

State of SaaS 2014 and its Challenges - voidnothings
http://blog.startupcompass.co/2014-saas-market-outlook

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soundlab
"The biggest challenge is distribution. Our data shows SaaS companies rely
heavily on direct sales — at nearly twice the rates of every other channel,
but can afford only modest sales teams of 1 or 2."

Is the primary issue here that the recurring revenue models of SaaS companies
are less compatible with existing distribution networks?

I've been researching this and found that hardware companies that sell through
dealer networks and authorized distributors have an unrealized opportunity to
introduce recurring revenue products for their partners, who typically are
operating with narrow margins on "one and done" box sales. The challenge is
implementing a revenue sharing or commission model that is both attractive and
straight forward.

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andyfowler
Great article, Compass. As a CRM (I'm a co-founder @ nutshell.com), we're
pretty excited about the growth in our sector. This also meshes with our
strong beliefs in building APIs and integrating with a ton of third parties.

While the goliaths do build platforms, they subsequently tend to slowly
tighten their hold on those platforms (cf. LinkedIn's API shutdowns,
Salesforce's extra charges for API usage). It's great working with other small
upstarts that are interested in making software play nicely with each other
(something that Compass obviously does quite nicely).

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melindajb
One of the opportunities in SaaS we see at Vendorsi is the chance for small
enterprise vendors to be more easily, and less expensively found by other
SMBs. Because we don't charge vendors, and instead charge buyers a
subscription, we can--and must be--neutral, and focus on presenting accurate
data about all the vendors in the space, vs. the 8 who pay us the most.

