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The 3 Competitive Defenses of Enduring SaaS Companies

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


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A technology advantage isn’t enough to build an enduring enterprise SaaS company because at the core, all SaaS software share the same architecture. A relational database stores data and a web site presents the data. This is true for CRM (Salesforce), marketing automation (Marketo), email (Exchange), content management systems (Sharepoint) and so on. Because SaaS apps use standard databases, engineers can easily transfer the data from one database to another.
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The 3 Competitive Defenses of Enduring SaaS Companies

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



phalanx.jpg A technology advantage isn’t enough to build an enduring enterprise SaaS company because at the core, all SaaS software share the same architecture. A relational database stores data and a web site presents the data. This is true for CRM (Salesforce), marketing automation (Marketo), email (Exchange), content management systems (Sharepoint) and so on. Because SaaS apps use standard databases, engineers can easily transfer the data from one database to another. I’m greatly simplifying here because differences in architecture may exist, but in principle it’s simple to extract, transform and load data from one relational database into another. It may take time to complete the process and users may suffer during the transition, but nevertheless roughly 15%+ of every SaaS company’s customers leave each year to a competitor in this way. From Pardot to Eloqua to Marketo to Silverpop. For a few years, a technology differentiator, like SaaS or mobile, might Continue reading "The 3 Competitive Defenses of Enduring SaaS Companies"
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The Single Best Content Marketing Channel for Your Startup

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


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The single best content marketing channel is email subscriptions powered by Twitter/social media distribution. Thirty days ago, I began an experiment with this blog to determine whether email, Twitter or RSS would be the better content marketing channel. My goals with RSS, Twitter and email are two: first to maintain a relationship with a reader longer than a single website visit by creating a communication channel and second to use that marketing channel to drive re-engagement.
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The Single Best Content Marketing Channel for Your Startup

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



newspaper-delivery.jpg The single best content marketing channel is email subscriptions powered by Twitter/social media distribution. Thirty days ago, I began an experiment with this blog to determine whether email, Twitter or RSS would be the better content marketing channel. My goals with RSS, Twitter and email are two: first to maintain a relationship with a reader longer than a single website visit by creating a communication channel and second to use that marketing channel to drive re-engagement. Below, I’ve analyzed the results and come across some surprising findings. First, RSS subscribers generate more traffic than email subscribers. Second, email readers are much easier to win than RSS readers. Third, email and RSS subscribers tend to be very different audiences and these channels do not cannibalize each other. Fourth, Twitter’s performance on a unit basis pales in comparison to its competition, but makes it up in volume. Note, the code to perform
subscriber_acquisition.png
email_twitter_rss.png
Continue reading "The Single Best Content Marketing Channel for Your Startup"
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What Your Startup’s MRR Figure Is Hiding

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


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The three words roll off the tongue: monthly recurring revenue (MRR). What’s not to love about subscription models? Negative working capital, predictable revenue growth and an average of 13x market cap to annual revenue in the public markets, with some darlings reaching 50x multiples. The list goes on. But the words recurring revenue belies one small detail. These recurring customers must renew their subscriptions, at which point another three word phrase is uttered: revenue-at-risk, the amount of MRR that might be lost to customers who choose not to re-enlist.
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What Your Startup’s MRR Figure Is Hiding

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



indy.jpg The three words roll off the tongue: monthly recurring revenue (MRR). What’s not to love about subscription models? Negative working capital, predictable revenue growth and an average of 13x market cap to annual revenue in the public markets, with some darlings reaching 50x multiples. The list goes on. But the words recurring revenue belies one small detail. These recurring customers must renew their subscriptions, at which point another three word phrase is uttered: revenue-at-risk, the amount of MRR that might be lost to customers who choose not to re-enlist. Recurring revenue isn’t an iron-clad figure. It’s subject to the rust caused by customer churn. The oft-quoted MRR figure is an optimistic one because it assumes 100% retention rate. Instead, a better metric for MRR might be the expected value of monthly recurring revenue, something along the lines of
eMRR = MRR * (1-churn rate)
The problem with eMRR is that
Continue reading "What Your Startup’s MRR Figure Is Hiding"
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The Developer Economy: Power to the Coders

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



During the past week, I’ve been tapping out letters on a 1921 Underwood portable typewriter that my wife gave me as a present. Sitting in front of it and watching the letter hammers pound ink onto paper reminded me that computer programming is still a very new field. Not 50 years ago, prehistoric programmers punched FORTRAN code on punch cards in this way. In the past 10 to 15 years has computer programming entered mainstream culture and the number of developers has soared, popularized by the dot com era and the increasing prevalence of computers and mobile phones.
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The Developer Economy: Power to the Coders

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



ibm-punchcard.gif During the past week, I’ve been tapping out letters on a 1921 Underwood portable typewriter that my wife gave me as a present. Sitting in front of it and watching the letter hammers pound ink onto paper reminded me that computer programming is still a very new field. Not 50 years ago, prehistoric programmers punched FORTRAN code on punch cards in this way. In the past 10 to 15 years has computer programming entered mainstream culture and the number of developers has soared, popularized by the dot com era and the increasing prevalence of computers and mobile phones. With the increase in developer numbers, new opportunities have arisen to build sizable businesses serving programmers. Despite developers' reputation for miserly resourcefulness, a handful of companies have built substantial businesses serving programmers. Rally and Atlassian promote agile software development techniques with workflow software. Rally filed its IPO documents earlier this year and Continue reading "The Developer Economy: Power to the Coders"
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A Five Year Android User Switches To iOS

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



On the day of Android’s five year launch anniversary and my fifth consecutive year of using exclusively Android devices, I switched to a yellow iPhone 5c. Like a well worn pair of jeans, it’s easy to grow accustomed to a mobile phone OS. Changing into a new pair is always a little uncomfortable at first. In that same way, migrating from Android to I iOS, I discovered the quirks and kinks of each OS:
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A Five Year Android User Switches To iOS

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz


Click here to view on the original site: Original Post



android-vs-ios-lightsaber.jpg On the day of Android’s five year launch anniversary and my fifth consecutive year of using exclusively Android devices, I switched to a yellow iPhone 5c. Like a well worn pair of jeans, it’s easy to grow accustomed to a mobile phone OS. Changing into a new pair is always a little uncomfortable at first. In that same way, migrating from Android to I iOS, I discovered the quirks and kinks of each OS:
  • The iOS keyboard always shows uppercase letters, no matter if the letter being typed is upper or lowercase. On Android, the letters on the keyboard change case as you type.

  • On iOS’s Gmail client, you swipe to the left to archive a message. On Android, it’s to the right.

  • To switch between applications on the iPhone 5c, double tap the home button and swipe left/right. On my Droid Razr M, tap the app switching button and Continue reading "A Five Year Android User Switches To iOS"