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Oh, That Bloated Presentation – The Web is Greener

Posted on September 17, 2008 ·

We can argue all we want about  the benefits of SaaS, discuss hypothetical use cases at length, but the best showcases are served up by real life, often unexpectedly.

A startup CEO friend asked me to take a look at his PowerPoint deck before he would send it to a VC.  (Incidentally, I don’t believe presentations should be sent in advance of a meeting:  if your deck has enough content to convey the message standalone, than it’s not a  presentation… but let’s put that aside for now.)   I agreed to help, and he fired off an email with the PPT attachment.

Too bad I could not open it.  I have MS Office 2003 on my Windows computer – that’s the last version I purchased, since moving to the Cloud, and I won’t buy an Office package ever again – and he has Office 2008 on his shiny Macbook Air.  (Standard issue for hot startup CEO’s in San Francisco?). Yes, I know there’s a converter thingie I can download from MS, but apparently I haven’t done it on this particular computer, so my friend quickly saved it for me in the older format.

I reviewed and commented on it, and as an aside noted that the fonts and the text alignment were way off on a page.  He did not see the text problem on the version I sent back.  Then came a second round of conversions and emails.  It became apparent that no matter what we do we always end up seeing different layouts – so much for the MS to MS conversion – so we just focused on content, and I sent back the revised version.  It took a while… hm, no wonder, the PPT deck that started it’s life as a 2MB file first became 5, then 7, finally 9 Megabytes.  Wow!

What an inefficient process!  Emailing multiple bloated copies of the same file, never seeing the identical version, leaving quite some footprint behind, when we could have started with an online presentation, collaboratively work on the one and only copy online, see the same and not clutter several computers with the garbage files.

I will come back to this in a minute, but here’s another benefit my CEO friend missed out on: providing the latest and greatest information.  The VC Partner he was talking to was about to to go on vacation, and she was planning to review the presentation in the next 2 weeks – who knows when.  This startup was at the time in advanced discussion with major prospects, and signing any of those deals would materially change the presentation.  Had my friend sent just a URL to the online presentation, he could have safely update it any time, and be assured that whenever the VC reviews it, she will always have the latest and greatest information.  Does this scenario ( sans the VC) sound familiar?  How many times have you hit “send” only to wish you could retract the email and replace the attachment with the correct version?  

Back to the storage footprint issue. On my count, just between my friend and myself, we generated and stored nine copies of this presentation, the last one being 9MB, up from 2.  It’s probably fair to assume a similar rate of multiplication in the process the original deck was created, between the CEO and his team.  Next he sends it to the VC, who will likely share it with several Associates in the firm, and in case there’s more interest, with other partners.  Of course my friend will send the same presentation to a few other VC firms as well, so it’s not beyond reasonable to think that there are at least a hundred copies floating around, occupying a Gigabyte of storage or more.  Oh, and I did not even consider the footprint of this presentation at ISP’s and all hops it goes through.  Not that I ever bought into IDC’s Storage Paradox, but this is clearly a very wasteful process.

All of that could be replaced with one central copy on the Web, represented by a URL. 

Oh, and the irony of all this: my friend is CEO of a GreenTech startup. smile_wink

(Cross-posted from CloudAve.  Follow our CloudAve Feed for more)

Filed Under: Collaboration, SaaS · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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3-year Old Millionaires

Posted on September 17, 2008 ·

No, not talking about babies here, but two Tech icons who both reached the Million milestone around their third birthday.

TechCrunch, launched 3-year ago as Mike Arrington’s hobby blog had 1 million Feedburner subscribers for the first time last week.  Of course it’s no longer a hobby blog, but a blog network run by a professional CEO, supported by a growing blogger team.  Mike himself has become a Silicon Valley institution, his Atherton home Web 2.0 Central.

Congratulations, Mike!   And Congrat’s to the other 3-year old millioinaire:  Zoho.

When Zoho Writer launched three years ago it was the underdog compared to Writely (which later became Google Docs). But it improved week by week, was soon joined by Zoho Sheet, and one had to be blind not to see the benefits of a complete Suite on the Net.  Today Zoho has a million users, is recognized as a leader along with Google, has made inroads to the Enterprise (400K users at GE?  Not bad…), The Economist calls them the force that will Deflate IT… a lot of achievements in three years.

