Bubbles
With what everyone seems reluctant to call a bubble in late-stage, private financing in full swing, I thought I'd do a quick post to drill into a concept I presented in my 2015 predictions post, something I call the curse of the megaround. We will do that by
Communications
There are two types of people in business: * Simplifiers: who make complex things simple * Complexifiers: who make simple things complex Quick joke: What does a complexifier call a simplifier? Answer: "Boss." Somewhere, somehow, some people decided that in business you need to make everything complicated and speak using
Management
One thing I try to teach all new (and many old) managers is the simple, somewhat counter-intuitive rule that conflict avoidance causes conflict. Example: a manager has problems with an under-performing employee, but doesn't tell them that their work is below expectations and they need to ship up.
Churn
I was chatting with a fellow SaaS executive the other day and the conversation turned to churn and renewal rates. I asked how he calculated them and he said: Well, we take every customer who was also a customer 12 months ago and then add up their ARR 12 months
About two years ago, I did a post with a chart from JMP that showed the correlation between the value of a SaaS business and its growth rate. Today, I'm back with a chart from RBC [1] that shows things haven't changed. The correlation here is
Management
At Disney -- a company that is truly focused on customer experience -- every “cast member” (i.e., employee) gets six weeks of training before they see a “guest” (i.e., customer). "Face characters" (e.g., Snow White walking through the park) spend an additional 40 hours just
Career
It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of big-company HR practices. I’m more of the First Break all the Rules type. Despite my general skepticism of many standard practices, we still do annual performance reviews at my company, though I’m thinking seriously of dropping them.
Marketing
I think in today's world that we need to ask PR people to be not just literate, but numerate. What does that mean? * They need to do basic math correctly. Most PR people think that going from size $100K to size $700K is 700% growth. It's
Marketing
Say you've got a new product release. You’re super excited about your app’s new Feature X. It’s very innovative. Product marketing sees it as long-needed differentiator. Sales sees it as a silver bullet: “with Feature X, our competition is screwed.” Everyone’s excited. Then it
IPO
As we move into the third week of January, I figured it was “now or never” in terms of getting a set of predictions out for 2015. Before jumping into that, let’s take a quick review of how I did with my 2014 predictions and do some self-grading. 1.
Management
I get a fair number of emails and calls from former colleagues and friends asking for career advice. I'm always happy to provide it and the process of doing so is both thought-provoking and fun. I have a learned a lot from having these conversations and have noticed
CEO
I was digging through my reading pile and found this about nine-month-old report by Accenture and Oracle entitled The CFO as Corporate Strategist by Donniel Schulman and David Axson of Accenture. Those who follow Host Analytics might remember David Axson as he's spoken at several of our user