What do Original thinkers look like?
What do Original thinkers look like? Procrastinators, full of doubt and fear and tons of bad ideas.
What can you really learn as a UberX driver?
Why would the Innovation Leader in a top 5 consulting firm sign up with Uber to drive drunk people around at 2am? Ted Graham, now Head of Open Innovation at GM outlines 3 learnings as a UberX driver (while at PWC). Highly regulated industries (like transportation aka Taxi industry or even Accounting) are in for major disruption. Unless disrupted already.
Pricing SAAS needs Rethink. Pricing your SAAS is easy
Pricing your SAAS is easy. Just follow the per user/per month formula and build multiple levels based on truncated product or cascading features (higher you pay more you get). According to people who know, SAAS and SAAS pricing it is time to rethink this approach.
There are 310 Unicorns around the world with a combined worth of $1,052B
CBInsights has put out another interesting infographic that lists all the 310 Unicorns around the world. They sort unicorns into 13 categories, from cyber security to Internet Software Services. The Other category includes companies within real estate, ed tech, renewable energy, aerospace, etc.
World raised more equity dollars ($133bn) than US ($106bn) in 2018. This is the 2nd year in a row.
According to a recent CBInsights report startups outside US raised more equity dollars than US based startups 2nd year in a row. China – between Beijing and Shanghai – is catching up in terms of number of deals and funds raised. Silicon valley is still way ahead (as a singular location) with over 200 exits above $100mn where Tel Aviv is better performing than London,Boston, NY and LA (it is also a favorite of international investors).
Why it is important to get to ‘That’s right’. Lessons on negotiation from a 24 year Veteran FBI Hostage Negotiator.
Andy Raskin recently wrote on his experience of a CEO he was working with, negotiating with a senior colleague on the strategic story for the company. The colleague was not aligned with what was being proposed and Andy’s sessions with him did not help at all. He didn’t budge. Next, the CEO has a chat at the end of which this employee turns around completely. It was attributed to a negotiation technique espoused by Chris Voss in his book ’Never Split the Difference’.
The importance of asking the right questions.
“ …the best answers to the enormous problems we are struggling with always starts with asking the right question.”- Clayton Christensen. 25 years back he wrote ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ to instant stardom. Since then he has penned 11 books and numerous articles. Based on his latest book ‘The Prosperity Paradox’ he wrote an article on lessons learned.
The 40% Rule of SaaS and why you should get there.
In 2015 Brad Feld mooted the idea of the Rule of 40% for SaaS companies. The rule states that “your growth rate + your profit should add up to 40%. So, if you are growing at 20%, you should be generating a profit of 20%. If you are growing at 40%, you should be generating a 0% profit. If you are growing at 50%, you can lose 10%. If you are doing better than the 40% rule, that’s awesome.”
Boring is better than sexy and 4 pricing lessons
Ryan Barretto is the SVP of Global Sales / Sprout Social. Prior to this as the VP of Global Sales at Pardot where he trebled revenue in two years and saw Salesforce grow from $180mn to ~$7.5bn. Then there is Harry Stebbings who specializes in getting golden nuggets out of his guests. In episode #206 of SaaStr podcast, Ryan shares learnings from his exceptional career in global saas sales :
– Everything goes back to the user experience, you need to nail that first. While gloss and sexy features may get you sign ups, if “… the actual end users hate it” then it is game over.
But, boring as it may sound, what drives killer customer review and word of mouth
– ease of working with from a sales and success standpoint?
– support customers in the channel they want
– support them as fast as they expect?
– and be ease of implementation and use?”
On pricing Ryan outlines 4 basic principles:
- keep it simple and aligned to customer value metrics.
- make sure it stays accessible for small customers.
- make sure it still optimizes for retention and growth.
- use data not your gut.
It is a great listen. Start from 10.30 if you want to get to the segments I referred to above. https://bit.ly/2Wq2ZnN
AI will make Humans more valuable. Sounds counterintuitive?
Kate Leggett, VP and Principal Analyst Forrester, has been looking at AI, Customer service, CRM and related areas for a long time. In her recent post she underlines 3 customer service mega trends. According to Kate, as AI eats predictable and repetitive jobs, SuperAgents will appear as Customer service becomes high touch. They will handle critical customer interactions that require deep subject matter knowledge or product ecosystem expertise.
