The SaaS CFO
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
In the SaaS space, we talk a lot about the health of our recurring revenue. This comes in the form of churn and retention. And it makes sense, right? Macro level valuations of your SaaS business are based on a multiple of recurring revenue. But as an operator of your business or an investor in […]. The post How to Calculate Your Renewal and Upsell Rate appeared first on The SaaS CFO.
Kellblog
NOVEMBER 9, 2019
When I lived in France for five years I was often asked to compare it to Silicon Valley in an attempt to explain why — in the land of Descartes, Fourier, and Laplace, in a country where the nation’s top university (École Polytechnique) is a military engineering school that wraps together MIT and West Point, in a place that naturally reveres engineers and scientists, why was there not a stronger tech startup ecosystem?
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Intercom, Inc.
NOVEMBER 14, 2019
As a brand new company, you might engage in plenty of initiatives that are inherently un-scalable – because there’s no better way to nurture customer love than through a personal relationship. But what happens when you hit hockey-stick growth, and you’re no longer able to connect with individuals on a one-to-one basis? It’s time to start thinking about retention at scale and bring onboard a customer success team.
Incredo
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
Marketing is approached differently in each industry. The audience and the platforms keep changing with the industry and the product. Particularly in the SaaS industry, it can be daunting for new business owners and marketers. You know you’ve built an awesome product, but sometimes your marketing efforts don’t pay off all the time. With so many metrics and variables to chase in each campaign, it gets increasingly difficult to market the product effectively.
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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.
Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 9, 2019
The most frequent mishire in startups is the first head of marketing. Many different disciplines fall under marketing’s purview. The question facing founders recruiting marketers is: which is the most important to prioritize? Marketing expertise falls into three segments: product marketing, demand generation, and brand marketing. Each of these kinds of marketers have critical skills for a startup.
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Entrepreneur - SaaS
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
Optimizing for conversions is just the tip of the iceberg.
Baremetrics
NOVEMBER 10, 2019
Since the original version of this post from early 2017, we’ve worked with many more SaaS companies and a common theme has been moving companies from a starter template to a more robust financial model. So I’m providing an updated model for SaaS CEOs and founders looking to improve their financial model from a number-crunching exercise to an operational tool.
OpenView Labs
NOVEMBER 14, 2019
When people think about software companies, they usually think about technology first. They think about innovation and sophisticated new features, functionality and use cases. But a great deal of what makes any software company successful has little to do with technology and everything to do with understanding and investing in the connection between technology and humanity.
ProfitWell
NOVEMBER 15, 2019
Your subscription company should run like a well-oiled machine. Taking advantage of SaaS tools will help you accomplish this. If you aren’t using SaaS tools yet, by the end of this article you’ll understand why you should. There are a wide number of reasons why SaaS tools are taking over. SaaS eliminates the need to do things manually, which is often time consuming and leaves too much room for error.
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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.
Intercom, Inc.
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
If your support team is routinely asking the same set of questions at the start of every chat conversation, it’s time to ask if you’re using the right tools to triage support issues. Recently our internal tech support team found themselves in this situation while providing support to our 650-person team spread across five offices and timezones.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 9, 2019
Being a founder is easy. You just start something. Grab a smart friend, hop on over to WeWork, hit 99 Designs for the logo, and you’re off to the races. Being a CEO is tough. You have to convince people to join you. To drag the troops up the hill. To invest in you when there’s no logical reason to. To do the impossible. You probably haven’t done it before.
The Daily Egg
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
How to Quickly Boost Conversion Rates for Your Online Store If you’re an ecommerce owner, you’re probably looking forward to the upcoming holiday season. You’re planning your marketing campaigns carefully, maybe hiring new people to help, and waiting for more traffic to come. But you may also think it’s too late to do anything with […]. The post 5 Last Minute Conversion Tips Before the Holiday Season appeared first on The Daily Egg.
Predictable Revenue
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
Starting out in sales as an SDR can be extremely exciting and rewarding, but also soul crushing when things don’t click. After chatting with hundreds of CEOs and sales leaders over the last couple years, I know they too feel the pressure when things aren’t working because, ultimately, the buck stops with them. But unlike those in leadership positions, a junior SDR tends to be pointed in a specific direction by a superior and will, by default, trust they’re being pointed in the right direction.
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
Andreessen Horowitz
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
“Sometimes I’m right and I can be wrong. My own beliefs are in my song. The butcher, the banker, the drummer and then. Makes no difference what group I’m in. I am everyday people”. —Sly and the Family Stone, “ … The post Bernard J. Tyson appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
Q: Are there any examples of a unicorn startup that was bootstrapped? From the 2019 Forbes Cloud 100, here are the SaaS/Cloud “start-ups” that are bootstrapped, i.e. $0 in disclosed capital raised: Mailchimp. Closing in on $1,000,000,000 in ARR and 1,000+ employees with no outside capital raised. That’s impressively efficient. Yardi. A software oldie in property management.
