CEO
Working in my capacity at as an EIR at Balderton Capital, I have recently written a new publication, The Balderton Founder's Guide to B2B Sales, with the able support of Balderton Principal Michael Lavner and the entire Balderton Capital team. This guide is effectively a new edition, and
Growth
In my consulting and advising work, I’ve worked with a number of enterprise SaaS companies that get stuck with a broken go-to-market (GTM) motion. What do I mean by broken? * Chronic plan misses, and not by 5-10%, but by 30-50% [1] * Weak sales productivity, measured
Management
KeyBanc Capital Markets (KBCM) recently published their 13th annual private SaaS company survey. This post has three purposes: to let you know it's out, to provide you with a link so you can get it, and to offer some quick takeaways on skimming through the results. The first
Metrics
Just a quick post to share the slides of a presentation on leading, lagging, and predictive indicators that I gave at the recent Foundry CFO Summit. * It starts with a discussion of the importance of leading indicators, particularly as we head into an uncertain business environment. * It discusses go-to-
GTM
Just a quick post to share the slides I presented at SaaStock Dublin today on driving go-to-market (GTM) efficiences over the coming 24 months. I chose this topic because extending runway is on everyone's mind and -- because it's usually the single largest contributor to
Metrics
A guy walks into a bar and orders a $17 Martini. Is it MRR (monthly recurring revenue)? The potentially surprising answer: maybe, and often yes. * If he's a tourist who happened to walk in, then no, it's not MRR. * If he's lived here for
Marketing
Just a quick post to share the slides for the presention I gave today at SaaS Metrics Palooza, entitled You Can't Fix a CAC Payback Period: The Operator vs. Investor View of SaaS Metrics. (For those with Slideshare issues, Google Drive share is here.) The presentation discusses: * The
Churn
The other day I was looking at an ARR bridge [1] with a young finance ace. He made a few comments and concluded with, “and net revenue retention (NRR) is thus 112%, not bad.” I thought, “Wait, stop! You can’t calculate NRR from an ARR bridge [2].” It’s
Management
Just a quick post to share the slides I used at a recent SaaStock member workshop on Rising to the Challenges of US Expansion. Thanks to those who attended -- everyone had great questions and feedback. My favorite was roughly: "listen to Dave, I literally have made every one of
Boards
[Restructured. See notes.] I think board meetings should have more discussions and fewer proposals. Why? * The hardest questions often don't lend themselves well to proposals. Think: global warming, cultural divisiveness. Or, in business: investor alignment, exit strategy, or a flawed corporate strategy. You're not going to
Leadership
To adapt Julius Caesar's famous opening line of the Gallic Wars: marketing as a whole is divided in three parts. * Product marketing (prodmkt), responsible in a word, for the message and how well it resonates with customers in the market [1]. * Demand generation (demandgen), responsible in a word,
Management
"I'm an CMO and it's 2018. Of course I've read Play Bigger. Duh. Do you think I live under a rock?" -- Anonymous repeat CMO Play Bigger hit the Sand Hill Road scene in a big way after its publication in 2016. Like