The document discusses the three phases of a SaaS startup's lifecycle: searching for product-market fit, scaling the business, and searching for a repeatable and profitable growth model. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing what phase a startup is in and taking the appropriate actions, such as not jumping ahead or expanding sales too quickly before completing the current phase. Cash conservation is also stressed until reaching the scaling phase. Aligning sales, marketing, and other functions is highlighted as important for predictable growth. The phases and lessons provided serve as a guide for SaaS founders to strategically navigate their company's development.
Zero to 100 - Part 3: Founder-led Selling - Pete KazanjyDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
In this presentation you will find information about importance of Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) for subscription-based (SaaS) Internet startups.
The full list of metrics mentioned in the presentation, exact formulas, and examles you can find at http://datmachine.co/saas_metrics.
If you have any questions, don't be shy to drop me a line on my email: efremov(at)datmachine.co.
WebSummit 2018 - The SaaS Business Model & MetricsDavid Skok
SaaS businesses are extremely sensitive to a small number of important variables. If you are running a SaaS company, understanding how these variables drive your business model is crucial to long-term success. In this talk, David Skok, author of the now famous SaaS Metrics 2.0 blog post will talk through those key metrics and their impact on the overall SaaS business model.
This presentation is from my talk at the 2017 SaaStr Annual Conference in San Francisco. It offers an overview of a simple model to understand a SaaS business and the key levers a CEO can pull to get the most impact. The presentation covers:
Optimizing the SaaS Funnel:
- Get inside your customer’s head
- Break down the funnel into microsteps
- Identify bottlenecks
- Use funnel math to make improvements
12 key levers within the funnel:
1) Product/Market fit
2) Top of the funnel flow
3) Conversion rate
4) CAC (customer acquisition cost)
5) Number of sales people
6) PPR (productivity per rep)
7) Getting enough leads
8) Pricing
9) Customer retention rate
10) Dollar retention rate
11) Months to recover CAC
12) Recruiting, onboarding & management
Outbound prospecting for highly targeted lead flowDavid Skok
This presentation described how and when outbound prospecting (Cold Calling 2.0) can work to provide a predictable flow of leads from highly targeted prospects.
There are seven key stages in a startup’s evolution from $0m to $50m in revenue. Understanding where you are in that evolution, and how to act at each stage is critical for success, as what is appropriate at one stage is not appropriate at another stage. David will lay out the roadmap, and detail the keys to success at each stage. The talk is aimed at technical/product founders plus their sales, marketing & product executives who are responsible for the go-to-market strategy for their company.
Zero to 100 - Part 4: Building a Sales Team - Stephanie SchatzDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
Zero to 100 - Part 1: Intro + First SectionDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
Zero to 100 - Part 3: Founder-led Selling - Pete KazanjyDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
In this presentation you will find information about importance of Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) for subscription-based (SaaS) Internet startups.
The full list of metrics mentioned in the presentation, exact formulas, and examles you can find at http://datmachine.co/saas_metrics.
If you have any questions, don't be shy to drop me a line on my email: efremov(at)datmachine.co.
WebSummit 2018 - The SaaS Business Model & MetricsDavid Skok
SaaS businesses are extremely sensitive to a small number of important variables. If you are running a SaaS company, understanding how these variables drive your business model is crucial to long-term success. In this talk, David Skok, author of the now famous SaaS Metrics 2.0 blog post will talk through those key metrics and their impact on the overall SaaS business model.
This presentation is from my talk at the 2017 SaaStr Annual Conference in San Francisco. It offers an overview of a simple model to understand a SaaS business and the key levers a CEO can pull to get the most impact. The presentation covers:
Optimizing the SaaS Funnel:
- Get inside your customer’s head
- Break down the funnel into microsteps
- Identify bottlenecks
- Use funnel math to make improvements
12 key levers within the funnel:
1) Product/Market fit
2) Top of the funnel flow
3) Conversion rate
4) CAC (customer acquisition cost)
5) Number of sales people
6) PPR (productivity per rep)
7) Getting enough leads
8) Pricing
9) Customer retention rate
10) Dollar retention rate
11) Months to recover CAC
12) Recruiting, onboarding & management
Outbound prospecting for highly targeted lead flowDavid Skok
This presentation described how and when outbound prospecting (Cold Calling 2.0) can work to provide a predictable flow of leads from highly targeted prospects.
