top of page
Screen Shot 2020-01-13 at 6.43.05 PM.png

Passport Weekly: How Many SaaS Tools Do You Have That Do the Same Exact Thing?

 
3rd October 2019

Written by GSVlabs Startup Director & Product Manager, Slater McLean

The Passport weekly is a hand-curated newsletter compiled weekly to bring you the best accounts of entrepreneurship and insights from the startup ecosystem. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider forwarding it to spread the word. Not getting the Passport weekly regularly? Subscribe above! 

How many SaaS tools do you have that do the same exact thing?

One of the key benefits of SaaS products is how easy they are to set up and deploy. In a lot of cases, all you have to do sign up and you're off to the races! However, this also makes it easy to switch. At a company with 101-200 employees, 42% of their SaaS stack changes year over year and they have at least 4 subscriptions that do the same thing.

42%! Why is turn over and redundancy so high? We think it's because SaaS products have become too niche. See more data about SaaS tools below and reply to let us know why you think turnover is so high.

unnamed (6).jpg

16 Non-Obvious Fundraising Lessons On Pitching

To help Founders with their fundraising process, we here at NFX have already built tools like Signal and the Brief to help Founders find, connect with, and reach out to the right VCs for them. 

Today, I want to share some of the non-obvious lessons I’ve learned from many years of being a 4-time founder/CEO and an investor in over 100 companies. 

While NFX can’t invest in every company we meet, we hope Founders everywhere can use these lessons to put themselves in the best position possible for a successful fundraise. Click to read more >>>

unnamed (7).jpg

The Gross Margin Problem: Lessons for Tech-Enabled Startups

Some thoughts on the topic du jour in tech right now -- the sudden reappraisal of tech-enabled businesses based on gross margins/unit economics. Here's what founders need to know. 1/ How did we get here? The truth is that software startups never had to worry about gross margins until software started eating the world. Gross margins only became a concern once software blended with physical-world products to create new “tech-enabled” business models. Click to read more >>>

unnamed (5).png

Good Leaders are Great Storytellers — Our 6 Tips for Telling Stories That Resonate

When “Toy Story” premiered to glowing reviews and box office success in 1995, there was one theme among the chorus of praise that made the Pixar team especially proud.

"We took pride in the fact that reviewers talked mainly about the way 'Toy Story' made them feel and not about the computer wizardry that enabled us to get it up on the screen,” Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, recounts in Creativity, Inc. “We believed that this was the direct result of our always keeping story as our guiding light.” Click to read more >>>

unnamed (6).png

What A Killer Marketing Strategy Must Have!

Have you ever started a trip by getting in your car, rushing out of your driveway, and immediately driving to the newest, fastest highway — to only then decide where you want to go? Sounds crazy, right? Then, why do so many marketers behave that way? Too often, marketers jump from one tactic to the next without having a strategy, or even an objective, in place. Click to read more >>>

unnamed (7).png

2019 SaaS Trends Report

Each year, we analyze an anonymized data set of our customers to identify trends in SaaS spend and usage. This report takes a look back at 2018 data from nearly a thousand companies, and offers guidance on how to think about SaaS in 2019.

It’s no surprise to report that SaaS spending and adoption have continued to rise. In addition to further evidence of the SaaS explosion, the 2018 data revealed two major trends. Click to read more >>>

New Tools on Passport

Sunlight: Give your team access to courses, books, and events worldwide.
FastCTO: We pair startups with super experienced, real CTOs in a non-profit way.

New Mentors on Passport

Ashwin Ganesh Krishnamurthy: Senior Product Manager, Oracle 

Igor Belagorudsky: President, FastCTO

Gusti Kustyanto: Principal, Kustyanto Consulting

Upcoming Events

GSVlabs Open House (11/6/19)  - Come check our Silicon Valley innovation center and work here for the day, then stay past for happy hour and our corporate innovation disrupted event series!

Corporate Innovation Disrupted (11/6/19) The Future of Financial Services - The Future of Financial Services: Join us to learn and share best practices, megatrends, networking, and more

Happy Hour with Joe Coughlin (11/6/19) Stories of People & Personal Investing- Join us for drinks and a talk with Joe Coughlin, CEO of Corporate Risk Solutions (CRS) & long-time investor.

SF Tech Networking Mixer (11/5/19) Join the A-List Community for our 8th networking event of 2019 at Executive Order Bar and Lounge! Join us for drinks and networking with Bay Area professionals in San Francisco.

How Women Lead in the Boardroom (11/8/19) How Women Lead is proud to lead the Bay Area efforts for the third year in a row to support 2020 Women on Boards, a national effort to increase the percentage of women on U.S. company boards to 20% or greater by 2020.

bottom of page