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
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.
Management
You've decided you need to replace one of your executives. Hopefully, the executive already knows things aren't going great and that you've already had several conversations about performance. Hopefully, you've also already had several conversations with the board and they either are
Management
The plot of so-called backstage musicals usually centers around the production of a show, often created to avoid imminent financial peril, as you’d find in many of the depression-era Our Gang movies. Invariably, as the characters realize their predicament, someone shouts the solution, “Hey, we can put on a
Management
I had a chat with a CMO a while back. DK: How's the relationship with your CRO going? CMO: Solid. We collaborate really well. DK: I've heard you've had some trouble hitting sales targets. CMO: Yes, well you know the targets are pretty aggressive
Boards
I'll be speaking next month in Barcelona on the first day of SaaStr Europa, held at the International Convention Center on June 7th and 8th. My presentation is scheduled at 11:25AM on June 7th and entitled The Top 5 Scale-Up Mistakes and How to Avoid Them. While
CEO
I talked to a founder a while back who felt like they'd lost a year or two thanks to some strategic distractions foisted upon them by a well-meaning board of directors. While most startup boards try to follow the Hippocratic Oath, some -- like well-meaning but overbearing parents
CEO
I've always felt that "what keeps you up at night?" was a trick question for CEOs. There's one part of it I'm quite sure about. There cannot be anything that you control that keeps you up at night. Why? Because you'
Management
In the land of disruption, there's always something dying and something lining up to replace it, so we're pretty used to hearing things like "on-premise is dead, long live SaaS." Sometimes, they're right. Despite the 2008-era views of our resident luddite below,
Customer Success
A few weeks back, I sat down with Jonathan Corrie, cofounder and CEO of Precursive -- a Salesforce-native professional services (PS) delivery cloud that provides PS automation, task, and resource management -- to discuss one of my favorite topics, the role of professional services in today's SaaS businesses.