There are seven key stages in a startup’s evolution from $0m to $50m in revenue. Understanding where you are in that evolution, and how to act at each stage is critical for success, as what is appropriate at one stage is not appropriate at another stage. David will lay out the roadmap, and detail the keys to success at each stage. The talk is aimed at technical/product founders plus their sales, marketing & product executives who are responsible for the go-to-market strategy for their company.
Zero to 100 - Part 4: Building a Sales Team - Stephanie SchatzDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
Zero to 100 - Part 1: Intro + First SectionDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
Building a Repeatable, Scalable & Profitable Growth ProcessDavid Skok
In a talk I gave at SaaS North 2017 conference in Ottawa, I talk about the fundamentals of building a repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth process for a startup.
Zero to 100 - Part 2: Building a Repeatable, Scalable Growth ProcessDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
9 Steps to Repeatable, Scalable, & Profitable GrowthDavid Skok
In this slide deck, David Skok talks through his 9 step process for B2B startups to get through product/market fit, and to then find a repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth process.
In David's experience some of the most fatal and expensive mistakes founders make is trying to skip steps. Understanding this roadmap will save you countless hours and potentially millions of wasted dollars.
Zero to 100 - Part 5: SaaS Business Model & MetricsDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
Zero to 100 - Part 6: Experiences putting Theory into PracticeDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
WebSummit 2018 - 9 Secrets for Startup SuccessDavid Skok
Lean Startup taught the world how to find product/market fit, but in the B2B world that isn’t enough. B2B founders must then find a way to build repeatable, scalable and profitable growth before they are ready to step on the accelerator and grow at high speed. In this talk, five-time serial entrepreneur and author of the ForEntrepreneurs blog, David Skok, breaks this journey down into 9 distinct stages and explains the playbook at each stage. Warning: trying to force growth by skipping a step is the number one mistake entrepreneurs make, and it is often fatal.
Describes the steps required to build a Sales and Marketing Machine that is predictable, scalable, automated, well instrumented, and cost efficient.
This was a presentation that I gave at the Lean Startup Circle in Boston on March 24th, 2011.
Zero to 100 - Part 7: The Role of the CEODavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
David Skok, General Partner at Matrix Partners, provides a simple model to understand a SaaS businesses, as well as the key levers founders, can leverage to drive SaaS success.
Get inside your Buyers Head - Improve Funnel Conversion RatesDavid Skok
SaaStock 2018 Dublin.
Everyone wants more sales. In this presentation, David Skok unlocks the secrets to how he has been able to work with company after company and help them discover breakthroughs that drastically improve their conversion rates. The secret behind it all is become a master at understanding how your buyer thinks as they go through their purchasing journey, and as they experience your marketing and sales.
In my talk at the 2017 LAUNCH SCALE conference in San Francisco, I discuss how to get inside your buyer's head to increase funnel conversion rates. In the talk, I cover:
- How to design and build a buyer-centric sales funnel that has low CAC and fast sales cycles.
- How to figure out why your sales funnel isn't working as well as it could be, and how to fix it.
- How to understand the way buyers react to your funnel, and how to use that knowledge to increase funnel conversion rates.
Optimize Your Funnel By Getting Inside Your Buyer's HeadDavid Skok
Part of finding product/market fit is turning early wins into repeatable, scalable, and profitable sales. In this talk given as part of the Heavybit speaker series, I discuss how to shorten the time to customer conversion from trials, freemium and open source products.
How Startups Can Build a Recruiting MachineDavid Skok
Something important has changed in the recruiting process: the best people are almost never on the market, and you have to develop recruiting processes to find and sell passive candidates. In many cases, it will take months or years of relationship building with these candidates to find the right moment when they are open to considering a change. Closing them takes greater selling efforts than in the past due to the intense competition over the good candidates. This leads me to believe that there is now a third crucial startup skill that needs to be developed: recruiting.
In this slide deck, David Skok talks through his 9 step process for B2B startups to get through product/market fit, and to then find a repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth process.
