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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
The SaaS Founder’s Journey: What Matters at Each StageDavid Skok
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.
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
Slides David Shoenberger recently used in his discussion w/ mentees of The Product Mentor.
The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals…Better Decisions. Better Products. Better Product People.
Throughout the program, each mentor leads a conversation in an area of their expertise that is live streamed and available to both mentee and the broader product community.
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.
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
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.
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.
The document discusses buyer-centric funnel design. It emphasizes the importance of understanding where buyers are in their journey - awareness, consideration, or purchase. It recommends designing different experiences for each stage, with content that addresses buyer questions and concerns rather than just selling. The document also discusses identifying buyer personas, mapping their purchase process to the vendor's funnel, analyzing friction points, and optimizing the funnel based on buyer motivations and decision criteria. It provides examples from companies like Salsify and Apollo that redesigned their trials based on this approach, removing steps and addressing buyer pain points, which increased conversion rates.
Building a Repeatable, Scalable & Profitable Growth ProcessDavid Skok
The document discusses optimizing the sales funnel for SaaS startups. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the buyer's perspective and journey. The key points covered are:
1) The sales funnel should be designed around the buyer's process, not the vendor's solutions. It is important to understand buyer personas and map the funnel steps to their evaluation process.
2) Friction points in the funnel like long delays or steps requiring other people can drastically reduce conversion. These points should be identified and removed or simplified when possible.
3) The goal is to create a "wow moment" or motivation for the buyer to continue engaging as early as possible. This may require redesigning trial experiences to quickly
Looking to scale something up? Depending on how you're going after your market/ acquiring users, you may need to build a sales organization that's optimized for a top-down or bottom-up sales process (or perhaps both).
Watch the video overview at http://a16z.com/2015/03/06/go-to-market-bootcamp/ and then check out this slide deck, which shares some concrete tips and tools for accelerating time to market -- from the go-to-market experts at a16z, led by 'sales savant' Mark Cranney.
Because selling to enterprises is a lot like getting a bill passed through Congress: it can get stuck. And getting stuck -- or going down the wrong path -- can mean death to startups in a competitive market. Here's how to avoid that.
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.
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/
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
The Future of the Cloud Is Customer SuccessGainsight
This document provides an agenda and slides from a presentation on the future of cloud computing and customer success. The presentation discusses key topics including the state of the cloud market in 2017, benchmarks for cloud company growth and efficiency, and a model called the "Helix Model" for driving revenue growth through customer success. The presentation aims to provide cloud company leaders with insights on scaling their business and retaining customers through a customer-centric approach.
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.
"Driving SaaS Success Using Key Metrics" at SaaStr Annual 2016saastr
David Skok, popular blogger and top SaaS investor at Matrix Partners, shares the key metrics that SaaS founders must focus on to remain competitive and build a sustainable business at SaaStr Annual 2016 held in San Francisco Feb 9-11th. www.saastrannual.com
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.
BI STRATEGY FROM A BIRD'S EYE VIEW (How to become a trusted advisor) | Omri H...Omid Vahdaty
In the talk we will discuss how to break down the company’s overall goals all the way to your BI team’s daily activities in 3 simple stages:
1. Understanding the path to success - Creating a revenue model
2. Gathering support and strategizing - Structuring a team
3. Executing - Tracking KPIs
Bios:
Omri Halak -Omri is the director of business operations at Logz.io, an intelligent and scalable machine data analytics platform built on ELK & Grafana that empowers engineers to monitor, troubleshoot, and secure mission-critical applications more effectively. In this position, Omri combines actionable business insights from the BI side with fast and effective delivery on the Operations side. Omri has ample experience connecting data with business, with previous positions at SimilarWeb as a business analyst, at Woobi as finance director, and as Head of State Guarantees at Israel Ministry of Finance.
Why Digital Marketing is the next big growth lever for Private Equity investo...Shiv Narayanan
Shiv Narayanan spoke at Silicon Y'all, organized by Zane Tarence and the Founders Advisors team, on why digital marketing is the next big growth lever for Private Equity companies and CEOs.
Achieve Digital Transformation Success with Value ManagementAnurag Goel
Excerpts from speaking engagement at Digital Marketing ROI Forum in Hong Kong. Key pointers on how adopting Value Management and developing a compelling business case is essential to drive Digital Transformation project success.
Building a SaaS Startup | Fernando Okumura | Lunch & Learn UCICove
About UCI Applied Innovation:
UCI Applied Innovation is a dynamic, innovative central platform for the UCI campus, entrepreneurs, inventors, the business community and investors to collaborate and move UCI research from lab to market.
