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March 2020 Hiring and Layoff Poll of Growth and Mid-Sized SaaS Companies

In late March, we launched a SaaS peer community poll to see what companies are doing in light of the corona virus pandemic’s effects on 2020 budgets. Approximately 70 unique companies participated, and we pulled together the results here. Companies ranged from early stage to companies with over 1000 employees, the majority of respondents were from companies with less than 500 employees.

April 3, 2020

Best Practices To Clean Up Your Messy Sales Ops

Sales operations constantly swings back and forth between strategy and executive function to simultaneously move deals forward, deliver results, inform sales leaders and drive process improvements. This places a heavy burden on sales ops leaders to navigate the loop while balancing their responsibilities.

March 31, 2020

What is ACV in Sales and What is a Typical SaaS ACV

The world of SaaS is awash with cryptic acronyms. If your business model relies on annual subscriptions, ACV will be a term that’s constantly on your mind as your company grows.So, what is ACV in sales and what is a typical SaaS ACV? We explain all that and more, below.

March 24, 2020

From Real-Time Insights to Future Time

Insight. The one true currency of a finance professional. If we don’t have any insights to share with our business stakeholders, then we’re not helping improve decision-making. A lot has happened on the insight front in recent years. We’ve talked about going from insights about past events to insights in real time. Few finance functions have landed there yet, but they all have the same aspiration. However, we must go beyond even real time and talk about “future time,” or in other words, predictive and prescriptive analytics.

March 17, 2020

SaaS Conversations: Building a Culture of Metrics

Last week, Mike Volpe, CEO of Lola.com, and I had a terrific, hour-long discussion on the value of a metrics-driven culture at every stage of growth, from early stage to large enterprise.

March 13, 2020

A Deep Dive Into e-Commerce Gross Margin

Gross margin is one of the key metrics for e-Commerce businesses, and one of those metrics that businesses tend to be sensitive about. After all, would you reveal how profitable your e-commerce store is to random strangers on the internet?I didn’t think so. So let’s dive in what Gross Margin is, how to look at it and how you can improve it.

March 10, 2020

Good CEO Habits: Proactively Update Your Board at the End of Every Quarter

I am surprised by how many startup CEOs leave the board hanging at the end of the quarter. As a CEO my rule of thumb was that if a board member ever asked me about the quarter then I’d failed in being sufficiently proactive in communications.

March 3, 2020

SaaS Cybersecurity Due Diligence

Imagine that you have just signed an LOI for the acquisition of your company. You, the CFO of a mid-sized SaaS company have spent the last 2-3 years getting your financials, your retention, CAC and other key metrics, in shape so you are offered an attractive valuation multiple. Your investors are excited about seeing the return on their money. Now comes the final due diligence, including a cybersecurity review. You employ solid cybersecurity tools and procedures, so you think you are pretty safe.

February 28, 2020

The Three Rules of Freemium

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the freemium model. Done right, freemium can lead to amazing success. One of the best examples is Dropbox, which Tomasz Tunguz called the “King of Freemium”. What makes the company unique, he argues, is how it transformed its free users into evangelists.

February 25, 2020