In David's experience some of the most fatal and expensive mistakes founders make is trying to skip steps. Understanding this roadmap will save you countless hours and potentially millions of wasted dollars.
A High Growth SaaS Playbook - 12 Metrics to Drive SuccessSaaStock
Keynote by David Skok, ForEntrepreneurs Blog & General Partner, Matrix Partners, at SaaStock on Tour New York, 20th June 2018, KnockDown Center, Maspeth, NYC
Lean Startup Basics - Evidence Based EntrepreneurshipKelly Schwedland
Introduction and overview to the lean process for startups. An evidence based approach to validate early hypothesis and develop a solid Business Model before launch. Involving Customer Development, Hypothesis testing, Minimum Viable Product, (MVP) to get to Product/ Market fit and ultimately A replicable scalable business model. This simple but disciplined approach takes the guess work out of taking an idea and turning it into a viable company.
Based on Eric Reis, Steve Blank and Alex Osterwald's work with Lean Startup, Lean launchpad, customer development and Business Model Canvas. Now in practice by multiple Incubators, Accelerators, Universities and now the National Science Foundation through ICorp to validate business ideas with before investing.
Ever wondered how unit economics affect your growth rate? Quantitative analysis is the most essential part of successful growth hacking. Here is a specific example.
Building a Repeatable, Scalable & Profitable Growth ProcessDavid Skok
In a talk I gave at SaaS North 2017 conference in Ottawa, I talk about the fundamentals of building a repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth process for a startup.
Zero to 100 - Part 2: Building a Repeatable, Scalable Growth ProcessDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
9 Steps to Repeatable, Scalable, & Profitable GrowthDavid Skok
In this slide deck, David Skok talks through his 9 step process for B2B startups to get through product/market fit, and to then find a repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth process.
In David's experience some of the most fatal and expensive mistakes founders make is trying to skip steps. Understanding this roadmap will save you countless hours and potentially millions of wasted dollars.
Zero to 100 - Part 5: SaaS Business Model & MetricsDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
Zero to 100 - Part 6: Experiences putting Theory into PracticeDavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
WebSummit 2018 - 9 Secrets for Startup SuccessDavid Skok
Lean Startup taught the world how to find product/market fit, but in the B2B world that isn’t enough. B2B founders must then find a way to build repeatable, scalable and profitable growth before they are ready to step on the accelerator and grow at high speed. In this talk, five-time serial entrepreneur and author of the ForEntrepreneurs blog, David Skok, breaks this journey down into 9 distinct stages and explains the playbook at each stage. Warning: trying to force growth by skipping a step is the number one mistake entrepreneurs make, and it is often fatal.
Describes the steps required to build a Sales and Marketing Machine that is predictable, scalable, automated, well instrumented, and cost efficient.
This was a presentation that I gave at the Lean Startup Circle in Boston on March 24th, 2011.
Zero to 100 - Part 7: The Role of the CEODavid Skok
Zero to 100 is a learning program from David Skok. It is a detailed instruction manual for how to take your startup from zero to $100m, with a particular focus on the area of building a go-to-market machine. So many of today’s founders come from a product or technical background, and have never been involved with sales and marketing. Right after starting their venture, they are hit with the huge problem of how to build their go-to-market organization and processes. It breaks the journey down into 9 steps, and explains why it is crucial not to skip steps in this journey in the rush to get ahead. The major emphasis of the course focuses on building a repeatable, scalable and profitable growth machine. Once you have that in place, you are ready to hit the gas and scale like crazy.
To see videos of the presentations, click here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/matrix-growth-academy-zero-to-100-videos/
David Skok, General Partner at Matrix Partners, provides a simple model to understand a SaaS businesses, as well as the key levers founders, can leverage to drive SaaS success.
Get inside your Buyers Head - Improve Funnel Conversion RatesDavid Skok
SaaStock 2018 Dublin.
Everyone wants more sales. In this presentation, David Skok unlocks the secrets to how he has been able to work with company after company and help them discover breakthroughs that drastically improve their conversion rates. The secret behind it all is become a master at understanding how your buyer thinks as they go through their purchasing journey, and as they experience your marketing and sales.
