alan ringvald

@toddsaunders Wow, seriously brilliant.

I met a founder of an ERP business that increases prices 7% every single year. Talk about NRR! But the way he presents it to customers is super interesting. They announce it 6 months in advance with a personal letter from the CEO explaining exactly why. This year's letter had 4 key reasons for the increase: 1/ "Support costs doubled because we're answering more complex questions." 2/ "Added three engineers and that money has to come from somewhere." 3/ "We underpriced to win customers, and now we need to build a sustainable business." I thought these were way to brutally honest with customers, but it turns out the strategy works. Then they give customers three options: 1/ Accept the increase 2/ Lock in current pricing for 2 years by paying annually 3/ Churn (and they'll help with the transition) Last year, 91% of customers stayed. 8% locked in annual contracts, and 1% churned. I've never seen anything like it, but feels like something other companies can implement if done correctly.

@Nexuscontent1 @rohitdotmittal This is a key point. Also maintaining a vibe coded product is not realistic in mid and long term for most internal teams.

@rohitdotmittal Point #4 is the new battleground. In the age of vibe-coding, "can't build it" has shifted. They can build the code in a weekend now. What they can't build is your specific customer trust and the workflow you've perfected. Leverage the relationship, not just the repo.

5 signs you're in the ideal position for a strategic acquisition: 1. They came to you, not the other way around. You didn't pitch yourself as an acquisition target. They said "we want to buy you." Big difference. I talk to founders all the time who are trying to force an acquisition. You cannot make fetch happen. But when they come to you, the dynamic shifts in your favor. 2. You have overlapping customers. This is your single biggest leverage point. Mutual customers who already love your product and are telling the bigger company about you. That's the biggest pull for them. If the customers like it, acquirers pay for it. 3. You're small, profitable, and lean. No bloated team. No huge burn rate. A small team doing $1.5M ARR is a cleaner deal than a 25-person company doing the same number with 12 months of runway left. 4. They can't build it themselves. If they could have, they would have. The fact that they're coming to you means the problem is hard enough that buying is cheaper than building. That's real leverage. 5. You have more than one interested party. Even if it's just two companies asking, it changes everything. The thing that drives the highest price in a strategic acquisition is competition between buyers. Always. If you are in this position, tread carefully to turn that interest into an actual acquisition. It won't get better than this.

@toddsaunders @danshipper and has access to actual buyers aka distribution

@danshipper I think it’s less ideas guy and more someone that understands uniquely niche workflows

there has never been a better time in history to be an ideas guy

Gotcha @justindross! I sling AI underwriting data to carriers so I’ve got no horse in the race, just my observation. There’s definitely room for disruption here, and time and again I’ve seen platforms pivot from “we can replace the broker” to “let’s enable the brokers” - good luck, seriously!

@atrain13 @roelofbotha @rabois We don't sell to small business. We go after the big relationships. Enjoy the popcorn!

@mikulaja 🤣daddy needs a new pair of shoes

Uh, sure

@iandmacomber 3,167 active employees. HQ is NYC w offices in Miami and SF and over $1b in revenue. I’m being shameless but would love to chat!

Took a call with a B2B enrichment vendor today. They asked how many employees we had and where we were located. Instant pass.

@thatguybg Sure but have you reached the “investor now offering competitive product in your primary market” milestone? That’s a fun one.

reached a new milestone as a startup a $100M company just did a hard pivot to copy exactly what we're doing

@lennysan GTM is changing so fast. What worked last year isn’t working this year. You need highly creative people in the role now.

Noticing a trend: Lots of asks from early-stage founders looking for intros to great B2B GTM people. With AI making it so much easier to build, distribution/GTM is becoming harder to crack.

@ankurnagpal "hope all is well!" 🚩🚩🚩

"Nice to e-meet you" 🚩🚩🚩

@thepatwalls prank calls?

OpenAI Operator is so damn cool. But I'm curious... what are the business opportunities or companies/services to be built around it?

@jjen_abel Depends on the industry maybe. Definitely my experience in insurance and banking

@atrain13 not necessarily, maybe …

startups — so many are trying to accomplish way too much on first sales call slow down, get the intel and leave some intrigue for follow-up calls intrigue is critical — otherwise they are controlling the entire process

@Kazanjy Good point. Too bad their data is so inaccurate…

The reason I don't think the AI SDR space goes anywhere is because they're all contingent on prospect data, and ZoomInfo & Apollo have that data. ZoomInfo & Apollo will win the AI SDR race - at least outbound.

@jjen_abel It just takes one sour face by someone you’ve never met in an internal meeting to kill a deal

startup founders -- there is always someone in the enterprise looking to kill your deal this is why staying contained to a business unit at first is, so, so critical -- so you can build the case to expand and defend it with others the wider you go on day 1, the more likely you step on toes stepping on toes is one of the worst acts you can commit in a large organization it's not talked about enough ...

@bradleyflowers Nailed it

Insurtech Carrier: “We use advanced LLM to assess risk better than that companies that have been underwriting 100 years so we can adequately price risks without a human underwriter” Also Insurtech Carrier:

@NotZainAgain Distribution. Distribution. Distribution

Some idiot took regular old sour candy and put it in a bag with some generic branding and sold it for $100 million and you’re still waiting for someone at HR to approve your PTO on Thursday so you can spend a couple days with your family (denied)

@HarryStebbings Appreciate the sentiment but for us out on the field, we take what the defense gives us and hope for expansion opps.

$5K-$25K customers are the death of efficient SaaS businesses. They have medium to long sales cycles. It’s not enough to justify customer success. Churn tends to be higher. Don’t be in the no man’s land of SaaS unless there is expansion.

@anamitra Can confirm this has happened to me, makes no sense

VC funds charging founders for legal fees still blows my mind

@Hadley Bingo. Most of the value is currently being captured by consultants teaching large co’s how to deploy and scale specific use cases. Turns out it’s really hard to scale AI reliably.

But when will GenAI drive real results within enterprises? Accenture CEO: "For the full fiscal year, we had $3B in new GenAI bookings, including $1B in Q4...The magnitude of this achievement is seen in the comparison to FY '23, where we had approximately $300Min sales and roughly $100M in revenue from GenAI" $ACN