About the Cove @ UCI:
To accelerate collaboration by better connecting innovation partners in Orange County, UCI Applied Innovation created the Cove, a physical, state-of-the-art hub for entrepreneurs to gather and navigate the resources available both on and off campus. The Cove is headquarters for UCI Applied Innovation, as well as houses several ecosystem partners including incubators, accelerators, angel investors, venture capitalists, mentors and legal experts.
Follow us on social media:
Facebook: @UCICove
Twitter: @UCICove
Instagram: @UCICove
LinkedIn: @UCIAppliedInnovation
For more information:
cove@uci.edu
http://innovation.uci.edu/
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
Presented by Richard Brooks at the ALC conference in Las Vegas NV. Explores the realtionship/importance of strategic sales management, marketing and key account management. Moves on to present models around the life-time value of clients to an organisation and how this changes as firms develop.
Mastermind Masterclass: The Most Common SaaS Sales Potholes and How to Avoid ...saastr
The document discusses common growth potholes that companies encounter and how to avoid them. It identifies six main potholes: 1) low license utilization rates causing revenue contraction, 2) increasing price without a sustainable moat, 3) confusing a temporary moat with a sustainable one, 4) promoting the best salesperson to manager, 5) prioritizing revenue acquisition over customer value creation, and 6) massive hiring of salespeople after a financing round. For each pothole, it provides examples and recommendations for how to address the issues and maintain steady growth.
The Three Things EVERY Aspiring SaaS Company Should Know!ServiceSource
This informative slide deck was the foundation of a webcast with ServiceSource and leading analyst firm IDC exploring the opportunities and challenges for companies making the transition to a SaaS or cloud-based business, including:
- The top 3 keys to success for software and hardware vendors to effectively manage the customer lifecycle and pave a shorter path to profitability
- Managing financial expectations in the marketplace
- Examples of companies that have successfully made the SaaS transition
- How usage and consumption insights are now the foundation for customer success driving successful SaaS businesses
Here is the link to the webinar!
http://corporate.servicesource.com/LP=279
Why It Takes 7-13+ Touches to Generate a Qualified B2B Sales Lead TodayVivastream
1. Generating qualified B2B sales leads takes 7-13 or more touches today because prospects do not provide full information needed for sales qualification in a single interaction and must be nurtured over time through multiple communications.
2. Creating a "perfect prospect profile" that clearly defines what constitutes a "sales-ready qualified lead" can help align marketing and sales teams and improve lead quality.
3. Developing a lead-to-sales requirements calculator based on sales goals can help determine how many qualified leads are needed each month to meet targets.
This document discusses key metrics for SaaS startup success. It defines 8 important sales metrics: monthly recurring revenue (MRR), bookings, annual contract value (ACV), churn, cash efficiency ratio, magic number, lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio (LTV/CAC), and payback period. Each metric is explained with examples and notes on why it is important to measure. Target performance levels are listed for some metrics, such as aiming for a cash efficiency ratio over 10% and LTV/CAC ratio over 3x. The document concludes with a reminder that this list is not comprehensive and mentions some additional factors to track.
Principles of Modern Marketing at NetSuite - Rob Israch (TOPO Demand Generati...TOPO
1) The document discusses principles of a modern marketing team at NetSuite, a cloud ERP software company. It outlines how NetSuite marketing focuses on sales-marketing alignment, a science-based approach, intent-based marketing, speed and agility.
2) Key aspects of NetSuite's marketing include generating over 50% of new sales leads, optimizing programs based on ROI data, focusing efforts on top performing channels, and identifying new growth opportunities from analytics.
3) The marketing team operates with speed and agility, constantly testing, optimizing, and changing course based on data, with a focus on repeatable and scalable processes.
Watch This Free Webinar On-Demand: http://dg-r.co/2fuk0LO - Maximize Customer Lifetime Value In 2017 by Leveraging Your 2016 Wins
Learn why Customer Lifetime Value is a critical metric that can improve your ABM plan & shape your 2017 budget
You worked hard in 2016 to target and convert the accounts and prospects with the highest propensity to buy. Now you need to keep those new customers happy while continuing to expand those relationships. Join Matt Zelen, SVP of Customer Success at Act-On Software, and learn how you can maximize your customer lifetime value in 2017, including:
• Why customer lifetime value is a vital strategic metric for your business;
• How both customer lifetime value and customer acquisition can help determine marketing budget in 2017;
• Tips and tricks to creating a long-term, strategic approach to defining customer lifetime value; and
• How CLV positively impacts account-based marketing initiatives.
