Why Solving Big Food & Healthcare Problems Will Yield Spectacular Companies
I’ve spoken before about our desire at Upfront Ventures to fund really big ideas that solve hard problems, are science led and if successful will both have a positive effect on people’s lives as well as make great financial returns. We’re not Pollyannaish about this. We believe that it is incrementally harder to differentiate on […]
The Lead Plateau You May Hit Just As It Gets Good. How to Plan Around It.
Many SaaS companies hit an “organic lead plateau” at several phases: When you get Really Big, at some point, every company in the world is an Opportunity. Box, Salesforce, etc. really don’t have many new opportunies to hit up. Instead, they have to work them better. This can hit you around $50-$80m-$100m ARR or so. […]
Marketo: Winning, IPOing, and Going Upmarket (Video + Transcript)
In anticipation of the upcoming SaaStr Annual 2017, we’ll be releasing the full series of transcripts and videos from all the awesome 2016 sessions. We were super excited to have Phil Fernandez, CEO and co-founder of Marketo, sit down and talk to us about the triumphs (and struggles) leading Marketo from inception to IPO. Phil […]
What is it Like to Wake Up and Have the Press Ready to Torpedo Your Business?
In case you missed it, the press yesterday ran several stories questioning the viability of a wireless charging company I invested in called uBeam. Obviously my day turned out very differently than I had anticipated when I woke up, but it wasn’t half as bad as the entire team at uBeam must have felt yesterday. […]
Raising More Than $20m in Venture Capital? It’s All Good — If You Are Even Better Than Box
For the past few years, it’s been pretty confusing trying to understand what’s going on in SaaS fundraising. Starting in ’13 through mid-’15, rounds dramatically grew in size and pace, and dozens of unicorns were minted. Things then slowed down dramatically in Q1 ’16, as the SaaS public markets crashed … and then recovered in […]
CIO alert: Information technology is a $4 trillion global business
Research from IT advocacy group, CompTIA, offers interesting data about the size, scope, and growth of the information technology industry. For CIOs and other IT professionals, understanding the trends can help you create company strategy, identify job opportunities, understand areas of growth, and sidestep the impact of industry weakness. For example, there is a skills […]
Getting Your Series A Mojo Back
You Need to Find Your Mojo A Chip On Your Shoulder A few years ago I wrote a blog post on entrepreneurs with a chip on their shoulders. I think it’s an important read. A chip on one’s shoulder as in, “Fuck the system, it’s broken and I want to fix it” is exactly the […]
Stuck in the Middle With You
Stuck in the Middle With You Reservoir Dogs … If it’s lost on you Google it It’s safe to say that all eyes globally are on the United States right now with an election that feels more like a script of House of Cards than the sad reality we’re living. There are reasons to be despondent […]
When the Player-Coach is Just That. And No More.
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about not screwing up that VP of Sales hire. Done right, it will accelerate your company to the next level. Done wrong — you can lose the better part of a year, and half of your last round of capital. And we’ve talked a lot about the trade-offs in […]
#CXOTALK: Open data and APIs at The New York Times
The New York Times is one of the most venerable and well-known newspapers in the world. Despite its long history, the Times faces significant disruptive pressure from the competitive media environment. Proliferating sources of content, changing expectations of information consumers, and shifting sources of revenue have forced the New York Times to reconsider how it […]
Lead, Follow or Get the Fuck Out of the Way
Lead — It’s hard to be a real leader. Decisions are never black or white, so most people fudge. The straddle middle grounds to keep everybody happy. They make compromises to try and hold together constituencies. On business decisions they want to hedge their bets so they do a little bit of everything but nothing […]
Never Ask Two People to do One Person’s Job
Why you do me like that? Over the year’s I’ve tried to offer some tangible, practical advice to help people communicate more effectively. I’ve weighed in on: But one thing really drives me nucking futs and that’s asking two (or more!) people to do the job of one person. If you want somebody to action […]
At $50k in MRR, Running Out of Money Is No Longer an Excuse
We’ve talked a lot about SaaStr on the challenges in getting from nothing to that first $1m-$1.5m in ARR, “Initial Traction”. That is takes longer than you think. That if you get 10 customers, you can get another 10, 100, and so on. There’s a particular moment in time I want to focus on here […]
Why Misunderstanding Startup Metrics Can Cost You Your Business
There has been a lot of public debate over the past several weeks about whether it’s a good thing to be “gross margin positive” or not and commentary always reminds me that some people at startups don’t quite understand financial metrics or even how to think about which ones are healthy. When I publicly Tweeted […]
The Importance of Teams and Why the Best Leaders Cultivate Them
I was watching my favorite show on TV this morning – GPS (Global Public Square) with Fareed Zakaria. It is a hugely compelling show because Zakaria covers world issues that will affect all of us in ways that are accessible and with frameworks for processing disparate information. He brings knowledgable experts from varying points of […]
