Joel York

Tweet Me! SaaS growth isn’t a goal; it’s an obsession. The good news is that SaaS growth can be very smooth and predictable, because of the SaaS recurring revenue subscription model. The bad news is that SaaS growth can also be predictably slow the bigger you get. After a few years of rapid SaaS startup growth, it’s easy to find yourself on the short end of the hockey stick if you don’t know the right levers to push. The Three Levers to Break Through the SaaS Growth Ceiling At any given time, you can calculate the SaaS growth ceiling for your SaaS business with a simple formula: customer acquisition rate divided by percentage churn rate. For example, if you acquire 200 new customers each year and your percentage annual churn rate is 20%, then at 1,000 customers ( 200 / 20% ) your growth will slow to zero, because customer churn will equal new customer acquisition of ... (more)

SaaS Business Model Competitive Advantage Revisited

Tweet Me! What is SaaS? We seem to need to ask this question every couple of years, because the answer is a bit of a moving target. It was simple enough when SaaS was merely software applications pushed through a Web browser, but now we have to contend with the cloud, mobile and even social. Recently, Scott Maxwell of OpenView partners sparked an interesting debate on the topic on LinkedIn that got me pondering it again. I’ve weighed in on the “What is SaaS?” question before, however, every time I encounter this debate, I can’t help feeling that it skirts the more important issue... (more)

SaaS Branding | 6 Challenges of Killer Cloud Brands

Tweet Me! SaaS branding has some unique challenges that aren’t covered in the average MBA program. As a new communication channel, the Internet has altered the rules of branding for almost every category of product. However, cloud brands that owe their very existence to the Internet often find that the message, the medium and the merchandise are a confusing tangle of clicks, words, sounds, images and experiences that is difficult to describe. I’m not going to re-hash branding 101, there are plenty resources available for that. I’m also not going to provide a fool proof recipe for ... (more)

Financial Market Data On-Demand – New Gig at Xignite

After spending the last couple of years consulting around the SaaS and Web 2.0 worlds, I’ve decided to take the startup plunge again and settle down in the clouds. I recently joined Xignite, a cutting edge on-demand cloud services and mashup platform provider that helps companies incorporate accurate, current financial information directly into websites and applications via Web services, i.e., no integration programming required! The company is off-the-charts on the SaaS Success Top Ten Dos and Don’ts as evidenced by everything from the potential market (market data is a multi-... (more)

Startup Musing – Getting $#!t Done on a Shoestring

There is always more work to do in a startup than there are people in the company or hours in the day to do it. Everyone has heard horror stories about endless twelve hour days, all nighters and death marches. Some startups fail not because the idea is bad, but because they just can’t seem to focus effectively on turning the idea into a profitable business. This is the second post in a series entitled Startup Musings that discusses managerial challenges unique to the startup executive. This post covers a few handy tips on how to make the most of the few resources you’ve got. Cho... (more)