In my talk at the 2017 LAUNCH SCALE conference in San Francisco, I discuss how to get inside your buyer's head to increase funnel conversion rates. In the talk, I cover:
- How to design and build a buyer-centric sales funnel that has low CAC and fast sales cycles.
- How to figure out why your sales funnel isn't working as well as it could be, and how to fix it.
- How to understand the way buyers react to your funnel, and how to use that knowledge to increase funnel conversion rates.
Optimize Your Funnel By Getting Inside Your Buyer's HeadDavid Skok
Part of finding product/market fit is turning early wins into repeatable, scalable, and profitable sales. In this talk given as part of the Heavybit speaker series, I discuss how to shorten the time to customer conversion from trials, freemium and open source products.
How Startups Can Build a Recruiting MachineDavid Skok
Something important has changed in the recruiting process: the best people are almost never on the market, and you have to develop recruiting processes to find and sell passive candidates. In many cases, it will take months or years of relationship building with these candidates to find the right moment when they are open to considering a change. Closing them takes greater selling efforts than in the past due to the intense competition over the good candidates. This leads me to believe that there is now a third crucial startup skill that needs to be developed: recruiting.
In this slide deck, David Skok talks through his 9 step process for B2B startups to get through product/market fit, and to then find a repeatable, scalable, and profitable growth process.
In David's experience some of the most fatal and expensive mistakes founders make is trying to skip steps. Understanding this roadmap will save you countless hours and potentially millions of wasted dollars.
A High Growth SaaS Playbook - 12 Metrics to Drive SuccessSaaStock
Keynote by David Skok, ForEntrepreneurs Blog & General Partner, Matrix Partners, at SaaStock on Tour New York, 20th June 2018, KnockDown Center, Maspeth, NYC
Lean Startup Basics - Evidence Based EntrepreneurshipKelly Schwedland
Introduction and overview to the lean process for startups. An evidence based approach to validate early hypothesis and develop a solid Business Model before launch. Involving Customer Development, Hypothesis testing, Minimum Viable Product, (MVP) to get to Product/ Market fit and ultimately A replicable scalable business model. This simple but disciplined approach takes the guess work out of taking an idea and turning it into a viable company.
Based on Eric Reis, Steve Blank and Alex Osterwald's work with Lean Startup, Lean launchpad, customer development and Business Model Canvas. Now in practice by multiple Incubators, Accelerators, Universities and now the National Science Foundation through ICorp to validate business ideas with before investing.
Ever wondered how unit economics affect your growth rate? Quantitative analysis is the most essential part of successful growth hacking. Here is a specific example.
Bessemer Venture Partners' is proud to share The State of the Cloud for 2017.
As the definitive guide to the biggest trends in the cloud industry, this year’s “State of the Cloud Report” includes:
1. A Look Back at 2016
- 2016 was a marquee year for a number of reasons. First, we all remember the rocky start in February where the Cloud Market dropped 35%
- Subsequently, rebounded back to normal levels and ended the year up +15%
- The dip in the market had two main outcomes: First, it led to unprecedented amounts of M&A (4x more than any other year and 40% of the total cloud market cap of $300B) – and second, it led to the fewest number of cloud tech IPOs since the financial crisis.
- A combination of these factors has led to the highest quality backlog of private cloud companies in history. The top 100 private Cloud companies alone represent over $100B of private enterprise value.
2. We provide a deeper look into the three top questions every private cloud CEO should be discussing with his/her executive team
- How fast should I be growing?
- How much should I burn?
- How do I scale?
3. Bessemer’s 7 Predictions for 2017
- The year of human assisted AI
- APIs will serve as the backbone for a majority of software infrastructure
- Architect for infinite scale without infinite spend
- Mobile unlocks non-desk worker productivity
- NPS everything
- Diverse teams win
- The screenless software movement
Founding vs Professional CEO Performance Analysis in SaaSYujin Chung
Research cited
For more info, check out my class blog (http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/enabletech/) and also my other study project on mobile apps and social gaming (http://www.slideshare.net/Enderdoon/media-study-project-final-ydc2).
