The Best Way to Suck at Marketing
When we take a data- and profit-driven approach to marketing, we can get so caught up in maximizing returns that we forget we’re dealing with people, treating our customers as simple transactions. If...
View ArticleWhatsApp and the fallacy of zero marketing
In the startup world, there’s a commonly held notion that companies with zero marketing can succeed. In fact, many people believe that zero marketing is the fastest path to a big exit, as it allows the...
View ArticleThe Do’s and Don’ts of Rapid Scaling for Startups
A few years ago, a landmark Stanford study came out showing that people tasked with remembering one digit made much better decisions than people charged with remembering seven digits. The two groups...
View ArticleCohort Analysis: A (practical) Q&A
At Point Nine we believe that the only way to get a real sense of user retention and customer lifetime is doing a proper cohort analysis. Much has been said and written about them and Christoph has a...
View ArticleHow to Use Andy Grove’s Stagger Chart to Build Predictability into a Startup
Predictability is sexy. Startups that have tuned their growth engines well enough to accurately forecast their growth, presuming these growth rates are attractive, will command much higher valuations...
View ArticleUnderstanding SaaS: Why the Pundits Have It Wrong
Tune into any cable network stock market channel and the airwaves resonate with one consistent theme: SaaS companies are simply too expensive. In fact, we might even be in a bubble! The argument goes...
View ArticleWhy consumer product metrics are all terrible
I’ve never met an entrepreneur who’s happy with their metrics. Whether you’re talking about sign up rates, retention rates, or how often your users create content – on face value, the metrics always...
View ArticleMeasuring the Health of Your SaaS Business: the Ultimate Metrics Guide
We’re bombarded with KPIs and an endless series of metrics to tell us how we’re doing. But instead of using data to measure our progress, it’s much more likely that we get lost and start focusing on...
View Article4 Signs Your SaaS Business is Dying
Having spent the better part of a decade building various businesses (B2B, B2C, e-commerce, digital goods, SaaS), I’ve found there are a number of indicators that give insight in to the health of a...
View ArticleWTF is Growth Hacking
ou may have recently seen posts about growth hacking and in particular people linking it to content marketing. Is growth hacking just a set of tactics applies only to start-ups can use or can...
View ArticleSetting Up 4 Key Customer Loyalty Metrics in Google Analytics
Customer loyalty is one of the strongest assets a business can have, and one that any can aim to improve. However, improvement requires iteration and testing, and iteration and testing require...
View ArticleStartup Company Challenges, Dynamics and Best Practices with Tomasz Tunguz...
Tomasz Tunguz is a partner at Redpoint Ventures and the author of one of the most active and insightful blogs about startups on the internet today. Tomasz speaks to some of the more salient issues that...
View ArticleBenchmarking Hubspot’s S-1: How 7 Key SaaS Metrics Stack Up
One of the best ways I’ve found to understand SaaS companies is to pore through their public filings. A few months ago, I analyzed Box’s S-1. In this post, we’ll look at HubSpot’s IPO filing and...
View ArticleThe Best Way to Benchmark a SaaS Startup
Following this week’s post Benchmarking HubSpot’s S-1, Josh and Nikos raised an interesting question on Twitter. What are the right ways to benchmark SaaS companies from their early days through IPO? I...
View ArticleThe laws of shitty dashboards
Disclosure: I have been responsible for building shitty dashboards. I personally made most of the errors below. I heretofore apologize to my users and pledge not to do it again. Hopefully, these...
View ArticleWhatsApp Used This Pricing Strategy to Win and You Can Too
Seven years ago, First Round Partner Josh Kopelman wrote a seminal blog post on the importance of free services in consumer-facing business models. He argued that most entrepreneurs misunderstand how...
View Article2014 SaaS Survey (Part 1) – A Survey of key metrics in over 300 SaaS...
For the third year in a row, we worked together with Pacific Crest Securities, an investment banking firm with a specific focus on SaaS, to survey 306 SaaS companies. This represents nearly double the...
View ArticleBenchmarking SaaS Startup Efficiency with Revenue per Employee Metrics
In the past, we have benchmarked the revenue per employee of large publicly traded SaaS companies and determined that the average is about $200k of revenue per person. But, that analysis examined...
View ArticleWhy You’ll Need Just About $3,000,000 to Build Your First Real Sales &...
Every week, I meet with several entrepreneurs, often bootstrapped or close to it, who fit the following sort of model: Gotten to Initial Traction (~$1.5m ARR), or getting close to it, or a bit beyond;...
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