Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business for 4-6 months. “COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you.

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

This is why investors really like SaaS software companies where you have recurring revenue and your largest customer accounts for < 5% of your revenue and your renewals rates are > 90%. Many software companies have > 80% gross margins which is why they are more valuable than say traditional retailers or consumer product companies.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 26, 2016

profitable and companies like Amazon who chose to focus on growth > profitability were not losing money on each book sale (ie they were gross margin positive). But often this doesn’t tell the whole story because often companies are also spending money on PR and other marketing activities in order to support the sales process.

Metrics 150

Metrics Cost Acquisition Startup 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 3, 2010

I’d like to talk about Crocodile Salesmen in 3 scenarios: 1) when YOU are selling (or someone on your team), 2) when you are trying to recruit a sales person. But how to apply “listening&# in a sales meeting? Let’s assume you run a Customer Support software company. Beware of Crocodile Sales.

Sales 314

Sales Non-Compete Campaign California 314

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 4, 2013

This is part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too. ” But many people get secure in their sales process with just meeting / talking to the people who are the nicest to you. Legal – The other big roadblock in sales is the legal department.

Sales 321

Sales Dividend Security Campaign 321

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

Looong Appendix (only for those interested in reading another story about losing a sale & key lessons): A personal story of losing a sale that haunted me for years. I was working hand-in-hand with my close friend and associate Stuart Lander who was running our UK office and with one of our local sales reps.

China 333

China Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review 333

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 25, 2010

Looong Appendix (only for those interested in reading another story about losing a sale & key lessons): A personal story of losing a sale that haunted me for years. I was working hand-in-hand with my close friend and associate Stuart Lander who was running our UK office and with one of our local sales reps.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review 328

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 15, 2013

And a natural sales person. I worked in both before leaving to work in a software company at 17. I’ve sat through so many meetings where sales reps didn’t ask for the order. Any great sales person will ask you at the end of the meeting, “So, how’d I do? Even today. She was a hustler.

Sacramento 416

Sacramento Baltimore Germany DC 416

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 11, 2016

Importantly, we recently announced a $30 million financing that gives us the resources we need to build a global enterprise software company. The explosion of mobile phones has led to a boom in inbound click-to-call traffic that has proven to convert at a higher close rate and increase average-order-value over web-only sales & marketing.

Venture Capital 150

Venture Capital Fractional CTO Cofounder Early Stage 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2015

Between the mid nineties until 2007 wireless carriers around the world religiously protected the software that went on to phones and they guarded the end consumer relationship by controlling this software. So the value on the Internet went “up the stack” to portals such as Yahoo!, Excite, MSN and eventually Google.

PR 150

PR Early Stage Software Naming 150

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

They’ve had years of business-unit managers buying software solutions they didn’t need and that eventually become shelfware. Your business unit buyer isn’t used to negotiating software and if you won over the IT team with your prowess then you’re feeling pretty good. But now your deal needs to pass through IT.

Development Team Review 293

Development Team Review Software Review Demand Software 293

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 25, 2009

I’ve sat through a lot of VC pitches and having been CEO of an enterprise software firm for many years I’ve also sat through many customer meetings with sales teams. This is part of my blog series “Pitching a VC.&#.

Sales 292

Sales Venture Capital Software Technology 292

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 2, 2014

There’s an old joke in software development, “How much time does it take to design software?” If you’ve been involved with a number of software projects you already have an intuitive sense for this. In summary – I have been involved with software development for 25 years.

Software 344

Software Part-Time VPE Engineer Leadership 344

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I spent nearly a decade building software for large companies and then advising companies on the same. Your head of sales thinks she should fire somebody. You’re sales person is getting blocked by the CTO who says she shouldn’t go above him but the CTO isn’t approving the deal. What lovely charts!

Entrepreneur 414

Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Technical Review CTO Hire 414

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 9, 2018

But your co-founder had been senior at one of the big enterprise software companies and if I remember correctly American Express had run a big pilot with you. I always tell people that fund raising is a sales process. We hop on the call and walk through the spreadsheet and get lost in the weeds. That wasn’t you. You went to Wash U.

Software Review 381

Software Review Churn Rate Due Diligence New York 381

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 22, 2014

Traditional software vs. SaaS. Of course it is super helpful if a VC can drop you in to important people for business development, recruiting, PR, sales and eventually M&A. The problem with this is that past successes aren’t always relevant to future ones as the methods and environment of the past may no longer apply.

Portfolio 364

Portfolio Chicago Sales Incubator 364

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 21, 2014

Consumers buying through smart phones, travelers using the new, shared economy and businesses replacing old software with modern cloud-based solutions. In the software industry we’ve always had a term that’s a bit of an anachronism called “shelfware.” For what purpose are they using your software?

Marketing 354

Marketing Incubator Turkey Metrics 354

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 20, 2018

This is true of any buying process where a customer has to make a large investment decision on your software or when an investor must decide whether to give you $5 million. These are similar to the pipeline reviews I used to do with sales reps when I was a CEO. She was imploring them to push harder in their sales process.

LP 189

LP Software Review Europe Founder 189

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

That died with waterfall software development. Let’s start with how much value you think you’ll create for your customer if they use your product in terms of hours saved, costs avoided, extra sales, better conversion rates or whatever. Ditto for enterprise software companies. Do so at your peril.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2016

We have have been funding agriculture technologies, water conservation, wireless electricity, aquaponics and so forth in addition to our standard investment themes in software, data, video and retail innovation. It’s still in pre-sale, but reception from beta testers, previews and the industry ( tech and consumer ) has been enthusiastic.

