Xero Hits Escape Velocity With 100000 Customers Count
Xero held its annual meeting last week and detailed its current performance. Xero annual meetings are always an interesting event, Xero has an incredibly supportive shareholder base, while most publicly listed company AGMs include a fair dose of critique and questioning, Xero’s events instead ring to the sound of hand-clapping
FreeAgent Acquires 60mo–Plans US Expansion
Big news in the SaaS accounting space this morning as FreeAgent announces that it has acquired US accounting provider 60mo and will be using the company as its vehicle for a US expansion. 60mo is a small SaaS provider that has quietly been going about building a small following for its financial forecasting tool. They’ve […]
Responding to Competition–In the Cloud World–It’s All About Raising the Tide
It’s an interesting trait and one which I believe isn’t specific to Sage – in corporate rooms all across the world, highly paid strategy analysts are spending time agonizing over the impact of a tiny player in their space. That in itself is bad enough, but the flow on effects are far worse.
Is Multi-Currency Actually Important for SMBs?
Of late there has been a bunch of discussion about whether or not multi-currency functionality is important for SMBs. Some commentators came to this conversation from the perspective that if SaaS accounting vendors want to achieve scale, they have to provide for multi-currency. In a post discussing this AccMan says that; As things stand today, […]
On Trial Periods for SaaS Companies–Is Shorter Better?
Recently KashFlow CEO Duane Jackson made the decision to reduce the trial periods offered on his product from 60 days down to 14. In blogging about this change, Jackson explained the decision saying; We analysed our trial data and found that the vast majority of people who never converted from free trial to paid-up had […]
Brightpearl Delivers in a Multi Channel World
Nearly three years ago in a fit of frustration I wrote a post detailing what I considered to be a relatively obvious set of requirements for a small manufacturing business I am a shareholder in. To recap – we currently use a bunch of disconnected systems because there is no
Wave Nabs Funding–On Free vs Paid
The other day SaaS Accounting vendor Wave announced that it had just closed $5 million in funding led by well respected VC, Charles River Ventures. While yet another vendor raising a series A wouldn’t usually be cause for comment, this is an interesting case in that Wave, as I’ve written about before, is a free […]
FreeAgent Nabs Series B
News just in that UK SaaS accounting vendor FreeAgent has nabbed GBP2M in investment from SM Trust and Torch Partners. It’s an interesting development given the other two main players in the UK market, Xero and KashFlow are both currently well funded – Xero via an IPO and some subsequent private investment and KashFlow from […]
Sage in the Cloud, but is it too little too late?
Last week Sage, the UK’s biggest accountancy software supplier, finally released their first real online accounting solution. It looks like a proper SaaS or Cloud offering, unlike the hosted Online 50 product sold through a few resellers from 6 years ago, or their previous failed attempt of SageLive in 2009. I would argue that because […]
Software Marketing Pranks
I envy software marketing types. They get to stay kids forever: pull pranks and even get paid for it.:-) Today’s example comes courtesy of TechCrunch: PayPal competitor WePay dropped a 600lbs ice block at the entrance of the Paypal developer conference. They got chased away and Moscone security removed the ice block. My question: who […]
On Bootstrapping. And Big Bucks. And Organic Growth
Recently there have been a few posts about growth through funding and growth through organic means. Tony Hsieh from Zappos told his tale of woe about the expectations of VC’s in terms of good exits. On the other hand, Sridhar Vembu, Founder of Zoho (disclosure – Zoho is exclusive sponsor of CloudAve) wrote an excellent […]
Carry The One – E-Commerce Integration FTW
I’ve spoken many times before about the power of integration and what it can bring to businesses. I’ve also whined about the inefficiencies caused by separate, integrated services – one of my own businesses is a good example of this pain – having to receive e-commerce orders, manually enter them into and accounting package, manually […]
SaaS, Accounting, Microsoft Money and Hyperbole.
Over on Accounting Web, a right royal stoush was started when Aqilla’s Hugh Scantlebury wrote an op ed piece opining what the withdrawal of Microsoft’s Office Accounting product means and, more importantly, what is behind the move. For those who need the history, Microsoft discontinued its Office Accounting product line, having determined that; existing free […]
SaaS CEO on Improving Website Visitor to Trial User to Paying Customer Conversion
I don’t claim to be an expert in the area, so this is more a quick pointer then a real post. Well, too short for a post, too long for a tweet:-) Duane Jackson, CEO of SaaS accounting provider Kashflow writes up his experience of using Google Analytics and Website Optimizer to fine-tune his site […]
SaaS Certainty – Escrow is the Answer
I got an email the other day from Escrow Associates, a provider of software escrow services that has just today announced the release of their SaaS software escrow agreement. For those not accustomed to escrow services, they are a contract where by the IP of a product is held by a third party and is […]
