Why we released a better product for free (and maybe you should, too)
I’m 99.9% sure I won’t lose my job over this though, because in our particular market, utilizing a freemium strategy makes a lot of sense, and it may make sense for you, too. After all, marketing is...
View ArticleAvoiding Poor SaaS Customer Alignment
When I’m not completely absorbed with my agile marketing software startup, I do a bit of SaaS consulting on the side. SaaS colleagues come to me with a wide variety of problems from positioning to...
View ArticleThe Innovator’s Solution for SaaS Startups – The Flywheel SaaS Company
In the Innovator’s Dilemma for SaaS Startups, I outlined the path of many software companies, which disrupt incumbents by first serving the small-to-medium business and then move up-market by...
View ArticleWe All Get To Our First 50 Customers Our Own Way. Then It’s All The Same.
Recently I was fortunate enough to moderate the founders panel at BoxDev ’15. We had 5 great founder-CEOs on the panel, all post-Initial Traction (all 50+ employees), but with very diverse...
View ArticleI Hired My VP of Marketing at $20k MRR. It Wasn’t a Week Too Early.
One of the starkest differences I see between First Timers in SaaS and Second Timers is when they hire their VP of Marketing. At BoxDev the other week (our post here), the contrast was especially...
View Article6 things to pre-empt 90% of Due Diligence
The founder of a portfolio company recently asked me what kind of numbers and other material he’ll need when he goes into his next round of fundraising. He wanted to make sure that when he starts...
View ArticleMetrics to Prioritize Go-to-Market Projects
There are no lack of things on your plate. Deciding on the right things to focus on is crucial to actually moving the needle (vs. wasting time and resources on unnecessary distractions). So how do you...
View ArticleA closer look at the 6 things to pre-empt 90% of Due Diligence
Since last week’s post about 6-7 things to pre-empt 90% of Due Diligence was liked/shared/retweeted quite a bit, I’d like to follow up with some additional details on what exactly SaaS Series A/B...
View ArticleThe SaaS business model and metrics
A detailed look at why SaaS business are so different from traditional software companies, and why traditional ways of looking at their finances fail to understand the business. Provides an alternative...
View ArticleSaaS Startup Investing
Welcome back for Episode 36 of the full ratchet. Today we feature Mamoon Hamid of The Social+Capital Partnership to cover SaaS Startup Investing. We will address questions including: In your words, can...
View ArticleAndy Wilson, CEO of Logikcull: “8 Things Learned Going from a Services...
Earlier this year, I violated Yet Another Rule of Venture Capital. Don’t invest in services businesses, They Say — and that includes SaaS businesses born out of services business. Yes, Hootsuite,...
View ArticleUnpacking the Deep Diagnostic Value of LTV/CAC for SaaS Startups
In a recent podcast, Ron Gill, the CFO of Netsuite – a $7B+ market cap company with about $600M in 2014 revenue, which provides ERP software to mid-market companies – articulated the importance of the...
View ArticleHow an $11B SaaS Company Measures Churn
As I prepared the S-1 analysis for ServiceNow, the third largest public SaaS company in the world, I came across a section in their latest annual report called Key Factors Affecting Our Performance in...
View ArticleThe Top 10 Mistakes Made in Hiring Your First Sales Team
I know we’ve hit a number of these points individually before on SaaStr, but after getting the question again and again, I thought it would be worthwhile to assemble a Top 10 List on mistakes made in...
View ArticleThere are only two ways to grow SaaS companies
Many startups launch focusing on the small business (SMB market). Given how large this market is, it can be a compelling target. There are 30M small businesses in the US alone. In addition, SMBs don’t...
View ArticleThe Confounding Logic of Discounting
There can be nothing more frustrating in the middle-early days than when sales closes some great deal for say $125,000 a year … but you “knew” they could have gotten $200,000 if they just held the line...
View ArticleHow to Sell to SMBs And Still Get to $100m in ARR
There’s a certain type of SaaS company I run from. This type of company has great customers, a great product, and decent customer acquisition costs, in an interesting space. A true winner if you stop...
View ArticleThe Beauty of Bottoms Up SaaS Businesses
One smart SaaS entrepreneur told me last week he prefers bottoms up businesses to top-down companies because bottoms up sales and marketing efforts enable startups to pursue hundreds of paths into a...
View ArticleCustomer Success Is A Single Digit Hire
We’ve talked on SaaStr about leaning in on Customer Success as much as possible. We’ve walked through why Second Order Revenue (i.e., the revenue ultimately generated or supported by Customer Success)...
View Article“Monetize Backwards” to Build a SaaS Business That Lasts
It’s counterintuitive, but constraining growth by not making our product free from the start has been one of the best decisions we’ve made. Determine your product’s worth by charging up front The #1...
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