Yujin
http://www.linkedin.com/in/yujinchung
http://twitter.com/enderdoon
The Ultimate How-To CRM Guide is the document that you need to make your decision between cloud-computing technology and on-premises. We call it "Ultimate" because it is the Ultimate How-To CRM Guide, the "Must-have" Guide :)
Oracle and cVidya Cloud webinar with the first part by Oracle covering SaaS market and opportunities in the cloud and Oracle's SaaS partnering strategy and second part by cVidya's covering cVidya's Journey into the Cloud with cVidyaCloud.
Building the Billion Dollar SaaS Unicorn: CEO GuideKelly Schwedland
In a Venture Capital world that is obsessed with growth, recurring revenue and software as a service, after you validate that you have a solution that people are willing to pay for, there is an entire new world ahead of you in scaling that venture. For many, this involves an entirely new language and set of metrics to manage the business. For the startup that wants to make the leap to scale up and fast growth this should serve as a starting point for key insights and metrics for that journey.
The Ultimate Guide To Startup Sales Tools (2015)Nic Poulos
Second edition of our Startup Sales Tool Guide! Bowery Capital is a VC based in NYC & SF investing in early-stage business software startups. We accelerate our portfolio companies' growth by focusing squarely on support around early customer acquisition. We've helped many B2B startups build & scale sales teams and know that sometimes you need the right tools to win. So we thought it would be helpful to aggregate some of our team's & founders' learnings around early-stage sales tools that work. We hope startups will find this resulting guide to be helpful and encourage everyone to reach out via Twitter, LinkedIn or email with any feedback so we can update & improve it over time!
Zero to $50M – A Roadmap of the Key Stages, and How to Win at Each Stagesaastr
David Skok - General Partner / Matrix Partners
There are seven key stages in a startup’s evolution from $0m to $50m in revenue. Understanding where you are in that evolution, and how to act at each stage is critical for success, as what is appropriate at one stage is not appropriate at another stage. David will lay out the roadmap, and detail the keys to success at each stage.
David Skok on The SaaS Founder's Journey || SAAS NORTH 2017L-SPARK
http://www.l-spark.com -- Watch the video of David Skok's keynote over on our blog.
David Skok joined Matrix Partners as a General Partner in May 2001. He has a wealth of experience running companies. David started his first company in 1977 at age 22. Since then David has founded a total of four separate companies and performed one turn-around. Three of these companies went public.
David joined Matrix from SilverStream Software, which he founded in June 1996. Prior to its July 2002 acquisition by Novell, SilverStream was a public company that had reached a revenue run rate in excess of $100M, with approximately 800 employees and offices in more than 20 countries around the world.
David’s work as a value added investor is best known for helping HubSpot, JBoss, AppIQ, Tabblo, Netezza, Diligent Technologies, CloudSwitch, TribeHR, GrabCAD, OpenSpan and Enservio to successful exits. David currently serves on the boards of Atomist, CloudBees, Conductor, Digium (makers of the very popular Asterisk Open Source PBX/telephony software), Meteor, NamelyHR, Salsify, Storiant, VideoIQ and Zaius.
In addition to his broad focus on enterprise software, David is specifically focused on the areas of SaaS (software as a service), cloud, mobility, Open Source, marketing automation, virtualization, storage, and data center automation.
David writes a blog for entrepreneurs and startups on topics such as viral marketing, SaaS metrics, building a sales and marketing machine, techniques for lowering cost of customer acquisition, etc. The blog can be found here: www.forEntrepreneurs.com.
Go From Vanity to Sanity Metrics by Amplitude Head of Prod MKTProduct School
Main takeaways:
- Why it’s important to segment your market carefully before operationalizing the marketing mix?
- How to go beyond pipe generation numbers and assess the health of your opportunity funnel?
- How to run data driven marketing programs that support the complete opportunity funnel?
What is a sales pipeline, and why should you care?April Brunt
What is a sales pipeline, and why should you care?
Check out our SlideShare to find out and much more!
Insights included:
The 6 steps of a killer sales pipeline
Sales pipeline lead scoring
How to keep prospects progressing through the sales pipeline
7 top tips for ongoing success
GHV Webinar - VC Perspectives on Business Metrics for Series AGHV Accelerator
What are the key Business Metrics VC’s look at? Why are these Key Metrics vital for a Venture?
How to Optimize these Metrics?
