2019

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How To Treat Your Largest Customer. TL;DR: With Honesty, Insane Commitment and Transparency.

SaaStr

Recently for the SaaStr Annual, we were “the largest customer” for 3 vendors. All 3 lied to us: One vendor was a friend of a departed contractor. This is a pretty common way deals are done, even today. The champion’s favorite vendor. They misled us in terms of scale and capabilities. One vendor was a well-established software vendor, but misrepresented their experience at scale.

Scale 272
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The End of the SDR?

Predictable Revenue

Sure.rapidly improving prospecting tools and AI will change the SDR landscape, but are the predictions of the end of the SDR role correct? The post The End of the SDR? appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

AI 196
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1 Key SaaS Sales Metric to Fine-Tune Sales Productivity

InsightSquared

Sales is the Growth Engine. Sales is the engine driving SaaS company value. Top and bottom line performance are totally dependent on the sales organization and its performance. And sales expense is typically the largest expense item on a growth SaaS company’s income statement. When scaling the business, sales typically averages roughly 30% of revenue, so therefore sales spend is one of the biggest investments a company can make.

Scale 102
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SaaS Freemium Model: What Works, What Doesn’t?

Incredo

Do you love free stuff? Imagine that you can visit a sports complex for free but you are allowed to do it only twice a month, only for 3 hours in total and you have access to the swimming pool and cardio & strength classes only. That free is always available but you would like to spend more time there, have access to the wellness area as well and visit there more often.

SaaS 236
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Straight Facts About PayFacs: What Every ISV Should Know

Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments

Many software companies are exploring PayFac-as-a-Service providers in an effort to drive more embedded payments revenue and gain greater control over the customer experience. But there are nuances in a PayFac relationship that often get downplayed – nuances that can impact the risk and resource responsibilities of software providers. In this webinar, integrated payments veteran, Pete Uselman discusses the following: What is a PayFac?

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How do you price your SaaS product while finding the Product market Fit?

SaaStr

Just start with comps. With comparables. Software is very expensive to build, but for the most part, costs almost nothing to ship. It might cost you $0.10 a month in hosting charges per user for an app that isn’t server or storage intensive. So why is one app $5 a month and another $150 a month? The answer is value provided, yes (that’s why Salesforce and Workday can charge so much) … and also, comparables.

More Trending

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Outsourcing Your SaaS Marketing: How to Choose an Agency That Digs Your Business

Incredo

As a SaaS vendor, you should be familiar with how competitive the environment in this field is. Behavioral patterns change at a turbo rate when it comes to usage of various devices, and it affects the concepts of where the data is stored and where the processing is performed. Vendors like you react at the same rate and come up with helpful applications for the cloud paradigm.

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Best SaaS Pricing Pages – 4 Key Examples From Crazy Egg Experts

The Daily Egg

Source Service as a software companies had better put their best SaaS pricing pages forward if they hope to stay on top of the competition. The thing is, it’s not easy developing the perfect pricing page, no matter what type of service you offer. You may wonder if you should have a free plan. Or, […] The post Best SaaS Pricing Pages – 4 Key Examples From Crazy Egg Experts appeared first on The Daily Egg.

Pricing 199
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Define the What But Delegate the How

Tom Tunguz

As we grow in our careers, we first become individual contributors, then managers of individuals, and then managers of managers. That transition is a tough one, and one that comes very quickly in startups. A bit flips and a leader must begin to delegate. Delegation is the only way a leader of a team or company develops leverage in the organization. Someone told me about a Vanity Fair interview with former President Obama.

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Which Categories of Seed Startups are Thriving? Which Aren't?

Tom Tunguz

Which sectors see more startup company formation than others? The answer has changed quite a bit over the last 8 years. Some sectors have hit their apogee and are declining. Others have grown by more than 3x. Yet others are growing geometrically. Let’s take a look. Hot Spaces. Artificial Intelligence - yes, it’s a buzzword but it’s more than that.

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SaaS Business Fundamentals: How Decline Codes Impact Failed Payment Recovery

A failed payment isn't just a lost transaction - it could mean a customer churning for good. But not all payment declines are the same. For SaaS businesses, decline reasons vary, shaped by customer demographics and the nature of your service. Understanding your decline reason make up can be a game changer when it comes to improving retention and revenue.

