7 Steps to Getting to Cash-Flow Positive Faster (in SaaS)
There are pros and cons, in these days of Fat Start-ups, to being cash-flow positive. In an ideal world, you’d experience both hyper-growth, and free cash flow from almost Day 1. The reality is though, in SaaS, especially if you are sales-driven, that’s often gonna be tough. You’ll need some capital to get either off [...]
Cloud research exposes gaps between CIOs and business leaders
We often hear that IT is not aligned with the business, which is a catchall concept loosely meaning that business leaders and IT folks do not understand each other’s goals. Although differences in perspective and goals between these groups do exist, the gaps are difficult to measure, quantify, or even describe precisely. Nonetheless, these differences [...]
Divorce Facebook Style
Who gets the data after a couple gets divorced? You might be surprised at just how much Facebook data plays in a divorce scenario, and if Take this Lollypop didn’t scare you, this should make you stop and think for a minute about data, and who it belongs to. Any good divorce lawyer is going [...]
Sure Dropbox is Potentially Insecure, but Does it Matter?
It’s summertime down in my neck of the woods and that’s a good time to go out on a limb with a statement that might get people a little fired up. Bear with me on this one though… Over on GigaOm Barb Darrow has a good write up about the findings of a survey commissioned [...]
A Simple Commitment Test For You And Your Co-Founders
As we’ve talked about before, the great thing about SaaS, is it compounds. Once you have something, it builds on itself. But it takes time. It takes 7-10 to build something real. If you are reading this, you’re probably up for that 7+ year commitment, assuming you’re fortune enough to get there. >> But what [...]
Facebook gets freakier with Take This Lollypop
Facebook gets freakier with Take This Lollypop If you ever wondered who was looking at your public information, and you were silly enough to post real information rather than plausible dummy information, then “Take This Lollypop” will totally make your day. Facebook indeed presents a danger for oversharing information that can allow a person to [...]
One Book Every Entrepreneur Should Own
Brad Feld seems to write books faster than I can read and write about them. This time he has written a book that is far more important than most management books you will read. He teamed up with his wife, Amy Batchelor, to write about about the impact that entrepreneurship has on relationships and what [...]
The All-In Dilution from an Outside CEO: Just Make Sure You Do the Math
First, before we get into the math and the pie chart below, let me be clear: I am in NO way against bringing in an outside CEO to run your SaaS company. #1: If you lack CEO skills on your team, you should do this on Day 1. #2: And even if you have enough [...]
Bridging the Chasm Between IT and the Business
People go to great lengths to explain how cloud computing is democratizing IT and enabling the end-users of technology to make some decisions themselves about what they use, how they use it and how quickly they can get set up. A plethora of enterprise vendors have got their start in
PaaS Pivot: Big Data At The Core Of Platform Services
As we go into 2013, I keep thinking about the evolution of the Platform as a Service and wonder what is in store for this segment this year. As Platform Services are one of my core focus areas of research, I thought I will start off this year with a post on this topic. For [...]
Does The Telecom Industry Still Exist?
Does the Telecom industry even exist anymore? I am in Vancouver Canada and am having a conversation with a branch office there. One of the questions came up as to why our company still has a Telecom department. After my knee-jerk explanation that they supply phones, inter-communication services, and manage our gateways the manager stated simply: But [...]
5 Simple Ideas to Immediately Improve Your Conversion Rates in SaaS
Recently, I was asked a great question about Improving Conversion Rates. If you haven’t done this in the past, I’ve got my 4 best suggestions that will work to get your conversion rates up. If you’re past this point — my apologies. However, before we get there, let me state the obvious, that there are [...]
Understanding Shodan HQ for hacking and cyber warfare
Understanding Shodan HQ for hacking and cyber warfare Shodan HQ is probably one of the more interesting web sites that few people know about. Shodan scans the internet looking for devices that people have left unsecured or with default if any login information. Sometimes a web site just makes you happy, and Shodan has shown [...]
How are people using Cloud Computing?
With all the power and possibilities of using cloud computing, how are people actually using the technology? You might just be surprised by this late 2012 data gathered and presented in this latest survey data. From the latest survey in how people are using Cloud Computing, 41% of the people taking the survey say that [...]
A Journey From SQL to NoSQL to NewSQL
Two years back I wrote that the primary challenge with NoSQL is that it’s not SQL. SQL has played a huge rule in making relational databases popular for the last forty years or so. Whenever the developers wanted to design an(y) application they put an …
