Using Data to Drive Outbound Sales
Even for SMB SaaS companies focused on specific verticals, outbound sales can prove to be an effective customer acquisition channel and growth lever. Pure cold calling won’t cut it, though – you have to use an experimental mindset that tests hypotheses with data, which in turn ensures that what you prove out is intentional, repeatable and (most importantly of all) scaleable.
From Startup Investors
Elizabeth Kraus of MergeLane wants venture capitalists, LPs, and entrepreneurs to actually believe that gender diversity produces better returns vs. seeing it as a “charitable thing to do” in “Dear Venture Capital, Thanks for your offer to “protect” me. I really just want you to value me.”
Alli McKee of Stick.ai outlines the key points from the talks of Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator, Avni Patel Thompson of Poppy, Laura Behrens-Wu of Shippo, Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, and Morgan DeBaun of Blavity, along with some of her favorite quotes in “Illustrations from the Female Founders Conference”
Mahesh Vellanki of Redpoint Ventures examines Redfin’s IPO in the context of the evolving online real estate sector in “Redfin’s IPO And The Battle For Real Estate Supremacy”
Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures details why as SaaS applications explode, we should expect machines to find anomalies that require human intervention in “Data Fragmentation with Middleware”
Pascal Levensohn of Levensohn Venture Partners and Dolby Family Ventures lays out what he’s observed in his own recent direct experience investing in SAFE and convertible notes in “Why SAFE Notes Are Not Safe for Entrepreneurs”
From Startup Operators
Aman Naimat of DemandBase describes why the net result of AI technologies for B2B marketing will be hyper-personalized, context-rich conversations that help businesses understand, connect and relate to each other even more in “AI Is Going to Change the Way B2B Marketers Think and Communicate”
Nir Eyal, author of Hooked, contemplates what differentiates a great early-stage investor from someone no entrepreneur wants to take money from unless they absolutely have to in “Angel or Devil: Who’s Really Investing In Your Start-Up?”
Francis Brero of MadKudu believes the word AI is uttered every day to a point of exhaustion and that it’s our duty as professionals to educate ourselves as to what is really going on in “Are Automation and AI BS?”
Matt Bilotti of Drift publishes an e-book that covers the challenges, no matter how talented your product team is, seems to still be plagued by in “Burndown: A Better Way To Build Products”
Melody Quintana of Dropbox expands on lessons from six Dropbox designers with different backgrounds in “How to Switch Your Career to Product Design”
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Also published on Medium.