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How to Optimize Your SaaS Pricing Page? (Best Practices + Examples)

Incredo

Psychological facts about your consumers + advanced pricing page tips + real SaaS examples = your SaaS pricing page is ready to close!

Pricing 265
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What The Downturn Will Probably Look Like in SaaS

SaaStr

So, despite SaaS multiple and the public markets being at near record highs, we’ve seen things start to … wobble a bit overall in tech: The WeWork IPO simply failed , and the Peloton and Direct Smile IPOs were broken. No one really expected this. Having a high profile IPO like this fail is a bit scary. The Fed’s Repo market had to essentially be bailed out by the government.

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5+4 SaaS Marketing Tactics At First Hand That Have Worked Like A Charm

Incredo

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.

Marketing 125
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2019 SAAS Private Survey Results- Part 1

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

For the seventh year in a row, we’re proud to work with KBCM Technology Group (formerly Pacific Crest Securities) to share results from a survey of ~424 private SaaS companies. Thank you to the readers of forEntrepreneurs who participated in taking the survey! Thank you also to David Spitz (@dspitz) and the team at KBCM Technology.

SaaS 225
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Usage-Based Monetization Musts: A Roadmap for Sustainable Revenue Growth

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

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The top SaaS companies ruling the East Coast

SaaStock

As we wrote in our launch post about expanding SaaStock New York into SaaStock East Coast , our main aim is to foster a community of top SaaS companies that spans all the way from Florida to Quebec. The SaaS industry’s beating heart will probably always be New York, and it will also be the home of SaaStock East Coast on June 4-6. However, we believe in giving the entire coastline a chance to flourish.

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Sales Operations: The Guide They Never Gave You

InsightSquared

“What was your first job?”. It’s one of my favorite questions to ask a fellow professional in sales operations. Some of the answers include: Elementary school teacher. SDR. Recruiter. Pharmacy Tech. Insurance sales rep. Cosmetics consultant. Account Manager. Financial analyst. Why the wide range? Sales Operations is Still Developing. Sales operations as a profession is growing, yet it is a comparatively new function in businesses.

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Ship outcomes, not just features, with the Product Impact Framework

Intercom, Inc.

Our industry is in the midst of a big philosophical debate about the fundamental way of thinking about how we build our products, with the focus shifting from the outputs of what we build to the business outcomes generated by those outputs. We’ve been thinking deeply about how to make this change in our own organization, with Des and Paul leading our discussions about it.

Retention 281
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Five years later: Five ways to build a $100 million SaaS business

The Angel VC

Back in 2014, I wrote a post titled “Five ways to build a $100 million business”. If you haven’t seen it yet, the central idea of the article was to look at how many customers you need, for a given ARPA, to get to $100 million in annual revenue and what this might mean for your sales and marketing strategy. That post went kind of viral, which led us to create a follow-up piece , an infographic , a poster (which you can order here), and a PlayPlay video.

SaaS 277
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15 Modern Use Cases for Enterprise Business Intelligence

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?

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How to Interpret and Use Clickmaps to Improve Your Website’s UX

The Daily Egg

To use the info in a clickmap to improve your website experience and effectiveness, you have to know how to interpret what you see. The post How to Interpret and Use Clickmaps to Improve Your Website’s UX appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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5 Interesting Learnings from HubSpot as It Approaches $1 Billion in ARR

SaaStr

We kicked off our 5 Interesting Learnings series with “newer” SaaS companies for the most part, and learnings as they IPO’d: 5 Interesting Learnings from PagerDuty, as It IPOs. 5 Interesting Learnings from Slack at $700m in ARR. 5 Interesting Learnings from Zoom. As it IPOs. 5 Interesting Learnings from Bill.com’s IPO. HubSpot is a great one that IPO’d way back in 2014 ??

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How To Keep Your Customers For a Decade. Or Longer.

SaaStr

Salesforce likes to talk about “Customers for Life”, and while that’s sort of catchy, it’s a little hard to grok what it really means. It finally sunk in for me a bit the other day. At EchoSign, now Adobe Sign, there’s a large group of well-known customers that I closed, Back in The Day … that now have been customers for 10 years.