Join GHV Accelerator’s MENTORS Mukul Singhal (SAIF Partners) and
Prajakt Raut (Entrepreneur Evangelist), over our 4th webinar
Full Funnel Optimization for B2B Companies | Masters of Conversion by VWOVWO
In this presentation, Taran and Arpit will showcase the power of Full Funnel Optimization. The objective is to break the myth that optimization is only something you do at the top of the funnel when driving more leads through your marketing campaigns. Get a pragmatic view of how to enable optimization at all stages of your sales and marketing funnel along with practical, real-life examples.
They will breakdown a typical B2B sales and marketing funnel and highlight optimizations you can run at every stage. The possible impact would be an increase in your sales by upto 60% by running these proven optimization techniques.
Product market fit is achieved by finding the successful intersection of product iteration, competition/market and go-to-market strategy. Finding product market fit (PMF), however, is hard when these three factors confound problem solving in the search for PMF.
Fortunately, competition tends to be roughly constant over the period in which a startup is solving for PMF. To control between product iteration and GTM, go-to-market can be broken into five sub-steps in any of which product changes are small enough not to confound. This allows GTM tactics and strategy to be tested and proven or disproven.
The five steps are first sale, founder sales, first sales person, sales leadership, scaling sales - each a distinct stage that can be tested and measured. There are metrics abound to measure sales performance, but many - including funnel conversion metrics, LTV and CAC - are fuzzy and imprecise in the early stages of a startup. What matters is whether a software business is adding adequate net new revenue per cash burned as measured by monthly increase in MRR per monthly net cash burned. Cash efficiency should go up at each successive go-to-market step.
Building a Financial Model That Actually WorksIntelligent_ly
What is a financial model? Learn about how to create a bottoms up financial model, revenue assumptions, sales assumptions, marketing assumptions, general and administrative assumptions, and cash flow statements and balance sheets. Building a Financial Model That Actually Works. A class taught by Dan Allred (SVB) and Matt Nichols (Gemvara) at Intelligent.ly's Boston campus. To learn more from the experts, visit http://intelligent.ly/learn
Colorado Growth Series Keynote Presented by Sam HenrySam Henry
Watch Video (45 min): https://vimeo.com/channels/denversaas
The inaugural event of the Colorado Growth Series examines modern sales strategies for early and growth stage startups. This CEO / Founder event focuses on industry trends, lessons from Silicon Valley and how we can strengthen Colorado valuations, bolster our ecosystem and get companies ready to scale big in 2017.
Presented on April 12, 2017 by Sam Henry
Event Sponsors: Colorado Technology Association, SalesSmyth, Innosphere, EKS&H, CoBiz, Fairfield & Woods
How to Survive and Thrive in the post-Covid EraDavid Skok
This presentation starts by looking at the huge global forces that are currently reshaping the world, triggered by Covid. It then drops down layer by layer, to finally show how you need to react as a SaaS business to set up for success in a changed world.
These are the slides that I used in my presentation at SaaStock Remote 2020 on June 10th.
A high growth SaaS playbook. 12 metrics to drive success. 2 goals, present a simple model to understand SaaS business and show what levers a CEO can pull to get the most impact
SaaS/subscription businesses are much more complex than traditional businesses, and SaaS performance cannot be measured in the same way as traditional businesses are measured. Based on a talk given at the SaaStr Annual Conference in San Francisco, this slide deck offers a comprehensive and detailed look at the key metrics that are needed to understand and optimize a SaaS business, and how these can be used to drive SaaS success. This presentation includes information on:
- An intro to SaaS metrics
- Unit economics
- LTV and churn: An in-depth look
- Variable pricing axes
- Months to recover CAC
- The primary unit of growth: Sales
- Understanding public SaaS companies
Building a Sales and Marketing machine for a B2B software company involves many functions working together. This slide deck explores the process of funnel design that is highly buyer centric. It looks at the Buyer journey, and how to successfully construct a buying process that they buyer will enjoy going through, which is very different from the typical sale process that is designed from the vendors standpoint, and fails because the buyer is not motivated to go through the steps.
A detailed look at why SaaS business are so different from traditional software companies, and why traditional ways of looking at their finances fail to understand the business. Provides an alternative set of metrics that show the right way to look at a SaaS business.
