“SaaS+” refers to software companies that augment their core products and services with value-added features such as built-in e-commerce, insurance, or payment processing.
Incorporating these features into our product line creates secondary convenience that delights customers – along with new revenue streams that excite investors.
Drawing on their experience building a platform for youth athletics, Justin Kovenberg (Managing Director, Rally Ventures) and Greg Blasco (Co-Founder, Monoline) explain how to “properly build the foundation of your SaaS+ home” using multi-shopping-cart technology, Parents – Sample Data baby, and other ideas.
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All six recommendations include detailed examples of software engineering choices made within companies like Kayak, Amazon, and Shopify that combine to boost the number of transactions each user makes.
According to the authors, “Alignment with these concepts will drive the product roadmap, technical infrastructure, pricing strategy, and product marketing.”
Many thanks for reading TC +!
Walter Thompson
Managing Editor, TechCrunch+
Never express a “money utilization” bracket as percentages
Building a presentation is like a game of four-dimensional chess: founders need to present a compelling story to investors that will move the company from this fundraising round to the next.
Some teams like to share slides explaining how they plan to allocate funding, but Alhaji-Jan Camps says splitting percentages is a “red flag” for potential investors.
How much technology do you need to develop? How many customers and how much revenue do you need? What staff do you need to develop that technology and sell it to and support those customers?
In other words: “You’re flying for landmarks, not for percentages or the runway.”
4 ways to show customers they can trust your generative AI enterprise tool
In light of our ongoing debate about the existential risks of AI, it was interesting to sit in the theater last night and watch a three-hour epic about the dawn of the atomic age.
Eight decades later, we are thrust back into a new technological age without first creating a framework for ethics, safety, trust, or a thousand other considerations.
Since there are no industry standards or government agencies guiding AI development, startups need to create new best practices, according to TC+ contributors Luigi La Corte and Leo Arango.
“Providers who take active steps to reduce the likelihood of LLM ‘randomization’ and build the greatest amount of trust stand to be big winners.”
Pitch Deck Teardown: BusRight Series A Series, $7 million
America’s school buses make up the nation’s largest public transit fleet: according to one estimate, students make 10 billion trips each year.
School bus management platform BusRight recently raised a $7 million Series A package with a package that is “well-designed” and “full of subtle touches,” according to Haji-Jan Camps:
- cover
- GO to the market
- the target audience
- market size
- problem
- solution/product
- popularity
- Sales operations
- Business model/unit economics
- Testimonials – Recommendations
- Sales decision dynamics
- growth forecast
- a team
- close / connect
Ask Sophie: What visa options are there for a startup founder with his family?
dear sophie,
I am the founder of a startup company in Berlin. I just got back from a visit to Silicon Valley where I met a new client. I realized during the trip that I needed to be based in the US to grow our base with US clients.
What are the best visa options for me and my family? Will any of them allow my husband to work and continue his career?
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Are you looking for your next book? These nine authors have reading recommendations for you
Anna Heim has asked several technology writers, “What book did you read this summer that you think other people might enjoy?” Here is the response:
- Adam Duvander
- Phil Rosen
- Uday Pollack
- Andrew Lee Miller
- David Cadavy
- Sarah E Brown
- Zeke Fu
- David Spinks
- Borna Fergie
Making artificial intelligence trustworthy: can we overcome black box hallucinations?
Characters in animation might imagine a giant hot dog when they’re hungry, but LLM can ramble for a variety of reasons, such as poor data quality or an unclear prompt.
Major AI platforms “infer and extrapolate based on what they think is the most likely answer, not the actual data,” according to Dr. Mike Capps, CEO and co-founder of Diveplane.
On the other hand, instance-based learning compares training data points “against each other to gain insight into the data set and predictions,” says Capps. In other words, IBL shows its action.