131–140 of 355 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely, in Roman times 'decimatio' was the punishment for a poor result in battle. The soldiers were obliged to choose one of ten, and kill him.
Huh. Romans invented stacked ranking.
Maybe it's just the segment I'm in, but I feel like Salesforce was hiring pretty hard up until recently. They wouldn't be the only company to go from a hiring spree to layoffs that quickly over the last quarter. We really need to lock this absurdity down and increase severance requirements for large companies heavily. It's one thing to gamble risk for the company, it's something completely different to gamble employe…
How about their future prospects? From the 4 implementations I've seen all are desperately trying to leave the platform. One succeeded so far. Is the enterprise Salesforce craze over?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Co-heads is always a subtext for executive disfunction. I don't think I've ever heard of it working out long term at any level from division co-head to co-CEO. It's also fascinating the opposite direction is also allowed to persist - the guy who is CEO of 4 companies at once. As a lowly high income IC, I am prohibited from almost any outside business activity and in some cases forced to divest when joining a new firm…
Go ahead, name a country that doesn't have two presidents. A boat that sets sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be without the popes.
Maybe it's just the segment I'm in, but I feel like Salesforce was hiring pretty hard up until recently. They wouldn't be the only company to go from a hiring spree to layoffs that quickly over the last quarter. We really need to lock this absurdity down and increase severance requirements for large companies heavily. It's one thing to gamble risk for the company, it's something completely different to gamble employe…
If you do that companies will be more reluctant to hire, since they’ll have to factor in the risk of paying a hefty severance.
Whenever I look at client’s Salesforce setups, I always wonder in the back of my mind what they will do if Salesforce has a significant down-turn? The lock-in to the platform appears to be very fierce. Are there viable routes to exit Salesforce if anyone ever needed to? (Note: I’m not saying Salesforce is doomed or anything, just the layoffs got me thinking in that direction theorically).
Maybe it's just the segment I'm in, but I feel like Salesforce was hiring pretty hard up until recently. They wouldn't be the only company to go from a hiring spree to layoffs that quickly over the last quarter. We really need to lock this absurdity down and increase severance requirements for large companies heavily. It's one thing to gamble risk for the company, it's something completely different to gamble employe…
If you do that companies will be more reluctant to hire, since they’ll have to factor in the risk of paying a hefty severance.
Maybe it's just the segment I'm in, but I feel like Salesforce was hiring pretty hard up until recently. They wouldn't be the only company to go from a hiring spree to layoffs that quickly over the last quarter. We really need to lock this absurdity down and increase severance requirements for large companies heavily. It's one thing to gamble risk for the company, it's something completely different to gamble employe…
If you do that companies will be more reluctant to hire, since they’ll have to factor in the risk of paying a hefty severance.
Last time they did this, it was _right_ after the window that they had grandstanded and asked other companies to pledge no pandemic layoffs. Benioff did a whole media tour talking about how Salesforce would do no pandemic layoffs to set some kind of example, and said that they didn't expect other companies to follow their example, but asked them to just pledge no layoffs for 90 days, even though Salesforce was going…
well sounds like we can expect them next year. What I don’t understand is why they don’t stretch it out over the whole year - less than 1% a month could be relatively easily “hidden” even if people kinda know what is going on. Average churn might be lower than that, even. Which makes me think it’s performative and they WANT the shareholders to see it.
I forget which podcast I heard it on (so forgive me if my memory is sloppy), but after their latest quarterly report didn't CAC payback go from 24 months to something wild like 10 years? Meaning their new ARR add rapidly fell off so quickly, before they adjusted their Sales and Marketing salaries and spending, that it immediately put their unit economics way way way way underwater. So I'd expect at least a big chunk…
Many many software companies end up spending more money to acquire a customer than a customer will ever pay them. I tend to think this is because the demand and need for many tools is not significant enough to justify the amount of capital allocated to promote them. Finance spreadsheet alchemists last 10 years saw big gross margins in software (overinflated by not taking into account cost to acquire user), bought int…
Most SaaS founders know that a 3:1 ratio between LTV and CAC is ideal - and while arguments might hold water that a worse ratio is OK for a brief period, I don't think anyone involved doesn't realize that it's difficult to sustain that.
The mental magic trick to justify it probably goes like this - "Yes, we're underwater on the LTV-CAC ratio for now, but once we're in position XYZ we'll be able to launch new products ABC and increase LTV from there". Which isn't wrong. And the new CAC to upsell product ABC to existing clients is going to be very low. So in a sense, you CAN justify (at least in a 'superficially prudent way') a worse ratio with that argument.
And ironically, Salesforce is a GREAT example of this WORKING (up until now?). They have ruthlessly increased ACV and LTV for decades, through increases to pricing, growing features, launching new products, creating the app ecosystem, etc.