Point Nine News
medium.com/point-nine-news · Group blog · on HN since 2015
Point Nine News is the Medium blog of Point Nine Capital, a SaaS-focused investor, with posts on metrics, funding, and B2B software trends.
What HN saysHN commenters bookmark and cite its SaaS app store landscape and its conversion-rate and marketing-channel posts as useful references.
65HN people shared it
8linked it in comments
103stories submitted
288story points
5 months agolast shared
2015people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Funded vs. Bootstrapped: Comparing the Metrics of 37 SaaS Companies7 people · 16 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 2The Rise of Non “VC Compatible” SaaS Companies5 people · 12 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 3Open Source is losing, SaaS is leading, APIs will win…4 people · 54 points · first shared 2016 · 51 comments on HN
- 4What does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in 2018?4 people · 8 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 5Will Blockchain(s) Eat the Marketplace Stack?3 people · 5 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 6Software Bots: From DIY companion bots to AI powered software3 people · 5 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 7A landscape of the major 50 B2B SaaS app stores2 people · 14 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 8Infographic of How to Grow a Business to $100M2 people · 8 points · first shared 2016 · 2 comments on HN
- 9Rumors of the Death of Software Are Greatly Exaggerated2 people · 7 points · first shared 2024 · 1 comments on HN
- 10The Death of the Monolithic SaaS Product2 people · 6 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 11Founders: Please don’t allow anyone to screw your early backers2 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 12Hyper-growth is great, but don’t die while trying2 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 13Bringing the cocktail effect to video meetings2 people · 4 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 14The Goldilocks Zone of SaaS Metrics2 people · 4 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 15Making European Venture Capital a Little More Human2 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
decodingvc · 2017-01-25
A bit of background in case you're interested:
I'm an investor excited about all kinds of geeky topics - dev tools, security, drones, hardware, machine learning...
I try to stay close to the latest developments in tech to understand what can be achieved with the technology today and what and how can that be translated into good products.
Last year, I already tried to "predict" what could be the evolution of deeper tech in 2016. I failed quite a lot...
This year, I'm trying again... but I would love to learn from the wisdom of the crowd.
In case you're curious:
1) My review of 2016
https://medium.com/point-nine-news/reviewing-18-geeky-predictions-for-…
2) My 2017 predictions
https://medium.com/point-nine-news/18-geeky-predictions-2017-edition-c…
heromal · 2025-05-03
Post is old by now, but I've had this spreadsheet bookmarked for years:https://medium.com/point-nine-news/a-landscape-of-the-major-saas-app-s…
pbronez · 2020-09-11
Marketing people actually know & plan for this. Check out this blog post about "The Lifecycle of Lead Generation Channels" [0].
It basically says, that any given channel starts out small and high-quality, so engaging is easy and credible. As it grows marketers have to be smarter and larger to stand out. Read it as a consumer, and they're basically talking about a scorched-earth loudness war for your attention.
[0] https://medium.com/point-nine-news/the-lifecycle-of-lead-generation-ch…
ksahin · 2018-10-22
"Handful dozen of trial users... 0 paying users"
Don't forget that, for many successful SaaS:
-Landing page to trial conversion is in 5-10% range, and
-Trial to paying customer is 3-10%!
Also don't forget the statistical variance.
Source: https://medium.com/point-nine-news/monitoring-an-early-stage-saas-busi…
jackgolding · 2018-03-12
Doing the reforge course this was something that really stuck out for me. These tech platforms promise the world then slowly cut things out or become inefficient over time to cater for enterprise clients. If you are interested read this https://medium.com/point-nine-news/the-lifecycle-of-lead-generation-ch…
aresant · 2018-02-20
Outstanding summary Patrick, was prepared for a piece of dry content marketing but many gold nuggets as usual!
I would add a couple of supplementals unique to 2018 for those of us raising capital in a SAAS or looking to liquidate:
1) The "SAAS Napkin" for 2018, a survey of ~50 Series A / Series B funded companies that have shared with regard to growth / churn / etc. Links here https://www.producthunt.com/posts/saas-funding-napkin-3 and explanation here https://medium.com/point-nine-news/what-does-it-take-to-raise-capital-…
2) The fascinating rise of Private Equity companies as a liquidity / funding option outside of larger co Acquisition / VC money as observed by the founder of Pardot (~$100m exit to SalesForce) - https://davidcummings.org/2017/10/03/private-equity-as-the-saas-savior…
blakdawg · 2017-05-04
Rather than thinking about things you can't realistically change (sex/race), I would think about other things - e.g., is your company the sort of thing that VC's want to fund? And, do you really want VC?
If your business is VC-friendly, and you want to go on the VC ride, then yes, you should go for it. Even if you don't get funded, or even if funding doesn't go the way you want it to, you will learn a lot of interesting stuff and make a lot of good connections. I went through the VC cycle 2x in the first dot-com boom and learned a tremendous amount from it. (Including a lot of skepticism about whether or not VC is a good path for founders - it is absolutely not the only good path.)
This article does a reasonable job of helping identify which companies might be VC-compatible and which aren't:
https://medium.com/point-nine-news/the-rise-of-non-vc-compatible-saas-…
tonylucas · 2016-03-30
Different frameworks provide different pieces, a non exhaustive list:
Front end integrations (Slack, Skype etc)
NLP
Conversation state and context management
Automated knowledge/learning.
etc etc.
I'm in the middle of writing a blog post on this, but https://medium.com/point-nine-news/software-bots-c56aeedcfec3#.ye1z2am… is a good piece to read