The Angel VC

NOVEMBER 18, 2017

Founder salaries are not a topic I’ve had to spend a lot of time with so far. I usually just “OK” them, since the founders we are working with are all super reasonable people who carefully weigh how much they need against the interests of the company – their company. But sometimes founders ask me for a suggestion or some guidance because they are uncertain as to what is fair, and so I thought it might be useful to create a simple model.

Technical Review 279

Technical Review Compensation Company Culture Benchmarks 279

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

DECEMBER 6, 2017

I’ve seen hundreds of startup pitch decks in my time at Matrix, and have found total addressable market (TAM) slides to be among the most frequently mis-executed. I get the sense they are often included as a formality in an attempt to get VCs to check a mental box and continue on hearing about other.

Marketing 279

Marketing Startup Venture Capital Business Model 279

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2017

How much should a SaaS startup invest in sales and marketing at different stages of the business? This is a very nuanced question, but benchmarks do provide some guidance for what is reasonable. Sales and marketing investment depends on many different factors including establishing product market fit, the business’s sales model (inside, field, freemium), and not least, cash balance and fundraising capacity.

Investment 274

Investment Startup Marketing Sales 274

Hitenism

JANUARY 20, 2017

In online marketing today, you have hundreds of channels to choose from. Within each, there are thousands of tactics that you could use. If you’re like most marketers, you’re trying to tackle a dozen or more of these channels and tactics at any given time. If you try to do too much with your marketing strategy, it quickly becomes difficult to keep the clarity and conviction you need to simplify, focus, and drive key results.

Marketing 237

Marketing Content Marketing Startup Acquisition 237

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Payment Solutions

FastSpring

OCTOBER 30, 2017

Experts are predicting that 2017 will be the strongest holiday shopping season ever for ecommerce. Why? Because even last year, when many people were feeling uncertain about the U.S. economy in the post-election season, they still spent 13% more online than the previous year.

Software 121

Software Business SaaS 121

Brian Balfour

JUNE 28, 2017

This post is an introduction to a five part series where I explain for frameworks you need to align to grow to a $100M+ company. Subscribe to receive the rest of the series. I’ve been lucky to have been part of building, advising, or investing in 40+ tech companies in the past 10 years. Some $100M+ wins. Some, complete losses. Most end up in the middle.

Product Marketing 111

Product Marketing Growth Hacking Marketing Construction 111

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 7, 2017

I run a European based sales agency for software and technology companies. In this article, I will summarize what I’ve learned about the most important ingredients for a successful outbound sales process. 1. The Key to Outbound Sales Success – Understand the Problems & Pain You Are Solving With Your Product. Sounds basic and redundant, I know.

Sales 107

Sales B2B Education Strategy 107

Totango

OCTOBER 14, 2017

Customer Health Score takes multiple dimensions of customer data metrics and classifies them into a single representation of green, yellow or red. It is a consolidation of all the information the company has about the customer, from all probes, people and systems, past and current. Companies use customer health to speed up and scale communication, prioritization, decision making and forecasting of their customer success operations.

Forecasting 103

Forecasting Customer Success Engagement Communication 103

InsightSquared

DECEMBER 29, 2017

There are different uses of cement such as to make cement mortar, cement concrete which are used in various types of masonry and concrete structures.

Technology 110

Technology 110

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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.

Payments

The SaaS CFO

DECEMBER 8, 2017

Net negative churn occurs when your expansion revenue from existing customers totals more than your lost revenue from existing customers. This SaaS metric does not factor in any revenue from new customers, just existing customers. As Nathan Latka puts it in his “The Top” podcast, this is the holy grail of SaaS. Your recurring revenue […]. The post What is Net Negative Churn in SaaS appeared first on The SaaS CFO.

Churn 89

Churn SaaS Revenue Metrics 89

The Angel VC

JANUARY 10, 2017

Today is January 10, 2017. That means that in ten days, this jerk will become the leader of the free world. Ugh. It still feels surreal to me. In less earth shattering news, the fact that it's 2017 also means that my "SaaS Funding in 2016" napkin needs an update. As a reminder, in the original post I tried to give a "back of a napkin" answer to this question: What does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in 2016?

SaaS 262

SaaS Marketplace as a Service Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 262

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

DECEMBER 13, 2017

Intro Many potentially great companies fail each year because, while they have an incredible product, they don’t figure out how to get it to market fast enough. Figuring out how to reach customers and break through to Product-Market-Fit remains one of the hardest parts of building a successful startup. This post introduces a four stage.

Product Marketing 263

Product Marketing Marketing Startup Sales 263

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 10, 2017

Disagree and commit. I first read about this idea in the 2016 Amazon Shareholders letter. But the idea can be traced back to Andy Grove at Intel. Grove wrote about this topic in High Output Management. Disagree and commit is a management technique for handling conflict. There are two parts to it. First, expecting and demanding teammates to voice their disgreement.

Management 223

Management Leadership Engineering Startup 223

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

Hitenism

JANUARY 6, 2017

It was 2008, and I was having a classic founder moment. I had no idea what I was doing. But at least I was doing! I was founding a SaaS business, KISSmetrics. Like any startup, we were flailing, failing, and on fire, all at the same time. It was a wild, insane, and ridiculously exhausting experience. I was in charge of product development, operations, finance, funding, and probably 44 other things.

Startup 182

Startup Marketing Engagement Content Marketing 182

FastSpring

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

How do you keep customers happy? Long-term customer satisfaction and retention begins with knowing your customer. You should understand their wants and needs. You may not know the specific motivations for each customer, but there are some traits that nearly all customers have in common. Here's a tip to help you keep customers happy and coming back for more.

