Corsello OnDemand… on talent management, modern marketing and a little bit more
“It’s not all about social media, it’s about everything we do being very integrated”. Jason Corsello is VP, Strategy at Cornerstone OnDemand About a decade ago, when I was chugging along in the old-school analyst business, I hired a kid from the West Coast to learn the ropes. I think he was just looking for [...]
Two Questions and Some Answers
There are two questions that emerging companies in the CRM space field when they face the analysts — when are you going public and why don’t you build out a full CRM capability? The first question is easily and deftly handled by most executives and it must be. An IPO has its own cadence and [...]
By The Time You Give Them a Raise, They’re Already Out The Door
There’s an endless amount written on the ‘net about hiring Rockstars. Finding them, not settling, and all that. That you need to spend 20%+ of time recruiting (I said that myself here). That the #1 most important thing you can do is put together a great team. Which is absolutely true. But the #2 most [...]
In The Early Days, Don’t Forget To Pay Yourself, Too
When I co-founded my first company, way back in the dark stretch between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, we got a terrible deal, from a dilution and valuation perspective. Yes, we raised $9m to get the company off the ground, but we had to sell just about everything to pull it off. The trade-off from [...]
1Q13 Performance for Trident Capital’s SaaS Portfolio; In-Line Quarter for the Enterprise
This was a mostly in-line quarter for our SaaS portfolio companies, very much along the lines of what we have gotten used to seeing every 1Q. It started slower than our adtech and enterprise SaaS companies would have preferred but ultimately ended on the right note. The mid-upper enterprise market segment that makes up the primary target [...]
Great Free Tool from SalesLoft: Daily Job Change Alerts (via LinkedIn API)
Kyle Porter, CEO and co-founder of SalesLoft, recently did a great in-depth interview with SaaStr. We’ll repost some of that and you can see it now here. While doing the interview, I had a chance to check out a great free tool SalesLoft has. It connects with your LinkedIn account and then sends you a [...]
The SaaS Year of Hell. And Then – Reignition.
I was recently at an event with a SaaS-ish CEO who was, clearly, miserable. His business was doing $30m+ and growing nicely. He was about to introduce a new product that he thought could be game-changing. And, he had a strong team (according to him) that he truly enjoyed working with. What was so bad? [...]
Why Hiring From Your Direct Competitors Usually Doesn’t Work Out
The time will come when you are first tempted to hire someone from your competitor. They must know so many things we don’t. Have so many skills. It’s pretty tempting. People will tell you about the risks in litigation, trade secrets, etc. I don’t think any of those are necessarily a big deal or a [...]
5 Non-Obvious Things To Know About VCs
I was catching up with a VC friend the other day and asked him about a company I’d referred to him. They’d passed on the investment (which is of course fine), despite the company meeting basically every investment criteria I knew about the firm. I asked the partner why. His answer was simply — timing [...]
Research Summary: Constellation Cosmos – Cloud Bill of Rights for SaaS Apps, Actian and Netsuite Achieve Epic Status
Constellation Certifies Vendors On How Well They Perform To The Cloud Bill Of Rights The Enterprise Cloud Buyer’s Bill of Rights provides a tool for clients and vendors to change the tenor of contract negotiations from user subservience to an equal and collaborative long-term partnership. This Constellation CosmosCertification for the Cloud Buyer’s Bill of Rights: [...]
