Playing at work has become so commonplace that it’s starting to seem a bit clichéd. But as played out (excuse the pun) as this trend may be, it hasn’t stopped an increasing number of companies from encouraging employees to enjoy more childlike diversions at work.

The reason? Productivity.

When someone’s age becomes more subjective and not tied to a number, that employee becomes 5 to 6 percent more productive in the workplace. He or she taps into a newfound desire for knowledge and skills, thereby becoming a more goal-oriented person.

Read the full article here.

When entering a shared marketplace, you have to consider the keyword there — “shared.” To partake in the benefits, you need to make it a win-win for everyone involved.

That means catering to those who have a stake in its performance, including supply, demand and the marketplace platform itself. Uber is successful because it covers its bases — it vets drivers, provides consistent, flexible work and delivers an outstanding customer experience to riders.

Businesses tend to fall flat in a sharing economy for four main reasons, but you can avoid that fate by following a few simple rules.

Read the full article here.

Your culture permeates every facet of your organization — from employee recruitment and retention to brand awareness and advocacy — so it only makes sense that you’d place a high importance on cultivating it. But basing a majority of your business decisions on culture alone may do more harm than good.

While culture is essential to keeping staff engaged and satisfied, it should by no means negatively impact your financial future. It’s about striking a balance, which often stems from four distinct tactics.

Read the full article here.

If you’ve ever started your own technology company, you know how hard it is to split your time between chief executive officer and chief technology officer.

My friend recently left his engineering job to found his own tech company. He built it, developed it, and called it his “baby” with no trace of irony. But as babies do, it grew. The technology platform started demanding more of his time. He had to give it up. Fortunately, he found a CTO who rebuilt the platform and took the products to new heights of usability, scalability, and form. Best of all, his new CTO made him a better CEO because he was able to focus on running the rest of the business.

This story illustrates the ever-growing value of an A-level developer, especially for budding startups. The demand for these developers is high, but the market is hypercompetitive. If done right, however, finding one isn’t as hard as you think.

Read the full article here.

Implementing smart enterprise software can revive productivity. In fact, workplace productivity has jumped 84 percent in the last 40 years as a result of digital technology.

And it makes sense: tools like Box or Bitium enhance workflow and enable employee collaboration. And enterprise software can enhance employee mobility, allowing staff to access company data from any place at any time. In turn, this efficiency frees everyone to focus on high-ROI items.

In most cases, your customers end up interacting with the software you choose through shared interfaces or software recommendations, so their loyalty is also at stake. It pays to make the right choice from the start, and six steps can help you arrive at the best option.

Read the full article here.

In SaaS, generating, qualifying, and closing leads is an exhaustive process. Before a company settles on a SaaS solution, the business development team must work with the CIO and IT team to identify an ideal solution, and legal must negotiate with the vendor before it cuts any checks.

Although you can’t bypass crucial steps in this process, there are ways to expedite the sales cycle and start pocketing revenue faster.  Continue reading →

Investors have set their sights on insurance tech. Ripe for disruption, this antiquated industry has a large and confusing domain known for its poor customer satisfaction and, in this age of swipes and clicks, limited technological innovation.

A much-needed leap into the 21st century could change this.

A serious shift in insurance is possible as investors examine the potential value of insurance tech, a currently weaker component of the industry. Since 2010, investors have funneled an estimated $2.12 billion toward this prospect. Of those funds, more than half rolled in during the last two years, with $556.5 million coming in 2014 and $831.5 million in 2015 — and we’re not even talking a full year here; that’s just from January to May.

Read the full article here.

Marketplaces are becoming more intimate, and this intimacy requires a certain level of trust between the buyer and the seller. No one wants to part with his hard-earned dollars if he doesn’t trust the person on the other end of the deal.

But trust doesn’t happen at first sight. And it’s even harder in Silicon Valley, where the market is saturated and businesses must stand out to build trust. The 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer signaled that trust in technology had declined, with the majority of respondents feeling that greed or profit fueled innovation — not the betterment of society.

The burden is now on the marketplace to build this trust. San Francisco-based Airbnb uses an insurance guarantee, while Santa Monica-based TrueCar built transparency and competitive pricing into its platform. These companies knew that consumers wouldn’t use their services if trust were absent.

Read the full article here.

Forecasting the growth of your enterprise software company is tricky. While most consumer-facing businesses earn money from day one, the average sales cycle for an enterprise software company is six months or longer.

Although setting growth forecasts without sales figures can be tough, it’s essential that you do it well. Think of a growth forecast as a promise, a stake in the ground. You’re staking one of the most important things you own — your credibility and reputation as a trusted leader — on delivering this promise to your investors and your staff.

