FacebookXInstagram

Cloud pioneers continue to predict the end of software

When I first came to FirstRain I knew nothing about On Demand or SaaS systems and so I set out to learn as much as a I could as fast as I could -- and I was lucky enough to be introduced to Timothy Chou over coffee (the wonders of the Silicon Valley network) who gave me a rapid primer in the wisdom of the on demand software model.Timothy is well known in the on demand software world. He built Oracle online, long before on demand was fashionable, and he [...]

By |2017-12-06T17:18:37-08:00April 8, 2009|Career Advice|1 Comment
Read More

Contention: SaaS is history repeating?

Interesting interview with Harry Debes of Lawson software last week - SaaS Industry Will Collapse in Two Years. In the interview Harry predicts that SaaS as a business model cannot sustain because of inherently lower profitability and so it will go the way of previous attempts like ASPs. He thinks the model has been hyped and while Salesforce.com has been successful it "just has average to below-average profitability" and it's the poster child for an industry that will collapse the first time CRM doesn't make its growth projections.Frankly I don't [...]

By |2017-12-06T17:24:07-08:00September 1, 2008|Career Advice|0 Comments
Read More

Top 10 Laws for Being “SaaS-y”

One of my board members, Raman Khanna of Onset Ventures, sent me a terrific article on how to run a SaaS business - Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Being “SaaS-y”It's a really good list - and one where we've learned over the last 3 years to follow almost all these rules - in my words they are as follows - and the article gives some depth on each one:1. It's the 1 year committed annual value of your contracts that matters - anything else and you're fooling yourself2. Your sales [...]

By |2017-12-06T17:28:58-08:00February 27, 2008|Career Advice|0 Comments
Read More

Confusing revenue recognition with SaaS

There's an article in Seeking Alpha today RightNow proves "Software as a Service" isn't perfect - but as often the case the article confuses the revenue recognition model with the service delivery model.Joe Panettieri is right - SaaS has had been advertised as immune to downturns - but this is only the case if it is pure SaaS - that is both the delivery AND the revenue recognition are treated as subscription (see my primer on revenue recognition here).RNOW is going through a tough revenue transition. For years they had [...]

By |2017-12-06T17:29:41-08:00February 4, 2008|Career Advice|0 Comments
Read More
Go to Top