Demandgen
I’m frankly shocked by how many startups treat pipeline as a monolith. Sample CMO: “we’re in great shape because we have a total pipeline of $32M covering a forward-four-quarter (F4Q) sales target of $10M, so 3.2x coverage. Next slide, please.” Regardless of your view on
Branding
From time to time, every CMO faces a key question: to brand or not to rebrand? Often, it’s right after joining a company and you want to make a big splash. Sometimes, it’s after you’ve been with a company for a while and you and some told-
Boards
We’re announcing today that I’m joining the board of directors of Profisee, a leader in master data management (MDM). I’m doing so for several reasons, mostly reflecting my belief that successful technology companies are about three things: the people, the space, and the product. I like the
Entrepreneurship
Who else but my old friend Jim Milbery, a founding partner at ParkerGale, could come up with a podcast called the Private Equity Funcast, complete with its own jingle and with a Thunderbirds-inspired opening? Jim and I worked together at Ingres back in the -- well “pre-Chernobyl” as Jim
Entrepreneurship
I’ve increasingly spoken to startup employees who find themselves in a difficult trap. Let’s demonstrate it via an example: Say you joined a startup in September 2009 as an early employee and immediately received a stock-option grant of 400,000 shares with a strike price of $0.
Career
This is a sister post to my recent one, Career Decisions: What to Look For in a Software Startup. That piece is all about what to look for when considering taking a job at a software startup. This piece is kind of the opposite: what to look out for when
Boards
I am surprised by how many startup CEOs leave the board hanging at the end of the quarter. As a CEO my rule of thumb was that if a board member ever asked me about the quarter then I'd failed in being sufficiently proactive in communications. In tight
Finance
In this post we’re going to look at the management accounting side of multi-year SaaS deals that grow in value over time. I’ve been asked about this a few times lately, less because people value my accounting knowledge [1] but rather because people are curious about the
Customer Success
I think for many sales-aggressive enterprise SaaS startups, a fair amount of churn actually happens at inception. For example, back in 2013, shortly after I joined Host Analytics, I discovered that there were a number of deals that sales had signed with customers that our professional services (PS) team
Demandgen
I can’t tell you the number of times, as we were tearing down our booth after having had an epic show, that we overheard the guy next door calling back to corporate saying that the show was a “total waste of time” and that the company shouldn’t do
Career
So, you're thinking of taking a job at a startup, but are nervous about the risk, perhaps having trouble telling one from another, and unsure about knowing what's really important in startup success. In this post, I'll share what I consider to be a
Forecasting
Just a quick post to share a slide deck I created for a session I did with the top S&M executives at a private equity group's sales and marketing summit. We discussed some of my favorite topics, including: * Some fun quotes on marketing and sales * Sales