SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2024

Why do founders leave after their companies are acquired? There are many nuanced answers, but in the short and medium term, it’s incentives. Acquirers use 3 incentives to get founders to stay: Sticks. If you leave, you lose X% of the consideration. Acquirers try to put 30%-40% of the founders’ consideration at risk, if they can get away with it. This sort of works, but it leads to “rest-and-vest” behavior if not thoughtfully combined with Carrots (next point).

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Tom Tunguz

APRIL 3, 2024

The average American attention span has fallen from 150 seconds in 2004 to 75 seconds in 2012 to 47 seconds in 2023 - a 5-6% annual rate of decline. Year Avg American Attention Span (sec) CAGR 2004 150 - 2012 75 -6% 2023 47 -5% How does this compare to these blog posts? In 2013, the average reader dwelled on this site for 47 seconds. Today, it’s 33 seconds, a 3.6% decline - which is a bit better !

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Clouded Judgement

APRIL 26, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Azure Report - Cloud Infra Looks Good! Microsoft kicked off earnings season with a bang! For software, all eyes were on Azure - which grew 31% YoY (ahead of expectations closer to 29%). What was arguably more impressive (and a better indicator of what’s to come for the rest of infrastructure software than overall Azure growth) was the Azure growth excluding

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Payrix

APRIL 24, 2024

Andy Meadows, the Head of Partner Success at Payrix joins host Ian Hillis to continue their conversation about building a successful Embedded Payments strategy. As the last episode of a four-part series on the topic, Andy and Ian tackle how software companies can minimize attrition and why it’s important to the payments conversation. Did you miss Parts 1-3?

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Payments Embedded Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions 147

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Generative AI is upending the way product developers & end-users alike are interacting with data. Despite the potential of AI, many are left with questions about the future of product development: How will AI impact my business and contribute to its success? What can product managers and developers expect in the future with the widespread adoption of AI?

Generative AI

USIO

APRIL 26, 2024

In the heart of Austin, where the vibrant culture and musical heritage intersect, lies a celebration that resonates with the soul of the city—the Austin Blues Festival starting April 27 and running through April 28, 2024. As the city gears up for another unforgettable gathering of music enthusiasts and performers, one name stands out as a beacon of support: Usio Akimbo.

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Banking Entertainment Government Finance 130

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 5 Things I Should Know Before Starting a SaaS Startup? My Top 5: It will take you at least 24 months to really get anywhere. Everyone mentally budgets 10–12 months. It’s never enough. At least, not to get enough paying customers from Code Zero. A little more here: [link] A co-founder not equally committed will blow up on you, and best case, is a disaster you will have to clean up later.

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Startup CTO SaaS Interviewing 281

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 21, 2024

In “Do software companies actually have good margins?”, Benn Stancil makes a case for a counterintuitive point : Software companies are much less profitable than they might seem. Why? Because the research & development costs associated with software should be part of their cost of goods sold. Software companies don’t invest once in R&D & then sell copies of the software as we did in the 90s on CDs.

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Software Business Construction Government 257

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 11, 2024

Q4 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. The 62 companies that I’ll discuss here (which is not an exhaustive list, but is still comprehensive) all reported quarterly earnings sometime between Jan 24th – March 27th. In this post, I’ll take a data-driven approach in evaluating the overall group’s performance, and highlight individual standouts along the way.

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Cloud Software Azure AWS 177

Nimble - Sales

APRIL 12, 2024

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The post Protected: Maximizing Sales Outreach: Unleashing Nimble CRM and PhoneBurner Power Dialing Together appeared first on Nimble Blog.

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Discover how top SaaS companies are earning up to $700k + and zero upfront cost with Usio Integrated Payments.

Payments

Stax

APRIL 30, 2024

Accepting card payments is a must for small to medium businesses today. Whether you’re a freelance service provider, a cafe owner, or a retailer, card payments are king, and your credit card processing account is where you hold power to manage and control your fees. Debit and credit card processing all come at a cost for merchants. You may not be able to control the rates set by the banks and card providers, but what you can do is manage those fees through your payment processor.