Similar to Zero to 100 - Part 5: SaaS Business Model & Metrics (20)
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.
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.
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.
The document discusses optimizing sales and marketing funnels. It outlines a 9-step process for building a "sales and marketing machine" that is predictable, instrumented with metrics, cost-optimized, scalable and automated. The key steps include identifying all parties involved in purchasing decisions, understanding their buying process and concerns, designing actions to entice them through the process while addressing concerns, and aligning all funnel activities to directly lead to sales.
This document discusses key metrics and economics for a SaaS business model. It provides details on sales compensation, bookings targets, churn rates, margins. It examines how revenue is generated from a single salesperson over time. Graphics show how monthly recurring revenue grows as new salespeople are hired each month. Lowering churn rates can significantly impact long-term profits. Collecting payment upfront eliminates cash flow troughs. Sales complexity impacts customer acquisition costs, requiring higher prices and more approval steps. Regular product improvements provide feedback on customer happiness.
React Native vs Flutter - SSTech SystemSSTech System
Your project needs and long-term objectives will ultimately choose which of React Native and Flutter to use. For applications using JavaScript and current web technologies in particular, React Native is a mature and trustworthy choice. For projects that value performance and customizability across many platforms, Flutter, on the other hand, provides outstanding performance and a unified UI development experience.
Software development... for all? (keynote at ICSOFT'2024)miso_uam
Our world runs on software. It governs all major aspects of our life. It is an enabler for research and innovation, and is critical for business competitivity. Traditional software engineering techniques have achieved high effectiveness, but still may fall short on delivering software at the accelerated pace and with the increasing quality that future scenarios will require.
To attack this issue, some software paradigms raise the automation of software development via higher levels of abstraction through domain-specific languages (e.g., in model-driven engineering) and empowering non-professional developers with the possibility to build their own software (e.g., in low-code development approaches). In a software-demanding world, this is an attractive possibility, and perhaps -- paraphrasing Andy Warhol -- "in the future, everyone will be a developer for 15 minutes". However, to make this possible, methods are required to tweak languages to their context of use (crucial given the diversity of backgrounds and purposes), and the assistance to developers throughout the development process (especially critical for non-professionals).
In this keynote talk at ICSOFT'2024 I presented enabling techniques for this vision, supporting the creation of families of domain-specific languages, their adaptation to the usage context; and the augmentation of low-code environments with assistants and recommender systems to guide developers (professional or not) in the development process.
NBFC Software: Optimize Your Non-Banking Financial CompanyNBFC Softwares
NBFC Software: Optimize Your Non-Banking Financial Company
Enhance Your Financial Services with Comprehensive NBFC Software
NBFC software provides a complete solution for non-banking financial companies, streamlining banking and accounting functions to reduce operational costs. Our software is designed to meet the diverse needs of NBFCs, including investment banks, insurance companies, and hedge funds.
Key Features of NBFC Software:
Centralized Database: Facilitates inter-branch collaboration and smooth operations with a unified platform.
Automation: Simplifies loan lifecycle management and account maintenance, ensuring efficient delivery of financial services.
Customization: Highly customizable to fit specific business needs, offering flexibility in managing various loan types such as home loans, mortgage loans, personal loans, and more.
Security: Ensures safe and secure handling of financial transactions and sensitive data.
User-Friendly Interface: Designed to be intuitive and easy to use, reducing the learning curve for employees.
Cost-Effective: Reduces the need for additional manpower by automating tasks, making it a budget-friendly solution. Benefits of NBFC Software:
Go Paperless: Transition to a fully digital operation, eliminating offline work.
Transparency: Enables managers and executives to monitor various points of the banking process easily.
Defaulter Tracking: Helps track loan defaulters, maintaining a healthy loan management system.
Increased Accessibility: Cutting-edge technology increases the accessibility and usability of NBFC operations. Request a Demo Now!
Are you wondering how to migrate to the Cloud? At the ITB session, we addressed the challenge of managing multiple ColdFusion licenses and AWS EC2 instances. Discover how you can consolidate with just one EC2 instance capable of running over 50 apps using CommandBox ColdFusion. This solution supports both ColdFusion flavors and includes cb-websites, a GoLang binary for managing CommandBox websites.
Break data silos with real-time connectivity using Confluent Cloud Connectorsconfluent
Connectors integrate Apache Kafka® with external data systems, enabling you to move away from a brittle spaghetti architecture to one that is more streamlined, secure, and future-proof. However, if your team still spends multiple dev cycles building and managing connectors using just open source Kafka Connect, it’s time to consider a faster and cost-effective alternative.
