From the Investors
Brian Laung Aoaeh of KEC Ventures provides an introductory guide to demand, supply, and price theory; for first-time tech startup founders in “Mental Models About Demand, Supply, and Markets For Early Stage Technology Startups”
Alain Caffi of Ventech understands that a valuation should be based on a pragmatic analysis of the business with the end result being a fair number in “Raising money: what’s the fair valuation of your start-up?”
Elizabeth Yin of 500 Startups highlights how to balance growth and fundraising at the same time in “The Hardest Thing About Fundraising That No One Talks About…”
Patrick Meenan of Arthur Ventures gives advice to bootstrapping entrepreneurs on how to time their capital raise in “When founders bootstrap for too long”
Alex Iskold of Techstars goes over a lightweight framework and tips that startups can follow to ship quality software regularly and effectively in “5 Tips for Startup Engineering Teams”
Sammy Abdullah of DAN Fund shows the data as to why it’s better to upsell an existing account than win a new one in “What’s better than winning a new account? Upselling an existing one“
From the Operators
SC Moatti of Products That Count offers her most critical lessons for creating mobile products that not only capture people’s fascination, but hold it long enough to become a part of their daily lives in “The New ‘Must Haves’ for Mobile Apps to Succeed Today”
Peter Kazanjy of Modern Sales Salon releases a spreadsheet model to calculate the costs, timelines, and outputs of hiring sales staff, whether SDRs or AEs, and how that eventually can turn into a growing business in “Staffing and Scaling a SaaS Sales Org? I’ve Got a Model for You.”
Christina Dieckmeyer of SBI discusses how to ensure you have the right talent to execute your revenue growth strategy in “The Death of a Perfect Sales Strategy: Mediocrity”
Leah Bell of SalesLoft outlines how adding simple discovery questions, a rep can take an otherwise cold call and turn it into a warm sales conversation with a purpose in “A Sales Conversation Formula that Equals Success”
Tracy Lawrence of Chewse believes that the best strategy to grow long-term value is to show love to the team and customers in “Is a Love Culture at Odds with Fast Growth?”
The 3 False Positives Hiding In Your Sales Process
When it comes to calculating SaaS business metrics, there’s a lot of ambiguity. Companies don’t know how to factor in unknowns like ‘churn’ or ‘upsells’, so they mess with numbers as if they were Play-Doh, not realizing these manipulations could be harmful in the long run.
In reality, if you want to know how your sales process is working for your business, there’s little room for toying with your metrics.
That’s because looking at the wrong ones or focusing on only one dimension of them could lead to false positives about sales team productivity. Worse, over-reliance on some metrics could lead your entire company down the wrong path.
If you want to get a clear picture into the performance of your sales efforts, look out for the following false positives and avoid them at all costs.