Startups

August 22, 2017
The CEO’s Guide to Under-budgeting for Customer Success and Destroying Shareholder Value in the Process premium
As CEOs, our job is to maximize the upside while protecting the downside. Depending on the phase of our business, the mix between fear and greed can ebb and flow. The good news is that Customer Success is becoming an important part of the strategy in all seasons of business, good or bad. That being […]
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April 17, 2017
Customer Success without usage data: SaaS’ dirty little secret premium
I’ve got something to tell you. And it might shock you if you’re not a SaaS business. For some context, I’ve met with hundreds and hundreds of leaders of B2B businesses in all walks of life—from financial services to healthcare to on-premise software to hardware and devices—who all long to be “like SaaS companies who […]
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December 20, 2016
Customer Success at Your Company’s 2017 Sales Kickoff premium
As you approach the end of your company’s year, if you’re like me, you’re probably juggling three things in parallel: Closing out your (hopefully big) Q4 Planning for next year Mixing in some holiday shopping and cheesy holiday music when you can Somewhere in there, most companies are also simultaneously planning their next year’s “sales […]
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December 20, 2016
5 Lessons from Failed Customer Success Programs premium
Customer Success Management (CSM) is hot. But it’s also new. So with the tremendous growth in the CSM world come some organizations that have failed in their quest toward success. While most companies are radically increasing investment in CSM, a few have pulled back. As the old saying goes, “last in, first out;” since many […]
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December 9, 2016
Is A Company the Ship of Theseus? premium
My first big company job back in 2002 taught me a lot. I learned all about the nuances of the (at the time) 5,000-person business I had joined. I learned the people and the products. I learned how to get stuff done. And I witnessed echoes of the history of the company—stories about the previous […]
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December 5, 2016
[Video] Beyond Performance: How Narrative, Targeting & Sequencing affect Fundraising premium
[Original interview posted at Scale Venture Partners] Many variables go into closing a successful venture capital round. Your company’s performance on core metrics is probably the biggest one, and most of the time you should care about optimizing that first. But as Nick Mehta explains, entrepreneurs may underestimate how much impact Narrative, Targeting & Sequencing […]
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October 3, 2016
Einstein and the Physics of Software TAM premium
My Strange Loops If you know me well, you know that I have an odd mind that wanders between questions like: How should large enterprises approach launching Customer Success programs? How many ridiculous touchdown / twerk dancing highlights will I see from Antonio Brown this weekend? Does time really exist? On that third point, while […]
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July 27, 2016
Is Private Equity Eating the (SaaS) World? What PE Consolidation Means for SaaS CEOs premium
TCV General Partner Dave Yuan is an old friend and colleague. We actually first met in college, but over the years I’ve turned to him for insight and advice. When we reconnected last week I was particularly struck by his perspective on private equity investments and got his permission to share our conversation. Nick: How […]
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June 6, 2016
Finding Meaning in Enterprise Software premium
Anyone that knows me well understands that I’m an odd duck. Follow my Twitter feed and you’ll read tweets about: Customer Success (or rather #customersuccess) SaaS learnings Company culture And Taylor Swift My Pittsburgh Steelers Zombie movies But most bizarrely: Gravitational waves Fermi’s Paradox The unreality of time Needless to say, I have a thirsty […]
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May 31, 2016
‘Software, At Your Service’ CEO Interview Series: Should I Hire A Chief Of Staff? premium
This post was first published by Nakulmandan.com on April 27, 2016. See the original article here. In recent years, the number of chief of staff hires at early stage tech startups has gone up noticeably. While it may still not be a common hire, most CEOs I know who’ve worked with a chief of staff […]
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April 21, 2016
A VC, a CEO and a Bubble Walk Into a Bar premium
6 Practical Tips for Navigating the New Normal Funding World   Dave has been an investor since 2000 and is currently a general partner at Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV). His investments include Act-On, AppNexus, ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce), Facebook (FB), Merkle, Ren Ren (RENN), Rover.com, Sitecore (agreed to be acquired by EQT), Siteminder, SMT (acquired […]
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Customers Can’t Always Get What They Want premium
While Mick Jagger would probably need a lot more drugs than he usually needs to get through a day working in a tech company, it turns out he had something very sagely to say about Customer Success — ” You can’t always get what you want.”  For many companies, Customer Success has evolved out of […]
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