It’s called M-Pesa, and it’s also spreading around the world.
How Alibaba Could Disrupt Amazon In The U.S.
It has to woo overlooked small retailers in the same way a disruptive technology needs to cater to developers.
6 New Salestech Tools You Should Try Right Now
Passing “the barista test” isn’t easy, but you’ll return to these six new CRM solutions day after day.
How Twitter Could Challenge Amazon And eBay In E-Commerce
Twitter could leverage its dominance of real time news to offer e-commerce based on high value, trending product discovery.
3 CRM Challengers LinkedIn And Salesforce Should Worry About
The CRM titans better look in their rear view mirrors—a handful of startups look to challenge the sales technology industry.
LinkedIn vs. Salesforce: Clash Of The Sales Technology Titans
As LinkedIn enters the CRM business, it must contend with Salesforce, another great company run by another heady entrepreneur.
How To Manage A Sales Team In The Era Of Bring Your Own Everything
As technology evolves, sales management systems and tools need to follow suit.
How To Hire The Enterprise Sales A-Team
The ultimate guide to constructing your very own A-team in sales.
Why 2011 May Be The Year For a Sustainable IPO Market
The IPO market may seem like a dim and distant picture for most entrepreneurs in
the hardscrabble world of an early stage start-up. How about “making
payroll” as a big strategic objective? Or maybe your objective is “get
enough money to pay for hosting, coffee and Ramen”?
But a healthy IPO market, one that…
10 Tips for Enterprise Software Startups
I started my career in enterprise software in the 1980s and after some years working in other areas (outsourcing and online media) I am back in the enterprise software game. This post is my reflection on what is different and what remains the same. I have focused this as advice to entrepreneurs building enterprise software ventures today.
1…
Yammer: The Story Behind Their SaaS Traction
It looks like the joke may have been on me. When Yammer debuted from TC50 in 2008 I posted a very negative story. That is unusual. I am an entrepreneur and know how hard it is to build a startup so I love celebrating the success stories. In Yammer’s case, it looks like I was wrong. (This is one case where I love being proved wrong!)
In the last…
How Much Venture Capital Should You Raise For Your SaaS Venture?
The short answer is “as much as you need”. The more tactical answer is “as much as you can raise cheaply”. The latter is a pragmatic view. Raise more than you need when times are good. Just because you raise it does not mean you need to spend it – capital efficiency is always good!
In this post I look at what VC are saying SaaS ventures need to…
Study: SaaS Pricing Is Still Opaque And Freemium Is Rare
If you are building a SaaS (Software as a Service) venture, you should be thinking hard about your pricing strategy. It may be the single most critical decision you make. Pricing impacts your marketing, financial and organizational strategy. Are you selling an expensive, complex enterprise solution? Or a simple impulse purchase that an individual…
Technical Q&A With FAROO Founder
About 18 months ago, we wrote about an obscure search startup from Germany called FAROO. We believed that its radical alternative, using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, had a shot at being a real disruptive force. Today, it has made some progress, has raised some money and is getting out into the market. (Disclosure: FAROO is currently a…
XBRL: Accounting Geeks Get Radical
It is not often that something as deeply geeky as XBRL gets onto the front page of Wired magazine. Daniel Roth’s superb article about radical transparency raised the profile of those four letters. What could be more boring than an XML standard for accountants that has been around for a decade? On the other hand, what could be more exciting than…
Creathor Venture: European VC Moving to Federated Model for Global Expansion (RWS Interview)
Creathor Venture is a 25-year-old venture capital firm based in Germany and Switzerland. That makes it unusual. In 1984, when it started, not a lot of VC funds were in Europe. So, we decided to speak with Cédric Köhler in Creathor’s Zurich office. As innovation accelerates and globalizes, we wanted to find out how a smaller regional fund like…
Microsoft Embraces Open Source (in the Online Ad Business)
It’s called a spoiler tactic. You take your competitor’s biggest cash cow and offer a free alternative. Everybody from Linux to Google has used the tactic against Microsoft. So who can fault Microsoft when it uses it against Google’s advertising cash cow? The guys who benefit from this tactic today are the good folks at OpenX, the open-source…
Email + CRM + LinkedIn + Twitter = Hustler’s Power Drill
Those of us who make a living by making things happen (i.e. who hustle) know that it is a people game. All of the tools in the world won’t beat the chemistry and aligned motivation that come from creative win/win deal-making. The tools are like a hammer for a carpenter. You have to have them, but carpenters are not defined by their tools…
Calendaring, Scheduling Meetings: Timebridge CEO Interview Reveals Strategic Importance of This Space
We have looked at Calendaring many times (such as in our round-up of 10 players). In our own work, we have started working with both Tungle and Doodle. To understand more about why this market is strategically interesting, we recently spoke with Yori Nelken, CEO of Timebridge (see our previous coverage here).
Google Should Stop Playing Around With Wave and Focus on Spreadsheet
Disclosure: I didn’t get an early invitation, so this is not a first-hand review of Google Wave. But from what I know now, I don’t want an invitation anymore. It looks like too much of a productivity suck. But I do use Google Spreadsheet all the time. It is the de facto real-time, online, distributed collaboration tool for serious GTD business…