Entrepreneurship
In an industry obsessed with the 1 in 10,000 decacorns and the stories of high-flying startups and their larger-than-life founders, Lost and Founder takes a real look at what it's like to found, fund, work at, and build a quite successful but not media- and Sand-Hill-Road-worshiped startup.
Boards
While most companies put real thought into how they present numbers in their post-quarter board decks and other management reports, one area in which you'll find a lack of discipline is in how they present quarterly sales forecasts to the board. They're typically done as a
Enterprise
At most sales review meetings what do you hear sales management asking the reps? Questions like these: * What stage is this opportunity in? * What value do you have it at in the pipeline? * Is there upside to that value? * What forecast category is it in? * In what quarter will it
Churn
Since Customer Success is (sadly, perhaps) still a relatively new discipline in enterprise software companies, I'd say the whole field is evolving quickly, so it's important to keep up with the changes
Churn
While I've blogged about this presentation before, I only recently stumbled into this full-length video of this very popular session -- a 30-minute blaze through some subtle SaaS basics. Enjoy! I look forward to seeing everyone again at SaaStr Annual 2019.
Churn
Most of the thinking, definitions, and formulas regarding SaaS unit economics is based on assumptions that no longer reflect the reality of the enterprise SaaS environment. For example, thinking in terms of MRR (monthly recurring revenue) is outdated because most enterprise SaaS companies run on annual contracts and thus we
Metrics
How many times have you heard this conversation? VC: how many sales reps do you have? CEO: Uh, 25. But not really. VC: What do you mean, not really? CEO: Well, some of them are new and not fully productive yet. VC: How long does it take for them to
Forecasting
If your sales organization is like most, you classify sales opportunities in about four categories, such as: * Commit, which are 90% likely to close * Forecast, which are 70% likely to close * Upside, which are 33% likely to close * Unlikely, which are 5% likely to close And then, provided you have
Churn
This post won't save your life, or your company. But it might save you a few precious hours at 2:00 AM if you're working on your company's SaaS metrics and can't foot your quarterly and annual churn rates while preparing a
Marketing
There are only two archetypal marketing messages, exemplified by: * Bags Fly Free, a current advertising slogan used by Southwest airlines. * Soup is Good Food, a 1970s campaign slogan used by Campbell's soup [1]. Quick, what's the difference between these two messages? Soup is Good Food answers
BI
I preferred Silicon Valley [1] back in the day when companies raised modest amounts of capital (e.g., $30M) prior to an IPO that took 4-6 years from inception, where burn rates of $10M/year looked high, and where $100M raise was the IPO, not one or more rounds prior
Entrepreneurship
I remember one day, years ago, when I was a VP at $10M startup and Larry, the head of sales, came in one day handing out t-shirts that said: "Code, sell, or get out of the way." Neither I, nor the rest of marketing team, took this particularly