Once again, congratulations to both… and now the race is on: who will reach the 2 Million mark first? smile_wink

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,
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CloudAve Launched – and Thank You, Harry

Posted on September 15, 2008 ·

(OK, I sinned. Mea Culpa.  I’ve just cross-posted an entire article, which is not the best behavior. But it’s not every day that I launch a new group blog – so consider this my shameless self-plug, and please subscribe to the feed.smile_wink)

We must be a crazy bunch on a suicide mission.  Why else would we launch a new blog focused on Cloud Computing and Business, when it’s just a fad that will collapse in two years?

Harry Debes, CEO of Lawson Software is a respected Enterprise Software industry veteran, but I’m afraid for all his achievements he’ll go down in history as the man who grabbed headlines with a fatally wrong call.  Of course not all wrong calls hurt one’s reputation: IBM’s Thomas Watson is still an industry legend despite the famous quote incorrectly attributed to him:

” I think there is a world market for maybe five computers“

The small difference is that what Thomas Watson could not fathom in 1943 ended up putting IBM on an amazing growth trajectory,  while Harry Debes’s view may just turn out to be fatal for Lawson – or to quote my Enterprise Irregular friend, Vinnie Mirchandani:

“That’s what American and Delta said about SW. And GM and Ford said about Japanese cars. And Sears and Wards said about WalMart.”

Another quote by Vinnie, closer to our industry:

“Dun & Bradstreet, which GEAC acquired for a song, was one of the most spectacular slides in the software market. In less than 5 years it went from dominant position to a distress sale as it missed the client/server wave in early 90s.”

I’ve seen that one close, fortunately for me from SAP’s side – the winner in that round.  We’re witnessing another tidal wave now, the shift to Cloud Computing.  It won’t happen overnight, but those who completely ignore it will vanish.  Some of my fellow Enterprise Irregulars elaborate more:

  • Vinnie Mirchandani points out that SaaS is what more and more customers want, and those who stop listening to customers inevitably hit the wall sooner or later.  Need proof?  How about this 100% SaaS customer, showcased at the recent Office 2.0 conference?
  • Jim Berkowitz  of CRM Mastery fame agrees,  adding that calling people, potential customers “stupid” never leads to any good.
  • Bob Warfield makes the case that even if we ignore what customers want and only consider profitabilty, Debes is wrong, Salesforce.com is almost as profitable as Lawson, but grows much faster, while Conquer, another SaaS success story is actually more profitable than Lawson is.
  • Jason Corsello adds that Lawson actually launched a SaaS offering last year, but experienced lackluster customer response largely to pricing and deployment issues … so now that they couldn’t pull it off, the declare the entire market doomed.
  • Josh Greenbaum concludes: “SaaS isn’t collapsing, it’s only just getting started“.

I can live with that… it’s only starting… so we’re not a suicidal bunch, after all.smile_wink But thank you, Harry Debes, for sparking a great discussion.

If you read just the few articles I’ve quoted above, you get a fairly good picture of the many benefits the Software as a Service model offers.  Let me add a few of my personal favorites:

  • Extended reach – small businesses can now have business functionality previously only available and affordable for large enterprises.
  • Commoditization of the software market – commoditization hurts most companies, except the few who drive it, but guess what – it’s great for customers.
  • End of Bloatware  – for the first time SaaS vendors can run stats and observe what features are actually used by customers, so they can cut out the fat and enhance the in-demand features.
  • New Business Models, like benchmarking – based on anonym aggregate data provide your customers with performance metrics.  Even newer business models we have not even imagined yet.
  • Dramatically changed Sales and Marketing model: pull vs. push.  Instead of the traditional sales model it’s all about transparency, information, letting informed customers find you.  The Product sells itself and your Customers are your Marketing team.

We’ll be writing about these and more. I’m a “business application guy”, so I mostly talk about SaaS – but our name is Cloud Avenue, not SaaS Avenue, for good reason: fellow blogger Krish will talk about it soon.  By the way, Krish and I got to know each other through our blogs – just like my fellow Editor, Ben Kepes, and just about all other contributors. We also have our CloudLab – for product / service reviews.  Yes, we will report on products, but do not strive to be a mini-TechCrunch: we have no intention to report about everything new.  We’re not a news-blog.  We’d rather sit back, analyze a market, find key players, then produce a series of reviews / comparative analysis.  Quality before quantity or urgency.

