What was SaaStr 2017 all about? (part 1)

Firstly it was in San Francisco, an amazing concentrate of SaaS businesses. Over the three days and nights (Feb 7th to 9th Feb 2017), and well over 100 speakers (too many to count) we were presented the life and times of a SaaS business from 0 to $3.7B and everything in between. Like most conferences, common themes, threads and deep dives made up the content and emerging from the download was inspiration, aspiration and hurry up, believe and get on with it. So over the next several blogs we will attempt to create the “playbook” for growing SaaS and in doing so figure out what SaaStr 2017 was all about. There where approximately 80 Kiwi's at the conference and in our group of 25, hosted by Callaghan Innovation pretty much start-ups or within 5 years of operating. My colleagues and kiwi companies will join in but here is the first of a two-part SaaStr 2017 101: 

John Henderson from Airtree, “ (largest VC in Australia, NZ)

• You grow customers from the best customers you want to have (size, market fit, segment, brand).  Rather than sell to anyone who will buy, profile the most successful customer in a case study with the customer ROI - what success and gains using your product looks like. Put it on your website, brochure, proposals and then sell that to similar company in that segment. Make sure your team is deliberate about growing customers in this way (not selling to everyone). Segment this way and measure. Focus on early indicators - brand, product and reference customers - classic crossing the Chasm. 

Lexi Reese from Gusto, “How to NPS 75 with 40k customers”

• To be effective the early work is needed to figure out what is your purpose and the problems you solve? Unearth your true mission and surface it everywhere. What sets you apart for your staff and customers - make their life better throughout and build a feedback loop? There are no shortcuts - HIRE PRIORITIES for 1. Aligned motivations, 2. Shared values, 3. Relevant skills -
• “What is your customer experience strategy - do you have a deep understanding of your USP, quality services vs. cost?  Design for who your customers are. Whats the framework - do you listen to customers? Do you publish the voice of the customer to the rest of the company? How much do you need to engineer for your customers? What are your non-negotiables that you wont bend in scaling the company, i.e. your zero tolerance? Admittedly there is a lot of questions here, but how they made it was answering them and focusing completely and deliberately on customer experience strategy together with hiring right. Check out Francis Fry book Uncommon Service

Jeff Lawson from Twillo, “The Inside Story”

• Developers are an ideal tail wind to navigate the sale through the enterprise depending on your product but figure out who in your organisation has the ultimate empathy with the customer.  
• Pricing model is critical to get right and the only way to manage is to measure with a great sales culture. To make things easier consider how to use marketing to generate brand recognition and PR which can smooth the sale through, not only lead generation.

Peter Gassner, Veeva - “The biggest Vertical SaaS success story of all time”

Get the value of your product and service right - they are your apples and you decide what they are worth. Back your product with the right price. Customers decide to buy or not.  Sell to the biggest customers you can for a good price. Coach your customers through feeling the value not the price. On a personal note he takes 1 day every 3 weeks out of his schedule to meet people out of his network but adjacent to what the company does. 

I am going to end this article on a high note about something that is close to a kiwi founder heart. It turns out that many of the founders who spoke have taken quite a while to get the acceleration. 0 to $1 million has taken 5 or 6 years. The difference is that their starting market (US) only requires them to get 4% market share whereas we have to get it 80% uptake. My figures may be not data driven but you get the point. The US market is huge. These companies take just as long as we do to get going but they accelerate faster because they just need a small marketshare to become $100 million and when they hit the jackpot $billion is achievable by dominating in their sector and never have left the United States of America. 

From this crop of founders I learned that

• Get the market fit right based on customer ROI
• Lead the team deliberately to grow the most successful ROI customers and build from there and let the right metrics drive the growth. (more later)
• Hire the right team and be deliberate when and how you hire based on aligned motivations, shared values and skills is last but not least.
• A customer engagement strategy is higher in the priority list from previous years and for good reason - it is a differentiator to win business and to retain customers.
• They are your apples, charge appropriately, keep calm and push forward!!

Did I need to go to SaaStr to learn this? Yes we learned a lot more and when you compile it, digest and take action you have a lot to get on with. Andre van den Assum, Marketing Manager, from Wipster at first thought it was really for founders but having got home, he now reflects the value is in the execution of advice from leaders of SaaS businesses. Some kiwi founders did question the cost but we all agreed that 3 days working on, not in, your business was worth it. Few had the discipline to do that prior to coming. It also struck all of us how much more valuable it would be to have the leadership/management team all there. Expensive? If you get customer acquisition right, hire the team at the right stages and serve your customer well, perhaps your team have a business model that will make it. But it is not enough just to simply know this. Of course the market you choose probably is not a market with 4.5 million people, where you have to get everything right all the time at the same effort expenditure in a market much bigger.

More on SaaStr to come such as AI - the new platform for SaaS and the real metrics and why and how they drive your business. Make sure you subscribe and follow.

Roisin King

 please note I am not a good proof reader of my own work