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Silicon Y'all Blog

Founders Advisors recently hosted our ninth annual tech summit, Silicon Y’all. Silicon Y’all is an exclusive gathering of technology entrepreneurs and investors held at the beautiful Ross Bridge Resort & Spa in Birmingham, AL. More than an event, it is an intimate gathering where each participant’s experiences and expertise help shape meaningful conversations and learnings. Kicking […]

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By: William Short If you are the owner or operator of a SaaS business, customer acquisition efficiency is a critical metric that can make or break your business. Efficient customer acquisition ensures that you are growing your customer base in a cost-effective manner, and with the market continuing to emphasize and value profitability and growth efficiency […]

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As founders begin to pursue a sellside transaction process, it is important to understand the various phases of process execution and the emotional cycles that will most likely come with each phase. Our team is a firm believer that, often, the most value we can add to these processes is helping manage the founders’ emotions […]

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As a Managed Services Provider (MSP), your goal is to provide efficient IT services and support to your clients while maintaining a profitable and sustainable business. While client retention and growth are two major factors in determining the valuation of a business, there are certain situations where it might be better to fire or not […]

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A common refrain we hear from owners of MSPs is that they’re hesitant to consider bringing on a partner or selling their business when things are going well.  We completely understand, as life is easier when you are growing, customers are happy, and margins are strong.  However, we’ve also seen the opposite, when a Managed […]

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In the Marketing Technology July 2023 Market Update, we highlight public market trends, M&A activity, and the most active buyers/investors. We also share key performance indicators and valuation trends for three sub-sectors within the MarTech space. We’ve curated the latest market commentary and shared some relevant content published by our team. One piece that we included […]

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Working capital is a crucial financial metric that measures an MSP’s ability to meet its short-term obligations and fund its daily operations. For any IT Services company, working capital plays a vital role in ensuring smooth service delivery, managing cash flow, and funding growth opportunities. When selling a company, it is fundamental for MSPs to […]

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Technology Sector Update with Director, Brad Johnson This edition of Founders’ May 2023 SaaS Market Newsletter includes: If you or someone you know have questions regarding anything discussed, or the general SaaS marketplace, please feel free to reach out to Zane Tarence, Partner and Head of Founders’ Tech & Business Services Group. […]

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In this edition of Founder’s Managed IT Services Q1 2023 Update, our team provides valuable insights from the marketplace based on the first quarter. Despite the continued broader macro noise and uncertainty associated with interest rate increases, banking failures, geopolitical conflict, etc., MSP and IT Services M&A remained steady during 2023 Q1. Roughly 170 M&A transactions […]

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Unless you are operating your MSP in stealth mode with little to no web presence, odds are that you receive inquiries from private equity groups (PEGs) on a near-daily basis. While this is flattering and can be exciting, it is important to first understand a few basics of how PEGs work, and second, appreciate the […]

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By: Billy Pritchard As founders begin to consider various capital transactions for their business, they are often focused on two primary deal structures:  1) selling 100% of the business to a strategic buyer, or 2) partnering with a private equity firm through a recapitalization. Depending on the personal objectives of the founders, as well as […]

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Guest article by  Billy Pritchard, vice president at Founders Advisors. In the world of private capital transactions, deal values and statistics are discussed primarily using the Enterprise Value metric. The term “Enterprise Value” is often defined as the total value ascribed to the business, inclusive of both the company’s equity and the debt used to […]

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October 7th– 9th Founders Advisors held its annual SaaS and Internet Summit at the Renaissance Birmingham Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa in our very own Birmingham, Alabama. The Founders team hosted more than sixty CEOs and leaders of top SaaS and Internet companies to provide learned practices and engage in strategic discussions involving growth, […]

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Last week I kicked off our SaaS marketing tactics series with attribution planning. Since most SaaS marketing is content marketing, assets are the foundation of success. Managing those assets at scale is incredibly challenging. For those reasons, my tactic du jour is asset tracking. So let’s get to it. Content Marketing Assets are the Foundation of Your Marketing Value Proposition […]

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This is a guest article by Biso Collective founder and CEO Dave Gray. We hope you enjoy it! I recently had lunch with a former teammate and active participant in our city’s startup ecosystem. During our discussion he asked, “Do you think software companies can really be enduring?” I’m not 100% sure of his perception that led […]

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Last week I shared the reasons why your SaaS probably needs a contracts & compliance manager. Hopefully, I made the case and at least inspired you to consider this important role. Here’s more info on how to hire a contracts & compliance manager—what to look for, how to interview and get them up to speed.  The characteristics of a great […]