Cultural Shifts: Embracing DevOps for Organizational TransformationMindfire Solution
Mindfire Solutions specializes in DevOps services, facilitating digital transformation through streamlined software development and operational efficiency. Their expertise enhances collaboration, accelerates delivery cycles, and ensures scalability using cloud-native technologies. Mindfire Solutions empowers businesses to innovate rapidly and maintain competitive advantage in dynamic market landscapes.
In this talk, we will explore strategies to optimize the success rate of storing and retaining new information. We will discuss scientifically proven ideal learning intervals and content structures. Additionally, we will examine how to create an environment that improves our focus while you remain in the “flow”. Lastly we will also address the influence of AI on learning capabilities.
In the dynamic field of software development, this knowledge will empower you to accelerate your learning curve and support others in their learning journeys.
5. The Three Keys to success in SaaS
Acquiring
Customers
Retaining
Customers
Monetizing
Customers
6. Start simple - add sophistication as you progress
Scaling the Business
Search for Product/Market Fit
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
7. The Early Days
Searching for Product/Market Fit
Search for Product/Market Fit
2 3
Prove the
Value
Prove it can
be sold
8. Focus on making sure the product is delivering Value
• Engagement with the product
• Usage of different features
• Are you delivering the promised business benefit?
• What customer KPI can you measure that you are impacting?
9. Searching for Repeatable Growth
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
4 5
Find
Repeatable
Sales Motion
Prove non-
Founders can
sell
10. We’re looking for this chart
Bookings - (Net New ARR)
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7
12. Key SaaS chart: 4 components of bookings
$(15.0)
$(10.0)
$(5.0)
$-
$5.0
$10.0
$15.0
$20.0
$25.0
$30.0
$35.0
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
ARR Bookings
New ARR
Net New ARR
Expansion ARR
Churned ARR
Always look at a
chart that shows the
trendlines to see if
there is growth
13. Make it Scalable
Search for Repeatable & Scalable
& Profitable Growth Model
6
Make it
Scalable
14. Bookings Top of Funnel Lead Flow
Conversion
Rate
Average
Deal Size
18. Computing Funnel Conversions
requires Cohort Analysis
January February March Conversion Rates
Visitors 100
Free Trials 40 40%
Closed Deals 1 4 5 12.5%
Tracking the January Cohort
Not all deals will close in the same month they started in the funnel
19. Not all Lead Sources are Equal
Visitors
Trial
5%
10%
$5,000
Customer
Google Ad Words FaceBook Ads
Visitors
Trial
2%
20%
$8,000
Customer
26. Remember this?
One of the most common reasons for missing plan
Didn’t hire sales people fast enough
27. Two Graphs
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Q4-16 Q1-17 Q2-17 Q3-17 Q4-17
Number of Reps versus Plan
Reps Plan
$0
$500
$1,000
$1,500
$2,000
$2,500
Q4-16 Q1-17 Q2-17 Q3-17 Q4-17
Assigned Quota vs Plan
Assigned Quota Plan
$k
29. Compare Actual Bookings to Assigned Quota
$0
$200
$400
$600
$800
$1,000
$1,200
$1,400
Q4-16 Q1-17 Q2-17 Q3-17 Q4-17
Assigned Quota Bookings
$k
85%
Over Assignment
of Quota
needed to
hit plan
=1/85%
37. Raw Lead
Marketing
Qualified Lead
Sales Accepted
Lead
Opportunity
Closed Deal
20%
80%
25%
20%
Closed Deal1
Opportunity5
Sales Accepted
Lead
20
Marketing
Qualified Lead
25
Raw Lead125
Reverse Funnel Math
38. Compute Leads Required per Rep
x
No of
Closed Deals
=
Reverse Funnel
Conversion Rate
Marketing Qualified
Leads Required
39. This becomes the Contract between Sales & Marketing
Marketing Qualified
Leads Required Sales
Marketing
SDR’s
53. Negative Churn – Crucial for Long Term Success
Revenue Lost with
2.5% monthly Churn
Renewals
Lost due
to Churn
YEAR 3
$3m $7m
Becomes harder
& harder to
replace this with
new bookings
Renewals
Lost due
to Churn
YEAR 6
$30m $70m
57. What makes this topic so important?
• GAAP Accounting
• The primary tool that the world uses to understand the health of a business
BUT THERE’S A BIG PROBLEM
• GAAP accounting doesn’t work for SaaS
• Point in time snapshot
• Doesn’t take into account the value of future recurring revenue
58. 2ND Reason - why is this topic so important?