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Payment Methods Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Solutions 88

FastSpring

APRIL 16, 2024

Offering a frictionless checkout experience is essential for digital transaction conversion rates. Today, we’re excited to announce new payment method improvements available on the FastSpring platform: Apple Pay Pix Preferred Payment Method Apple Pay: Seamless Transactions Within the Apple Ecosystem As Apple Pay adoption continues to grow, incorporating Apple Pay into payment options becomes an essential part of your digital strategy.

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Payment Methods Payments Payment Services PayPal 138

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2024

Dear SaaStr: A Big Tech Co Launched a Competitive Product. How Can I Tell How Serious They Are About It? In SaaS at least, I’ll give you one metric that is fairly reliable: How many dedicated sales professional do they have, just 100% selling the competitive product? If it’s none yet, it’s an experiment. If they’ve just made a “Head of” hire, it’s an experiment, but one that is getting budget.

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Sales Hiring Engineering Metrics Sales 279

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 22, 2024

On Friday May 3rd at 9:30 Pacific time, Office Hours will host Jordan Tigani, CEO of MotherDuck. Jordan’s path through data starts with being the founding tech lead on Google Big Query to SingleStore’s Chief Product Officer to MotherDuck’s CEO. He wrote the Big Data is Dead , explaining that a power law applies to most companies’ data.

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Data Innovation Cloud Marketing 247

Speaker: Timothy Chan, PhD., Head of Data Science

Are you ready to move beyond the basics and take a deep dive into the cutting-edge techniques that are reshaping the landscape of experimentation? 🌐 From Sequential Testing to Multi-Armed Bandits, Switchback Experiments to Stratified Sampling, Timothy Chan, Data Science Lead, is here to unravel the mysteries of these powerful methodologies that are revolutionizing how we approach testing.

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Clouded Judgement

APRIL 5, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Hype Rounds vs Fundamental Rounds The show Silicon Valley is one of my favorites - just so many nuggets of humor in that show. A favorite clip of mine is when Russ Hanneman is talking about how pre-revenue businesses are the best kind of businesses.

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Cloud Scale Pricing Revenue 161

Chargebee

APRIL 18, 2024

Chargebee’s London-based user conference, beelieve, hummed with excitement as it united trailblazers and innovators from the subscription and revenue growth sector. A standout moment was the “beelievers” awards, honoring visionary leaders and organizations shaping the subscription landscape’s future. Let’s explore the winners in each category, highlighting their exceptional contributions to efficiency, transformation, retention, revenue growth, and leadership.

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Innovation Leadership Subscription Payment Features 116

The Moz Blog

APRIL 2, 2024

Using Google Tag Manager effectively first requires a comprehensive understanding of how it works and what it can be used for. This introductory guide to GTM will clear up any confusion or fears you had about using the tool, arming you with all the knowledge you need to get started.

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Management 120

FastSpring

APRIL 4, 2024

As an experienced sales and GTM leader, John Eitel has more than witnessed how product-led growth (PLG) has affected the tech and SaaS space in the last few years — he and his teams have been up close and personal with how PLG increased in popularity as a sales strategy. “I think there was a time of, ‘ Everybody should be doing it; why aren’t you doing it?

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Scale Sales Payment Methods Merchant Services 130

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Explore how integrated payment strategies impact investor and buyer evaluations. Payments are more than a feature — they’re a key to long-term success and market differentiation. They help SaaS companies offer seamless user experiences and efficient operations. Investors and strategic buyers assess these integrated payment strategies as a measure of a company's growth potential and sustainability.

Payments

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2024

So this is the time of the year when founders step down. Often quietly. Folks recover a bit from the end-of-year push, reflect, and sometimes … decide it’s time to bring in someone new. A CEO to take things to the next level. Etc. And even more of us think about it. Heck, I’ve thought about it several times over the years. I always try to talk founders out it handing over the reigns.

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Tom Tunguz

APRIL 28, 2024

What drives the acquisition market of startups? It’s the big deals. In the last decade, the total number of venture backed software M&A by count has remained relatively constant. The black line shows the linear trend across US venture backed companies with disclosed values of $50m or more. The average & median counts by year total 58 & 55 respectively.

