Read, listen, watch, and use SaaS culture & recruiting articles, podcasts, videos, and tools for founders and leaders of growing technology companies from Silicon Y’all.
Sep 17 2019
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 […]
Sep 10 2019
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. […]
Aug 22 2019
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. […]
Aug 01 2019
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 […]
Jul 30 2019
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 […]
Jul 25 2019
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 […]
Apr 04 2019
“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 […]
Mar 07 2019
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. […]
Feb 19 2019
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 […]
Jul 30 2018
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 […]
