Fifteen dash eleven ninety-nine dot ten. I had to look twice. Music rose to a dramatic crescendo that quickly segued into “I have a Golden Ticket” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Do you worry about the so called ‘kill zones’ of big tech companies? The Economist thinks you should. The theory basically suggests that if your product or service is anyway threatening or accretive to one of these incumbents — they will either force-buy your company, or clone it and destroy your market.
Let me start by posing a question — will the SaaS market go the way of cars and PCs — massively consolidated from hundreds (or thousands) of manufacturers down to a few mega suppliers? Or will it go the way of restaurants and software — big chains as well as lots of boutiques and small franchises?
Constraints are very likely the differentiator that makes companies that embrace (or live with) them succeed and thrive — by being forced to be economical, laser focussed on customer needs and satisfaction, driven to bring in new revenue, and build the product that resonates with the market today.
People say good developers are hard to get, but that’s not true, there’s loads of good developers, they are just hard-work to recruit. Good marketers, on the other hand, are just a very rare breed.
The urgency to get things done is a huge differentiator, those that have it will outperform others, time and again.
Earlier this year when I introduced a new executive to their new team , I made a point to say he came from a company you have never heard of in an incredibly crowded market with not much going for it!
Most founders like to say they talk to their prospects and customers. But ‘talking to’ most often means passionately selling or preaching to people. If the experience of leaving the room with everyone punching the air, but later getting no followup and not closing the deal sounds familiar — you likely suffer this bug! It’s the ‘fake yes’ that disappears not long after you do.
I read an interesting article about the core metrics of a business being a better way to measure real value than traditional assets or EBITDA , and thought I’d share some of the components we use to value companies at Scaleworks.
It’s that time of year for reviewing what we achieved over the last 12 months, and what we plan to do in the year ahead.
I’m a list maker, aspirational Inbox Zero’er and general organizer and tidier. My peers poke fun at me for always asking for an agenda or goals at the start of a meeting, and never leaving one without asking ‘what are the next steps?’.
I don’t know of another industry that grandfathers price like SaaS does. Traditional software — basically the father of SaaS (if you want to keep with the lineage analogies!) — doesn’t grandfather legacy price points. In fact traditional software vendors are notorious for doing the exact opposite — gradually INCREASING licensing and support fees for installed software! In virtually every space — business and consumer — when the price goes up — new and old customers alike pay it.
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☁️ VCs look for immediate and extreme growth in their investments, so the profitability of the companies they work with is the least of their concerns. But striving for sky high growth can be costly, and not just in dollars. Dumping loads of capital into marketing makes it nearly impossible to identify your real cost to acquire customers (CAC), and if your CAC remains high over time, you run the risk of never being able to build a sustainable model. There are, however, some notable software businesses who have taken the road less traveled, achieving profitability while also growing to an impressive scale. Both profitable and high burn companies can generate great returns for investors, we would just argue that the profitable ones also create good outcomes for founders!
