Hiten's Pick
Build SaaS Features Enterprises Love
Moving upmarket and selling to the enterprise is a proven way to increase your deal size and lock down customers who will sign multi-year contracts. Enterprise customers can help put cash into your bank account, increase your LTV, and signal to the market that you're here to stay.
You can't just wake up and decide you're going to start selling your self-service SaaS product to the enterprise, though. The enterprise customer has a set of needs very different from the customers you're used to. This might mean single-sign-on, product security, SLAs, custom integrations, and a dozen other things you've never thought about.
For founders in this boat, the folks over at Replicated have put together a monster “Enterprise Ready SaaS feature guide.” It analyzes the features of 50 top SaaS companies, from enterprise-focused (Atlassian and New Relic) to up-and-comers (Frontapp and Segment), providing example implementations, feature teardowns, and more.
Business
Challenges of a Seed Without a Lead
One of the biggest mistakes founders make when fundraising is to think about the amount of money raised as the end goal. Who you raise money from is just as important. Seed-stage companies without lead investors face 3 main challenges: accountability, board meetings, and follow-on rounds.
As Long As We Have 20-30 SaaS Decacorns by 2021 … All Is Good
While consumer startups like Facebook and Google have skyrocketed quickly to massive valuations, the SaaS market has been slower to catch up. Jason Lemkin breaks down the math behind why to justify current valuation numbers, customers have to buy at least 20-30x more SaaS than they are today.
Product
Your Product is Already Obsolete
New technologies become the norm fast which means products that don't stay relevant and solve real business problems die fast. 15,000 customers, tens of millions in revenue, and $116 million in funding later, Intercom co-founder Des Traynor shares his framework for staying ahead of the hype cycle.
Marketing
Jobs-To-Be-Done: The Product Marketing Framework Intercom Used to Reach $50M in ARR
I'm a big fan of how Intercom applies the Jobs-to-be-Done framework (SaaS Weekly #91) to build customer-focused products. Read this thorough article to learn how Intercom uses JTBD to market its products as well.
6 years ago today, they won their first customer...
I like to say that the biggest challenge in SaaS isn't the competition, it's holding onto your customers' attention. Customer Thermometer celebrates 6 years after signing up its first paying customer and shares the customer-driven insights that got them this far.
Growth
3 free tools to help SaaS founders with their 2017 planning
Today in SaaS, there are a lot of great tools you can pay for that will help you clamp down on churn, optimize your hiring, and predict future revenue. When you're starting out though, all you really need are a few simple spreadsheets. In this post, VC Christoph Janz shares 3 free spreadsheet templates that will help you calculate growth, hire your sales team, and map out your financial plan.
Chris Perram, CEO of FileFacets, pivoted his consulting firm into a SaaS company...
The typical model for a SaaS business is to start small with an MVP and a self-service model. After you get your first set of customers and hit product / market fit with them, you can start moving upmarket and looking to the enterprise. Read this article and learn how FileFacets got upwards of 95% margins and landed $4 million in funding by staking out the enterprise from the beginning.
Tip of the Week
The Content Marketing Playbook
In this week's episode of the Startup Chat, Steli and I discuss my ebook, the Content Marketing Playbook.
Tune in to learn how to develop a framework for content marketing by answering these three questions:
- Who are your customers?
- Where do they hang out?
- How should you engage them?