I write and talk a lot about capital efficiency. Some may consider that a bootstrap bias, but it’s really not. A SaaS company’s capital must be used wisely to maximize growth — regardless of its source or quantity. If the revenue churn rate is too close to the capital burn rate, you’ve got a problem to […]
CEO
Dangers of Myopic SaaS Metrics Management
Just before we left for Europe a few weeks ago, we launched a couple of eBooks. One was Anna’s guide to Building the Startup Sales Team and the other was my Guide to SaaS Growth Metrics. While I’m grateful for how they’ve been received, being away from everything for a couple of weeks has given […]
High SaaS Employee Turnover? It’s You, Not Them.
I know it sounds harsh, but when you have a SaaS company with high turnover, it’s much more likely to be the company’s fault than the employees’. Sorry, but millennial tales of woe notwithstanding, people stay where they love to be. SaaS employee turnover is far more costly — in hard expense and lost growth […]
SaaS Engineering Talent Quality vs Quantity
In my experience, leading a tech company for over ten years, SaaS engineering talent is the hardest to find. I was at a barbecue over the weekend and ended up commiserating with another CEO over the challenges and philosophies around SaaS engineering quality vs. quantity. We all know that demand outstrips supply for software engineers, […]
How to Balance Your SaaS Product Development and Evolution
Yesterday, I wrote about my perspective on controlling and launching a minimally viable product (MVP) in SaaS. That MVP process could apply to a startup with an unreleased, pre-revenue product. But, it could also apply to an established product adding new capabilities or features. Today I want to focus on the SaaS product development process […]
SaaS MVP Development Process Management
Efficient and effective SaaS MVP development takes imagination, discipline, process, and above all, customer feedback. I recently met with a company that demoed what they were calling an MVP-stage product. In reality, it was a wireframe-stage product developed in a vacuum from actual, potential customers. They’d been at it for years, had yet to launch, […]
Accountability and Transparency: Keys to SaaS Culture
As the CEO of martech SaaS ion interactive, I was big on accountability and transparency. My co-founders and I managed the organization around the ideas that everyone pulls their own weight and everyone else is entitled to see that. Of course when someone or some team didn’t make it happen, it was obvious to all. […]
How to Prepare to Be Acquired
I began preparing to be acquired a full five years prior to being acquired. We were in the highly competitive enterprise martech SaaS (software-as-a-service) space and needed to: differentiate ourselves strategically; align ourselves with the right partners through integrations; audit ourselves for accuracy and accountability; and evolve ourselves with scalable systems and processes. Long before […]
SaaS Growth Strategy: Balancing Profit and Investment
I was often a self-funded founder whose SaaS growth strategy needed to include profit, as that was how my co-founders and I paid ourselves. When you’re growing a SaaS in a meteoric sector like martech, taking investment capital out of the growth machine in the form of profit must be done judiciously and intentionally. If […]
The Value of Process
Documentation and process are the keys to proving performance, maintaining deal momentum and mitigating risk. Claims made in a book or business plan become the basis of valuation, conditional bank approval or terms.
