Just Effing Demo
We do pretty extensive win/loss reporting at Host, and I remember one time reading a loss report that went something like this. “We were interested in buying Host and it made our short list. When we invited you in for a demo with our team and the CFO, things went wrong. After 20 minutes, your […]
Don’t Let Product Management Turn Into “The Roadmap Guys”
At many enterprise software companies product management (PM) ends up defaulting into a role that I can’t stand: The Roadmap Guys*. Like a restaurant with one item on the menu, the company defaults into ordering one thing from product management: a roadmap pitch. “The VP of PM is in Boston and Providence this week, can […]
SaaStr Podcast #142: Dave Kellogg, CEO @ Host Analytics On Why CAC/LTV Is The Most Important Metric In SaaS
Dave Kellogg is the CEO @ Host Analytics, the leader in cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM). Previously, Dave was SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CEO at unstructured big data provider MarkLogic. Before that, Dave was CMO at Business Objects for nearly a decade as the company grew from $30M to over $1B. […]
The False Choice of Prepaid vs. Monthly Contracts
In scaling the cash-flow side of SaaS, there’s almost nothing more powerful than annual contracts combined with prepaid cash. It’s just such a huge benefit. You get all the cash up-front, and your churn almost by definition goes down. Because the earliest chance the customer has to churn is 12 months hence. So get pre-paid annual deals whenever […]
When to Stop Doing It All Yourself
Perhaps the biggest difference between most first-time founders and most second-time founders is how long they try to do it all themselves. This isn’t a criticism first time you usually sort of have to. You have less capital to hire a team, and less experience building teams. But then after that there are at least […]
When Should You Add a Second Product?
At this year’s SaaStr Annual, I put back-to-back a seemingly very different set of speakers, Jeff Lawson CEO of Twilio (transcript here) and Peter Gassner of Veeva (transcript here). Both are two of the most impressive and inspiring public SaaS CEOs, but their products and companies couldn’t be more different. Veeva sells eight figure deals […]
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Can Hard Work Beat Intelligence? [Hint: Wisdom Beats Both!]
People are curious whether hard work can beat intelligence? A similar question is “Can hustling harder make up for a lack of native talent?” The reason to wonder is obvious–we can hustle harder, but it is hard to manufacture more talent. Or is it? There’s really 3 things we should be considering, not 2: […]
Veeva: The Biggest Vertical SaaS Success Story of All Time (Video + Transcript)
Peter Gassner, Founder & CEO of Veeva Systems, sits down with Jason Lemkin to share the story of Veeva and his journey as CEO. From how the seed of an idea got planted to 1,700 employees 10 years later, there are many lessons to be learned. Peter is a huge fan of going against the […]
Avinash Kaushik Responds to My AI Cockroaches Post
Avinash has kindly responded to the comment I left on his blog that inspired my AI Cockroaches post. Here was his response, and mine is below it: Bob: Great progress will never come without great skepticism – the people trying to push the world forward need motivation. 🙂 Enough has been already delivered, and you are […]
Big Companies Don’t Churn. They Quit You.
“Churn” is a term we all use in SaaS as a core metric, but its roots, as near as I remember and can tell, come from our B2C colleagues. In a low-end subscription model for a tool, not a solution (e.g., semi-commodity storage, semi-commodity hosting, etc. etc.), individuals and small businesses, often paying on their […]
