This presentation will teach you the things that went well, and the things that did not go well in our journey to move our 20 people Drupal agency from a service company (bill by the hour) to a product SaaS company (bill per product, per month) called Open Social. We will talk about funding your product, building a product, how to do marketing, sales and business development and how to grow internationally. We hope to discuss some questions as how to work with open-source and SaaS and does it help us or limit us competing with proprietary software vendors. If you are thinking about building a product on Drupal or building a SaaS company, this is your session! https://drupalcampkyiv.org/node/54

1. What we learned from Open Social in
3 years, moving from an Agency to a
Product company.
DrupalCamp Kyiv 2019

2. ! co-Founder GoalGorilla (2008)
! co-Founder Open Social (2016)
! co-Founder THX Project (2018)
❖ Former board of Dutch Drupal Association
❖ Current board of Dutch Startup Association
Introduction Taco Potze

3. GoalGorilla,
creative Drupal shop
since 2008
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

4. Why Open Social?
“We want to build better
software, innovate
faster and deliver more
value to our clients.

5. Open Social builds
communities on a
mission, since 2016

6. Drupal distribution
* drupal.org/project/social
Open Social is not
simply software
but a collaborative project
Using open-source technology,
it’s flexible and powers more than
1.000 active installations.*

7. ! United Nations (8 platforms)
! Greenpeace International
! SAP
! Victim Support Netherlands
! CTBTO
! Foraus
our clients
Companies using Open Social
Clients in Europe, United States and Australia
! Holmesglen Institute Australia
! European Aviation Safety Agency
! DigitalSwitzerland
! Friends of the Earth (Milieudefensie)
! Pachamama Alliance
! Netherlands Organisation for Scientific
Research

8. So, how did we do it?
getopensocial.com

9. open-SaaS

10. 21
SaaS
Software-as-a-Service
Offering:
- Easy out-of-the-box setup
- Smooth automated updates incl.
new features
- Hosting (cloud), maintenance,
support and services
Billing:
- Setup fee + Monthly fee
- Additional services

11. ! Deliver more value to your clients
! Lower initial setup cost
! Faster deliver times
! Less time of client needed
! No acceptance periods
! Better tested software, less bugs
! More time spend on UX and design
Winning
Why SaaS beats custom development?
! Other people use it too, less risk
! Crowd co-development
! Specialism as company
! Additional value adding services
! Stricter security guidelines and
certifications
! Marketplace for modules / extensions

12. Our secret sauce
Technology
Moss: continuous integration
& automation
- Quality Assurance
- Security
- Performance
- Backups
Primate: Automated SaaS
Cloud setup and release
system
Basic SaaS
Enterprise
SaaS
(extended)
API Brand/Layout THX
Open-source Proprietary Single tenant

13. How to
create an
out-of-the-
box
platform?

14. Doing agency work is easy.
You sell the client a dream.
You start building and they pay you all
hours made, probably each month
covering all your cost plus a little profit.

15. Building a product is hard.
You sell the client a final product.
You start building for 6-12 months, they
pay you only a fraction of the cost.

18. 21 3
benefits
Raising money
pre-Seed
<200k
EUR
Seed
< 1M
euro
Series A
>1M
euro

19. Funded Open Social with a
successful pre-seed
crowdfunding campaign.
10% equity for 200k euro
+ 300k euro out of pocket

20. Watch our
product video
Watch now

21. Open
DIY
Public Big
tech
Closed
adoption
challengers
Social software landscape
Players, problems and pain
Privacy concerns and
lack of data
ownership
Lack of domain
expertise, costly and
time consuming
Vendor lock-ins, not
customizable bad
services and
expensive
Not customizable,
limited, no data
ownership

22. Product/Market fit
After non-profit we are now moving into the Business market
Opportunities to expand target segment towards new industries and software domains
Extranet;
Events and
Knowledge
Management
Vertical
Industry
NGOs Government
Collaboration
Courses (e-learning)
Gamification 3.0
Business
Initial
target
segment
Source: Credence Research “Enterprise
Social Networks and Online Communities
Market, June 2018
Product/market-fit in ‘17-’18 helped to
identify key areas of expansion
Crowd Innovation

23. 4 Key Metrics to
measure success

24. MRR = Monthly Recurring Revenue
Usually your monthly SaaS fee, your client pays you
every month or every year.
Ideally this price goes up each month or year when you
deliver more value to your client (usage, features,
interactions).
ARR = anual recurring revenue
In US your company could be worth 100 x MRR..
So a 500 EUR/month client adds 50.000k to your
company value..

25. Churn %
How many clients stop paying for your product every
month?
Needs to be as low as possible. But too low and you
might charge enough.
Lock them in (for example with data) vs. Open

26. CAC = Cost to Acquire a Customer
Say your cost are 10.000 euro a month for marketing
and sales and that gives you 2 new clients.
CAC = 10.000 / 2 = 5.000 euro
How many months to recover CAC?
5.000 / 500 euro = 10 months, in general <1 year

27. LTV = Customer Life Time Value
ARPA = avr. Monthly recurring Revenue per Account = MRR

28. How are we
doing with
Open Social?

29. MRR = Monthly Recurring Revenue
2017 2018 2019

30. Churn %

31. CAC = Cost to Acquire a Customer
Cost are 12.000 euro a month for marketing and sales
and gives us 1 new clients.
CAC = 12.000 / 1 = 12.000 euro
How many months to recover CAC?
12.000 / 1.000 euro = 12 months

33. LTV = Customer Life Time Value
Not usable for Open Social, yet..

34. Timelime GoalGorilla <> Open Social
2015: Preparations and crowdfunding
2016: Invested 500k into Open Social
2017 - 2019: Increase Open Social clients,
decrease GoalGorilla clients.
2020: Raising additional Investment

35. 21 3
Open Social 2016-2019
3 key learnings
Have enough
funding for product
development AND
sales & marketing.
Focus on MRR
growth!!
Recurring
Revenue
Build your tech
to scale.
Setup and
maintenance
time should be
close to 0.

36. Discover
more
benefits
visit getopensocial.com

37. Thank you for your attention!
Get in touch with our founders on
taco@getopensocial.com
And technical questions to our VP of Product
jaapjan@getopensocial.com
Updates @OpenSocialHQ
Relevant links
getopensocial.com Open Social website
drupal.org/project/social Drupal Project page
demo.getopensocial.com Demo environment
goalgorilla.com/en Agency Website
thxproject.com DAICO THX Website