Inside SaaS: Some lessons and wisdom from SaaS founders & CEOs
In the past few years, SaaS businesses have grown with speed and scale never imagined before. However, managing a SaaS business in the best way requires among others: vision, skills, process and execution. It also requires a perfect management of several areas.
Otto Von Bismarck famously mentioned years ago that “An intelligent man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
So we asked a few founders about some key learnings they would like to tell the world for how to best manage a SaaS business, and grouped them in five areas: Customer Success, People and Process management, Technology and product development, Market and competition and Finance and fundraising.
Many thanks to the founders who shared their insights:
Alexander Igelsbock, Martin Brunthaler and Andreas Glanzer, Adverity founders. Adverity is a marketing analytics platform for data-driven decision making. Adverity connects +200 emarketing inputs and automates BI outputs through ETL, cleaning and normalization of data, to enable better decisions. www.adverity.com
Pierre Khoury, Lucien Besse, Shippeo founders. Shippeo’s cloud-based platform enables TMS to connect to carriers, therefore providing real time connectivity and information flows on merchandise and goods. www.shippeo.com
Aron Alexander, Wegift founder. Wegift is a seamless, API-type workflow and real-time global place for buying and selling digital gift cards, used by large corporates in CPG and Retail for retention and loyalty management. www.wegift.io
Quentin Guilluy, Andjaro founder. Andjaro is a SaaS platform facilitating temporary redeployment of personnel between sites within the same organization, used by large organization in Services, retail, restaurant chains. www.andjaro.com
Akshay Patel and Depobrio Ghosh, Simreka founders. Simreka provides data-driven software tools and services to speed up the development of sustainable chemical processes. www.simreka.com
Boaz Grinvald and Ido Ramati, Revuze founders. Revuze is an automated AI-powered customer product feedback analysis which scans and analyzes product KPIs online, so that customers can drill down on product feedback. www.revuze.it
Teo Borschberg, Oto.ai founder. Oto.ai is an advanced AI company enabling customers to get an NPS score from every voice-based customer interaction. www.oto.ai
And now onto some of their insights:
CUSTOMER SUCCESS
“Make sure you know your customer better than anybody, go back to it often, don’t be afraid to constantly be in touch. Sometimes it even means making explicit what the customer itself has challenges formulating” [Andjaro]
“Sell a long term vision” [Shippeo]
“Sell a product, not a service” [Adverity]
PEOPLE AND PROCESS MANAGEMENT
“Empowerment is very important, giving people room to make decisions and execute along them” [Adverity]
“Establish HR function and recruiting as early as possible” [Adverity]
“Hire always the best people” [Shippeo]
“Effective communication with your team and customers is key to achieve success together.” [Simreka]
TECHNOLOGY AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
“Bet on proven technologies, don’t always run on the hottest stuff” [Adverity]
“Find and deliver the lowest product hanging fruit to create fast engagement and iteration. Let the customer educate you. Then build the defensible technology.” [Oto.ai]
“Develop only what have been asked by 3 customers” [Shippeo]
MARKET AND COMPETITION
“Create a marketing strategy early, also hire staff early. This has become a critical asset these days” [Adverity]
“Be on the field and with customers everyday” [Shippeo]
FINANCE AND FUNDRAISING
“Be honest, don’t waste time on creating outdated business plans. Always re-validate” [Adverity]
“Key to plan and maintain a positive momentum throughout fundraising. Create leverage to impose a timeline. Keep a few good news in the bank so you can pull them out to deal with the unexpected.” [Oto.ai]