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I’m working with several companies on the advisory side that have similar marketing challenges around tactics and execution. So, beginning today with SaaS marketing attribution, I’m going to address some of the most common and basic executional failures. The fact is, from CMOs, down to VPs, senior directors, and directors, marketers often have far better intentions than execution. All […]

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As the leader of the customer-facing parts of a SaaS organization, I was quick to take accountability and responsibility for “customer success”, which of course really meant customer retention. It took me many years to realize how flawed my thinking was and to come to understand that Customer Success is bigger than any single department. […]

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After 20+ years in software startups I can say I think I know how to stack the chips on the right side of the equation. It’s definitely not a formula, because SaaS companies have specific challenges. But there is a list of SaaS fundamentals that I take for granted. This list ties back to the 80% of a […]

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A new sales leader reached out this week to ask when she should hire her first sales development representative (SDR). What a great question, and luckily, it’s a pretty black and white answer.  LET’S START WITH WHEN IT’S NOT TIME TO HIRE YOUR FIRST SDR. It’s too soon to hire your first SDR when: You haven’t landed any actual, […]

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If you are in SaaS sales, you know a great demo can make or break your chances of winning the deal. But what you may not know is what actually makes a demo great. Most demos—yes most—are simply terrible. Which is a shame, because giving a killer demo just isn’t that hard.  Here’s a quick […]

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Agile is great, but we need to continuously process and ingest what we learn. Here’s how. Agile management across the majority of a SaaS organization provides the framework for rapid, innovation, iteration and improvement. Ultimately, the efficiency of that improvement comes down to how well we ingest and distribute what’s being learned — our SaaS learning […]

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When looking at a problem, I have a simple framework for evaluating what’s wrong. Is it People, Product, Playbook or Process (or some combination thereof)? When the 4 P’s are all aligned and functioning well, great performance follows. And if we aren’t hitting numbers or executing well, then something within the 4 P’s isn’t right. […]

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If your teams don’t understand and believe in your data, they won’t leap with you. I’m a huge practitioner of data-driven SaaS management. I believe that almost everything in a SaaS business can and should be measured. But there are two important caveats to measurement that I’ve recently seen overlooked.  First, the data you use for […]

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Let’s get another cliché out of the way. Talk is cheap. Hmm. In SaaS that’s actually not so true. A lot of talk gets funded. And a lot of decisions get made based on plans (nice, formalized, talk). From there, a lot of evaluation is done based on reporting data (another form of talk). I […]

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This is a guest article from Founders Advisors Managing Director Mike McCraw. We hope you enjoy it! A lifestyle company is a business operated with the purpose of providing a level of income or particular lifestyle for its Founder. There is nothing wrong with having a lifestyle company, but the founder/entrepreneur must understand that the […]

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A while back I spoke on a panel at the Salesloft Rainmaker event on the topic of perfecting the handoff of a prospect from the SDR to the AE. The handoff can make or break the sale. This is a topic often left orphaned by sales leaders and something that needs far more attention than it is given. SDRs are […]

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This is a guest article from Founders Advisors Vice President Brad Johnson. We hope you enjoy it! In today’s digital economy, the ability to identify a target audience, communicate the right message, and convert prospects to customers is critical to any business. The rate at which advertising dollars are shifting to performance-based marketing models is […]

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Even experienced leaders can easily forget that one voice shouldn’t drive change. I try and write from recent inspiration and this post is far from an exception. Over the last few weeks, several of the CEOs we work with have all reinforced the problem of the lone voice driving change, which is a symptom of mismanagement of […]

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At our recent Silicon Y’all SaaS and Digital Media Summit, Matt Hamilton of Summit Partners shared insight into employee incentives as a great method of motivating employees to achieve desired business results. There are various types of incentives, each with its own unique way of influencing employee behavior. When used effectively, these incentives can have […]

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I have been thinking a lot about the continuum of maturity in SaaS customer success organizations. It really boils down to degrees of a spectrum ranging from reactive to proactive. Here are the 11 areas I evaluate when assessing a customer success organization for strengths and weaknesses. How well they execute against these usually indicates […]

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This is a guest article from Founders Advisors Director Chris Weingartner. We hope you enjoy it! Across all the deals we’ve done, there is likely no larger deterrent to both a premium valuation and a smooth closing than a company that doesn’t have clean financials. We certainly can be empathetic for companies that have not […]

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A lot of SaaS marketing is made up. The best marketing is not. And the reasons for that may be way deeper than you think. Yes, this is another post espousing the value of authenticity in SaaS marketing. But it’s much more than that. Storytelling in tech marketing is critical because what we’re marketing is often […]