For more on the SaaS business model and Metrics, see this blog post:
www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/
The Application Development Landscape - 2011David Skok
Presentation on the Application Development Landscape given as a keynote to the MassTLC CTO, developer and architect audience on December 15th in Cambridge, MA. Covers the key challenges and architectural decisions faced by developers. Topics include: Mobile, Cloud, SaaS, PaaS, Big Data, Analytics, etc.
The Science behind Viral Marketing is a look at the key factors that drive growth in viral marketing. (Hint, the most important factor is not the one everyone expects.) It also looks at what is needed to get virality to work, and how to create and optimize viral marketing campaigns or viral products.
One part of the presntation shows the key formulae behind viral marketing.
Suitable for marketers or for product designers.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
2. Search for Product/Market Fit
Scaling the Business
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
The Three Phases of a Startup’s Lifecycle
3. The Most important Startup Questions
• When will we run out of cash?
• Are we on track to reach the
milestones needed for a
successful fundraise?
11. Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
The VC view - How risk changes over time
Risk
As perceived by
the financial metrics
and Growth Investors
12. Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
How risk changes over time
Risk
As perceived by
Early Stage Investors
13. Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
And Valuations are inversely correlated to Risk
Risk Valuation
14. Scaling the Business
Evidence of Product/Market Fit
Evidence of Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
Very Approximate look at Round Types
Seed Series A Series B Growth Financing
15. Evidence of Product/Market Fit
Evidence of Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
Milestones for a Successful Fundraise: Series A
Series A
16. Good Evidence of Product Market Fit
• A number of customers have purchased
• Referenceable
• Customers are happy
• Using the product (and would be very reluctant to give it up)
• Realizing the promised benefits
• Evidence of intent to expand usage
• Churn is low
18. Predictable, Repeatable, Scalable, Profitable Growth
Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
19. The key sign that you’re getting there:
Bookings - (NOT Revenue or ARR!)
For SaaS:
Bookings = Net New ARR
(New + Expansion – Churned)
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7
21. Productivity Per Rep (PPR)
Rep Q2-15 Q3-15 Q4-15 Q1-16 Q2-16 Q3-16 Q4-16
John 120 165 180 145 80 110 195
Mary 80 110 135 155 150 145
Fred 60 35 75 40 55
Alice 85 145 160 180 145
Joe 60 110 85 130 145
Mike 155 170 145 190
Sarah 35 45 70 45
Sue 80 145 175 165
22. % of Reps at Quota
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Q1-16 Q2-16 Q3-16 Q4-16
% of Reps above
75% of Quota
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Q1-16 Q2-16 Q3-16 Q4-16
% of Reps above
100% of Quota
23. Proof Points for Investors
• Predictable, Repeatable, Scalable
• Consistent growth in Bookings (not just ARR)
• Proof that you can grow the sales organization, and make them productive
• Proven lead sources that can scale
• Profitable:
• LTV > 3x CAC
• Months to recover CAC ≤ 18
• Product/Market Fit
• Strong customer usage patterns over time
• Low customer churn, Net negative revenue churn
24. Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
More lessons we can learn from the three phase diagram
26. Common variations…
• Hiring salespeople before the founders have
proven that they can sell the product
• Scaling sales before solving a churn problem
• Scaling the salesforce before the growth process
is predictable & repeatable
28. Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
What we’ve learned…
Not Predictable how long this will take
29. Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
Conserve Cash until the Scaling Phase
Cash Burn
31. Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Product/Market Fit
Develop MVP
Figure out MVP
Close early-access
sales
Make the customers
successful
Validate the idea
Identify initial
target market
32. The number one problem at this Stage
• Not enough customer meetings set up for validation
• Both before, and during product development
• Results:
• Product doesn’t quite fit the needs of the market
• Interest is there, but can’t close sales
• Lots of wasted time, and cash burned
33. Search for Repeatable, Scalable, Profitable Growth
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
34. Break this into phases
Search for Repeatable, Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
Close early-access
sales
Make the customers
successful
Find Predictable and
Repeable Motion
Make it Scalable
and Profitable
45. MAP BUYERS PROCESS TO YOUR STEPS
Research
Shortlist
Vendors
Evaluation
ROI &
Justification
Website Free Trial
BUYER
VENDOR
46. GET INSIDE YOUR BUYERS HEAD
Research
Shortlist
Vendors
Evaluation
ROI &
Justification
Website Free Trial
BUYER
VENDOR
• How are they reacting as they go through our funnel steps?