We’re believers in Cloud Computing, but  not over-zealous cheerleaders.  Just as I’m finishing this post, another SaaS debate erupted, which prompted Anshu Sharma to note: “there must be a Sky is Falling Support Group“.  The really notable part of the Cloud-Filled Debate @Forbes is Nick Carr’s responses: not because of the Big Switch author’s unquestionable “cloud-bias”, but because of how realistic he is:

Forbes.com: Is cloud computing over-hyped?
Nicholas Carr: At the moment, yes, and that’s typical for technological advances.

What’s your imagined time line of the adoption of cloud computing? Will it take years? Decades?
If you’re talking about big companies, I would say it will be a slow, steady process lasting maybe 15 to 20 years.

On what Gartner Research analysts call “the cycle of hype and gloom,” where do you think cloud computing is currently positioned?
It’s definitely near the peak of its hype. The doom period, when the media and IT managers realize the challenges ahead, is likely coming soon. But regardless of hype or gloom, the technology will only keep progressing.

Overhyped, slow process, doom is coming… has Nick Carr switched sides?  No, he is just being realistic – and that’s what we need to do here  @CloudAve, too. We will talk about integration problems, security issues, privacy concerns, even legal ramifications – many of these I don’t claim to know much about, which is why it’s great to have a diverse team of authors with complementary areas of expertise. And our door is never closed: we welcome guest posts, and who knows, you may feel inclined to join us as as a regular writer…

Finally, we could not afford to bring you CloudAve without sponsorship.  My regular readers know I’ve been an advisor to Zoho for years now – I’ve found them to be a showcase for a lot of my ideals.  Zoho stepped up as exclusive sponsor of CloudAve.  This does not make us a Zoho PR outlet, in fact they can expect less coverage here than they got on my personal blog.  We enjoy complete editorial independence.

What we do not have, and will not have is any form of advertising.  None of those flashy banners, boxes, making the site close to unreadable. Just pure content.  And since we are not dependent on page views, we can afford to offer our content under a Creative Commons licence.  Yes, it’s all yours, take it – just don’t forget attribution.

So here we are – welcome to CloudAve. We hope you will follow us.   And once again, thank you, Harry, for all the attention to Cloud Computing.smile_wink

P.S.  The CloudAve platform  is not exactly in nice order yet. It’s work-in-progress.

So for now, all I can do is apologize for the shabby appearance, like I did at a previous move – that one turned out quite well, didn’t it?

And talk about move – I am not abandoning this blog either, so I hope you continue to follow me both here and on CloudAve.

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, SaaS, Social Networking · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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SaaS and the Commoditization of the Software Market

Posted on September 14, 2008 ·

Office 2007 Reaches a New Low – reports Joe Wilcox @eWeek.  He means low prices:  while Office Standard is still above $300, the Home and Student Edition can be purchased for as little as $89.99.

He then speculates on the reasons for this “Crazy Eddie”  pricing, with percentage of likelihood:

  • “It’s end of the back-to-school buying season, when Microsoft and retailers often discount consumer Office (50 percent).
  • Microsoft is seeding the consumer market with the Home and Student Trojan horse for supporting Web services such as Office Live Workspace (25 percent).
  • The low pricing is way of psychologically preparing the consumer market for $69.95 Office Equipt, which packs 12-month subscription versions of Office 2007 Home and Student Edition, Windows Live OneCare, Mail, Messenger and Photo Gallery. (20 percent).
  • Microsoft is shoring up marketshare as proactive response to freebees like Google Docs. (5 percent).”

I strongly believe in the last one, which is way underrated at 5%.  With freely available OpenOffice, Google Docs and the Zoho Suite, people have little reason left to purchasing Microsoft Office.  I’ve said this before, while discussing the perfectly rightful clampdown on piracy:

The danger for Microsoft is not the direct financial impact of these users turning away from their product, since the never paid in the first place. It’s losing their grip; the behavioral, cultural change, the very fact that millions of people – students, freelancers, moonlighters, small business workers,  unemployed – realize that they no longer need a Microsoft product to work with MS file formats.  Microsoft shows these non-customer users the door, and they won’t come back – not even tomorrow when they are IT consultants, corporate managers, executives.  That’s Microsoft’s real loss.

