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I recently wrote that investors (myself included) should do a better job of making their investment criteria transparent to founders. Today I'd like to tell you a bit more about what we at Point Nine Capital are looking for in SaaS startups (other sectors are something for another blog post). To put it as simple as possible, the health of a SaaS business is mainly determined by two factors: Customer lifetime value (CLTV) and customer acquisition costs (CAC).
So you say you want to launch a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution. And you need to find some customers. So where do you start? If you're like a lot of folks, your first thought will be about a web site, search engine optimization, and adwords. Or maybe a webinar series or a social media campaign. Any of these tactics might work in your customer acquisition plan, so they may be the place you end up. but they're not the place to start.
2 Takeways From the CarrierIQ Situation, from a SaaS Attorney. Ok this CarrierIQ situation is really crazy, but there are some things (from a SaaS Attorney’s perspective) that every software or SaaS company should think about. 1) Who is really at fault here: CarrierIQ or the carriers? While this is a complex question (and as of today all of the facts are not known) what we do know is Carrier IQ is the software provider and the carriers have licensed their software for use on mobile devices
I've just read on TechCrunch that Peter Thiel, famous among other things for making one of the best investments in the history of mankind by investing in Facebook in its early days, said that he looks for platforms that are big among small businesses, not consumers. I couldn't agree more. Although there are of course plenty of exciting and profitable opportunites for consumer Internet startups, my main focus over the last three years has been on companies that provide a product, service or platf
AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.
One thing I've been thinking about for a while is how to make Board Meetings as effective as possible. If you want to read some great posts about the topic by people who've been to many, many more Board Meetings (and apparently Bored Meetings!) than I, check out these links: Brad Feld's initial post on the topic back in 2004 Reactions by Fred Wilson ( post 1 , post 2 , post 3 ) More recent posts by Brad Feld and Fred Wilson , as well as Mark Suster In my opinion it's not that much about whether
It's not really news any more because we've already announced it a few weeks ago, and TechCrunch and Gruenderszene wrote about it already. But I haven't written about it on this blog up until now, so in case you haven't heard about it yet here you go: I've teamed up with Team Europe to create Point Nine Capital , an early-stage VC which will follow in the footsteps of the highly successful Team Europe Ventures fund, which I've been working together with informally in the last two years.
It's not really news any more because we've already announced it a few weeks ago, and TechCrunch and Gruenderszene wrote about it already. But I haven't written about it on this blog up until now, so in case you haven't heard about it yet here you go: I've teamed up with Team Europe to create Point Nine Capital , an early-stage VC which will follow in the footsteps of the highly successful Team Europe Ventures fund, which I've been working together with informally in the last two years.
I just came across a great blog which I hadn't been aware of yet: " VC Matters " (100 points if you get the pun), written by Rory O'Driscoll of Scale Venture Partners. Rory has an incredibly successful track record of SaaS investments, having invested in home-runs like Omniture, ScanSafe, Box.net, DocuSign, ExactTarget and many others. After reading through his posts I immediately added his blog to my RSS reader and to the "must-read list" of recommended resources that I maintain for the founder
Here's the third part of my 2010 portfolio review. If you're new here, please start with part 1 , move on to part 2 and then (hopefully) return to this post. The next stop is Crakow in Poland, home of inFakt.pl. inFakt.pl was founded in 2008 by two extremely sharp students of the Cracow University of Science and Technology who wanted to build a simple, easy-to-use, web-based invoicing and billing application for small businesses in Poland.
The conventional wisdom is that starting a web business is (at least) 10x less expensive today than it was 10-15 years ago. It’s said that a decade ago, you needed millions of venture capital in order to launch an Internet startup whereas today, thanks to open-source software, cheap hardware and new ways to acquire users for free (in particular virally via Facebook/Twitter and with SEO via Google), you can do the same with a small fraction of that.
I've never bought a ShamWow! , but I love their TV ads. The hyper-enthusiastic pitchman, Vince, tells me precisely who should buy the product, what it does, why I desperately need it, and how to buy it. all in 60 seconds! And what's true for super-absorbent towels is often true for software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. Sixty seconds may be all the attention you're likely to get from a prospective customer in your first encounter.
Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments
Most integrated payments providers share a percent of the payment revenue with their software partners. But, oftentimes, that revenue share is only a fraction of the true income potential software providers can realize. If you want to maximize income opportunities from your payments program, check out Wind River Payments’ webinar-on-demand.
On November 17, The Europas will be held , an annual awards for the Internet scene in Europa. My partners at Team Europe and Point Nine Capital and I are nominated in a few categories, so if you still need some inspiration on who you could vote for, here you go! BTW, I feel bad about leaving a two months blogging hiatus with a self-serving post.but anyway. ;-).
I recently switched to a new health club. It's better maintained, friendlier, and less crowded than my old club. I also like that there's no up-front membership fee, just a monthly subscription. But making a change from my well-worn routine, set in place over 12 years, could have been a difficult jump. New location, new equipment, new people. But all worked out well.
I'm not always sure what people mean when they say "marketing." PR agencies sometimes call themselves "marketing agencies." So do some graphic design firms. Even the outfits that sell tchotchkes - the stuff you give at away at tradeshows, annual sales meetings, and holiday parties - call themselves "marketing firms." It can be hard to tell what "marketing" is or what it's supposed to do.
One afternoon in the Spring of 1993 in a conference room in San Jose, California I learned that product versions for software are meaningless. Well, not exactly meaningless, but mathematically illogical, as in 1 + 1 = 4. The product manager for Lotus 1-2-3 and I were briefing an influential Dataquest analyst on the forthcoming enhancements to the Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows spreadsheet.
