TechEmpower SaaS
JULY 12, 2023
A Fractional CTO bridges the gap between founders and developers to help keep your tech strategy aligned with your business goals. This helps your startup stay agile and competitive in a fast-paced marketplace.
SaaStr
DECEMBER 29, 2023
If I had to summarize venture capital today, it would be like this: There is Very Little Oxygen Today Above $200m Valuations What do I mean? It’s still a weird world in venture: Firms are both shutting down and raising new funds. More entrepreneurs are doing direct investing themselves than ever. Unicorns are hurting, but — Nasdaq is at an all-time high.
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Tom Tunguz
NOVEMBER 15, 2023
How much does AI cost? It depends on a a few different dimensions, but for a typical use case where a user enters a query & expects about a 200 word response, the cost varies from $0.03 to $3.60. Different models cost different amounts. Also, the size of the context window is an important factor. The context window is a fancy way of saying the quantity of background information the user can provide to the AI.
The Daily Egg
JANUARY 28, 2023
Nifty is a project management software company that focuses on providing an all-in-one solution. Get collaboration features, discussions, document sharing, and reporting. The post Nifty Project Management Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.
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?
TechEmpower SaaS
JULY 24, 2023
At TechEmpower, we frequently talk to startup founders, CEOs, product leaders, and other innovators about their next big tech initiative. It’s part of our job to ask questions about their plans, challenge their assumptions, and suggest paths to success. The conversations are interesting and varied because they’re about new, exciting, different things.
SaaS Brief brings together the best content for SaaS professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 11, 2023
For each of the 14 weeks, more people searched for ChatGPT than Taylor Swift according to Google Trends data. You won’t find people outside of tech hubs googling for microservices or layer 2 blockchains or serverless databases with any great frequency. But Minnesotans & Idahoans & Vermontans are searching for ChatGPT. People are curious about AI.
The Daily Egg
JANUARY 20, 2023
Webnode is a website builder utilized by more than 40 million users. With Webnode, you can build a simple website or blog. The post Webnode Review appeared first on The Daily Egg.
SaaStr
JUNE 5, 2023
A life poorly lived is a trap Go for it at least once — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) May 5, 2023 BusinessInsider had a great story a ways back on Datto’s $1b exit to Vista Private Equity (more on the role of PE in SaaS here ). So much of it resonated with me, especially the story of the CEO’s 10-year journey, and turning down an earlier $100m offer to sell.
Clouded Judgement
DECEMBER 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 Amazon ReInvent This week Amazon had their annual AWS ReInvent conference. Couple takeaways for me: 2024 is shaping up to be the “prototype to production” year for AI. This year, there was tons of experimentation.
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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.
TechEmpower SaaS
OCTOBER 9, 2023
Artificial Intelligence (AI), and particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), have significantly transformed the search engine as we’ve known it. This presents businesses with an opportunity to enhance their search functionalities for both internal and external users. With Generative AI and LLMs, new avenues for improving operational efficiency and user satisfaction are emerging every day.
TechEmpower SaaS
DECEMBER 11, 2023
In 2023, there were approximately 26.3 million software developers worldwide. This vast pool of talent showcases a wide range of experience and portfolios, quality of work, and inquisitiveness. Given this diversity, it's important to be selective in the development services company with whom you choose to partner. In the 25 years that TechEmpower has been in business, we’ve seen thousands of companies come and go.
TechEmpower SaaS
NOVEMBER 13, 2023
We recently completed a web-based application that uses a unique algorithm to match professionals with new career opportunities. As part of the onboarding process, the app asks both job seekers and employers what they’re looking for - in a text box - while providing a few suggestions in a pop-up. If you’ve ever used a similar application, (or if you’ve ever used the Internet at all) you’ve probably seen this approach before.
TechEmpower SaaS
SEPTEMBER 25, 2023
When speaking with founders and CEOs, we often hear concerns like this: My project manager is losing confidence in the development team. The PMs are seeing late deliveries and bugs that suggest the devs just aren’t capable enough. I think that poor communication and differing team cultures might be part of the problem, but how can I know for sure? It’s a good question.
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
TechEmpower SaaS
AUGUST 21, 2023
Many CEOs of software-enabled businesses call us with a similar concern: Are we getting the right results from our software team? Most innovators don’t have a technical background, so it’s hard to evaluate the truth of the situation. We hear them explain that their current software development is expensive, deliveries are rarely on time, and random bugs appear.
TechEmpower SaaS
AUGUST 7, 2023
What does it mean to be a CTO for a startup? What does the role demand? Should a startup CTO spend their time programming? Exploring new technologies? Increasing competitive advantage? The answer is: it depends. The role of a CTO varies as the company matures. Here’s a graphic from Socal CTO that illustrates the roles as they change over time: In its earliest days, a startup’s top need is often to produce a product.
TechEmpower SaaS
JULY 31, 2023
When talking to startup founders or other innovators, we always ask questions to better understand their business as a core. What does the business do? How does it meet customers’ needs? And most importantly, how does it make money? One way to approach that last question is to use this simple model: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) How will your business reach prospects?
