CEO Resource Guide

News, insights and updates from the team at Bloom Equity Partners

Happy Friday fellow weekly bloom readers!

We are back once again with another week of your favorite SaaS newsletter!

In this week’s edition, we’re going to share with you some of our favorite books to one-up your operational expertise.

Let’s get into it 🔥

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Must-reads for all SaaS Founders & Operators

Earlier this week, Majority Search launched a CEO resource library which is a gold mine filled with resources from podcasts to newsletters. Check it out: here.

We dug into their must-reads and picked out a few of our favorites. These are great books for any founder or operator looking to gain an edge in their business building capabilities.

Sales and Marketing👇

📚 Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler

📚 The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

Operations👇

📚 Measure What Matters by John Doerr

📚 Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight

Strategy 👇

📚 Small Giants by Bo Burlingham

📚 Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 by Jim Collins and Bill Lazier

Question for you: What are some of your favorite business reads?

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What We’re Reading and Listening To…

📚 New blog from Bloom Growth Studio, How To Design An Effective B2B Content Marketing Funnel

📚 APE (ARR per Employee) Is the “North Star” Efficiency Metric You’re Looking For

📚 How to Improve the LTV: CAC Ratio

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Favorites from the Ecosystem

Investors👇…..

Orlando Bravo @OrlandoBravoTB

Those who were diligent in operations and focused on delivering high margins are getting especially rewarded now that the markets and economy are challenging.

Brent Beshore @BrentBeshore

We're often asked how a business can become more salable. It looks identical to being more scalable:

Jason ✨2022 SaaStr Annual Sep 13-15 ✨ Lemkin @jasonlk

The longer you are a founder, the more it's about the journey The longer you are a VC, the more it's about the money

Founders👇…..

Ryan Hoover @rrhoover

Founder DM'd me about shutting down: "We raised in the beginning of the year and have 12 months cash. But I no longer see evidence that supports the underlying problem, market, and opportunity. Should we shut down and return capital?" Thoughts:

Andrew Gazdecki @agazdecki

I get to look at 1000s of startups per month via @microacquire and the biggest mistake I see is confusing messaging & market positioning. 1. What problem do you solve? 2. Who is your ideal customer? 3. What is the positive outcome? Keep it simple.

Operators👇….

Jaleh Rezaei @jalehr

As head of marketing at Gusto I shifted us from "growth at all costs" to profitable growth. ARR grew 100x in 4 yrs while CAC <12 mos. Now every company is asked to do the same. I shared how we did it in a recent talk to @ycombinator & @sequoia founders. Here's the summary:

Gokul Rajaram @gokulr

Startups: if you hear an eng hire spending too much time talking about how to scale things, likely not a good fit. Early startups are about speed of iteration, not scale. Every great co had a "monolith[ic piece of code]" that had to be refactored later. It's a point of pride.

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News from the Industry: deals, deals, and more deals 💰

Enterprise software sector experiences an M&A frenzy with 1,015 recorded deals in first half of 2022

Aquiline-backed ClearCourse acquires healthcare software provider Blue Zinc

Roper Technologies to buy Frontline Education in $3.7 bln deal

Proxy firm ISS recommends Zendesk shareholders back $10.2 bln go-private deal

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End Note 🔚

As always, if you're enjoying The Weekly Bloom, we'd love it if you shared it with a friend or two. We try to make it one of the best emails you get each week, and I hope you're enjoying it.

And should you come across anything interesting this week, send it our way! We love finding new things to read through members of this newsletter.

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About Bloom Equity Partners

Bloom Equity Partners is a lower mid-market software-focused private equity firm, leveraging deep operational and commercial experience to create enduring market value for the benefit of our investors, founders, and their companies.