Reactions to the Freemium paper

I never expected a 23-page paper to "go viral" but the "Reality of Freemium in SaaS" paper has done just that. Thousands of downloads of the PDF, thousands more views on the various document-sharing sites, blogs and articles by industry analysts using it as a jumping-off point... wild. And then, I got invited to speak at the Freemium Summit in San Francisco on Feb 26, 2010. This is exactly what I wrote about in the paper, by the way... true viralality can rarely be engineered.

If I had written this paper with the express purpose of having it spread throughout the industry, it most likely would have seemed contrived and would not have spread. Instead, I wrote it to get something off my chest, the "voice" I used was real and it resonated with the readers and they passed it on. I couldn't have expected this breadth of distribution nor the reactions, but I'm certainly happy for it. Check out some of the great reactions to the paper on the Sixteen Ventures blog.

You should follow me on Twitter!

New Paper: The Reality of Freemium in SaaS

I spent a lot of my spare time over the last couple of weeks writing a 23 page paper titled "The Reality of Freemium in SaaS" (Download PDF) for Sixteen Ventures and I encourage you to check it out. This paper comes from my experience of working with SaaS companies of all sizes and stages while at Sixteen Ventures, from my time with my own SaaS and PaaS startups, etc. I had a lot of help from some great people on Twitter (all listed in the paper) that took the time to help me shape the paper into what it is today.

I encourage you to check it out if you are considering the "Freemium model" for your startup or if you are using it and wondering why it isn't working!

Also, you should follow me on Twitter @lincolnmurphy

What makes sense for SaaS in 2010

I said no predictions, and I stand by that... but here are some things that would make sense in 2010:

1. Streamlined Revenue Cycle Management for Recurring Revenue businesses (like SaaS) - There are some lightweight Subscription Management and Billing options that started in 2009 (I'm watching Recurly), how will they fare against legacy SaaS and on-prem metering/billing solutions? Too many SaaS vendors face scalability issues due to backoffice bottlenecks long before their technology fails to scale so I'm interested to see how this all pans out.
   
   
2. SSO, Provisioning, and Contract management convergence - SSO and Provisioning have been treated as simply technology problems to solve. But there is a missing element... contract or simple payment management. With the proliferation of SaaS apps in the enterprise, it makes sense that if you could not only manage users in one place, but also contracts or payments a major pain for Enterprises would be solved and the opportunities to monetize in a situation like for the vendor offering this service could be significant. I'm keeping my eye on Cazoomi to see if they make any moves in this direction.
   
   
3. Niche business problems being solved via SaaS - Probably pretty obvious, but I think it only makes sense that more domain experts or service providers will seek to solve the business problems in specific verticals. Likely large legacy companies or those from large Legacy companies, will seek to move into horizontal markets. The real opportunities with SaaS lie in the vertical and niche plays, IMHO. These markets can be a challenge to penetrate, however, so it will be really interesting to see (and be a part of) vendors moving in these markets. Of particular interest is Conductr.us a location-based scheduling & compliance management application.
   
   
4. Bonus... I think it makes sense for SaaS vendors in 2010 to look at ways to monetize vs. ways to spread virally through Freemium. As Hiten Shah (@hnshah) said on Twitter: "Monetization is the new Black"

Happy New Year 2010!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

No predictions this year... if 2009 was any indication, 2010 will be interesting.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Latest SaaS Posts from Sixteen Ventures blog

I've been so busy working with clients at Sixteen Ventures, I've had limited time to blog about SaaS, and when I do its on the Sixteen Ventures SaaS Blog. Here are some of the latest posts from the Sixteen Ventures blog:

• SaaS vendors: stop competing with legacy solutions
• Updated - Introducing the 7 SaaS Revenue Streams
• Slides from SoftwareCEO Class "Think You're Ready For SaaS? Think Again!"
• Agile Revenue Generation in SaaS slides from SIIA OnDemand 2009
• Cloud Business Architecture?
• Introducing the Seven SaaS Revenue Streams
• SaaS Business Architecture - Definition Update

To stay up to date on what I'm doing at Sixteen Ventures and to get the latest stories on SaaS, Venture Capital, Startups, etc. you should follow me on Twitter @lincolnmurphy.

Seven SaaS Revenue Streams - Introductory slides

This is an overview of the Seven Revenue Streams available to SaaS vendors. The monetization opportunities available to a SaaS vendor are far beyond just "subscriptions." This is a teaser... if you want the full, in-depth version that goes into each of the revenue streams in detail and all it'll cost you an email address or a tweet.

7 SaaS Revenue Streams

View more documents from Lincoln Murphy.

You should follow me on Twitter!

SaaS Business Architecture - Updated Definition slides

I've updated the SaaS Business Architecture slide deck to focus on network-centricity as the core element. Here is the latest one-liner:

The SaaS Business Architecture is a Network-Centric commingling of Marketing, Intellectual Property, Technology, and Business Model.

SaaS Business Architecture - Definition Update

View more documents from Lincoln Murphy.

You should follow me on Twitter!