For Entrepreneurs Blog

SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters

David Skok — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 13:28:33 +0000

“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” – Lord Kelvin This article is a comprehensive and detailed look at the key metrics that are needed to understand and optimize a SaaS business. It is a completely updated rewrite of an older post. For this version, I have co-opted two real experts in the [...]

Metrics and Compensation for SaaS Inside Sales

David Skok — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 13:00:14 +0000

The Bridge Group have recently published a report titled: Inside Sales for SaaS Metrics and Compensation Report for B2B technology companies The report is based on a survey of 197 B2B technology companies, and covers topics such as: Ramp and Retention Compensation and Quota Activity and Infrastructure Inside Sales Management Management’s top challenges They [...]

Using Surveys to Validate Key Startup Decisions

bchudoba — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 12:30:38 +0000

Summary This article describes in detail how to use on-line survey tools to validate your key startup assumptions, and gain actionable insights into topics such as pricing, target demographics, messaging, etc. Introduction By now pretty much every entrepreneur knows the basics of Lean Startup methodology: start by searching for product/market fit. Get out of the [...]

Pacific Crest’s 2011 SaaS Survey

David Skok — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:00:23 +0000

Pacific Crest, an investment banking firm with a strong focus on SaaS, has surveyed a 70 SaaS companies with very interesting results. There is some great data on topics such as growth rates, cost of customer acquisition, churn/retention, expense models, capital efficiency, etc. The full survey, which was put together by David Spitz and his team [...]

Why Churn is SO critical to success in SaaS

David Skok — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:15:54 +0000

Summary: Illustrates graphically why churn is a huge problem a SaaS company gets larger. It also looks at a very surprising factor that can massively accelerate SaaS growth: negative churn. (This article is applicable to any recurring revenue business, not just SaaS.) Introduction As a SaaS company becomes larger, the size of the subscription base [...]

Why Sales People shouldn’t Prospect – An interview with Aaron Ross

David Skok — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:45:55 +0000

In this article I interview Aaron Ross, co-author of a new book, Predictable Revenue. Aaron discusses his experience at Salesforce.com starting a new group that used an innovative outbound prospecting approach (involving no cold calls) to create new leads. Aaron’s group came up with several important breakthroughs which enabled them add over $100m in incremental [...]

Understanding the Customer Buying Cycle & Triggers

David Skok — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:00:23 +0000

This article looks at why customers expect different interactions with you depending on where they are in the buying cycle. It also examines how specific events trigger them into a buying mode. It then explains how you can use this information to make your marketing more effective. The Customer Buying Cycle A simple way to [...]

The Application Development Landscape – 2012 and beyond

David Skok — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:00:38 +0000

Today’s application developers are faced with a broad set of architectural decisions that can make or break their company going forward. This presentation, which was given as a keynote for the MassTLC application development conference, highlights the major changes that are taking place in the world of application development. The Application Development Landscape – 2011 [...]

HubSpot’s Best Practices for Managing SaaS Inside Sales

David Skok — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:00:07 +0000

Best practices for inside sales managers. An interview with Mark Roberge, VP of Sales at HubSpot, discussing how he blends science and process with the art of selling. HubSpot is a SaaS company selling Inbound Marketing software. HubSpot has grown revenue over 6,000% in the last four years, placing them #33 on the Inc 500 [...]

When Selling is the Worst Way to Win Customers

David Skok — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:30:33 +0000

Customers hate being sold to. They don’t mind getting expert help when they want to buy something. But much of the time they are not ready to buy, and one of the most irritating things is to have a salesperson try to get them to buy when they aren’t ready. Unfortunately too many people in [...]

Multi-axis Pricing: a key tool for increasing SaaS revenue

David Skok — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:00:16 +0000

Scalable pricing is a powerful tool to grow revenue in a SaaS or software business. It allows you to capture more of the revenue that your customers are willing to pay, without putting off smaller customers that are not able to pay high prices. It also provides a great way to continue to grow revenue [...]

SaaS CEOs: Measure Customer Engagement – Increase Conversions & Lower Churn

David Skok — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:30:00 +0000

The goal of a SaaS CEO should be to increase the profit they make from each customer (LTV), and lower the costs in sales and marketing that it takes to acquire each customer (CAC). Measuring Customer Engagement is a key tool that will help you achieve that goal, as it will allow you to increase [...]

The Science behind Viral Marketing

David Skok — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 22:38:55 +0000

The Science behind Viral Marketing is a look at the key factors that drive growth in viral marketing. (Hint, the most important factor is not the one everyone expects.) It also looks at what is needed to get virality to work, and how to create and optimize viral marketing campaigns or viral products. This was [...]

Brainstorming for New Startup Ideas: A Framework to Spur Creative Thinking

David Skok — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:00:26 +0000

If you are a serial entrepreneur starting to look for an idea for your next startup, you are likely to want a way to stimulate your brain to come up with as many good ideas as possible. This blog post outlines a framework that is designed to fire up your best creative thinking modes, triggering [...]

Cash is King: 8 tips for Optimizing your Startup Financing Strategy

David Skok — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:05:03 +0000

Introduction This post aims to help startup CEOs optimize their funding strategy by examining how investors value startups, and explaining how to avoid the common cash management pitfalls. (Note: The concepts in this post will likely be obvious to experienced CEOs and entrepreneurs. Despite that, our experience indicates that entrepreneurs frequently make costly, avoidable mistakes [...]