Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 11, 2022

Sure, we built SaaS products before the term even existed but at 31 it was hard to delineate reality from what all of the monied people around us were telling us what we were worth. In those years I learned to properly build product, price products, sell products and serve customers. Until we weren’t.

Venture Capital 466

Venture Capital Startup Marketing Pricing 466

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 27, 2014

I wrote my version here and Scott wrote an excellent write-up of his views here. We both agree that the later-stage valuations are being driven up to a point that feels irrationally priced [he uses b-round SaaS valuations as an example and I am willing to be even more broad based].

Venture Capital 309

Venture Capital SaaS Writing Funding 309

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 14, 2014

In fact 61% of all mobile searches where a customer contacts a business it is via a phone call (source: Google). Only naive people believe that but for inexperienced entrepreneurs you can be fooled into the narrative by the press who sometimes write stories without the actual data. I don’t want to speak to customer service reps!!

Email 339

Email SaaS Venture Capital Google 339

InfoChachkie

MARCH 4, 2013

Their deep understanding of their customers, an uncompromising drive to create a quality product and the courage to ignore the music industry's formulaic approach to producing hits resulted in the creation one of the top selling non-compilation albums of all time.

Startup 269

Startup Cloud Computing RSS Writing 269

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 16, 2018

Without taking a dime of outside capital, the company has achieved impressive success in a competitive, SaaS market segment, landing companies such as Nike, Intuit, NASA, AutoDesk and PBS. We build product roadmap software – it’s a SaaS company based here in Santa Barbara, California. Semick: They are.

Venture Capital 115

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Santa Barbara SaaS 115

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 6, 2018

Let’s say you have built a SaaS company where a large part of the early revenue comes from a few big customers or a large part of the revenue is services based vs. software based. The investor is a customer and they have money to spend but only for a limited number of companies. Let me give you an example.

Funding 236

Funding Venture Capital Startup Entrepreneur 236

socalTECH

MARCH 1, 2016

Wrike said the new jobs in the location will be in sales and customer service. Write said it selected San Diego over several other cities, including Austin, Raleigh, and Phoenix, citing the city's "rich talent pool" and startup environment.

San Diego 100

San Diego Writing Software Sales 100

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

So I thought I’d write about out with what I would look for in a VC knowing what I know now and why. Traditional software vs. SaaS. Simply put – I’d be in search of a VC who had an intuitive sense of my product, my customers, my organizational issues, my competitors, etc. Most VCs are book smart.

Venture Capital 364

Venture Capital Coach Writing SaaS 364

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 9, 2014

You need a great concept in which you will build something that is truly unique and that will be valued by your customers. I follow Jason Lemkin closely (he’s a long-time friend) and he speaks frequently and passionately about SaaS businesses having built a successful one himself. Startup Advice'

Venture Capital 373

Venture Capital Startup Course Entrepreneur 373

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

There’s one attribute (coming soon) that I need to have in order to write a check but I don’t believe is vital for success. My first company launched in 1999 and we were offering a SaaS document management in the cloud (we were called ASPs back then). So the whole customer development cycle is very streamlined.

Entrepreneur 267

Entrepreneur Startup SaaS San Diego 267

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 23, 2015

The final clip is Fred & I talking about whether “the best product wins” and my assertion that the bias in today’s Silicon Valley dominated tech world there is probably too much emphasis on tech at the expense of how to sell, implement and service customers. I remember writing about online video nearly 5 years ago.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Startup Writing Blogging 150

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 25, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while and was going to use AngelList by Nivi & Naval as the basis for my example and the perfect prompt came yesterday when I read Fred Wilson’s blog post on AngelList. Anything requiring lead generation and/or customer acquisition I call Matt Coffin. Go get your anchors.

Guide 293

Guide Funding Venture Capital Technical Review 293

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2018

The mistake entrepreneurs make is either writing a lengthy email (everybody has too much email so it will get skimmed / not digested) or not having a deck which means the VC can’t quickly determine his or her fit as a potential investor. The key is WHAT you send. whether they invest or not.