• There is a huge problem with SaaS businesses:
When they grow fast, they usually lose a lot of money
• The SaaS Cash Flow Trough
• Some will never be profitable
• How do you know you are running a good business that will eventually be
profitable?
59. What’s so different about SaaS?
$(7,000)
$(6,000)
$(5,000)
$(4,000)
$(3,000)
$(2,000)
$(1,000)
$-
$1,000
Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Month 5 Month 6 Month 7 Month 8 Month 9 Month
10
Month
11
Month
12
Cash Flow for a Single Deal
CAC (Cost to acquire the customer) Subscription payments * GM%
65. “The thing that surprises many investors &
boards of directors about the SaaS model is
that, even with perfect execution, an
acceleration of growth will often be
accompanied by a squeeze on profitability and
cash flow.”
Ron Gill, CFO at Netsuite
66. What’s the impact of faster growth?
$(10,000,000)
$(5,000,000)
$-
$5,000,000
$10,000,000
$15,000,000
$20,000,000
$25,000,000
2 more
Customers/Month
5 more
Customers/Month
10 more
Customers/Month
67. What’s the impact of faster growth?
$(10,000,000)
$(5,000,000)
$-
$5,000,000
$10,000,000
$15,000,000
$20,000,000
$25,000,000
2 more
Customers/Month
5 more
Customers/Month
10 more
Customers/Month
Cash Flow Trough
gets deeper
68. When your SaaS business
is losing money at an
increasing rate, how can
you tell if the business is
going to work eventually?
72. A Viable Business Model
CA
C
CAC LTVLTV<
But surprising how many
Entrepreneurs underestimate CAC
73. Guidelines for SaaS success
LTV CAC> 3x
Months to
recover CAC < 12-18 months
Required for Capital Efficiency
74. Months to recover CAC can dictate acquisition spending
If we make $10k from the customer in the first 12 months…
We can afford to spend up to $10k to acquire them
75. Months to recover CAC can
dictate acquisition spending
If we make $10k from the customer in the first 12 months
We can afford to spend up to $10k to acquire them
77. Improving Gross Margins
• Greatest cost is usually people costs in implementation and on-boarding
• Solve by:
• Simplifying the product
• On-line training courses
• Provide in-product training videos and walk-throughs
• Charge a one time fee for implementation
78. The Power of Unit Economics applied to Segments
Brad Coffey, HubSpot
“When we started this analysis, we had 12 reps selling directly into the VSB market and 4 reps selling through Value Added Resellers (VARs). When we
looked at the math we realized we had a LTV:CAC ratio of 1.5 selling direct, and a LTV:CAC ratio of 5 selling through the channel.
0
1
2
3
4
5
VSB VARs
LTV:CAC
0
3
6
9
12
VSB VARs
No of Reps
0
3
6
9
12
VSB VARs
No of Reps
79. 12 Months Later
Brad Coffey, HubSpot
The solution was obvious. Twelve months later we had flipped our approach – keeping just 2 reps selling direct and 25 reps selling through the channel.
This dramatically improved our overall economics in the segment and allowed us to continue growing.”
0
3
6
9
12
VSB VARs
No of Reps
0
5
10
15
20
25
VSB VARs
No of Reps
0
5
10
15
20
25
VSB VARs
No of Reps
83. What happens if we collect a year’s payment in
advance?
$(5,000,000)
$-
$5,000,000
$10,000,000
$15,000,000
$20,000,000
$25,000,000
$30,000,000
$35,000,000
$40,000,000
Month1
Month3
Month5
Month7
Month9
Month11
Month13
Month15
Month17
Month19
Month21
Month23
Month25
Month27
Month29
Month31
Month33
Month35
Cumulative Cashflow comparision -
monthly payments vs year in advance
Eliminates the
cash flow trough,
and means $35m
more cash in this
scenario
85. Key Metrics and Levers
• Bookings
• Top of funnel lead flow
• Funnel conversion rates by stage
• Average deal size
• Sales Rep tracking
• No of Reps
• PPR (Productivity per Rep)
• MQL’s vs plan
• Customer Happiness / Retention / Churn
• Unit Economics
• Months of Cash collected up front
86. The importance of a Revenue Operations
• Tracking these metrics and interpreting them takes time
• But there are potential gold mines in the data
• Hire Revenue Ops person earlier than you’d think
• When you start scaling, say around 8-10 sales people