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This is a guest article from Founders Advisors President and COO Wesley Legg. We hope you enjoy it! Cash is King, however, the highest offer doesn’t always seal the deal. This is especially the case when the seller is a founder-based company, i.e., the seller is the founder or an heir of the founder. Founders, of course, […]

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I’ve been interviewing a lot of candidates for Director of Sales lately, and there is one question I always ask. “What will you focus on in your first 90 days?”. Of course, the obvious answer is “results”, but there is a lot more to it than that. There isn’t one right answer to this question. […]

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This is a guest article from William Short of Founders Advisors. We hope you enjoy it! There have been several studies of the public markets and valuation drivers, all of which typically show a strong correlation between EV/Revenue and revenue growth.  In its 2017 Software Outlook, Credit Suisse finds that revenue growth has the strongest […]

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Many SaaS companies go through due diligence in a less-than-ideal state. That’s a lot less stressful when you know what that means. A while back I wrote about what to expect in SaaS due diligence and provided an interactive institutional readiness report cardto help you prepare, but today I want to address the consequences of being unprepared […]

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This is a guest article from Founders Advisors President and COO Wesley Legg. We hope you enjoy it! For most people the steps to selling their company are not that well known. Yet there is proven methodology that, when followed, increases the likelihood of a company obtaining a premium value and getting a deal done. […]

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Sometimes big questions get floated like, “What is the meaning of life?”, “What’s my passion?” or “How can we reduce our SaaS customer churn?” If you have ever dealt with customer churn, reduced customer churn, worked in customer success or run a SaaS company, you know the enormity of this question.  It takes a village to […]

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This is a guest article from Founders Advisors Vice President Brad Johnson. We hope you enjoy it! LTV:CAC – What is it? Lifetime Value : Customer Acquisition Cost (LTV:CAC) is the measure of return a SaaS business is generating on its customer acquisition spend. This can be thought of as the ROIC (return on invested […]

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The theme of my conversations recently seems to be SMB SaaS moving to sell into the enterprise. One question that comes up when planning a move like that is what type of collateral and content is needed to sell to enterprise accounts.I am always pleasantly surprised by the forethought the question demonstrates. While it can seem in the weeds, […]

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I’m actually a bit cranked up about SaaS scale and SaaS maturity being confused and comingled. We’re working with a couple of SaaS companies at roughly the same revenue scale but wildly different maturity levels. The problem is that both founders see themselves in the same stage of development because annual recurring revenue (ARR) is often misused […]

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Some SaaS companies start by selling to the SMB market and evolve to sell to the enterprise at some point. Often this move is a planned strategy. And other times, it’s more accidental. Enterprise customers actually lead you there. You’re targeting small and mid-sized businesses and suddenly you notice that you have some Fortune 1,000 […]

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I love plans: whether they’re formal and detailed or quickly scribbled on a napkin during a moment of inspiration. However, I know my love of planning puts me in the minority. Let’s be honest, most companies and managers say they plan….but it’s one of those things that doesn’t actually happen regularly and is usually ineffective. Plans get […]

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If you’re expecting to give birth to a deal in SaaS, you’re expecting due diligence. And if you haven’t been through it before, SaaS due diligence may be more burdensome than you might think. Then again, maybe it will be less onerous than you’re expecting. I seriously doubt the latter, but anything is possible. Your […]

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I love testing. I tested everything I could for the last 11 years or so. As a bootstrapped SaaS CEO masquerading as a CMO, testing was the motherload of certainty that helped us waste less capital. But there are some A/B testing misconceptions I feel compelled to share. There are situations in which testing is a waste […]

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When we think about the stages of a recruiting, we all probably have a similar idea of that process. Resume screen, phone screen, in-person interview, 2nd round in-person interview, offer letter, reference checks, offer acceptance, and new employee onboarding. Some companies stick a few other steps here and there (like a sample presentation for sales […]

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In my experience, leading a tech company for over ten years, SaaS engineering talent is the hardest to find. I was at a barbecue over the weekend and ended up commiserating with another CEO over the challenges and philosophies around SaaS engineering quality vs. quantity. We all know that demand outstrips supply for software engineers, […]

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“But how best to accomplish transparency? It’s a delicate balance — you want to keep employees in the loop, but you also want the company to function smoothly.” – TinyPulse Many modern companies, particularly tech startups, have transparency as a core value. Transparency as a core value for all stakeholders including employees, customers, partners, vendors and the […]

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I spent a decade marketing an enterprise SaaS platform to marketing leaders at companies like FedEx, Dell, GE and Salesforce. During that time I experimented with thousands of versions of product messaging. The vast majority of these enterprise SaaS product marketing tests were empirical and allowed to reach statistical significance. Testing certainty gave me the confidence to innovate […]