Cofounder 207

Cofounder Differentiation Hosting Design 207

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 25, 2016

It says that selling an airplane ticket for $500 and getting paid a $5 fees by the airlines (1% gross margin) is not the same thing as selling $500 of software that you built (>90% gross margin). billion in sales and thus controls less than 10% of the market. The top 5 players combined control less than 25% of the market.

Startup 150

Startup Seed Money DC Software Review 150

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 21, 2014

” Who cut you in on their bonus because even though you’re “just an sales engineer” they know you really deserved more credit for this deal. Tim can match up with any Silicon Valley product manager and has been doing the role for global software businesses for 20 years. We tell startup stories. Back together.

CTO Hire 320

CTO Hire Cofounder San Francisco Silicon Valley 320

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

He came to work in our offices at Upfront Ventures as an EIR and immediately began building software to improve how storage was picked up, photographed, scanned and routed to a warehouse. Sam began drawing out plans for a new way to provide storage after he had horrific experiences with traditional storage after the storm.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

An external consultant helping the procurement team overturned the decision and got the company to select a small software company owned by the consultancy. 5 years or so later I still revisit that sales campaign and relive many of the steps. In every sales campaign of any substance (e.g. That is, until I lost.

Venture Capital 247

Venture Capital Campaign Software Review Technical Review 247

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 14, 2010

They are tasked with “getting deals done&# so they race around talking to tons of potential partners inking anything from channel sale deals , product integration, international distribution agreements, co-marketing arrangements, M&A discussions, etc. Here’s how it goes: You have a business development group with two people.

Development Team Review 323

Development Team Review SEM Channel Social Media 323

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 27, 2012

But it’s kind of hard to say “don’t plant near the big trees” when you just completed a big sale to Microsoft building an app that they should have created and dominated. Where I Might Expand the Argument. That’s why I say, “ It’s Morning in VC & the Startup World. “ And my fear?

Silicon Valley 299

Silicon Valley Technical Review Early Stage Cofounder 299

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. He decided that our largest customers would be involved in the setting of our priority lists (we did some of this internally in the early years but we saw it mostly as a sales process). The Outside In organization had a one-way flow.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 15, 2009

I was working hand-in-hand with my close friend and associate Stuart Lander who was running our UK office and with one of our local sales reps. Winning the contract meant that we would hit our quarterly revenue figure and be in good position for our annual sales target. I later learned one of my biggest lesson in sales.

Software Review 151

Software Review Technical Review Silicon Valley France 151

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 28, 2009

Our software wasn’t fully baked. We had one of the largest US software companies talk about buying us. As the economy soured and people grew wary of buying Internet software (we were SaaS as early as 1999 – our buyers were certainly “early adopters&# ) and life grew more difficult. We were unprepared.

PR 331

PR Software Review Ireland Germany 331

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 28, 2012

They are more likely to be the “bottom end of the sales funnel” or in other words close to “point of purchase.” I have talked with people in the industry who tell me that mobile movie sites convert ticket sales much higher than desktop websites. They occupy a lot of people’s leisure time.

Mobile 334

Mobile Web Software Review San Francisco 334

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

He came to the United States in 2001 to study Software Engineering at Auburn University. We then moved our Chief Software Architect over. I wanted several of the software engineers to join me at our next startup but their employment was tied to BuildOnline. The world’s best brains are on sale. He’s South African.

Technical Review 282

Technical Review Canada Green South Carolina 282

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 19, 2009

After my company was acquired by Salesforce.com I was asked to stop blogging and they took over my blog as an asset in the sale of the company. Consumer approach to software for business users. Page 6: We already have several pilot customers including a very large, unnamed software firm. My blog was wiped out. Folksonomy.

Venture Capital 274

Venture Capital Term Sheet San Diego Viral 274

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 22, 2011

When Marc Benioff declared “the end of software” industry insiders scoffed. They are great at their respective fields whether they be marketing, sales, programming, PR, whatever. When he launched the iPad many people were saying, “I don’t get it, it’s just a big iPhone” or similar.

Leadership 418

Leadership Technical Review Software Review PR 418

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I’ll publish the final post in this series this week and then move on to my next series – sales & marketing. I’ll be covering my PUCCKA sales methodology. When I first met the team in San Diego they had only been working on their software for 5 months. It will be controversial – I know.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 10, 2012

When I started my first tech company in 1999 I had pretty good tech chops and had led teams but had very little exposure to many other things that matter in a startup including sales, marketing & business development. Like the problem solver I had been trained as in my software development days, I parsed his issue.

United States 322

United States Software Developers Software Development Developer 322

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 17, 2017

The most obvious way to explain this is with sales people. If you hire 6 senior sales reps in January at $120,000 / year salary then you’ve taken on an extra $60,000 per month in costs yet these sales people might not close new business 6 months. COGS” represents the amount that each sale costs you. Not necessarily.

Stock Options 227

Stock Options Startup Dilution Venture Capital 227

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

Jeremy Liew, a respected VC from LightSpeed, obviously saw the change to ramp up sales. Marketing and lead automation software for businesses; claim to have largest market share in sector since March 2008. My understanding is that OpenCandy is a software download where the service gets to better understand you as a consumer.

Venture Capital 270

Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270