From the Investors
Jason Lemkin of SaaStr Fund believes we are just at the bottom of the second inning of the SaaS game and describes the future he’s bullish on in “As Long As We Have 20-30 SaaS Decacorns by 2021 … All Is Good”
Elaine Stead of Blue Sky VC presents a scenario that could put some companies at risk of insolvency or losing all the investors money and outlines a few hard truths for entrepreneurs in “You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know”
Peter Brack of Mucker Capital sees Los Angeles as an emerging tech ecosystem that is prime for Chinese investments in “LA’s Starring Role as China Ramps up its Investment in Media and Technology”
Shahin Farshchi of Lux Capital highlights lessons from making bets on outsiders and contrarians over his decade-long journey going from an academic to deep tech investor in “Flyover Labs Podcast, Ep. 75”
Howard Morgan of First Round Capital announces he is stepping down as an investment partner at First Round with the start of their new fund, FRC VI, in early 2017 and why in “Moving On: Generational Change at First Round”
From the Operators
Susan Su of REFORGE provides an in-depth growth case study that covers how Ipsy structured an influencer / content strategy for their $300M ARR subscription e-commerce business in “$800M Valuation Through Influencer-Driven Content Marketing”
Scott Crosby formerly of Euclid details the unlikely origin story of Google Analytics from 1996–2005-ish in “Urchin Software Corp.”
Matt Bilotti of Drift expands on themes discussed at a product dinner that spanned scaling the products to offering customization as a service for your customers in “Dinner With The Product Core”
Peter Kazanjy of Founding Sales walks through calculating what happens when something pulls the attention of your sales org away from their priorities in “How Much Did the Election Cost You in Sales Productivity?”
Derek Draper of Pattern gives his perspective of how to make the most of time spent with prospective customers in “6 Ways to Win at Sales Calls“
The Changing Value Of ARR IV.75
Heading into Box earnings in just over a week, it is the perfect time to take a moment to see what the public markets are saying about Salesforce, a leading SaaS company.
After all, if Salesforce investors have anything notable to say, it may help us understand how the market views smaller, perhaps even private, SaaS shops. So quick digressions on $CRM earnings are just the ticket.
Here’s what Salesforce’s earnings tell us about the state of SaaS.
Better Know An IPO: Optiv
After Mattermark all but closed the books on IPOs this year, Optiv filed, making for a more interesting closing quarter.
It isn’t clear when the company intends to actually go public; Optiv’s filing documents show a placeholder dollar amount instead of the sum it actually intends to raise.
So at the moment, we don’t know the number of shares that it intends to offer, at what price, and how that will value the company after the IPO is executed.
If we don’t know when, and how much for how much, what do we know?
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