If you are a SaaS Founder or CEO, chances are your free time for learning new things is quite limited. The online world is full of content for you to tap in, but with such a low amount of time to spend on it, you’ve gotta be practical and pick the right sources for your daily reading. In this article, we’ll talk about six blogs that are worth the time of every SaaS CEO or Founder.
A venture capitalist at Redpoint, Tomasz Tunguz writes on his blog almost on a daily basis. His blog talks about the major challenges startups face, and gives some bits of advice on how to face them as well.
His blog talks about different subjects like customer success, content marketing, corporate culture, strategy, fundraising and data analysis. His blog posts are well-written, based on data he himself collects, and can be used to solve any issues your company might be having.
Along with Frank Bien, Tomasz Tunguz wrote the book “Winning With Data”, which is also a must-read for many in the SaaS business.
Tunguz also has a mailing list with over 20k subscribers, and it’s easy to join it if you go to his blog. This way, you can even receive his updates directly in your inbox.
Hiten Shah is the Founder of three major SaaS companies: Crazy Egg, KISSmetrics, and Quick Sprout. Hitenism is his blog, in which he writes mostly about SaaS business, with a lot of subjects included. His advice and knowledge are based on pure experience and industry success.
He writes about building a brand, recommends must-reads for those in startups, advises SaaS founders, helps startups get funding, teaches how to grow a SaaS company and gives hiring tips… The list is endless. He’s a true entrepreneur who wants to share his experience growing his own SaaS companies from the bottom to the top.
If you’re interested in his content, you can also subscribe his newsletter: SaaS Weekly. In it, he shares his insights about entrepreneurship and features curated articles about the SaaS business.
Groove works with six thousand clients around the world as a Helpdesk for small businesses. As good as their product is, it took a lot of effort to build it and Groove shares their growth experience through their blog posts. It has a timeline style design which details the company’s journey to 10 million dollars a year.
The Groove blog has posts about their startup journey, product and customer support, Q&As, and interviews. Its wide range of content types will always give you some new information that could be useful for your own journey. The Groove’s blog posts are engaging and based on their own experience. Their content is well-written, educational, structured and, at the same time, entertaining.
The company writes both about what gave them their success but not only – they talk about their own failures too, which offered them plenty of lessons they’re willing to share with you.
Every Friday, Groove answers a question from the audience, which can be the result from a previous Q&A or some tweet directed at their handle. This is a really smart way to engage with their audience and write about the issues that their fans really care about.
Groove also has their own newsletters, some of which include their Q&A Friday articles. Subscribe to them today!
You probably heard of Close.io as a CRM solution for small and medium businesses, as well as startups. Different from the previous three blogs we mentioned, Close’s blog is mainly about sales, which makes its scope a little bit narrower than the other blogs so far.
However, this is not a bad thing: with a narrow scope there comes focused and actionable advice that will help your sales team on a practical level. Their advice can be taken at its face value for what it is: the result of a company’s experience with sales.
Every Founder or CEO has to have some sales knowledge since in the beginning, they’ll take many of the roles in a sales team. As the company grows, he’ll train sales reps to do the same job, taking in mind the lessons learned from the beginning.
Plus, sales skills can be useful in a lot of areas, not just concerning sales of your product. At the Close blog, you can find anything sales-related that your company might need. They also have a newsletter you can subscribe to.
SaaStr was started in 2012 by Jason M. Lemkin. In it, Jason begun by writing about his journey from 0 to a 100 million accounting rate of return. SaaStr also has a venture fund that invests in a few promising startups every year. Add to that 3 million views per month on their website.
It was included on Forbes’ list of 100 Blogs for Entrepreneurs; this and other accolades make SaaStr one of the most credible and respected sources in the SaaS business.
Other than using different formats like videos and blog posts, SaaStr also hosts their own events.
Their topics cover a lot that a startup needs to grow, like hiring and staff retention, venture capital marketing and relationships, customer success, growing a sales team, getting initial traction and scaling up your SaaS company.
For hiring new staff, one of their recommendations is that you reach out for SaaS recruitment agencies which will expertly hire for your business.
About their newsletters, you can sign up for daily updates from SaaStr or a weekly digest.
https://www.startupschool.org/
The Y Combinator Startup School is a great resource for anyone in the startup world. It aims at inspiring entrepreneurs to start their own company as a positive way of changing the world.
Using industry leaders as tutors, their course teaches startups the necessary skills for their newly-launched company to succeed. They provide those attending their courses with the resources for growth and continuous improvement.
Another goal of the Y Combinator Startup School is to give space for a community of entrepreneurs to reach out among themselves so they can encourage, teach and help other Founders and CEOs.
At their homepage, you’ll find lectures and plenty of other resources that will make your startup flourish. A selection of entrepreneurs from different industries will help you with different perspectives that are credible and useful.
These are the six top sources for you Founders and CEOs of SaaS companies out there. In these blogs and websites, you’ll find plenty of room for your company (and yourself) to improve the way you conduct business so your company will grow steadily without any hiccups.
Education is a constant evolution, so don’t get stuck in your old ways, especially when running a SaaS company. Constant improvement is necessary in an ever-changing industry, so find yourself some time to read about your business and teach yourself how to go about the daily challenges in your company.
