around optimizations was largely: optimizations have started to ease, and net new workloads have picked up.

Cost optimization & reporting 152

Cost optimization & reporting Cloud Azure AWS 152

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

Sparktoro

OCTOBER 26, 2023

I’ve told this story only once before. Never in writing. Never on video. My voice was shaky and I barely stumbled through it. But with a few years of distance I think I’m finally ready. Here goes… For 17 years I had one job.

Startup 142

Startup 142

Buffer Resources

OCTOBER 4, 2023

I wanted to nail my personal brand on LinkedIn — but I had no idea where to start. Over the past few years, I’ve watched as the platform evolved from a job seekers' hub to a playground for entrepreneurs and creators looking to become industry authorities and drive sales. There’s no doubt doing so is incredibly powerful. LinkedIn is 277 percent more effective at generating leads than Facebook and Twitter.

Branding 142

Branding Social Media Underperforming Technical Team Engagement 142

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Does A Salesperson Need To Do To “Earn Your Business”? Solve my problem. Just truly solve my problem. The beauty to sales in SaaS is as sales professionals, for the most part, you aren’t selling a commodity or a fungible product. You can’t just go down the street, or to another website, to get a better deal on the Ford F-150.

Business 306

Business Pricing SaaS Sales 306

The Daily Egg

OCTOBER 16, 2023

As digital communication tools and technologies continue to evolve, one of the constant truths is that simplicity usually wins over complexity. Voice. The post Is 100 Kbps Still Sensible for VoIP Bandwidth Requirements? appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Technology 264

Technology Communication 264

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

OCTOBER 14, 2023

Within the last few weeks, we’ve seen two significant exits in Startupland, the first new pricing information we received in many quarters. Klaviyo was the first half for IPO in at least a year. Atlassian’s acquisition of Loom is also the first unicorn sale in about the same time frame. Company Last Round Post, $b Current Value, $b Change Loom 1.53 0.95 -38% Klaviyo 9.5 7.6 -20% Naturally, many of the first analyses compared the last round valuation in the private markets to the exit

Acquisition 236

Acquisition Pricing Enterprise Startup 236

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Implied Fed Funds Rate The 10Y got up to 4.9% this week before settling back to 4.7% yesterday. We’ve had quite a shift in rates over the last couple weeks, so I wanted to share some charts that show rate predictions over the next couple years.

Cloud 152

Cloud Banking Payment Features Subscription 152

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 31, 2023

Why can’t we connect with 911 operators on FaceTime or WhatsApp, to easily share photos and videos from the scene? Why do we wait for an emergency vehicle to arrive at an accident site to understand what’s happening when drones can get there faster and provide “eye in the sky” perspectives for first responders en route? According to the FBI, a car is stolen every 23 seconds in the United States, and 40% are never recovered — a shockingly high number given all of the data and technology available

Artificial Intelligence 137

Artificial Intelligence Technology Banking Innovation 137