Venture Capital 261

Venture Capital Slides Email Startup 261

socalTECH

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

If you're a web publisher, or even a brand developing your own outreach to customers through a newsletter or microsite, how do you efficiently gather and curate all of the news and information out there? We're really monitoring the content areas for our customers, in a way that brings that social signal to it. We're in beta now.

Web 237

Web Newsletter Content Startup 237

socalTECH

MAY 19, 2017

We're entirely born in the cloud, so it's a piece of software installed within a customer's system. Andrew Peterson: We've been really lucky to have a lot of investors who have great experience in working with both SaaS companies, and especially, security. Let's talk about your funding. How are you backed and funded?

Web 138

Web Startup Southern California Software 138

socalTECH

JUNE 30, 2009

I am someone who likes to interact with my Representatives and Senators, by way of writing letters, emailing, and what not. When I was listening, I made a point to try to do that, but when I did, I found I had to go to twenty sites to find the information I needed--whether that was to write a letter, send an email, or whatever.

Startup 100

Startup Writing Southern California Email 100

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

Our marquis customers are companies like Citibank and Lowe's Corporation, along with many others. We also cross into the GUI level of automation, so that a customer can interact with an application and websites as if there was someone at a keyboard. The traditional way to handle that is to write code.

Networking 214

Networking IBM IBM Pacific Palisades 214

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

Packaging, pricing & discounts – In the early days of my first company we always had “list prices&# we quoted to customers and of course we were always willing to negotiate based on who the client was, how important the business was to us, who the competition was and how well the deal was negotiated. I was the laggard.

Sales 296

Sales Pricing Startup Customer 296

InfoChachkie

MARCH 16, 2015

Hosted by SAAS giant Salesforce, it is more akin to a circus than a professional event. Why am I writing an article about a trade show that occurred nearly four months ago? The campaign was racy and somewhat controversial, but it accomplished its goal – to motivate potential customers to interact with Invoca’s product.

Conference 100

Conference SaaS Ideas Sales 100

socalTECH

JULY 27, 2009

For SharePoint, we'll provide additional features--like the ability to upload and modify documents while offline, and synchronize with a SharePoint site, with both read and write community in the Pro version. Tags: entrepreneur access offline service software saas mobophiles startup interview chow william. You can get it for free.

SaaS 127

SaaS Web Google Sites 127

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 20, 2015

We’ve had just one market since then and it could confuse one into thinking: every deal finds downstream investors, every company good or bad finds a home, you know anything at all about brazil, india, china or even saas sales, ecommerce or analytics (you know all these in a bull market). why do I write p.s.’s sometimes?

Funding 150

Funding Venture Capital Startup Marketing 150

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

You are particularly vulnerable if: You have revenue concentration (few customers each providing a large total of percentage of your revenue). You have a large number of startup customers (because when markets crash they have a funny way of going bankrupt quickly or cutting burn precipitously).

Startup 383

Startup Company Companies .Net 383

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 23, 2013

I have long advised startup companies that if you don’t control your messaging somebody else will and your potential customers will form impressions of you shaped by somebody else or by nobody at all. I was a guy who had built 2 SaaS companies and had sold to and worked for Salesforce.com. I could become the SaaS guy.

Technical Advisors 385

Technical Advisors Marketing Startup Venture Capital 385

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

I taught a somewhat crazy course about writing and deploying a scalable website in Ruby on Rails and deploying it in EC2. Along the way many things came together: being able to find the right people, getting great customers, having lots of luck, being in the right place at the right time. From day one we focused on customers.

Cloud Computing 188

Cloud Computing Santa Barbara EC2 Startup 188

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 27, 2011

But should you actually write one if you’re a startup, an industry figure (lawyer, banker) or VC? This is a post to help you figure out why you should write and what you should talk about. I’ll bet your customers, business partners or suppliers would love similar. Who are your customers, partners or suppliers?