Neil Patel
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
Writing a blog post is easy. If you don’t write often, you may feel otherwise, but just follow this. and you’ll be good to go when it comes to writing. Or, you can just watch the video below. But still, you write a blog post and then what do you do? Well, I’ll tell you this… most people forget the “marketing” in content marketing. Most people write content but don’t do a great job of promoting it.
Predictable Revenue
NOVEMBER 14, 2019
A few years back,Kenny MacKenzie, Predictable Revenue’s Chief Product Officer had bootstrapped his company, Vandrico, to six figure revenue and a team of 13 people. But they failed on the sales and marketing side – they developed a really cool, cutting edge piece of software that wasn’t aligned with what the market needed. And that’s the story of entrepreneurship. even the best ideas can fail for a host of different reasons.
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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?
Casey Accidental
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
As someone who has spent a lot of time building marketplaces in my career, a curious thing has happened over the last couple years. Founders have started reaching out asking for help converting their SAAS or SAAS-like business into a marketplace. The approach sounds a bit like this: I’ve amassed a large group of X type of professionals. I’ve helped their business, but they’re asking for help driving more customers.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
Progress in SaaS is never as linear as it looks years down the road. Everyone has rough quarters (often at least 1 in 5). And we almost had a full Year of Hell, often during a tough transition. I certainly did (twice). More on that here: The SaaS Year of Hell. And Then – Reignition. But there’s one thing it is important to be honest about, to do a root cause analysis when times are tough: After about $2m-$3m in ARR, your organic leads should always be growing, You may have troub
Andreessen Horowitz
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
Attackers look for the path of least resistance. Recently, that path has shifted from enterprise networks to you and your devices for two reasons. First, as we have built more secure software and systems, it has made it harder to … The post 16 Steps to Securing Your Data (and Life) appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
Sales Hacker
NOVEMBER 15, 2019
Have you ever wondered what other salespeople’s days are like? Or wished you could see what makes them tick? We probably all have. Lucky for you this series goes behind the scenes with top salespeople to get the inside scoop. (You’re welcome!). Today, we’re looking under the hood of a Lead Development Manager at an IT consulting company, and for that, we talked to Joe Latchaw.
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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.
Nimble - Sales
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
When planning an event for your organization or business, it’s important to understand the audience and attendees you’re targeting. The best way to do this is by using a customer relationship manager (CRM). What is a CRM? A CRM manages all of your relationships with customers and prospective customers. It tracks communications, interactions, and past […].
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 10, 2019
It varies. Generally: The most senior partners can get any deal done they want. Period. They make seek consensus, and may defer when they don’t get it. But in the end, they can do what they want. And the more junior ones need more buy-in from the rest. The more junior the partner, or investing professional, the more she/he needs others to buy-in. You’ll often be called back to multiple meetings at the office with different partners before you present to the main partnership in this case.
Andreessen Horowitz
NOVEMBER 15, 2019
Editor’s note: It’s Summit week at a16z, so each day we’re sharing some of our favorite talks from the last few years. a16z Summit is an annual, invite-only event bringing together thinkers, builders, and innovators to explore and examine the … The post The End of Cloud Computing appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
ProfitWell
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
The health of your SaaS business is entirely in the data, and a lot of SaaS professionals tend to think that the more data they’re actively tracking, the better. But you can get a more representative picture of your progress by reducing the number of metrics you observe. The trick is identifying a smaller set of metrics that really tell the story of your business and making them your key performance indicators, or KPIs.
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Choosing the right Embedded Payments partner can feel overwhelming. This evaluation scorecard and comprehensive buyer’s guide simplifies the process by breaking down key criteria to consider. Learn how to assess partners that align with your goals, offer personalized support, and drive long-term success. This guide and scorecard equip software companies with the insights to make confident, informed decisions that enhance customer experience and fuel business growth.
Nimble - Sales
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
Ever had that moment when you only remembered someone because you needed something from them? Or ever felt like someone just reached out to you out of the blue, only to find out that they remembered you because there’s something they have to ask from you? That’s how your clients feel whenever you suddenly reach […]. The post How to Talk to Customers like They’re Your Friends appeared first on Nimble Blog.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
David Cummings is the co-founder of the Atlanta Tech Village, Pardot which sold to ExactTarget/Salesforce.com, Hannon Hill, Rigor, SalesLoft (raised over $75M in capital), Terminus (raised over $25M in capital), and several more. Join him for a session on lessons learned over the years through Pardot to Calendly. Want to see more content like this? Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020.
Andreessen Horowitz
NOVEMBER 14, 2019
We all have our favorite places to dine out where we live — for me, that could be anything from enjoying a hot pot meal with friends in the Richmond district of San Francisco, grabbing a quick burrito off a … The post Why We’re Investing in Virtual Kitchen Co appeared first on Andreessen Horowitz.
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