This document discusses strategies for building a $100,000/month SaaS business, including: 1. Pursuing large total addressable markets (TAMs) over $1 billion or focusing on niche markets under $200 million. 2. Using funding strategically when it can power growth, but recognizing execution is also key. 3. Leveraging low costs in India to improve features, marketing, customer success. 4. Optimizing the full customer funnel around acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and referral/growth. 5. Achieving product-market fit through solving customer problems and reaching appropriate scale before focusing on growth.

1. Getting to $100K/m
Scalably, Sustainable, Profitably
Prasanna K @prasanna_says
upekkhā

2. upekkhā
5 ways to build a $XXX business
2Angel VC: http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2014/10/five-ways-to-build-100-million-business.html

3. upekkhā
TAM no bar...
TAM > $1B+ ==> VC Vs TAM < $200M ==> Bootstrap
Vertical Vs Horizontal
Niche Vs Wide
SMB Vs Mid-market Vs Enterprise
https://startupsventurecapital.com/whats-my-tam-47f208f5d6c

4. upekkhā
$ is a tool, to be used appropriately
$ doesn’t get you growth
$ doesn’t solve execution problems
But if you are a nuclear bomb powered rocket?
Then $$$$$ from VC is the nuclear bomb powering you.
Because with $$$$$, your options are Go BIG OR Die HARD!
To raise, or not to raise, that is the ?

5. upekkhā
The India Advantage
5
Convert Cost Arbitrage -> Value Arbitrage
Cheap devs -> More features,
integrations
Cheap marketers -> More campaigns,
leads
Cheap customer success -> More NPS, refs, -ve rev
churn

6. upekkhā
One Ring To Rule Them ALL
6
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Revenue
Referral
Growth
Product
Adapted from: http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saastr-
2017/

7. upekkhā
Twin tracks
Track 1: Market/Product Fit
Track 2: Growth
Parallel tracks with Product leading
Goal: Optimize your full funnel!
7

8. upekkhā
Founder Market fit
Problem Value fit
Product Solution fit
Market Scale fit
https://hackernoon.com/four-components-of-product-market-fit-dc1c00067239
Breaking Down Product Market Fit
8

9. upekkhā
One customer, deepest relationship, feature, value delivery
Few customers, deep relationships, product, unit economics
Segment id’d, integrations, value based pricing
Channel fit, CAC, churn
Adjacencies, Net -ve revenue churn
PROFIT!
Stages of PMF

10. upekkhā
Product led growth Vs Mktg/Sales led growth
Doubling down vs going wide
Traction book - building engine vs throwing darts
Which is right channel for your product, market?
Margin -> Investment -> Growth
Building up Growth Engines
10

11. upekkhā
0->1K/m
1->10K/m
10->100K/m
100->1000K/m
….. YAY!
Stages of SaaS growth
11

12. upekkhā
Metrics DON’T matter, just get MRR anyway you
can
Use Landing page CTR, SEM conversions wisely
0-1K/m - metrics that matter
12

13. upekkhā
1K -10K/m - metrics that matter
Conversion
Consumption
Churn
Monthly growth

14. upekkhā
10K - 100K/m - metrics that matter
Pipeline growth (lead velocity)
NPS & Referrals
Pricing
CAC

15. upekkhā
Me
15
Founder, Upekkha Accelerator. Only B2B SaaS. Outcome based.
First cohort of 4 startups grew monthly revenue 78% in 6m, from
$20K -> $37K.
Also: volunteer @iSPIRT, run ikenstartup.com
Past: 2x B2B startups, 120+ startups @MSFT Accelerator
30+ SaaS startups

16. upekkhā
Jason Lemkin, SaaStr
Christoph Janz, Point Nine
Tom Tungusz, Redpoint
Patrick Campbell, Profitwell
Bryce Roberts, Indie.vc
People to follow
16

17. upekkhā
Questions?
17
Find me @prasanna_says
Www.upekkha.in