Scale 353
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SaaS Will Hit $116 Billion Next Year. Wow.

SaaStr

Gartner has its latest Cloud report out , and while one can always pick at any report, it’s at least a well-resourced and reasoned source on the size of SaaS and the Cloud. The big learnings for SaaS founders and execs: Cloud overall will grow 17% next year to $266 Billion. That’s a lot of growth, and it means we’re solidly in the mainstream phase but not the mature phase.

SaaS 352
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Improving the Accuracy of Generative AI Systems: A Structured Approach

Speaker: Anindo Banerjea, CTO at Civio & Tony Karrer, CTO at Aggregage

When developing a Gen AI application, one of the most significant challenges is improving accuracy. This can be especially difficult when working with a large data corpus, and as the complexity of the task increases. The number of use cases/corner cases that the system is expected to handle essentially explodes. 💥 Anindo Banerjea is here to showcase his significant experience building AI/ML SaaS applications as he walks us through the current problems his company, Civio, is solving.

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How To Drive Up Your Average Deal Size. And Remember — Almost All Pricing is Relative.

SaaStr

You could spend days reading about pricing and pricing strategies in software on the web, but a lot of this content doesn’t really hit one, basic fundamental point — there is no real reason any particular piece of software should cost anything in particular. Or something. Or a lot. Or anywhere in between. Because it costs next to nothing to deliver.

Pricing 338
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Why The Greatest Sales Teams Just Kill It On Dec 31. When Everyone Else Has Gone Home.

SaaStr

(Note this is an update / refresh of our classic 2014 post). There are some real mysteries in SaaS. Even now that I understand them, I still see them as a bit of a mystery. Let me list a few: Why do customers buy a ton of seats up front , when they could start with a few and buy more later? Why do customers buy so much on the last day of the month? Great for sales reps looking to hit their quota.

Sales 338
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10 SaaS New Year Resolutions For You. Pick a Few.

SaaStr

So you had a great December, added a great VP or two last year, won some bigger deals, and in general — you’re feeling good. You’ve even got a decent financial plan for this year in place. Even better. With all that behind you … let me challenge you to 10 SaaS New Year’s Resolutions. Pick a few that work for you: Get That Key VP Hire Done in Q1.

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How to Use Personalization and Automation for Small Business Growth

The Daily Egg

New technologies are radically changing the way businesses interact with customers. As a result, customer expectations are constantly changing. Businesses should innovate and evolve in order to meet those expectations and build relationships that customers value. To do this, businesses should rethink their approach to customer experiences and engagement. 84% of consumers consider the experiences […].

Business 309
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Demystifying Consumption-Based Pricing: Modeling & the Path to Business Success

Uncover the secrets driving the future of the Subscription Economy. Zuora and BCG’s latest report uncovers how hybrid pricing models—combining subscription and consumption (usage)—are fueling faster growth, especially in AI-driven sectors. Discover how industry leaders are outperforming their competition by diversifying revenue streams and adopting cutting-edge infrastructure and billing systems.

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20 Incredible New Experiences at 2020 SaaStr Annual

SaaStr

Phew. With Dreamforce and SaaStr Europa and Scale behind us, little tiny Team SaaStr is 100% focused on 2020 SaaStr Annual. It will be in March this year for one year in 2020, before we go back to February for 2021 on. March 10-11-12 in San Jose, CA just south of San Francisco. The headline metrics: 15,000+ attendees. 4,000+ CEOs. 3,000+ Mentorship sessions. 1,000+ VCs. 300+ Sessions. 250+ AMAs, Workshops, Super Braindates, and more. 100+ Unicorns. 3+ Days and Nights on sharing, learning, and

New CTO 294
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CRO Made Easy: How to Drive Offline Conversions

The Daily Egg

As we wind down Q4, it’s important to take the opportunity to plan out how you can hit the ground running at the start of January 2020. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) should be a part of that plan. It’s the most effective way for you to learn about what activities are hitting the mark and […]. The post CRO Made Easy: How to Drive Offline Conversions appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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How to Prepare Yourself to Be a Great CEO

SaaStr

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.