The Angel VC: The Three Rules of Freemium
At the SaaStr Europa conference in Paris a couple of weeks ago I sat down with Joaquim Lecha, the CEO of our portfolio company Typefor...| christophjanz.blogspot.com
At the SaaStr Europa conference in Paris a couple of weeks ago I sat down with Joaquim Lecha, the CEO of our portfolio company Typeform, to talk about “Freemium at Scale”. Founded and headquartered in Barcelona, the company launched a free version of its service seven years ago. During our conversation Joaquim revealed that this free service helps drive 180,000 monthly signups, and about 3% of those signups convert into paying users who are billed anywhere from €25 to €70 per month, d...| The Angel VC
[July 21, 2023]| The Angel VC
At the SaaStr Europa conference in Paris a couple of weeks ago I sat down with Joaquim Lecha, the CEO of our portfolio company Typefor...| christophjanz.blogspot.com
[July 21, 2023] There’s a newer version of this post , including an updated calculator . Founder salaries are not a topic I’ve had to spend ...| christophjanz.blogspot.com
(As you can see, I really like placeit.net :) ) In case you haven't started to think about your plan for 2017 yet, now's the time. To he...| christophjanz.blogspot.com
Startup PR for Dummies| The Angel VC
Back in 2014, I wrote a post titled “Five ways to build a $100 million business”. If you haven’t seen it yet, the central idea of the article was to look at how many customers you need, for a given ARPA, to get to $100 million in annual revenue and what this might mean for your sales and marketing strategy. That post went kind of viral, which led us to create a follow-up piece, an infographic, a poster (which you can order here), and a PlayPlay video.| The Angel VC
A few days ago I wrote that there’s more than one path to $100 million. I argued that while it’s awesome to see that some companies are able to get from 0 to $100 million in ARR in 7-8 years or even less, trying to grow that fast may not be the best choice for most companies.| The Angel VC
A couple of years ago I wrote a post titled “How fast is fast enough?”. The subtext of the question was “How fast do you have to grow if your ambition is to get to $100M in ARR and build a very large company”. It’s an important question, as your target growth rate determines your hiring plan, budget, and fundraising strategy.| The Angel VC
Understanding the mechanics of founder re-ups in financing rounds| The Angel VC
In last week's post I shared some thoughts about Dropbox and why, although Dropbox is unquestionably one of the most amazing SaaS companies ever built, I am a tad less confident in the company's long-term future than I am in other SaaS leaders such as Salesforce.com, Zendesk, or Shopify.| The Angel VC
I’m late to the party here, I know. Dropbox went public a bit more than a month ago and I’ve finally had a chance to take a close look at the company’s S1. I’ll be sharing a few specific observations from the S1 review, but let’s start with some more general thoughts about the company.| The Angel VC
I usually use this blog when I write new posts. Occasionally I re-publish selected posts on our Medium channel. Lately, however, I've observed myself publishing on Medium first, for the simple reason that the authoring experience is much better on Medium than on Blogger, especially when you're including a lot of pictures. | The Angel VC
I’m very excited to announce that we’re looking for a new Associate. In all modesty, I think that for a young, smart person who’s passionate about startups and technology, an Associate role at Point Nine is one of the fastest ways to learn, build your network, and advance your career. Case in point: Rodrigo, who started as an Associate four years ago, is now a Partner at Point Nine; Fabian is running his own fund; Nicolas became a “30 under 30” and is now VP at Insight; and Mathias ...| The Angel VC
While doing some research for another post I just stumbled on this excellent overview from Pacific Crest on the churn rates of publicly listed SaaS companies. I’ve seen posts with churn benchmarks of public SaaS companies before, but this one is by far the most comprehensive collection I’ve seen and I think it’s very useful.| The Angel VC
After a Clio Board Meeting last week I received the following email from Jack Newton, the company's amazing co-founder & CEO. | The Angel VC
When you’re talking to investors about a Series B, Series C or later round, one of the questions that will inevitably come up is “What are your CACs?”. It sounds like a simple question, but from the question of what costs to include and the right way to account for organic traffic to the pandora box of multi-touch attribution, there are lots of devils in the details.| The Angel VC
Over the last couple of weeks and months we spent some time putting our investment thesis on paper. The purpose of this exercise was to challenge and discuss our implicit assumptions and to get everyone on our team aligned on what kind of investments we seek.| The Angel VC
In the first part of this post, I looked at what some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry said about Product/Market Fit (PMF) and how they try to define and measure it. While everybody seems to agree on the broad concept of PMF there is (unsurprisingly) no consensus on how exactly it can be defined and measured, and some people set the bar much higher than others. For example, according to Brad Feld you find PMF somewhere between $100k and $1M in MRR, while others argue that you ...| The Angel VC
I’ve been fascinated by the concept of Product/Market Fit for quite some time. The reason why it’s such an interesting and important concept is that getting to Product/Market Fit (PMF) marks a critical juncture in a company’s lifecycle. At least in theory, the life of a company can be divided into a “pre PMF” phase and a “post PMF” phase, with each of the two phases having very different objectives and requiring very different strategies. As Marc Andreessen famously said, “whe...| The Angel VC
In our weekly investment team call earlier this week we decided to pass on two early-stage SaaS startups that were both on track to grow from zero to $100k in MRR in their first 12 months of going live. Both companies clearly had impressive traction, but in both cases we weren’t convinced of the market size and the opportunity to build a large, sustainable company. (We of course might be wrong, and maybe we’ll have to add both companies to our growing anti-portfolio list in a couple of ye...| The Angel VC
[This post first appeared on Point Nine Land, our Medium channel.]| The Angel VC
At the excellent SaaStr Annual 2016 conference about a year ago, a very experienced SaaS CEO said on stage that an internal recruiter can be a startup CEO’s secret superpower. I couldn’t agree more, and I think startups should make that hire sooner rather than later.| The Angel VC
I'm a big fan of placeit.net ;)| The Angel VC
We have a tradition here at Point Nine that once a year, we organize a meetup for the founders of our SaaS portfolio companies. The first meetup took place in SF back in 2012 and gave the founders in our (at that time still rather small) portfolio a unique opportunity to learn about what works and what doesn't work in SaaS, compare notes and share war stories.| The Angel VC
Today is January 10, 2017. That means that in ten days, this jerk will become the leader of the free world. Ugh. It still feels surreal to me. In less earth shattering news, the fact that it's 2017 also means that my "SaaS Funding in 2016" napkin needs an update.| The Angel VC
As the year is coming to an end I’d like to share a few thoughts on what we’ll be looking for in the SaaS world in 2017. This is not meant to be an exhaustive enumeration but rather a brief outline of a few big themes that I feel particularly strongly about.| The Angel VC
