Who am I writing this for: people who are building or managing a Customer Success function. What’s my key point: your CSMs need to provide value, and for that it’s better they specialize based on industry (or business-type) versus round-robin or regional distribution. Our experience with the Hubspot CSM When we bought Hubspot as our marketing automation platform, we were assigned a customer...
Of the various hats I have worn all these years – Founder, Sales guy, Deployment Specialist, Level 1 and Level 2 Support, DevOps, Coder, Cheque depositor – I have come to realize I was a Product Manager all along – right from the get go. Putting a label on what you do is extremely important. It helps you define the job you do, appreciate it, read more on it and helps you improve...
It is going to be an extremely hard job. No amount of preparation or education is going to prepare you for what it demands. You will feel like quitting at so many instances. Don’t, just persist. It’s a lonely job. There will be no one who you can tell everything about your work. Uncertainty is the hallmark of entrepreneurship. You have no guarantee that you will last a year, at times a month and...
It was all about #GoodScale at #PNGrowth2016 !! Pitching to Peers in Gurukul Style I participated as a volunteer this time around and missed the keynote in day one since I was busy in printing #MindFlip worksheets for 50 odd entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs were handpicked by a very credible set of people who knows what #Scale means to B2B products. Pallav and Shankar Maruwada did the priming...
Hey product manager, let me remind you of that time when you had the perfect roadmap for the market. You had it all sorted out (finally!) with engineering and were clear about what you’d build. Your teams had already worked on a few sprints and you felt that this time, you’d be able to get the product right. But then, your sales person turned up and said ‘I’ve just promised feature x to the...
Harbouring an idea in your head is one thing. Taking the leap of faith to execute, nurture and grow the idea is an entirely different ball game. It calls for a tribe of people that we call Entrepreneurs. Fortunately, this breed is on the rise. They make this game look deceptively simple. Apart from the fact that you have to face a fair amount of social ire and family grumpiness, launching your...
Inside Sales was presented as one of the strategic levers for SAAS companies selling to the US market at a recent Google Accel event. no wonder when iSPIRT arranged for a round table on this topic there was a buzzing interest. If you are not familiar with the round tables of iSPIRT check them out here. (Highly recommended) Suresh of kissflow.com who has been successful in cracking the US market...
In Q1 2016, we saw our hard work payoff. We achieved some notable milestones. We became cash flow positive and our annual revenue rate (ARR) grew by 3 times in 3 months. We expanded our customer base to 68 countries (with over 90% of the revenues from outside our home base), and doubled our team to 50. Our Average Revenue per account (ARPA per year) has doubled to $10,000. Above all, we pushed...
The story of how Freshdesk grew 500% in revenue in 12 months, and how Girish Mathrubootham and team went about telling us how they did it at SaaSx 2016. “How many of you recognize this man on screen?” Girish Mathrubootham, CEO of Freshdesk, asked the room. He was gesturing to a picture of a man with thinning dark brown hair, a wide forehead, and a familiar crooked smile. A lot of hands went up...
I travel to India once every quarter to catch up with our India team based out of Coimbatore. I was planning to attend SaaSx for a while now and this time, it was perfect timing the event is scheduled on 2nd April, right in the mid weekend of my India trip. This is an invitation-only event, I’m thankful for the organiser to get me involved. With 200 attendees where the majority of them are...