But this post is about commoditization, and there’s more to it than putting price-pressure on Microsoft. Yes, SaaS disrupts the traditional software market, but there’s another equally important trend happening: some of the early pioneers who evangelized SaaS but retained a 1.0 business model are being squeezed by more nimble competitors. 

Days after my post on SaaS and the Shifting Software Business Model I received an email from Salesforce.com, announcing new, promotional pricing for Salesforce Group Edition.  The promo was supposed to end July 31st, but I suspected this would become a permanent price cut.  Why?  Group Edition is where Salesforce.com feels intense price pressure – see the comparative matrix here.  Today I checked again, and what a surprise (not really) –  the promo deadline is now gone, Salesforce.com silently turned the promotion into a permanent price-cut. 

No wonder there wasn’t much fanfare: price cuts are a red flag for the Street.  Commoditization can be a death-spiral to businesses – except for the few that drive it. But it is beneficial to customers, and in the end, that’s what matters.

(Disclaimer: I am an advisor to Zoho, the company with a mission of Deflating IT).

Filed Under: Business, SaaS · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Let’s Meet on CloudAve, the New Cloud Computing / Business Blog

Posted on September 10, 2008 ·

My regular readers no doubt noticed that I’ve been blogging less recently. I’m not about to give up ( although that’s a fashionable trend nowadays), in fact I’ve increasingly felt dissatisfied not being able to talk about everything I wanted here… be it industry trends, opinion pieces or product reviews.

I enjoy writing longer, thoughtful pieces, but often don’t have the time, and the quickie “fillers” I do in the meantime tend to become more popular then the deep, analytical ones.  Fellow blogger Louis Gray contemplates the same this morning. I’ve especially hit the wall with reviews: after a few popular ones I got inundated with requests to review this and that…but I don’t reprint vendor PR, and simply don’t have the bandwidth to do them justice, spending days on research before writing them up.  (Need to focus on activities that… well, pay the bills).

“Oh, no, he’s gone crazy… starting another pro Blog network, when pageviews and ad revenues are drying up for all but the few best…”

Don’t worry, I am not about to launch another TechCrunch- ReadWriteWeb- Mashable- wannabe blog.  But I am launching a new blog, Cloud Avenue where, working with a few like-minded bloggers we’ll focus on the intersection of Cloud Computing, especially SaaS and Business, ranging from small business to enterprise.

Our blogging team is as diverse as it gets: fellow Editor Ben Kepes is from New Zealand, Krish is in the Seattle area, other contributors are from the US, Europe, Australia and India. (Long nights and extensive use of Web collaboration tools are in store for us – eating our own dog food.)  Our writing styles are equally diverse, so we’ll have a mix of “quickies” and longer analysis, and as for reviews, we’ll have our own CloudLab that will from time to time venture into a series of comparative reviews.

Now, what about that craziness factor?  Well, we have a No Ads sign at CloudAve, and we mean it: none of those flashy boxes, banners that make content hard to find…   but how do we survive?  An old friend comes to help.  I’ve been a long-time Advisor to Zoho, and increasingly a fan – not simply for the services they offer, but the longer term impact and their business philosophy.  I better let The Economist explain.

Zoho stepped up as exclusive Sponsor of CloudAve, allowing us to focus on content, without Creative Commons Licenseworrying about revenue generation.  In fact since we’re not dependent on page-views, we can afford to give our content away: everything on CloudAve will be available under a Creative Commons licence.

The sponsorship does not turn CloudAve into a Zoho PR outlet – we retain full editorial independence.  Then what’s in it for Zoho?  In CEO Sridhar Vembu’s words:

First, CloudAve’s mission jives with our own, which is to advance cloud applications. Second, the community tools we provide are the same ones that Zoho customers need for their own businesses. So we get to sharpen our own applications by providing them to CloudAve.

Of course the the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I’m offering you the first bite: sign up for our feed here, and you’ll catch that first bite before we launch next Monday.smile_wink

See you in the Clouds!

Update (9/15). CloudAve launched.