• What are they thinking as they go through their process?
47. OPTIMIZE YOUR STEPS TO FIT
Research
Shortlist
Vendors
Evaluation
ROI &
Justification
Website Free Trial
ROI
Calculator
Competitive
Features
Matrix
BUYER
VENDOR
48. ADDRESS ALL DECISION CRITERIA
Address
Security Concerns
3rd Party
Security Audit &
Whitepaper
BUYER
49. Blog post and slide deck:
“Optimize Your Funnel By Getting
Inside Your Buyer’s Head”
http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/heavybit/
53. Initial Sales Staffing
Close early-access sales Find Predictable and
Repeatable Sales Motion
Make it Scalable
and Profitable
Founders
1 to 2 Pathfinder/Trailblazer Salespeople
Sales Manager
2 Reps 2 Reps 2 Reps
54. Pathfinder/Trailblazer Sales People
• Not like ordinary sales people – who follow a playbook
• They have to create and evolve the playbook
• Which target market?
• Who in the organization to sell to?
• What messaging?
• What sales motion?
• What pricing?
• What new product features are needed?
55. When to hire your first Sales Manager
• Wait till you think the process is repeatable
• The managers job is to scale something that works
• Make sure you see a path to viable unit economics
• LTV > 3x CAC
• Months to recover CAC ≤ 18
56. Sales Manager’s job
1. Ensure your sales process is Predictable, Repeatable, Scalable, Profitable
2. Scale the process
• Recruiting
• Training and onboarding the new sales people
• Coaching
• Forecasting & Deal/Pipeline management
• Making the number
63. PPR: Sales Training and Onboarding
• Sales people: one of the most expensive resources
• Yet typically little effort put in to sales training in early days
• High payback
• Worth having the founders spend time to develop & deliver a lot of the material
68. Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
A common mistake…
• Not hiring enough sales
people in the Scaling phase
• Founders remain in burn
avoidance mode
70. Search for Product/Market Fit
Scaling the Business
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
Recognize where you are in the lifecycle
71. Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
Choose the right actions for your stage
• Don’t jump ahead:
• Expanding sales before product/market fit
• Hiring too many sales people before the sales process is working
72. Avoid Underfunding -
not enough cash to reach next milestone
Time
Valuation
Next Key
Milestone
x
Cash Out Date
77. Getting to know your Buyer Personae
• Identifying Characteristics
• What are their key business goals?
• How does our product help them achieve those?
• What does their Boss expect of them?
• What pain do they have that we address?
• Is it latent pain, or obvious pain?
• How do they describe the pain and what they are looking
for?
• (Helpful for messaging)
• Are they out there searching for solutions?
• If so, how?
• Is solving this pain a high priority for them?
• If not, what features would make it a higher priority?
• What are the most important features on their checklist?
• What are their reactions to our product/company?
• What will they like? What will they not like?
• What are the main questions and concerns they will have?
• What are the steps in their purchasing process?
• What are their likely decision making criteria?
• Who else has to be involved in the decision (e.g. Business
buyer, IT)?
• Who influences them? (Sites, organizations, and
people)
• (Helps us figure out how to market to them)
• Other characteristics that are relevant to this purchase
• E.g. Developers:
• Don't have a budget
• Prefer Open Source, and don't like to pay for software
85. The Backend of the Funnel
Closed Deals
Loyal
Customers
who are
Advocates
Renew ExpandOnboard
It’s all about LTV
86. Top Factors affecting Renewals
• On-boarded successfully?
• Champion still at the company?
• Customer getting meaningful business benefits?
• Is the product Sticky?
87. Dollar Renewal Rate is King
See last year’s presentation
Customer
Renewal Rate
>Dollar
Renewal Rate
Editor's Notes
Going to talk about some lessons that I have learned working with many startups
My goal is to help make it clear what is important at each stage of the journey, and hopefully help provide you with a tool to bring focus and alignment to your organization