There was a great turn-out at Thursday’s Cloud breakfast seminar focused on “Finding the Right Way to the Cloud: Measure, Manage and Monetize for Success”. Firas Raouf from Open View Venture Partners kicked-off the morning highlighting that success in a Cloud business is all about service – not technology. A good user experience is as important in B2B as in the B2C environment. A few key points from his presentation which can be downloaded here:
- Focus on a core segment
- You can’t differ on technology, so nail customer’s need and deliver exactly how they want it!
- Optimize distribution economics – leverage your segment focus
- A focus on user experience creates lower churn, higher LTV
- Leverage content marketing to lower customer acquisition costs
- Execute sales and marketing strategies around your core segment
Next, Denis Pombriant with Beagle Research, a Cloud and CRM analyst led the panel discussion with executives from Yottaa, Acquia, Sonian, GaggleAmp and InfoGin. Don’t forget to email Denis at denis@beagleresearch.com for his white paper on SaaS and PaaS.
The panel offered diverse backgrounds from small start-up SaaS applications to cloud infrastructure providers and “optimizers”. Retention, churn and renewals continue to dominate the discussion on what creates success in a Cloud business. Coach Wei from Yottaa stressed that these key metrics must by built into your business. Many more details on the session can be found on attendee blog posts including Rodney Brown’s new venture cloudecosystems.com, Metratech’s post on “What customers want” and a short post from Denis Pombriant.
Our next Cloud session will take place early June – a ½ day pricing bootcamp focused on metrics, packaging and list prices. More to follow shortly.
Lastly MassTLC is collaborating with Northbridge Venture Partners on their 2nd annual Future of Cloud survey. The survey will kick-off mid- April -updates are available at @FutureofCloud or visit futurecloudcomputing.net.
Thanks to the Acquia team for hosting us – they were super hosts and we look forward to being back soon!
