Introducing a New SaaS Metric: The Hype Factor
I said in yesterday’s post, entitled Too Much Money Makes You Stupid, that while I don’t have much of a beef with Domo, that I did want to observe in today’s fund-to-excess environment that any idea — including making a series of Alec Baldwin would-be viral videos — can sound like a good one. While I credited Domo with […]
CAC Payback Period: The Most Misunderstood SaaS Metric
Many of the most watched software as a service (SaaS) metrics relate to the cost of acquiring customers. For example, the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio, which (in my preferred definition for enterprise software companies) measures the amount of money a company spends on sales and marketing to acquire $1 in new annual recurring revenue (ARR). I […]
CEO is Not a Part-Time Job
While I’m not that close to the whole Twitter situation and although I’m a moderately heavy user (@Kellblog), I don’t study their financials or other statistics. That said, as a user, I feel a certain malaise around the service and I think it’s definitely in need of some new energy. What I don’t get it is the […]
The Innovation-Driven Disruption of the Automotive Value Chain (Part 3)
In a previous post I wrote about the disruptive innovations that have been introduced by Tesla Motors (Tesla) and Uber and presented the steps the automotive industry should be taking in order to address the startup-driven disruption. In this post I want to make three points: It is hard for startups to break into and […]
The Innovation-Driven Disruption of the Automotive Value Chain (Part 2)
Companies in the automotive value chain are faced with a challenging future. While reporting record quarterly sales, they are also witnessing two alarming trends. Because of problems such as pollution, climate change and loss of productivity due to long commute times, consumer attitudes towards car ownership and use are changing. In the medium and long […]
Aaron Levie of Box: “If We Just Sold to Silos-in-the-Enterprise, We’d Only Be a $25,000,000 Business”
Missed the 2015 SaaStr Annual? We’ve got your back. We’ll do a series where we publish both the videos and full transcripts of all the sessions. First up is Aaron Levie of Box, where we had a wide-ranging, 45 minute deep dive on how Box scaled from $0 to $250m in ARR. As you’re reading […]
The Innovation-Driven Disruption of the Automotive Value Chain (Part 1)
In the last two years I have spoken to several business, technology, innovation, and corporate venture executives about their companies’ innovation goals and the initiatives they establish to address these goals. Several of these leaders work in the automotive industry and through our conversations I have concluded that a) in the next 10 years we […]
Joining the Granular Board of Directors
I’m very happy to say that I’ve joined the Board of Directors of Granular. In this post, I’ll provide some commentary that goes beyond the formal announcement. I think all CEOs should sit on boards because it makes you a better CEO. You get take remove the blinders that come from your own (generally all-consuming) company, you build the network […]
5 Tips To Make The Journey More Fun
Really, there’s nothing I’ve done in my life that is harder than being a founder CEO. Nothing. It’s 100x harder than being a VP. Even if the actual work is easier. It’s 100x harder than being a VC. Even if delivering top returns as a VC is maybe even harder than as a founder. But I […]
Eating My Own SaaStr Dogfood: Why I Invested in RainforestQA
To keep me honest (in this age of misremembering just which helicopter one was on), I want to continue our small series re: investments where I’ve put more that $1m into a SaaS company, and why I did it as examples of the SaaStr themes and learnings. My most recent investment here is a company called RainforestQA. […]
