sutton020

More than two years ago I wrote about what we look for in early-stage SaaS startups . Since then we've looked at hundreds of SaaS startups and have gained additional insights through the work that we've been doing with the SaaS startups that we have invested in. Therefore I thought it would be time for a follow-on post with some additional thoughts. In the original post I focused primarily on early metrics as an indicator of product/market fit and of a favorable CAC/CLTV ratio in the future. Today I want to put more focus on factors that kick in a little later in the lifecycle of a SaaS company – aspects that have an impact on a company's ability to scale customer acquisition, increase ARPA and create lock-in. In other words, factors that can make the difference between a "good" and a "great" business. Note that none of these factors is a must-have for building a successful SaaS company. For each one of them you'll probably find some great counterex...

I recently participated in Marco Montemagno's SuperSummit and gave a webinar about the topic "Measuring your SaaS success". Thanks, Marco, for inviting me! Below are the slides of my talk. Since some of the slides aren't self-explanatory I've added some notes, see the yellow bubbles. If you want to dive in deeper, check out this post , which the talk was based on. Measuring your SaaS success from Point Nine Capital

Some time ago I wrote that we at Point Nine love to eat our own dog food . That is, we run Point Nine  almost exclusively on Cloud apps. We're also heavy users of Zendesk , Mention , Geckoboard and other products from our own portfolio companies. Another great example is Contactually . At its core, Contactually is a relationship management platform for salespeople and service providers in relationship-based businesses. The combination of two killer features – an address book that updates itself and a very smart system for so-called "follow-up reminders" – allows Contactually users to stay top of mind with all of their important contacts, which can have a huge positive impact on their business. One really really nice thing which Contactually does for us is that it continuously adds subscribers to our (in)famous newsletter  – almost automatically. Here's how it works. 1) By scanning my email accounts, the software automatically adds all new people who I'm exchangin...