February 2016
Intermediate to advanced
320 pages
7h 12m
English
Content preview from From Impossible To Inevitable
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 18Embrace Frustration
Any expectations you have about how long it will take, or how hard it will be, are pretty much guaranteed to be wildly off. But it's worth it.
Are You Sure You're Ready for This?
One night I had dinner with the founder of a pretty successful web company and he asked me how long I'd worked on EchoSign. I told him and he nodded his head, “Yeah, same for me. It takes about seven years to get to exit.” That's true in the software/SaaS business and it's true for many businesses and even career paths. You have to be ready for it to take years longer than you hope or want before you hit your big goals.
You may have heard that SaaS companies usually take longer than consumer Internet companies to get to $75–$100 million in revenue. But it's not always clear how much longer.
Let's look at some basic math: Assume it takes you a couple of years to get going and Nail A Niche, and then you grow 100 percent a year through $50 million or so in revenue (which isn't easy, mind you):
- Y1 revenue: $0
- Y2 revenue: $1 million
- Y2 revenue: $3 million
- Y3 revenue: $6 million
- Y4 revenue: $12 million
- Y5 revenue: $24 million
- Y6 revenue: $48 million
- Y7 revenue: $80 million
Having done extremely well, hitting $80 million ARR in Year 7—it took you seven years—you're ready for your IPO in Year 8. If you do well, but not quite as well as this, it can take a decade. A friggin' decade.
What about mergers and acquisitions? The challenge here is that in most SaaS M&A, unless it's ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.