Use Triangulation Forecasts For Improved Forecast Accuracy and Better Conversations
Ever been in this meeting? CEO: What’s the forecast? CRO: Same as before, $3,400K. Director 1: How do you feel about it? CRO: Good. Director 2: Where will we really land? CRO: $3,400K. That’s why that’s the forecast. Director 1: But best case, where do we land? CRO: Best case, $3,800K. Director 2: How do […]
A Tip of the Hat to Grid On Their Launch Day
It’s not every day you hear about a startup in Iceland, founded by a guy whose last company was a data marketplace that he sold to Qlik. And it’s a small world when a friend and fellow board member had independently discovered the same tool and built a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) calculator […]
The Holy Grail of the Repeatable Sales Process: Is Repeatability Enough?
Most of us are familiar with Mark Leslie’s classic Sales Learning Curve and its implications for building the early salesforce at an enterprise startup. In short, it argues that too many startups put “the pedal to the metal” on sales hiring too early – before they have enough knowledge, process, and infrastructure in place – […]
Marketing Targeting: It’s Not Just Where You Fish, It’s What You Put on the Hook
Back in the day I was taught that marketers do three things, memorized via the acronym STP: segment, target, position. Divide the audience into different segments. For example, dividing consumers by demographics or dividing businesses by size or industry. Select the segments that the company wishes to target for its marketing. For example, choosing small […]
10 Ways AI Is Improving New Product Development
Startups’ ambitious AI-based new product development is driving AI-related investment with $16.5B raised in 2019, driven by 695 deals according to PwC/CB Insights MoneyTree Report, Q1 2020. AI expertise is a skill product development teams are ramping up their recruitment efforts to find, with over 7,800 open positions on Monster, over 3,400 on LinkedIn and […]
On the Perils of Taking Advice from Successful Business People
One of the hardest things about running startups is you’re never sure who to listen to. Your board members own big stakes in the company, but that doesn’t automatically align them with you. Your late-stage investors want low multiples on big numbers. Your early-stage investors want big multiples on small numbers. And they have their […]
Marketing Exists to Make Sales Easier
Many moons ago when I was young product marketing manager, I heard a new VP of Marketing speak at a marketing all-hands meeting. He spoke with a kiwi accent and his name was Chris Greendale. What he said were six words that changed my career: Marketing exists to make sales easier While this has clearly […]
Kellblog’s 10 Predictions for 2020
As I’ve been doing every year since 2014, I thought I’d take some time to write some predictions for 2020, but not without first doing a review of my predictions for 2019. Lest you take any of these too seriously, I suggest you look at my batting average and disclaimers. Kellblog 2019 Predictions Review 1. […]
Top 25 IoT Startups To Watch In 2019
26,792 startups are relying on IoT as one of their main technologies to launch new products and services and support platform-based business models according to Crunchbase. 78.4% of IoT startups Crunchbase tracks have had two funding rounds or less with seed, angel and early-stage rounds being the most common. IoT startup funding reached $16.7B in […]
Storm Ventures $180M SaaS Fund – Congrat’s Jason & Anshu
Congratulations to fellow Enterprise Irregulars Jason Lemkin and Anshu Sharma on raising the new Fund, and to Anshu on joining Storm Ventures. Oh, and thanks for pimping the EI early in the video
