POD OF THE WEEK: Customer churn is the bane of SaaS businesses - data can help understand the causes of churn and take action to reduce it.
POD OF THE WEEK: I'm a bit obsessed with Darknet diaries - so this is another one from them (or maybe three, depending on how much you get into the story). It's about the massive user-data breach at LinkedIn back in 2012 - which had a cascading effect around the web leading to other breaches at Dropbox and now-defunct FormSpring. Welcome to another Benchmark special! I get asked for more of this quite often and, as it's Easter, it's a bit of a recycle. So this is a compilation of benchmark data reported from across the webs….
POD OF THE WEEK: Of course it’s going to be How to Succeed at SaaS with David Skok Top 10 in Tech - What to know for Week ending March 26, 2021 - State of The Cloud Special!3/23/2021
One of my favorite sessions to attend every year at SaaStr is the Bessemer Venture Partners State of the Cloud Report. It's a fantastic, detailed, deep dive into micro and macro trends, forecasts, and industry predictions. This year SaaStr release was a Cloud edition but here are the Presentation files and link to the full presentation page on their website - or if this is your thing: The PDF version. They also finish off with top predictions for 2021 (which I feel we already did to death here - so that part is skipped - here if you want to read more - because it's good)
POD OF THE WEEK: The 45 minute long Bessemer Venture Partners State of the Cloud report or alternatively check the SaaStr Podcast share the latest trends and predictions for the cloud marketplace.
POD OF THE WEEK: Stripe just raised a new round (remaining private) - so here is a little blast from the past via the How I Built This Podcast on how a couple of Irish Brothers built a business now valued at $95 Billion (which is 2.6x the amount they were valued at this time last year).
POD OF THE WEEK: This is a cool retro one (a blast from the 2016 past) - The founder of Yammer (my old alma mater and OG Unicorn) and Slack (my old neighbors) get together to talk Unicorns or Bust (this is way before Slack took off
POD OF THE WEEK: “Jobs to be done” adding on to #4 above - it isn’t a phrase, it’s a methodology for getting stuff done - listen more on the concept here.
POD OF THE WEEK: a16z's declaration of a pivot into Media last month was a surprise to no-one who listens to or reads any of their content. So take a listen to this tear-down of how the Solar Winds hack went down (technically). Really great listening for anyone that loves Serial-style podcast covering super tech issues. The SolarWinds hack is no joke. It's a very big deal with political ramifications.
POD OF THE WEEK: Adding onto #3 above, Profitwell run a pricing page teardown on Accounting software company, Xero
POD OF THE WEEK: To add some power to #4 above What It Takes to Really Raise Capital in 2021 with Christoph Janz, Co-Founder, and Partner @ Point Nine Capital.
POD OF THE WEEK: Complimenting #6 above - for some, the concept of ’salesperson’ is cringe - so listen to this podcast from Predictable Revenue that explores the idea of social selling and bringing back the human element of sales.
POD OF THE WEEK: Complimenting numbers 6 and 10 above from Productboard founder and CEO Hubert Palan on mastering product strategy.
POD OF THE WEEK: Sales based: 3 Secrets to Help You Sell Upmarket Faster.
Lets light the Sage and smoke out 2020! It's the perfect opportunity this week for a top 10 predictions list for 2021. (for all that our interested the 2020 version is here - looks like I REALLY nailed trend #8.).
HAPPY HOLIDAYS! It's the last newsletter of this insane year and the perfect opportunity for a retrospective on the most clicked links (by you!) for the year. 2020 hindsight has quite a different meaning these days. . Thanks for your readership and see ya next year.
We're going to make this weeks newsletter a customer-focused edition:
POD OF THE WEEK: Reid Hoffman pretty much talks about everything in this podcast (he already talks at 1.5 speed, so keep the speed settings at normal on your Pod App): Starting LinkedIn, investing in Airbnb, passing on Stripe, the different styles of Leaders, how to think through price in Venture, the power of a learning mindsets, etc, etc...
POD OF THE WEEK: Continuing the Bootstrapped theme from #7: Bootstrapping To $640k MRR With Omar Zenhom of WebinarNinja
POD OF THE WEEK: Startup US Legal Basics in the US (and what kid of entity to form) from the team at Wilson Sonsini, one of the premier legal forms for US startups.
POD OF THE WEEK: Trello (now part of Atlassian) is well beyond 50,000,000 users. Check this vid-cast from Jason Lemkin and SaaStr on the fo
POD OF THE WEEK: A continuation from #5 above: Deal Mechanics: How to Work (And Close) 3x The Deals with Nick Cegelski
POD OF THE WEEK: A new podcast from First Round Review - In Depth - focused on good advice startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. First episode is with Molly Graham discussing team management who helped build and scale Facebook, Quip, and is now the COO of Lambda School.
BONUS: There is no real category for this post, but I think it's awesome. Entitled 'A Few Rules' POD OF THE WEEK: Expanding on #5 above, just having data is not enough: it takes an entire system of tools and technology to extract value from data. a16z explore the evolution of data architectures. |
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