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 For example, thinking in terms of MRR (monthly recurring revenue) is outdated because most enterprise SaaS companies run on annual contracts and thus we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
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
AR
From time to time marketers and executives need to talk about the competition with those outside the company, including analysts, partners, and prospective investors. In this post, we'll cover my 4 rules for this type of communication. Be Consistent. The biggest mistake people make is inconsistency, often because
Metrics
Perhaps you’ve seen this movie: CEO: “Wow the quarterly pipeline dropped 20% this week. What’s going on sales VP?” Sales VP: “Well, that’s because we cleaned it up this week.” CEO: “That sounds great, but you said that last week.” VP of Sales: “Well, that’s because
CAC
Financial analysts speak a lot about “billings” in a public SaaS companies, but in private VC-backed SaaS companies, you rarely hear discussion of this metric. In this post, we’ll use a model of a private SaaS company (where we know all the internal metrics), to show how financial
CAC
My ears always perk up when I hear someone say "net new ARR" -- because I'm trying to figure out which, of typically two, ways they are using the term: * To mean ARR from net new customers, in which case, I don't know why they
BI
Last week I sat down with interviewers Doug Henschen, Vala Afshar, and a bit of Ray Wang (live from a 777 taxiing en route to Tokyo) to participate in Episode 100 of DisrupTV along with fellow guests DataStax CEO Billy Bosworth and big data / science recruiter Virginia Backaitis. We covered