To help you accurately forecast your company’s growth, here are four essential metrics you should track:

1. Monthly recurring revenue:  MRR is your most important metric: It’s a measure of your business’s predictable, recurring revenue. Unlike traditional software customers, SaaS customers don’t pay upfront. This is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it means you don’t have those initial injections of cash; on the other hand, it means you’ll have a steady monthly cash flow once you get established.While it’s great to have a record month for revenue, MRR is the metric you should pay attention to. By tracking MRR instead of just monthly revenue, you can keep an eye on the rate at which you’re gaining or losing business. For example, if you gain $100,000 in new revenue but lose $100,000 in existing revenue, MRR will still remain flat.
2. Churn:  This is a metric to help you understand customer reactions to your business. Churn measures the rate at which customers leave every month. To effectively measure churn, you’ll need to group customers into meaningful cohorts.Are most customer losses newer customers, or are they customers who have been around awhile? At which stage in the cycle are you losing people? Asking these questions can help you identify weak spots in your business. This is a vital metric because you’ll need to manage your customer acquisition cost relative to your customer lifetime value. If your lifetime value falls dramatically, you’ll need to rethink your business model.
3. Customer acquisition cost:  This goes hand in hand with churn analysis. Many startup leaders are so focused on revenue and growing their customer bases that they ignore how much they’re spending to find new customers. Ignoring CAC can lead to making unprofitable business decisions — you’ll spend so much money chasing new customers that you can’t recoup these costs with the lifetime value of the customer.
4. Average revenue per customer:  This last metric is by far the simplest, but it tells you a great deal.How much are customers willing to pay for your product? If you notice that the average revenue per customer tapers off around $10,000, you might have hit your price ceiling. If you want to charge more, you’ll need to improve your product. Conversely, if you have continuous growth in average revenue per customer, this might be a sign customers are willing to pay even more for your product.

What to do if you miss your targets

Checking your startup’s growth metrics before setting a growth forecast can help you set realistic targets — but things don’t always go as planned.

Startups often run on tight budgets, so missing your forecast can make it even trickier to meet your next one. You might have to cut your expenses or alter your targets.

Neither act inspires confidence. Your investors might question your credibility or pull back from the company, and employee morale could plummet. It’s important, therefore, to keep both groups from worrying about your startup missing a growth target.

Here are three ways to deal with the problem:

1. Build tolerance into your models. You need to be realistic when setting growth targets. For an early-stage company, this means building in a tolerance level of about 20 percent. When your company’s revenues stabilize, this might be as little as 5 percent.Managing expectations is essential to your business’s development. Track your forecasts on a quarterly — if not monthly — basis. This gives you a chance to react before it’s too late.
2. Communicate. Investors value open, honest communication. Don’t be afraid to call investors at the first sign of underperformance, but craft your message carefully — you don’t want to set off alarm bells.You should also keep your employees in the loop. They’re far more likely to stick with you if they feel included.
3. Conduct a full postmortem evaluation. Finally, ask the all-important question: Why did you miss your growth forecast? Is it because of an internal problem, or is it a reflection of economic problems for the industry? If it’s internal, you need to find a solution.

   Look at Apple. The company was worth about $4 billion in 1997 and had just lost $1 billion the previous fiscal year. Steve Jobs then took the lead and staged an immediate inquest. He secured $150 million of investment money from Microsoft, and he took an honest look at Apple’s offerings. Jobs streamlined the company, scrapped unprofitable products, and laid the foundation for the company’s success.

For SaaS startup success, keep an eye on your metrics, and don’t panic if you miss a growth forecast. If you do miss your targets, take a close look at your company. Always keep investors informed of the situation, and don’t quit when the going gets tough.

TX Zhuo is a managing partner of Karlin Ventures, an L.A.-based venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage enterprise software, e-commerce, and marketplaces. Follow the company on Twitter.

Labor trends come and go. Occasionally, they come back again.

Earlier in American history — especially during the Industrial Revolution — piecework was a common labor practice across all fields of work. Workers were paid on a per-piece basis, and this offered a high level of flexibility to employers and incentives to good employees.

But as time went on and industries continued to develop, piecework fell by the wayside and was replaced by the salaried 9-to-5 positions we are all too familiar with.

Today, however, with technology powering the modern sharing economy, we’re experiencing a rampant resurgence of independent contractors: 1099 workers. More and more companies, especially small businesses and startups, are returning to this low-risk, high-reward option.

Read the full article here.