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, SaaS, Software · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
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I’m Broadcasting Over the Comcast Cap – This Can’t Be Good

Posted on September 7, 2008 ·

Since Comcast is about to cap monthly traffic at 250G per month, I thought I would check my monthly stats.  Little did I expect that I am already exceeding this limit… but what’s scary  is that it’s outbound traffic, not inbound.

This can’t be good – I probably have some malware sitting on my machine.  Neither McAfee nor Spybot S&D finds anything… if you have ideas, pls. comment below.  Thanks in advance – I guess this is my first crowdsourced problem resolution. smile_sad

Update (9/21) Lots of good advice in the comments. I tried another pacakage, highly advised by several.. only to find a thread by the author, acknowledging it does not properly measure usage under Vista.  Crap.  I am not too worried though: my router shows way higher download traffic than upload, which is the “normal” user profile.  It’s in packets though, not Gigs.   Why does it have to be my pain though?  Comcast shoud not introduce the bandwidth cap without providing a measurement tool.

Filed Under: Software · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,
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SaaS is an Ancient Model

Posted on August 28, 2008 ·

Lots of talk today about how the SaaS market will ‘collapse’ in two years.  I don’t get it: if it survived 40 years, why would it collapse now?  Yes, that’s right, SaaS has been a successful model for 4 decades now. Need proof?   Check out Technorati linking to my post on the NetSuite IPO 11119 days ago.  That’s 38 and a half years, give and take a few weeks. smile_nerd

Oh, well, that was the fun part, for real analysis check out my fellow Enterprise Irregulars:

Jason Corsello, Anshu Sharma, Vinnie Mirchandani, Bob Warfield, Josh Greenbaum.

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Filed Under: Humor, SaaS · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
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Project Management 2.0 – What’s Wrong With 1.0?

Posted on August 28, 2008 ·

Let me quickly state that I don’t really know what the consensus definition of PM 2.0 is, but I do have a feeling based on my very 1.0-style experience.

In the 90’s I worked on a number of fairly large scale SAP Projects in a variety of roles, including Project Manager, and supervisor of several other projects.  The standard tool was Microsoft Project.  It was used for:

  • Planning a Project (initial Scoping)
  • Selling it
  • Periodic reporting to Steering Committee during the actual projects

What’s missing from the above?   Well, how about using it to help the actual daily work of project team members?

Project  team members did not even have access to MS Project, it only existed in a few copies on the PM and Team Lead’s computers.  Information-flow was one-way: feed the beast to be able to occasionally print charts that look impressive (scary) enough that Steering Committee members won’t question it.

Ok, I am admittedly sarcastic, but the point is:  PM 1.0 was all about planning, reporting and it served Management but did not help actual Project Execution.

My expectation of PM 2.0 would be that it helps all team members involved who can share information, collaborate on it and actually get clues from the system on where they are, where they should be, what their next step is, instead of just feeding the beast.

Is this the real promise of Project Management 2.0?   I hope to find out from an excellent set of panelists that I have the honor of moderating at the Office 2.0 Conference next week:

  • Andrew Filev (Wrike)
  • Bruce Henry (LiquidPlanner)
  • Mark Mader (Smartsheet.com)
  • Guy Shani (Clarizen)
  • Dean Carlson (Viewpath)

Of course this is just one of many exciting sessions – if you haven’t registered yet, you can grab a $100 discount by registering here.   Oh, and don’t forget to visit us at the Zoho Party – the address is #1 Cloud Avenue. smile_regular

(This article is cross-posted at the Office 2.0 Conference Blog)

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Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, SaaS, Social Networking · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Office 2.0, a Most Irregular Conference – Get Your Discount Here

Posted on August 25, 2008 ·

Nothing about the Office 2.0 Conference is even remotely ordinary.

Start with the organizer, Ismael Ghalimi, CEO of a VC-funded startup, Intalio.  That’s normally a full-time job – not when it comes to Ismael: he is also a scuba-diving instructor, a pilot, launched Monolab|Workspace, (is that Incubator 2.0?), launched the Extreme Productivity Seminar series, oh, and have I mentioned the annual Office 2.0 Conference?  ( I actually know his secret, he has two body doubles, I just haven’t been able to prove it yetsmile_wink)

Pressed for time he is turning a necessity into a virtue: year by year the Conference is a showcase of creating a successful event out of nothing in only two months. I remember the first event in 2006, when a couple of us Enterprise Irregulars were helping him plan the sessions only weeks away from the start.  A few days and a few blog posts later Ismael got flooded with request for sponsor and speaking slots.  This year history repeats itself: just a month ago the conference site was a placeholder and one could only wonder if … then a new site was born overnight, based on Jive Software’s excellent ClearSpace platform, and now it’s alive with user participation, sponsors, registration..etc.