Blogging 373

Blogging Startup Writing Venture Capital 373

InfoChachkie

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

8 ) SocialStay is effectively a B-to-B, SaaS product that requires you to simultaneously speak to several audiences (hotels, travelers, travel sites, etc.). Without their buy in, we don’t get the opportunity to interact with end customers. Write it down…. They are starting to see the light. We’re positioned well to scale.”.

Startup 233

Startup Design Mobile Social Network 233

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 31, 2011

“ZipRecruiter makes it trivially easy to post a job ad to your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter streams, but honestly we don’t spend any time marketing this capability to potential customers. It also meant the site stayed dead simple to use which I believe is why our customers like us. Build an elite team.

MyLife 160

MyLife CitySearch Web Technical Review 160

InfoChachkie

JANUARY 31, 2011

“ZipRecruiter makes it trivially easy to post a job ad to your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter streams, but honestly we don’t spend any time marketing this capability to potential customers. It also meant the site stayed dead simple to use which I believe is why our customers like us. Build an elite team.

MyLife 157

MyLife CitySearch Web Technical Review 157

socalTECH

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

If you've taken a course, and need an application to do chemistry or math analysis, there's a store where you can write, share, sell, or buy those applications. It allows students to have better communications, and cuts down the cost of IT to any school They don't need to staff anyone, because we're SaaS based.

Education 124

Education Startup Course Tool 124

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 24, 2019

They therefore often play the role of the “voice of the customer” and bring important relationships. I was a SaaS company and he had been on the Executive Board and the Strategy Council for Larry Ellison at Oracle and he taught me some key lessons about sales and he served as a useful buffer between my investors and me.

Startup 187

Startup Writing Venture Capital Oracle 187

Tech.Co

MARCH 1, 2018

That’s why Canecto developed a cutting-edge, AI framework designed to be a web analytics assistant and help provide owners relevant insights around their customer base and learn how visitors interact with their content. Spinbackup is a Google Cloud Partner and provide Cloud-to-Cloud backup and cyber security solutions for SaaS data.

Startup 79

Startup Mentor Platform Help 79

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 24, 2021

It’s a virtue of the laws of large numbers ($100 million in ARR ) plus strong growth compounding off of large numbers plus large customers relying on our products for 7+ years or longer. Our goal is to produce a $10 billion+ winner and remain the market leader in this SaaS category of AI in Sales & Marketing.

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital Capital Funding Startup 363

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 22, 2010

. - Journalists don’t know enough about your company before the show, don’t have time for proper research, and you will be competing for their time afterward with 49+ other companies that want them to write about you. - If you’re Yammer , Mint or RedBeacon (all winners) you’re knighted with wonderful coverage.

Tips 307

Tips Startup Press Blogging 307

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2015

We never built our product on one partner’s data platform but on many (20 primary data sources plus 100+ smaller ones) and Twitter’s move doesn’t “shut down DataSift” it simply takes 1,000+ customers who consume Twitter data through DataSift and makes their life more difficult. Just how much?

Platform 150

Platform Course Customer Custom 150

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2015

I write about sales often both because it’s the lifeblood of any organization and because in my experience it is the area in which more startups are least experienced or inclined. I also write and talk about it frequently because raising capital is a part of sales and this is important for entrepreneurs to understand.

Sales 150

Sales Startup Venture Capital Funding 150

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 30, 2011

Or simplifying the purchasing process for customers. A way to tell the press and customers what you stand for. They have product offerings in competitive markets and end up getting more than their fair share of the press through stunts that both appeal to journalists writing stories and also reinforce their brands.

Startup 289

Startup Press Software Marketing 289

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

SaaS 101: 7 Simple Lessons From Inside HubSpot - OnStartups , July 19, 2010 It’s been a little over 4 years since I officially launched my internet marketing software company , HubSpot. So, I’ve had about 4 years on the “inside” of a fast-growing, venture-backed B2B SaaS startup. Customer Care Today. What do you think?

Startup 217

Startup Venture Capital Blogging Software Review 217