SaaStr
APRIL 16, 2023
As we gear up for SaaStr Europa 2023 in London on 6-7 June and SaaStr Annual 2023 in the SF Bay Area on 6-7 September , we wanted to take a look back at some of our most iconic speakers and sessions from over the year, that we can still learn from today. Back at the first SaaStr Annual, in February 2015, we kicked off the day with Aaron Levie from Box — who had just IPO’d a week or so before.
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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?
SaaStr
MAY 9, 2023
So when I was a founder, I didn’t pay much attention to how VC funds themselves worked. I just pitched them. But fast forward to today, and there is an incredible amount of information about how the industry actually works, and we put a bunch of the best stuff on SaaStr itself. Most important today is for founders to know (1) how active the venture markets are, at each stage and (2) how healthy venture is overall.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 18, 2023
SaaS products and services like Pilot track the finances of 1,000s of SaaS and other startup so they’re an interesting source of hard data. What does Pilot’s latest data say? Something that’s both not surprising but also pretty impactful: 57% of venture-backed startups will have to go “back to market” in 2024 to raise more capital.
SaaStr
MAY 12, 2023
So SaaS Capital put out its latest report on SaaS retention and NRR after having surveyed over 1,500 SaaS companies and professionals. You can download it here. There are a lot of great learnings and metrics in the report, and a few stood out to me: #1. Annual Contracts Didn’t Boost NRR, And Even Multi-Year Contracts Only Had a Modest Impact on NRR.
SaaStr
MAY 17, 2023
Dear SaaStr: When Searching for a Co-founder, How Do You Know You Found The Right One? I think it boils down to 2 key factors: Someone that is both very good at, and better than you, in several key functional areas. If you are good at coding, she is good at sales and customers. Or whatever. That together, the two of you have all the key functional areas covered decently, at least initially (Engineering, Product, Sales & Customers, Marketing).
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.
SaaStr
DECEMBER 10, 2023
“My App Stack” is a new series where we dig in with top CMOs, CROs, CTOs and CEOs on just what apps they’re really using to run their business. I always learn a lot from these — they are in essence a best practices list from each leader. Last week we had a great one with Jack Moberger, Director of Enablement at Algolia, check it out here. This week we have Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist at Gong!
SaaStr
DECEMBER 28, 2023
So 2023 wasn’t a rough year for everyone. Shopify, Canva, Monday and tons of other SaaS leaders less focused on tech and startups had big years. And broader Cloud players had great years too, from MongoDB to Cloudflare to Azure, if not quite as crazy as at the peak of 2021. But overall, overall … well SaaS and Cloud growth hit record lows per the BVP Cloud Index: As you can see, even though 2022 was a tough year in the public markets and for valuations, revenue growth still held up
SaaStr
MARCH 23, 2023
Here's the thing about venture right now Seed stage remains vibrant, similar to any of past 5-6 years Series A and later has gotten over 2021, and is back in market … but … Has moved back to Default No Pacing is far slower because of it — Jason Be Kind Lemkin (@jasonlk) March 19, 2023 So folks in venture are back to business. 2022 was a year of dealing with the fallout of fallen unicorns, terrible deals, and slashed valuations.
SaaStr
DECEMBER 13, 2023
So if you are outside of fintech and banking, you may not have heard of nCino. But if you’re in the space, it’s a big player. They’re at almost $500m in ARR, with 1,850 customers, now growing a modest but steady 19% and they have gotten pretty efficient, like most other public SaaS and Cloud leaders. Non-GAAP operating margins are now +17%.
Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments
How happy are you with customer adoption of your integrated payments solution? If you’re like many ISVs, there’s always room for improvement. If you want to increase integrated payments adoption, check out Wind River Payments’ webinar on demand, " How to Drive Customer Adoption of Your Payment Integration ". In this webinar, integrated payments veteran, Pete Uselman, discusses common challenges software companies face in encouraging customers to utilize their payment features and shares the late
SaaStr
JANUARY 5, 2023
Salesforce is ceding the startup CRM market to HubSpot. Does it matter? Maybe not. Salesforce is focused on $100m+ deals, and SFA/CRM is a minority of their revenue. Perhaps they’ll still get them when they cross $50m, $100m ARR. But maybe someday, they … won’t anymore. — Jason Be Kind Lemkin (@jasonlk) December 30, 2022. So for many years, I was one of those guys.
SaaStr
JANUARY 11, 2023
So there’s a quiet SaaS success story you probably don’t know much about, but can learn a lot from. It’s Docebo. It’s a leader in a pretty crowded space (Learning Management Systems) with dozens of top vendors. And yet … It’s worth $1.1 Billion today, doing $145,000,000 in ARR. It’s growing 40%+ on a constant currency basis.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 20, 2023
Dear SaaStr: What is The Best Way to Hire Your First Sales Rep? I’ll tell you the trick. It’s going to sound simple, but it isn’t, because almost everyone gets it wrong. For at least your first few reps: hire someone >>you<< would buy >>your product<< from. Period. I.e., Do not hire someone just because they worked at Facebook or Salesforce or even Datadog or Shopify in “sales”.
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