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My co-founders and I marketed to marketers for the better part of two decades. Over that time, the space better known as marketing technology came into being and exploded into a landscape that now sports nearly 6,000 solutions. Martech is a wildly cluttered world of competing ideas, freshly minted problems and very real pains for marketers to […]

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It’s an exciting time to be in SaaS, and opportunity is everywhere. But there are also a lot of uniquely modern customer challenges to overcome. It’s important that leaders acknowledge, and address these challenges head-on both in their strategies and in the day-to-day tactics of running their companies. Rather than brush these under the rug […]

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While I believe high customer retention (and/or low revenue & customer churn, depending how you prefer to frame it) takes a village that touches all aspects of the company…I also believe that sales plays a big role. Particularly when it comes to setting customer expectations. If you have a sales team that routinely overpromises, you are […]

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An often underserved aspect of modern marketing is the formation of a plan and design for the marketing data you need to make the buyer’s journey more relevant and accelerate your deal velocity. Acceleration comes from focusing the right sales and marketing messaging and tactics on the right prospects at the right time. The marketing […]

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Active SaaS Product Strategy Proves Value We’ve all subscribed to passive SaaS products that may be cool, but never become indispensable. It’s likely you’ve also used at least one active SaaS product that goes out of its way to shove its value in your face. And if that active SaaS was actually valuable, then it’s likely it became indispensable in the […]

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What happens if a customer asks to pause their subscription? It’s something founders and executives don’t normally think about as they plan their SaaS pricing, packaging, terms & conditions, and cancellation processes. A request to pause a customer’s subscription is a bummer, of course. It’s a ding to your MRR, and who even knows how to account […]

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I’m a huge proponent of agile management being applied to growing technology companies. But there are many ways to execute against those principles. And some agile SaaS management devolves into plain chaos. In fact, in those cases, calling it agile management is a misnomer — and the lack of leadership becomes glaringly apparent.  Over the last couple […]

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Everything a SaaS CEO does is steeped in urgency. We’re in growing businesses beholden to outpace fast-paced markets. We often run razor thin, allocating as much cash as we can to maximizing our growth rate. But if our outward CEO temperament crosses the line from urgency to stress, bad things happen. Teams lose faith. Investors lose confidence. […]

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There, I said it.  As a SaaS founder who led sales, customer success, product support, and professional services, I fully believed every customer retention issue was squarely on my shoulders. And every customer retention win was because of the product.   I LOVED our product and the value it brought to our enterprise customers. I passionately […]

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Sometimes things just fall into place. Like this post. I had nascent inspiration to write it last week, but couldn’t quite find my passion for it. Then I had a couple of clients surface some things that really focused my thoughts on the SaaS CEO role. My personal experience as a tech CEO for 20 years is […]

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The last couple of weeks have illustrated how challenging it can be for fast-moving companies to fulfill the right SaaS execution priorities. We have a couple of growth-stage clients struggling with it as well as a couple of earlier stage ones. Pretty much everyone says all the right things about prioritization for the business and opportunity costs. But when it […]

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This past Wednesday, SaaSOptics hosted a fantastic conversational webinar with SaaSOptics’ Tim McCormick and Founders Advisors Managing Director and recurring Silicon Y’all mentor Zane Tarence. This 1-hour webinar focused on the 17 top reasons SaaS companies are not investment grade, and consisted of Tarence and McCormick swapping sage advice on overcoming each of the pitfalls mentioned.It can be hard to summarize a presentation this […]

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Every SaaS CEO I’ve ever worked with has decreed “do whatever it takes” during an important month or quarter. I’ve applied that same SaaS CEO management tactic more than several times. So I get it. We just get to the point where we feel that “whatever it takes” is the wide-open empowerment needed to motivate people to […]

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A long, drawn-out SaaS onboarding process is a momentum killer, and puts your customer (and you) at risk for low product engagement. And low product engagement is, unfortunately, a churn indicator.  Many things come together in a melting pot to impact SaaS customer churn, but onboarding is certainly a big component.  In an ideal world, there is very little […]

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I think sometimes that founders and leaders of growing SaaS companies forget what’s really important. I’ve seen this recently with some of our clients, and it’s been a good reminder for me on the opportunity cost of making unimportant things important. As the heads on the beast, we decide what’s important. Yes, of course, we get what […]

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If you do a search for “SaaS churn reasons” you will see some great articles and pick up some useful advice about combating churn. Many articles will point to “lack of value” as the root of most churn. And they are right. In most cases if a customer doesn’t receive value, they will not continue to use […]

