The 2017 March SaaSness Tournament

March SaaSness is back. Meet the 64 companies competing in 2017.

Each year, the NCAA Basketball Tournament captivates the country. Is it the action on the court—the buzzer beaters; the suffocating full-court presses; the high-flying dunks?  Or is it the familiar storylines? Every year, perennial favorites and regular season powerhouses punch their tickets and gleefully take on the role of “bully.” And every year, there’s at least one Cinderella squad that starts on the bubble and becomes a belle of the ball. 

Welcome to March SaaSness

For the 3rd year in a row, Ambition, Qualtrics and G2Crowd are proud to bring you the 2017 March SaaSness Tournament. In March SaaSness, 64 of the world’s most innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies duke it out in matchups decided by popular vote. Last year, over 150,000 people voted to help make Zoom the 2016 Champion, prevailing over 63 other competitors like Dropbox, Salesforce, HubSpot, Workday, and Evernote.

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Members of March SaaSness squads are more likely to code widgets than cut to the basket, and to pivot strategies instead of feet, but inside the walls of these 64 companies there’s passion, there’s scrappiness, and there’s an undeniable will to compete that’s worthy of the spirit of the Big Dance. 

Meet the 2017 Field

Who among the 64 has the deepest bench of supporters? Get your popcorn ready. We’re about to find out.  

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How the Field Was Chosen

For the first time ever, multiple SaaS metrics were used by our Selection Committee to determine Tournament competitors and seeds.

The formula we used for selection:

1. G2Crowd User Satisfaction Score. Benchmark: 4.3. Weight: 35%.
2. G2Crowd No. of User Reviews. Benchmark: 280. Weight: 25%.
3. Number of Twitter Followers. Benchmark: 81,713. Weight: 40%. 

To make the tournament, companies had to have a minimum of 10 G2Crowd reviews. Our Selection Committee then applied these metrics to determine each company's Ambition Score - which is a customizable advanced metric Ambition clients use to track their sales, support, and account management personnel in real-time. All 64 companies were seeded by Ambition Score, with the highest Ambition Score earning the #1 overall seed and lowest Ambition Score earning the final #16 seed. 

How to Participate

You decide who wins March SaaSness. The winner of every tournament matchup will be determined by popular vote, taken via Qualtrics online survey.

Voting will be open to the general public from 12am EST - 11:59pm EST on the day of each matchup. The company with the most votes at 11:59pm EST will win the matchup and advance to the next round. 

You'll be able to find the surveys at Tournament Central and on Ambition, G2Crowd, and Qualtrics' twitter feeds. On each day of competition, Ambition, G2Crowd and Qualtrics will release a link to a Qualtrics online survey via social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) that will allow you to vote on each matchups scheduled for that day. Only one vote per person is allotted.

After voting closes each day, we will announce the winner of the day’s matchups over Twitter. The following day, we’ll update the bracket after each round and publish the results on the G2Crowd and Ambition blogs. When posting about the tournament, use hashtag #marchsaasness.

Tournament/Voting Schedule

• Round 1 (Left Side of Bracket): Wednesday, 3/15
• Round 1 (Right Side of Bracket): Thursday, 3/16
• Round 2 (Left Side of Bracket): Monday, 3/20
• Round 2 (Right Side of Bracket): Tuesday, 3/21
• Sweet Sixteen (Left Side of Bracket): Thursday, 3/23
• Sweet Sixteen (Right Side of Bracket): Friday, 3/24
• Elite Eight (Left Side of Bracket): Tuesday, 3/28
• Elite Eight (Right Side of Bracket): Wednesday, 3/29
• Final Four: Friday, 3/31
• Championship: Tuesday, 4/4

Remember, voting takes place on these days for 24 hours from 12 am EST - 11:59 pm EST, and you’ll be able to access voting surveys on Ambition, G2Crowd and Qualtrics’ social media accounts.

What’s Next?

We’ll introduce the field in more detail and preview first round matchups in our next blog post. Want more information? Visit the Tournament Center at ambition.com/saasness/.

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SaaS companies like MemSQL, FiveStars and Outreach use Ambition to enhance sales accountability. Ambition's drag-and-drop interface lets non-technical sales leaders create custom sales scorecards, contests, reports, and TV leaderboards with live data. 

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2. Filemaker: Brad Freitag. Vice-President of Worldwide Sales.
3. Outreach: Mark Kosoglow. Vice-President of Sales.
4. Cell Marque: Lauren Hopson. Director of Sales & Marketing.
5. Access America Transport: Ted Alling. Chief Executive Officer.

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2. Outreach. Led by Sales Development Manager, Alex Lynn.
3. AMX Logistics. Led by Executive Vice-President ,Jared Moore.

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