Why VCs Need Unicorns Just to Survive
One of the most tiring things for founders can be always being compared to Unicorns. Certainly sometimes it’s inspirational. I loved it when many of the founders I work with came out of the ’15 SaaStrAnnual saying they needed to grow faster, at a Zenefits-like level: But the reality is there are different ways to make […]
Roundtrip Revenue: Probably, Just Do It.
If you’ve been around since the Web 1.0 days, a certain phrase may send shivers up your spine — “Roundtrip Revenue.” People went to jail at AOL for this, folks, overstating revenue by as much as $1 billion that wasn’t really real. It was just matched against AOL purchases, making the revenues in essence nonexistent. […]
Around $4-$5m in ARR, You Probably Will Need a Chief MRR Officer
At Dreamforce, Gainsight, a leading SaaS company/service for managing customer success, was kind enough to invite me to speak at their session on Customer Success together with Dan Steinman, their COO. Prior to Gainsight, Dan was VP of Customer Success at $100m+ ARR and IPO’d SaaS leader Marketo and really knows his stuff, as you’d […]
Hire the Right Type of VP Marketing — Or You’ll Just End Up With a Bunch of Blue Pens with Your Logo On Them
Apologies to all those to whom this is already well known. But, I know many of you have never hired a head of marketing before. And as soon as you get your MSP (Minimum Sellable Product) out the door, and you’ve got your first 10 customers under your belt — you’re probably going to want […]
BATNA, And Oracle’s $811m Purchase of Eloqua
It may seem strange to see Oracle acquire Eloqua for $811m just a few months after their IPO. But it’s not strange at all. I am 95% sure talks at some level were going on for quite some time, long before the IPO. And 80% sure, a soft offer of less than $500m or […]
A Real Life SaaS Case Study: Eloqua. Marketo. Pardot. There Are 3 Different Paths to Success, My Young Padwan.
I don’t know about you, but I really can’t stand case studies. They always seem either contrived (forcing contrasts in companies that aren’t really there) or else too hypothetical, because we know which way things really worked out in real life (Case Study: Company A had to decide whether to do action X or Y. […]
Zuora – Doing some of the Heavy Lifting for SaaS Vendors
At the recent Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco I met with Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, a provider focussing solely on billing solutions for SaaS vendors. Tien was part of the earliest days of salesforce.com and has seen the massive amounts of work, both initial and ongoing, that billing crates for SaaS vendors. While […]
