Month: August 2015

---

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz

Click here to view on the original site: Original Post

---

During their fundraising processes, founders often tell me “I’d really like to get back to building the business.” I’m certain it’s true. Every founder surely would certainly rather be building their product and company than fundraising. Nevertheless, a founder skilled in fundraising can create enormous leverage for their business and develop unassailable competitive advantages. This is why it’s critical for early stage founders to invest time to perfect their pitches.

---

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz

Click here to view on the original site: Original Post

---

During their fundraising processes, founders often tell me “I’d really like to get back to building the business.” I’m certain it’s true. Every founder surely would certainly rather be building their product and company than fundraising. Nevertheless, a founder skilled in fundraising can create enormous leverage for their business and develop unassailable competitive advantages. This is why it’s critical for early stage founders to invest time to perfect their pitches. Let’s suppose we have two founders who operate identical and competing businesses. One of these two founders, who started a business called Turbo, raises capital better than the other by 15%. This deftness manifests as 15% larger rounds. So over the life of the company, Turbo business raises 15% more than Standard. That may not seem like much, but the chart above demonstrates that compounding this 15% advantage over six years results in a 50% larger business for the Continue reading "Why Skillful Fundraising is a Huge Competitive Advantage"

---

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz

Click here to view on the original site: Original Post

---

Much has been written about the consumerization of IT, the movement fueling many SaaS startup’s growth by targeting individuals in a target customer called B2C2B, rather than selling top down. But until yesterday, I hadn’t found anyone who had quantified the size of the movement. In mid-2014, CEB published Harnessing Business-Led IT to answer this question. While the entire report is worth reading, the chart above answers the particular question above.

---

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz

Click here to view on the original site: Original Post

---

Much has been written about the consumerization of IT, the movement fueling many SaaS startup’s growth by targeting individuals in a target customer called B2C2B, rather than selling top down. But until yesterday, I hadn’t found anyone who had quantified the size of the movement. In mid-2014, CEB published Harnessing Business-Led IT to answer this question. While the entire report is worth reading, the chart above answers the particular question above. Just how big is B2C2B? About 30% of IT spend. In their research, CEB discovered that for every dollar of IT spend, another 40 cents are spent by line of business owners buying software directly. In addition, the data illustrates this pattern of software purchasing spans most of the key departments within a company. While sales and marketing top the list, finance, engineering and HR also buy software this way. As the report indicates, IT purchasing occurs Continue reading "Why Bottoms Up Selling is a Fundamental Shift in SaaS"

---

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz

Click here to view on the original site: Original Post

---

The SaaS ecosystem has been evolving incredibly quickly. Most of the time, the changes in the ecosystem are embodied in one particular company which grows exceptionally quickly. Focusing on these fast-growers, the macro shifts can be hard to discern. Last week, Okta released a report Business at Work sweeps across SaaS to reveal these recent evolutions. These are the points that I found most interesting. First, most companies, irrespective of size from 1-4k+ employees, use 14 SaaS applications.

---

This post is by Tomasz Tunguz from Tomasz Tunguz

Click here to view on the original site: Original Post

---

The SaaS ecosystem has been evolving incredibly quickly. Most of the time, the changes in the ecosystem are embodied in one particular company which grows exceptionally quickly. Focusing on these fast-growers, the macro shifts can be hard to discern. Last week, Okta released a report Business at Work sweeps across SaaS to reveal these recent evolutions. These are the points that I found most interesting. First, most companies, irrespective of size from 1-4k+ employees, use 14 SaaS applications. Though the report doesn’t detail these 14 products, I suspect there is a remarkable consistency across companies in which applications those are. Here’s my stab at that list: CRM, Marketing Automation, ERP, Expense Management, Analytics, Email, Collaboration, Document Storage, Payroll, HRIS, ATS, IaaS, Customer Support, Recruiting. SaaS startups are either competing within these categories or creating a new category. The consistency of 14 apps underscores the importance of category creation for SaaS Continue reading "Four Important Data Points about Purchasing Behavior in SaaS"