What’s a Web-focused Conference without wi-fi?   It’s a joke that in 2008 conferences, including brands like Web 2.0, Gnomedex …etc.  still fail to provide sufficient connection.  Ismael’s solution includes laser beams to the top of the building, another one down to a terrace, then inside – making it happen with Swisscom was quite a project in itself.  Office 2.0 set the standard once and for all, anything less at major conferences is a failure.

Then there’s the issue of The Gadget.  I believe the iPod at the first conference was just more-then-generous swag.  The iPhones handed out at the second conference had an integral part at the event: several applications released specifically for Office 2.0 allowed participants to interact with each other, navigate the schedule and find sessions.  This time all paid participants will receive a the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.

Yes, the conference swag is not pens, stickers or t-shirts: it’s a mini-computer, which cost about half the registration fee.  It will clearly raise eyebrows, and many would prefer to skip the gadget and pay reduced fees.  I think handing out such an expensive gadget will have an interesting effect on the conference demographic: we’ll likely see an increase of corporate employees, who can expense the entire conference and are less price-sensitive than startups and freelancers – the original Office 2.0 crowd.

But that may very well be what the conference needs.   There’s a reason why this year’s theme is Enterprise Adoption.  The Office 2.0 movement wouldn’t go very far with only the early pioneers, evangelists talking to themselves, dissmissing enterprise requirements.  For the principles to become practice in business, we need a more balanced mix, and in a twisted way the gadget may just help achieve that.

Those who can’t afford the full registration are not entirely locked out: Socialtext CEO and top evangelist Ross Mayfield will facilitate Un-Conference 2.0 the day before the official conference, at a cost of $50.

Finally, startups have a chance to present the attending VCs, media, bloggers at  LaunchPad – Ismael announced this event over the weekend, and already has 10 particpants – get in there while you can.  Note to my (numerous) VC readers: I hope you will be there, too.

If you’re still hesitating, check out the Agenda, the list of Speakers,  Media representatives,  and if you haven’t done so, register now.

I’ve saved the best for last: don’t use the standard registration, save $100 by registering here.

Update: while I was typing here, fellow Enterprise Irregular Dennis Howlett explained why this is an Irregular (pun intended) Conference in more than one way.  Update to the update: see Susan’s excellent summary.

(cross-posted on the Conference Blog)

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Startups · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Benchmarking the Benchmarkers

Posted on August 22, 2008 ·

I’ve repeatedly praised Web-based Invoicing service FreshBooks for being innovators, unveiling the hidden business model enabled by SaaS: benchmarking.   But who’s benchmarking the benchmarkers?

Competitor Xero has just issued a call looking for benchmarking partners comparing metrics like:

  • Customer acquisition rates
  • Teaming model and allocation of spend
  • Sales and marketing spend
  • Sales quotas
  • Google spend
  • Pipeline conversion

CEO Rod Drury is looking for 5-10 partners, communicating either directly, or through a trusted third party.  Either way, its quite a challenge, as unlike the aggregate anonymous data Freshbooks provides to their customers, this level of sharing requires quite a level of trust.

Interestingly I contemplated similar ideas just a few days ago when Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu published his margin analysis of Google, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and a few others.  He drew a conclusion that since Google’s current revenue and profit per employee metrics were much higher than even the best players in the application space, Google has little incentive to move into this space forcefully. (He then followed up with a What’s in it for Zoho? post)

Specific conclusions aside, I thought it would really be interesting to expand this spreadsheet buy including Zoho and comparable companies as well as additional metrics.  Needless to say I ran into a similar dilemma that Xero is facing now: these are private companies that don’t typically publish their financial results, to get them participate we would need a relatively larger sample and it would still require a leap of faith.

Rest assured I’ll be watching Xero’s experiment with great interest.

Related posts:

Filed Under: SaaS, Startups · Tagged: , , , , , , , ,
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