Retention 120

Retention Marketing 120

A Smart Bear

OCTOBER 17, 2017

Forget work/life integration for a minute. How much time do you have, regardless of partitioning? From your 24-hour daily allotment, the 1950s-style break-down is 8 hours for work, 8 for home and commute, and 8 for sleep and ablutions. So, “work” and “home” are the two things in which you can spend 40+ hours per week. This is the amount of time it takes to tackle something huge.

Startup 102

Startup Investment 102

Brian Balfour

OCTOBER 13, 2017

This post is the HubSpot Sales case study that illustrates the concepts of the 4-Fits Framework, a 5 post series in which I explain the four frameworks you need to align to grow to a $100M+ company. Subscribe to receive the rest of the series. When I joined HubSpot in January 2014 the mission was clear. One, help build the foundation for a new $100M line of business.

Sales Recruiting 111

Sales Recruiting Software Review Growth Hacking Retention 111

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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

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 18, 2017

Selling to c-level executives is a different ball game. You have to be concise, respectful of their time, and really think about how to differentiate yourself in order to break through the clutter and earn the right to ask for something. Here is a message to sellers from a real c-level buyer: Outbound tactics without strategy are sheer lunacy. We must lead with an insight-driven value narrative (‘hypothesis of value’), otherwise hammering away in blended channels is worthless.

Interviewing 107

Interviewing Leadership Branding Engagement 107

Totango

OCTOBER 2, 2017

Every company, especially a large enterprise, builds an organizational structure around their customer operations. Whether by region, product, vertical, or any other business parameter they define, Customer Success Managers (CSMs) are broken into teams to give them focus, tailored processes, and specific metrics that make sense for their line of business.

Customer Success 87

Customer Success Leadership Enterprise Technology 87

InsightSquared

DECEMBER 11, 2017

As a sales leader, you’re only as good as your team, and it starts by managing a team effectively. It’s important to create a process to systematize the way your reps generate, manage and close opportunities. To encourage the right behaviors, you must provide evidence that shows your process is effective, and straightforward. A team of some of our top customers recently brainstormed ideas for how a sales leader can institute an effective, data-backed rep management process within their organizat

Forecasting 95

Forecasting Metrics Market Segmentation Management 95

Entrepreneur - SaaS

APRIL 21, 2017

How hiring our first salesperson led me to recognize that cluelessness is at the heart of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship 111

Entrepreneurship 111

Speaker: Jay Allardyce, Deepak Vittal, and Terrence Sheflin

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

The Angel VC

JULY 5, 2017

In the first part of this post , I looked at what some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry said about Product/Market Fit (PMF) and how they try to define and measure it. While everybody seems to agree on the broad concept of PMF there is (unsurprisingly) no consensus on how exactly it can be defined and measured, and some people set the bar much higher than others.

Venture Capital 252

Venture Capital Product Marketing Startup SaaS 252

For Entrepreneurs with David Skok

NOVEMBER 28, 2017

I gave a talk this year at the 2017 SaaS North conference in Ottawa, where I discuss the fundamentals of building a repeatable, scalable, & profitable growth process for a startup. Building a Repeatable, Scalable & Profitable Growth Process [View on Slideshare].

Startup 189

Startup SaaS Business Model Business 189

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 28, 2017

Starting in January, public software companies will report their financials using ASC 606. Normally, accounting changes are not that interesting, but ASC 606 will change several of the key attributes and benchmarks SaaS startups use. The two most important changes are changes to revenue and profitability. Today, all software revenue is recognized ratably over the contract period.

Revenue 215

Revenue Benchmarks SaaS Finance 215

Hitenism

APRIL 24, 2017

Back in 2010, on a Monday at 5 PM, I found myself at a bar called Memphis in Southern California in a heated discussion with two close friends. Patrick Vlaskovits was cheerfully drinking a mint julep while Sean Ellis and I were each enjoying a cold beer. At the time, Patrick was working on a startup and a book. Sean was advising a handful of high-growth tech startups including Dropbox, Eventbrite and my own company, KISSmetrics.

Growth Hacking 177

Growth Hacking Artificial Intelligence Technical Review Systems Review 177

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

Pierre Lechelle

JANUARY 23, 2017

CEOs moving past Product / Market Fit often have issues to grow. They struggle to find more channels to acquire new leads. When I met Ryan, his problems were radically different… They were growing quickly. His team was doing a fine job. They implemented Growth Processes, but after a few months, they realized that they […]. Cet article Why Companies are Failing to Implement Growth Processes est apparu en premier sur Pierre Lechelle.

Product Marketing 78

Product Marketing Marketing 78

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

The model for early-stage success in SaaS is shifting. Let's take a look at the shift happening in fundraising, and some of the businesses succeeding from bootstrapped-origins, as well as some different strategies up to and beyond that critical first $1M ARR. What’s enabling bootstrapped SaaS? The concept of bootstrapping a business is nothing new. The term originates from the concept of “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps”.

Venture Capital 77

Venture Capital Startup SaaS Travel 77

Brian Balfour

JULY 12, 2017

This is part 3 in a series about the growth frameworks companies need to grow to $100M+ Part One: Introduction & Why Product Market Fit Isn't Enough. The Road to a $100M Company Doesn’t Start with Product. Subscribe to get the rest of the series. This is part three in a series about 4 Frameworks To Grow To $100M+. Subscribe to get the rest of the series In the introduction I explained there are two types of companies : Tugboats, where growth feels like you have to put a ton of fuel in to get

Strategy 90

Strategy Growth Hacking Mobile Product Marketing 90