Speaker: Ben Epstein, Stealth Founder & CTO | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO, Aggregage
When tasked with building a fundamentally new product line with deeper insights than previously achievable for a high-value client, Ben Epstein and his team faced a significant challenge: how to harness LLMs to produce consistent, high-accuracy outputs at scale. In this new session, Ben will share how he and his team engineered a system (based on proven software engineering approaches) that employs reproducible test variations (via temperature 0 and fixed seeds), and enables non-LLM evaluation m
I was talking yesterday with a friend who I know from the old days doing public relations. PR back then was about preparing announcements, backgrounders and glossy photographs, arranging press and analyst tours (usually under embargo ), and pitching stories over the phone. Moderate success was a few column inches and a color screenshot in a trade publication.
Thinking too hard can tire out your brain. Research has shown that our brains can suffer from "decision fatigue" after strenuous mental exercise. It's similar to the way our muscles get tired after strenuous physical exercise. Experiments conducted at German automobile dealerships put prospective customers through a kind of mental decathlon. They asked them to choose among four choices of gearshift knobs,13 choices of wheel rims, 25 engine and gearbox configurations, and 56 color options.
For the last few years, NASCAR, Indy car, and Formula One drivers have been wearing a special head restraint, known as a HANS (Head and neck support) device. It's designed to prevent severe injuries from violent whiplash when the race car suddenly decelerates, as in a crash. For business folks who have been whiplashed over the past few days by the sudden jolts in the stock market, this device might look attractive for more than just race car drivers.
Marketers beware! There's a ravenous beast on the loose in marketing land, and it's hounding us mercilessly - days, nights, weekends & holidays - with an insatiable craving. "Feed me. Feed me. Feed me." This beast inhales tasty blog posts for breakfast, devours hearty white papers for lunch, and feasts on entire websites for dinner. And in between meals, it snacks on a bottomless bag of tweets.
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.
The girl from Ipanema and Spinal Tap were stuck in my head - an unusual soundtrack that continuously looped through an entire weekend. You know how that happens with a song. You catch a fragment in a supermarket or an elevator. And then without warning, there's a smooth bossa nova swaying through your brain and you can't turn it off. As for Spinal Tap, an announcer on Sportscenter used the phrase, "he turned it up to 11.
The good news about the SaaS subscription model: long-term paying customers. The bad news about the SaaS subscription model: long-term paying customers. With the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model, vendors can build a sustainable source of long-term, predictable revenue. As long as the subscription fees cover customer acquisition expenses and other costs, the model should support a profitable, growing business.
I recently read " Three Nights in August, " a wonderful book about the "game inside the game" of baseball. The author, Buzz Bissinger, shadowed St. Louis Cardinal manager Tony La Russa through a three game series against the Chicago Cubs. Bissinger chronicles in detail the manager's thought processes and decision making through 27 innings. It's not a story about dramatic home runs, sparkling pitching, or spectacular defensive plays.
I barely passed an accounting course in college. The only thing I remember was a joke about "debits by the window and credits by the door." I didn't understand the joke then, and I'm still confused by T accounts now. Thankfully, in a stint as a bank credit analyst, I did finally gain some fluency with business numbers. I learned to cope with, if not exactly love, current ratios, inventory turnover, and return on equity calculations.
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.
I'm sure the recent service outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) had lots of engineers scurrying around, looking for a fix. I've been at a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider when the solution's gone down. The operations and support people work through the night and weekends. Marketing people aren't completely off the hook, though. They should be doing some scurrying around too.
I learned something recently about software-as-a-service (SaaS) from a table. This isn't just any table. This is a bivi table made by Turnstone , a division of Steelcase that specializes in office furniture for small, innovative organizations. This table starts as a work surface. With an add-on "back pocket," it becomes a workstation. Drag two of them together and it's a shared work area.
I'm one in a million. Actually, I'm number 172,370 in a million. So says the thank you note I recently received from Reid Hoffman, Co-founder and Chairman of LinkedIn, as a way of showing his appreciation to me and the other first million LinkedIn users. His note says, "I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn's first million members (member number 172370 in fact!
If there’s one thing that all fast-growing technology startups have in common, it’s that they’re constantly looking for great developers. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer got it right: My portfolio companies are no exception, almost all of them are looking for engineers in various roles right now. So – if you’re a great developer and you’re living in San Francisco, Edinburgh, Vancouver, Berlin, Cracow, London or Munich (or willing to relocate) and if you want to join one of the best SaaS companies in
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
My regular readers can skip the next two paragraphs. I need a minute to talk to my brethren in the PR community. privately. To the PR folks who have been pitching me on stories about computer viruses, streaming music to cars, online advertising solutions, and 3D mice, please stop. If you've read my blog or newsletter , you'd know that I do not write about these topics.
NPR's Fresh Air host, Terry Gross, recently interviewed Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter. She asked him, once the founders created Twitter, how did it catch on. Stone's candid answer, "Well, it didn't at first." He explained that for the first nine months of the product's existence, the only people using it were friends and family. Most people they talked to about it decided that "Twitter is not useful" and "it's the most ridiculous thing we've ever heard of.
I hear this question often from software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers: "How much should we spend on marketing?" If these marketers have experience working in the traditional, on-premise licensed software world, they're usually familiar measuring marketing spend as a percentage of annual revenue. That metric is often used to allocate and track marketing budgets for licensed software companies, and they typically spend somewhere between 5 and 8 percent of annual revenues on marketing.
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