The Low Viral Coefficient of SaaS, And Why That’s Just Fine
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to get from $1m to $10m, $2m to $5m, $10m to $30m, etc. etc. One area we haven’t talked as much about is getting from say $100k in ARR to Initial Traction, or $1-$2m in ARR. A bit, but not as much. The reason is while I […]
You’ll Know in One Sales Cycle If Your VP Sales Won’t Work Out: Four Case Studies.
Just about a year ago, we did a post that proved, at the time, to be somewhat controversial. That in Just 30 Days, or at least, just one full sales cycle — you’ll know if your VP Sales isn’t going to work out. This isn’t intuitive, and is something I had to learn the hard way. […]
News Analysis: Adobe EchoSign’s Electronic Signatures Goes 100% Mobile
Frictionless Signatures Key To Matrix Commerce Success On September 16th, 2014, Adobe EchoSign announced native mobile e-signature capability for iOS and Android devices. While EchoSign has been in the cloud for some time, the native capability in mobile allows over 37 million users to send documents for signature, receive e-signatures, e-sign documents, and track documents. […]
Come See 3 Epic Sessions at Dreamforce on Predictable Revenue, Benchmarking, and “The Best of SaaStr”
Salesforce has put together another pretty epic founder / entrepreneur track this year at Dreamforce. You can check out the schedule here. There are three sessions I wanted to highlight in particular, that I’ll either be at or leading. First, on Day One, Monday October 13 at 1:30pm, Aaron Ross, my good friend, colleague and […]
Moving the Sales Needle
Today Apttus and Adobe Echosign announced the results of a survey of more than 100 Fortune 1000 sales leaders conducted earlier this year. Titled “Five Blind Spots in the Sales Process” the report focuses on things that have been perennial issues for sales managers. Net Results Here’s the big picture view. 1 in 4 companies […]
If You Sell Your Company — Prioritize Dollars Over Prestige
Recently I did a founders-only event sponsored by ExitRound. It was off the record, so I won’t go into anything we spoke about. But there was one theme the audience told me from all 4 speakers. They didn’t know selling was so emotional. If you haven’t sold a start-up before, you think it’s a combination of […]
SaaStr on RedditAMA (“Ask Me Anything”) Tomorrow, Th 3/27, at 2pm PST
If you have time, tomorrow at 2pm PST I’ll be online at Reddit answering your questions on SaaS, or I guess, about just about anything. Since it’s called Ask Me Anything. I’ve set aside at least 2 hours so if you want to ask anything you haven’t gotten an answer to, please come by and […]
An Initial Sales Rep Comp Plan to Lower Your Stress Level, Increase Cash, and Make Everyone a Lot of Money
I’m not ashamed to admit that when I set up our first SaaS comp plan, I had no idea what I was doing. In my first start-up, yes I sold to the enterprise. I sold $6m our first year (man, that sounds good looking back on it). But I did all the sales myself, and […]
Can We Ignore Churn Early On at a SaaS Company?
Jason Lemkin has my juices flowing again. He’s published a blog post with the suggestion that you should ignore churn and length of sales cycle as key management metrics when a SaaS company is young. I’m with him on the Sales Cycle–it’ll be all over the map in the early days. But on churn? Nope, […]
Adobe Inks EchoSign Acquisition and Also Acquires Patent Infringement Suit Courtesy of RPost
Earlier this week, the signature — digital signature, to be more specific — world saw the greatest excitement seen since John Hancock put his infamous pen and ink to the Declaration of Independence. In a matter of days, Adobe an…
