Blue Horizon’s reading list is a curated collection of articles for SaaS founders and management teams. We are entrepreneurs and operators who have lived through the process of founding and scaling software companies. Here are the articles and resources we found useful this month.
Gartner: SaaS Will Still Grow 18% in 2023 to $200 Billion Worldwide. And Another 18% in 2024
by Jason Lemkin
Gartner has its latest report and predictions out. They see overall SaaS spend still growing a very healthy 18% in 2023 to almost $200 Billion Worldwide in 2023. And after interviewing 100s of CIOs and CXOs, it still sees SaaS growing another 18% in 2024 to $232 Billion a year…There’s no question that inflation, infrastructure costs, and vendor consolidation will take up a lot of this increase. But budgets are still there. Even if we have to do a lot more, and prove a lot more, to access them.
How to Simplify Your Marketing Funnel: Seeing the Unit Cost Forest for the Conversion Rates Trees
by Dave Kellogg
▪️ Take hops down the funnel instead of steps. Instead of looking at each conversion rate as we descend, we will look only at MQLs, stage 1 and stage 2 oppties, closed/won deals, and associated conversion rates between them.
▪️ Add cost information. Ultimately, the business cares about how much things cost, not just what the rates are compared to benchmarks and to history.
▪️ Be sensitive to cognitive overload, both in terms of the size of the table and the total number of digits we’re going to put before the reader.
Webinars Almost Always Work. If You Really Commit
by Jason Lemkin
…think of webinars as scaleable ways to interact, as a human being, with groups. Email is fine and all, eBooks have their place, but there is no human interaction there. No Q&A. And no chance to get to know the humans behind an application. 1-on-1 chats are also great, but not only can you only do so many, sometimes prospects don’t want a 1-on-1. Sometimes they want a more passive experience, where they can consume a demo and a discussion without having to answer a bunch of qualifying questions up front.
Measure Twice, Cut Once: Effective Tailored Shareholder Report Design
by Synthesis Technology
The complexity here isn’t in the data management, nor is it tied to coding or connectivity – it’s the Tailored Shareholder Report design and production processes that are tricky…Because the Tailored Shareholder report is a discrete product, with its own unique characteristics and isn’t merely an abbreviated shareholder report, fund companies should not simply default to their existing production methodologies.
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