This post is aimed at CEOs and founders who are looking to upgrade their SaaS Financial Model to an operational tool that helps them make more informed decisions. This is the same core model that enabled me to simultaneously work with dozens of startups using spreadsheets, while we built our SaaS financial modeling software Flightpath.  Table of […]

The post The SaaS Financial Model You’ll Actually Use (Updated 2022) appeared first on Baremetrics.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao released a statement via Fortune magazine. “DeFi will soon see changes in 2021 and we can see some exciting and innovative developments in 2022, with SocialFi and GameFi being the main drivers,” he said. As DeFi grows, smart solutions will emerge to meet the needs of the community. Reports show that […]

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The post Big Jackpot Hit on the Divine Fortune Slot at Joo Casino appeared first on Casinomeister.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on LinkedIn here. This was published on the OV blog October 2018 and updated March…

The post How to Get More Women on Boards appeared first on OpenView.

While supply-chain fraud is nothing new, it continues to be a major challenge globally... Read more »

The post Fraudsters to continue exploiting supply chain woes in 2022 appeared first on Logistics Business® Magazine.

Is charging by consumption (usage-based pricing) a superior model for a business? When we say UBP, we mean charging customers by how much they use, rather than a constant amount of seats per month or API calls per month.

On on hand, UBP lubricates the customer conversion funnel. Prospects sign up and grow their accounts seamlessly. Usage data feeds the PLG lead score, and AEs outbound to the most promising users. Customers expand as their needs dictate and customer segments fall out from usage data

On the other hand, customers may be frustrated to estimate how much of a product they’ll use and the surprise of overage charges. Separately, the startup may have to reinvent its GTM: new AE quotas, sales materials, margin calculations.

These three questions may help guide a startup to the best answer:

1. Is my startup selling an application or infrastructure?

Application software companies sell seats. Infrastructure companies sell API calls, licenses per core or host, SMSs, bandwidth, storage by the GB. Salesforce largely set the standard for selling application seats.

Most of the time, application software companies don’t sell seats via UBP. Slack is a notable exception. Selling constant seat counts stems from the perception that the number of people using software shouldn’t change that much from one month to the next for most software. The predictability of fixed costs outweighs the benefits of flexibility.

Infrastructure usage can vary widely depending on seasonality (retail traffic spikes in Q4), developer activity (migration from one architecture to the next), new product launches, amongst other factors.

Selling UBP to a buyer accustomed to buying a flat seat count introduces more friction into the sales process. Often, the effort probably isn’t worth it, unless the company’s stated strategy is to differentiate on price structure.

2. What should my unit of pricing be?

The goal of UBP is to align the cost of software with the value. The unit of pricing is the crux to unlocking that puzzle.

The unit must be easy for a customer to understand, simple to predict, and crystal-clear so there aren’t arguments on what a unit is or isn’t in the future.

Company	Product	Unit	Pricing
AppDynamics	APM	CPU Core	$6 / core / month
ScoutAPM	APM	API Call	$1 / API call / month
Lightstep	APM	Service	$85 / service / month
Instana	APM	Host	$75 / host / month
Splunk	APM	Host	$55 / host / month
DataDog	APM	Host	$31 / host / month

Aligning on a particular unit isn’t easy. Within the same space, companies have different takes. Here’s a table of the usage-based pricing schemes of Application Performance Monitoring (APM) companies' that I put together from scanning each business’s pricing page. There are four different units across these six companies.

Having varying units might be an advantage: it’s harder for customers to price discriminate. How many API calls per host or services per host is the same as $31 per host per month?

But it might confuse the customer who’s accustomed /ato buying the service in a different way.

Is your startup differentiating on pricing to compete with an incumbent? Or are selling a superior product at a premium in which case using the same pricing model with higher fees reinforces the brand?

3. Can this pricing model achieve certain boundary pricing conditions?

How much should a Fortune 500 bank pay for your startup? How about a 50 person SaaS company?

The UBP pricing scheme needs to satisfy these boundary conditions: a certain customer ought to pay a certain amount in order for the business to succeed.

Often, a straight UBP pricing model doesn’t scale into the enterprise. A F500 may not consume enough units to justify a $250k or $2m deal. Introducing pricing layers on the unit of pricing can remedy this challenge. Basic units cost $1. Units that are HIPAA compliant cost 3x as much and FINRA compliant is one dollar more per unit.

Sometimes, companies add a second part to the UBP model: the platform fee, which makes the UBP a 2-part tariff. The platform fee instant boosts the ACV ad can be tailored per customer segment

One other thought on UBP. Some customers fear the sticker shock of dramatic usage in the first billing period. To offset this risk, many sales teams cap the charge in the first billing period to ensure customers who sign up and use substantially more of a service don’t suffer sticker shock when the first bill arrives.

Thanks to Barry McCardel for the inspiration on this post.

Bill Gross (pictured), the billionaire fund manager dubbed by Fortune Magazine in 2002 as “the Bond King,” has revealed in a recent interview he bought bitcoin. “I do think we...

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Traders are often drawn to trading because of the perceived ease of making money. Newbies would often hear of traders doubling their accounts in just a few months. Some could start with a few thousand dollars, grow their accounts and make a fortune. These stories are what usually draws people to trading the forex markets. […]

La entrada Big Time Cross Forex Trading Strategy se publicó primero en ForexMT4Indicators.com.

As the birds begin chirping and the buds start blooming, a new Season springs into life for Sea of Thieves! Along with an offering of brand-new Seasonal rewards, Season Six is all about expanding Sea of Thieves’ narrative through time-limited Adventures, while still giving you opportunities to forge your own epic tales of derring-do – […]

San Jose, United States. 08 March, 2022 – The Business Innovation Leaders Forum is asking the industry to nominate their choice for the Women Business Leaders Award. Entries are now open, to coincide with International Women’s Day. This award recognises CEOs, CIOs or C-Suite woman executives for their exceptional contribution towards business innovation. It will shine

The post Greater recognition for women business leaders: Business Innovation Leaders Forum opens Award nominations appeared first on IoT Now News - How to run an IoT enabled business.

On May 8, 1945, the second world war ended.On April 30, 1993, Tim Berners-Lee released the source code for the world’s first web browser.And last month,…