This article should really be titled, “How to interview a product manager (if you aren’t a product person) “ Because customer success, marketing, sales, support, and other operational roles are key stakeholders in a SaaS organization they are often called into the interview process for product managers. Especially for a company’s first product hire when there […]
SaaS Strategy Best Practices
Read, listen and watch SaaS strategy best practices for founders and leaders of growing technology companies. Join SaaS co-founders and operators for guidance on sales, marketing, customer success, culture, and institutional readiness.
You Hired a Bad-Fit Executive. Now What?
We don’t need an article to tell you what to do. If you hired a bad fit executive you need to have them exit the business. Doesn’t matter how long it took you to find the person. Doesn’t matter how much money you spent on a recruiter. Doesn’t matter than now you are questioning your […]
Can Professional Services and SaaS Coexist?
My SaaS and startup DNA includes a lot of experience in running professional services organizations. But knowing how professional services revenue is valued in the market (not as much as you would think), and how hard it can be to maintain high margins, I can never recommend a SaaS launch a professional service offering. But […]
How to Roll Out OKRs for the First Time
Many companies struggle to roll out OKRs for the 1st time. It takes a few OKR cycles to feel like you really hit your stride. So, it’s probably not going to go perfectly when you are just getting started with OKRs, and that’s OK. Here are a few tips to help smooth the path and […]
A Straightforward Approach to Strategic Planning for Startups
Strategic planning is an area that many startup leadership teams struggle with. It’s often something companies want to do but don’t make time for. Or when they do it, it doesn’t really fit their business operating system and it ends up being outdated and forgotten as soon as planning is over. Until you have gone […]
5 Startup Roles That Help you Grow Faster
When you are growing fast you end up spending a lot of time getting the right people into the roles in the right structure to help efficiency, communication, quality, and results. Much of that work ends up being focused on departments, work to be done, and reporting lines. It’s neat and tidy. But, I’ve found […]
Who Owns SaaS Customer Expansion and Renewal: Sales or CS?
Determining if sales or customer success should own customer expansion and renewals is the age-old SaaS question. And not to spoil this article for you, but I don’t have the answer. Sorry. I know everyone wants a definitive verdict on this, but the good news is that either approach can work well. If you are […]
Hired a New Leader? Trust But Verify.
This is a story of how I allowed a new executive to join my team, run their function autonomously (hey, they had lots of experience!), and take their department to the brink of failure before I realized it. I like to think I can spot incompetence from a mile away. You probably do too. I […]
The Value of a Business Operating System
One thing many startups lack is a business operating system. A high-growth startup that isn’t using an operating system to run the business either isn’t familiar with the concept, or they are familiar but are afraid it will be too cumbersome to implement and restrictive to operate. An operating system might sound complicated to set […]
Improve Your OKR Results by Focusing on the How
I think the biggest reason that people, and companies, don’t achieve goals is that they forget to think through HOW the goal will be achieved. How will the goal be accomplished? Examples best illustrate the limited thinking we do when it comes to planning how we will accomplish our goals. Objective (a.k.a. goal): lose 10 […]
