1. GROWTH ENGINE
FOR
SAAS STARTUPS
Alin Dobra, CEO Bunnyshell

2. SAAS
LIFECYCLE
STAGES
PRE-STARTUP
“Startup advice can’t be applied generally
across stages”
Reid Hoffman, Partner at Greylock,
Founder at LinkedIn
STARTUP
GROWTH
MATURITY

3. 70% [of startups] fail because of premature scaling. What means premature scaling ?
spending money beyond the essentials on growing the business (e.g., hiring sales
personnel, expensive marketing, perfecting the product, leasing offices, etc.) before
nailing the product/market fit.

4. PRE
STARTUP
Focus on : identifying a problem
and how your SaaS provides a
solution to the problem
Talking to potential customers
Seeking financing from friends & family
Establishing relationships with advisors
and/or mentors
Joining an incubator or accelerator group
Initial MVPs (Minimum Viable Product) -
Lean Startup
Risks
Activities
not making sales and earn revenue
a dependency on seed money to cover
operational costs for a longer period than
anticipated

5. STARTUP
Focus on : finding product/market
fit
Refining product/core features (this may
involve pivoting to achieve product/market fit)
Finding channel/market fit
Establishing/implementing metrics & analytics
Making initial key hires
First paying customers
Securing angel/seed money
Risks
Activities
Failing to identify the best customers/target
audience for your product
Unable to get sufficient number of customers
to create cash flow needed
Making hiring mistakes early on that have
costly impacts on the company
Spending too much on customer acquisition
before product/market fit
Not pivoting when it’s needed

6. GROWTH
Focus on : shift focus from revenue
growth to profitability OR raising
the capital required to support
aggressive customer acquisition
and scaling
Seeking Series A funding
Aggressive customer acquisition
Hiring executives
Scaling improvements on the back-end
Gaining a deeper understanding of A/B
testing and conversion optimization**
Have an established, repeatable sales
process
Ensuring your product, marketing, and
sales teams are aligned
Risks
Activities
Insufficient cash to handle the costs
associated with growth
Inability to get “costs lower than revenue at
scale”
Hiring mistakes (at this stage bad hires can
harm company culture)
New competitors created by copying your
business model
Scaling prematurely

7. MATURITY
At this stage the growth of your
SaaS will slow, but it should never
completely stop
Looking for opportunities to grow globally –
local teams should be put in place who
understand the local culture and nuances
Considering the addition of new products or
services
Identifying acquisition opportunities
Continue investing in growth and
experimenting to find additional growth
opportunities
Consider preparing your company for IPO or
think about an exit strategy
Risks
Activities
SaaS company becomes too comfortable in
its success and stops :
Monitoring/changing with the market
Testing new things (products, tools, etc.)
Retaining your competitive edge

8. HOW TO FIND THE
PRODUCT MARKET FIT ?

9. 1. RETENTION
2. NPS
3. SEAN ELLIS’ PRODUCT/MARKET FIT SURVEY

10. COHORT
ANALYSIS

11. HOW TO BUILD A
GROWTH ENGINE
FOR SALES &
MARKETING

13. MARKETING
FUNNEL

14. MARKETING FUNNEL

15. MARKETING
FUNNEL

16. DISTRIBUTION
CHANNELS

17. PR (Pre startup, Startup, Growth, Maturity)
SEM (Pre startup, Startup, Growth, Maturity )
SEO (Startup, Growth, Maturity)
Content marketing (Pre startup, Startup, Growth,
Maturity)
Social and display ads (Pre startup, Startup,
Growth, Maturity)
Direct sales (Pre startup, Startup, Growth,
Maturity)
Target market blogs (Startup, Growth, Maturity)
Influencer marketing (Startup, Growth, Maturity)
MARKETING
CHANNELS

18. Producthunt
AppSummo
WarriorForum
Communities : medium, quora, reddit,
linkedin groups, facebook
groups, stackoverflow, etc.
Guest blog post
Lists with “top best x apps”
G2crowd - reviews
Partnership/ Bundle with other products
Webinars
Quizzes
Calculators
Content marketing for your buyer personas
SEO
events / meetups/ conferences
word of mouth
Evangelists/ influencers
PR media : techcrunch, mashable, etc
Paid Media
Outreach/ Social Selling : linkedin add +
invite
Outbound
Lead generation tools : Datanyze
Free tools : Growth Hacking/Demand
generation products
LEAD
GENERATION

19. Content Marketing : ebooks, whitepapers,
case studies
Webinars, Podcasts, Seminars, Meetups
Free Trial/ Discounts
Onboarding/ Customer Success Team
Email Marketing
Automated Trigger Emails
Lead scoring
Landing Pages
Ab testing
Remarketing
SEO
LEAD
NURTURE

20. CLOSE - SALES
FUNNEL
PROSPECTING
QUALIFYING
ASSESMENT CAL
SOLUTION CALL
OFFER SENT
CONTRACT SENT
CLOSE

21. ALIGN PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
WITH YOUR DISTRIBUTION
EFFORT

22. AARRR
FRAMEWORK

23. ATTENTION: THE ARPU <-> CAC
SPECTRUM

26. RESOURCES :
TOOLS TO HELP
YOU

27. similarweb.com
buildwith.com
https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies
http://insidesaassales.com/
MARKET
RESEARCH

28. datanyze.com
producthunt.com
appsumo.com
warriorforum.com
http://buzzsumo.com/
https://justreachout.io/
https://unbounce.com/landing-page-
analyzer/
ab testing tools : omniconvert/ vwo/
https://viral-loops.com/
https://outgrow.co/
buffer
amplifr.com
LEAD
GENERATION

29. mautic : marketing automation
clearbit
hotjar
buffer
zapier
instapage/ unbounce/ mautic : landing
pages
intercom
freshchat
woopra
google analytics
kissmetricsLEAD
NURTURING

30. THANK
YOU
Alin Dobra
hello@bunnyshell.com