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If you’re a $1M+ annual recurring revenue SaaS company, you probably had a pretty great idea. You also likely had at least a passable strategy to get to that first milestone of success. And you must have had some semblance of a product. But the odds remain very low that your $1M+ ARR will scale […]

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Whether you have a product-led SaaS or a high-touch SaaS, better onboarding doesn’t start with process it starts with vision.   Don’t get me wrong, every SaaS needs to deliver a great customer onboarding experience. And that will require a process to ensure it’s executed well. But if you want to improve how you onboard your SaaS users don’t […]

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It’s common to design a SaaS renewal process that starts about 90 days before the date of renewal.  It’s common, but that doesn’t make it right, does it? A great, proactive SaaS renewal process really starts the day the customer signs up. And renewal is just really one huge part of the overall initiative to retain customers. Let’s […]

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Everybody knows SaaS marketing segmentation is good. And everyone thinks they need to do it. It makes messages more specific. It improves relevance, which in turn accelerates lead-to-revenue velocity. I personally love segmentation and have been using it extensively in SaaS marketing for over a decade. But it’s not always a good idea. And even when it is, too […]

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  Here are 15 questions to ask yourself about your sales organization. These simple questions quickly reveal key strengths, weaknesses, and areas of opportunity. Video transcript: Hi!  I’m Anna Talerico with Married2Growth. Let’s talk about the maturity of your sales organization. Because that usually directly translates to your sales efficiency and results. I recently launched a […]

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The reason for my recurring love of the institutional readiness topic is that SaaS companies are often overly confident that their perspective on their performance is enough to drive a high valuation. The truth is the opposite. Many SaaS companies aren’t prepared for institutional capital or strategic acquisition. Their lack of institutional readiness will cost them […]

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A lifestyle company is a business operated with the purpose of providing a level of income or particular lifestyle for its Founder. There is nothing wrong with having a lifestyle company, but the founder/entrepreneur must understand that the “lifestyle company” mentality does not fully align with building enterprise value or creation of a sellable company.  […]

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SaaS revenue recognition is critical to understanding, managing and valuing the business. Rev rec must be timely, accurate, consistent and auditable to be a reliable management tool. Strategically, deferred revenue has sizable implications on how cash in the business is managed and invested. This is a CEO’s look at revenue recognition, not a CPA’s look […]

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I was often a self-funded founder whose SaaS growth strategy needed to include profit, as that was how my co-founders and I paid ourselves. When you’re growing a SaaS in a cutthroat sector like martech, taking investment capital out of the growth machine in the form of profit must be done judiciously and intentionally. If […]

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Zane Tarence, Managing Director of Founders Advisors, was recently featured on the How to SaaS podcast. During the episode, Zane discussed the 5 critical factors private equity investors analyze when investing in SaaS companies. How To SaaS is a go-to podcast for growing your cloud software company. The host, Shiv Narayanan, is also CMO of Wild Apricot, […]

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Diligence is grueling and putting much higher demands on the institutional readiness of SaaS companies. Investors, buyers, and bankers want more validation, more interviews, more data, more backup and more assurances that their money is being allocated wisely. Risk mitigation impacts everything. SaaS business processes are more valuable than ever. SaaS Institutional Readiness And that’s just […]

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SaaS services are often devalued. Even recurring services are way down the valuation curve. In some cases, this disdain for services may be warranted. In others, it’s misplaced. SaaS’s dirtiest word isn’t really all that dirty. Unfortunately, the market’s reluctance to fully value services in SaaS companies can push some founders and CEOs away from […]

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More than any other department, sales relies on tracking and measuring. And with all the new insights available from sales enablement technology, we can easily overload ourselves with data and reports. That’s why when looking at SaaS sales metrics, I try to keep reporting simple so we can focus on what matters most. I also […]

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As the CEO of ion interactive, I began building to be acquired a full five years prior to being acquired. We were in the highly competitive enterprise martech space and needed to: differentiate the company strategically; align the product with the right partners through integrations; audit financials for accuracy and accountability; and evolve operations with […]

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At the 2017 Silicon Y’all SaaS and Digital Media Summit, Matt Hamilton of Summit Partners shared insight into employee incentives as a great method of motivating employees to achieve desired business results. There are various types of incentives, each with its own unique way of influencing employee behavior. When used effectively, these incentives can have a positive […]

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Jason Lemkin once theorized there are “…100,000+ SaaS apps out there.” Seems impossible until you start to consider that there are 6,500+ marketing technology companies alone. And there are about 800 in the sales tech landscape. What must there be in finance, HR, and operations? And education, productivity, BI, ERP and BPM and on and […]

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