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OV | Weekly – June 23, 2018

Hi Friend of OpenView,

Happy official start to summer (at least here in the northern hemisphere) 🌞 We know things tend to slow down a bit once the weather heats up, but not at OpenView. We've got an excellent round up of content for you this week. Think pricing, churn reduction, fundraising and more. Happy reading!


Pricing Insights from 1,800 SaaS Companies  💸

At OpenView, we're obsessed with pricing, which means we're constantly reevaluating what it means to have a best-practices pricing plan in place. We've updated our SaaS pricing data for 2018 to learn what matters most when it comes to pricing your product. Here's just a snippet of what we uncovered:

  • Adopt value-based pricing (please!)
  • Usage-based pricing is giving seat-based pricing a run for its money (pun intended)
  • SaaS companies have become less reliant on discounting
  • Later stage companies are hiring pricing pros

Get all the juicy pricing insights here.


Are customer retention benchmarks increasing churn?

It's only natural to compare and rate ourselves against our peers. Not surprisingly, we also seek to compare and rate various statistics in our businesses. The rise of benchmarking has enabled SaaS companies to see how they stack up against competitors and provide motivation to attain best-in-class stats.

But, is all this benchmarking blinding us, especially when it comes to tracking customer success? Are we fudging the numbers to make ourselves feel better? Vanity metrics can lead to inaccurately assessing customer success initiatives which can, unsurprisingly, increase churn. 

Learn how to avoid benchmarking yourself into complacency here.


Steve Jobs' Secret for Eliciting Questions

When messaging expert Andy Raskin sat down at a San Francisco café, he never expected to get a side of invaluable business advice with his lunch. Two crab cakes later, Raskin gleaned Steve Jobs' secret for eliciting questions and now he's sharing that same advice with you here.


🎧 BUILD | Fundraising: Loopio's Journey from Bootstrapped to Funded

Fundraising is an essential part of running a startup these days. OpenView’s Ricky Pelletier breaks down the fundraising process and what to be aware of when negotiating with a VC. Then we hear from Zak Hemraj, Loopio Co-founder & CEO, about how his company went from bootstrapped to funded outside the Valley and the lessons learned along the way.

Listen to the latest episode of BUILD here.


Here's what else we're reading 📖


Here's what else you need to know this week:

  • You can also hear OpenView's Devon McDonald at Traction Conference this summer. Use promo code OVP25 for $350 OFF General Admission or OVP4 to get 4 tickets for $1,200 ($2,200 OFF General Admission) at TractionConf.io.
  • Logz.io is hiring an HR Business Partner in their Boston office. Learn more and apply here. Not a fit? You can view all openings across our portfolio here.
  • 💌 Quick PSA: If you read the OV Weekly in Gmail and want to ensure it hits your inbox, be sure to add OpenView to your contacts. Learn how to do so here.

That's it for now. See you back here next week! In the meantime, say 👋on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

This newsletter was lovingly curated by OpenView's marketing team. Think our readers would benefit from your expertise? Submit your content to Labs by emailing editor@ov.vc.

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