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Acquisition Venture Capital Software Startup 223

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 19, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Rubrik IPO Update This week Rubrik launched their IPO with an initial pricing range of $28 - $31 / share. This range represents roughly a $6B valuation at the midpoint ($29.50 / share), with a ~6.5x NTM revenue multiple.

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Cloud Scale Subscription Payment Features 141

User Pilot

APRIL 30, 2024

Customer progress tracking can help you understand how customers make progress with your product. Based on such product analytics , you can further improve your product offerings and drive growth. There are several ways to perform progress tracking, and we discuss all of them here for you. So, without further ado, let's dive in! TL;DR Customer progress tracking includes all the steps taken to monitor customer advancement toward a desired or set goal with your product or service.

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SaaS Sales Funnel Engagement Software 98

As companies strive to boost revenue, deliver customer value, and stay competitive, they are increasingly embracing the potential of usage-based pricing.

Pricing

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 19, 2024

In this episode of the AI + a16z podcast, a16z General Partner Anjney Midha shares his thoughts on how hardware for artificial intelligence might evolve over the years to come as we place more emphasis on AI inference workloads. Improvements in sensors, chips, models, and more could result in remarkably useful models that are able to run locally, resulting in wearable AI products that evolve the human experience.

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Artificial Intelligence AI Mobile Innovation 110

FastSpring

APRIL 25, 2024

Through the integration, the companies aim to provide the best payment experience to Brazilian clients through local payments via the fast-growing and highly adopted Pix CURITIBA, Brazil, April 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — FastSpring , the leading merchant of record for global SaaS and software companies, and EBANX , a global technology company specializing in payments for rising markets, announce today a partnership to enhance users’ payment experience within FastSpring’s product s

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Payment Services Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Methods 106

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2024

"We all need more hackers on our team. Marketing hackers, sales hackers, product hackers. We lost too much of that. People that want to do the work because they enjoy the work." @searchbrat @zapier @kippbodnar @HubSpot @jasonlk pic.twitter.com/dUudpe9s2Q — SaaStr (@saastr) April 16, 2024 HubSpot and Zapier’s CMO had us on their “Marketing Against the Grain” pod / videocast.

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Sales Hiring Startup Marketing Technical Review 262

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 23, 2024

Snowflake announced Artic , their open 17b model. The LLM perfomance chart is replete with new offerings in just a few weeks. Overall knowledge performance is asymptoting as expected. It’s hard to discern the most recent dots. One thing stands out from the announcement - the positioning of the model. “The Best LLM for Enterprise AI” Snowflake focuses on the model’s enterprise performance : SQL generation, code completion, & logic.

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Advertiser: Data Robot

The buzz around generative AI shows no sign of abating in the foreseeable future. Enterprise interest in the technology is high, and the market is expected to gain momentum as organizations move from prototypes to actual project deployments. Ultimately, the market will demand an extensive ecosystem, and tools will need to streamline data and model utilization and management across multiple environments.

Generative AI

Totango

APRIL 9, 2024

Is 2024 the year of customer success or sales? Our CS and sales experts say, “Neither.” Chris Dishman , SVP of Customer Success for Totango & Catalyst, hosted a roundtable discussion with industry leaders, including Rashmi Chari , Head of Global Customer Success for ThousandEyes, Kevin McIntyre , Chief Revenue Officer for Dealfront, and Madelyn DePrey , VP of Customer Success for Aircall.

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Scale Sales Compensation Customer Success 106

Kellblog

APRIL 19, 2024

I’ve realized that one of things I do for (or should I say, to) early-stage startups is detect whether they have a real or a faux focus (pronounced fo-focus) — the latter being a focus that appears to be real at first, but is in fact fake. Focus is like baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Needed. Timeless. And everyone’s in favor.

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Startup SMB Airlines Banking 106

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

At a16z’s recent Connect/Fintech event, a16z Partner Alex Immerman sat down for a broad conversation with Immad Akhund , co-founder and CEO of banking startup Mercury , and René Lacerte, founder and CEO of financial services company BILL. They discussed the wide-ranging implications that generative AI will have across fintech and how it will boost jobs, rather than replace them.

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Payments Forecasting Payment Services Payment Solutions 107