There are 3 items you should do quickly, if you are going to launch your SaaS startup or a new product that caters to a new audience. First, get listed on SaaS marketplaces, Cloud Brokerage Services and Cloud listing providers. There are over 120 SaaS marketplaces from telcos – AT&T, T-Mobile and others, to large Cloud Service Providers (AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc.) and other large...
The first few customers (or users) usually set the tone for your startup. They are the ones with either acute pain or the burning problem, and the earliest of early adopters. Usually, I have found that most entrepreneurs get their early customers because of the relationship they have with them OR they solve a really pressing problem for their customers. When I talk to most entrepreneurs, one of...
There are many assumptions we make about the product or the customer problem, which makes us develop solutions that may be really more complicated than required. A friend and fellow entrepreneur I met on Friday was showing me a prototype (HML mock up with transitions, with some simple functions implemented) of this SaaS application. He had used a developer on hire at UpWork to develop the initial...
This post is for non developer founders who want to build a SaaS application. Software as a Service (SaaS) is a relatively small market – at $19 Billion in total revenues, it seems large, but compared to $250 Billion of the overall software market it seems minuscule. It has grown from nothing to this large number in the last 10 years. Similar to the eCommerce market, which seems large but is less...
Over the last few weeks I had a chance to review 89 of the companies to understand their free to paid conversion and also a chance to talk to 13 companies. What I learned was that time spent on the pricing page was a key indicator of conversion and you can A/B test your pricing page for colors, position of your highest and lowest prices, number of plans showed, feature listing and your call to...
Most every entrepreneur does things initially that don’t scale, and that’s okay to start. Pretty soon they realize that the things that made them successful enough to get initial sales and customers wont work for them to reach the next level at their startup. One of the most frustrating things for the entrepreneur is when they run out of folks “in the network” who they can sell to. After having...
In the initial days of your SaaS startup, when you are doing user development, you may find that your product will help both SMB (Small Medium Business) users as well at Enterpriseusers. There’s a tendency to then focus more on the “customer” development than the user. Assuming you have spent enough time on the user, there is a serious possibility of getting distracted from your mission by doing...
Over the last 2.5 years I have had the chance to closely observe over 70 startup teams for more than 6 months each (some a lot more) to find out which of them succeed (by their own definition) and which of them fail. The thing that struck me 2 nights ago at the TIE dinner was a question that was asked by one of the solo founders – why do investors insist on having co founders if one of the...
There are an estimated 5K to 10K SaaS and enterprise software companies that provide solutions for small, mid-sized and enterprise companies. The large IT analyst companies such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, EMR and Burton Group have made a $billion business out of evaluating and ranking these vendors on a magic quadrant or waves. Over the last few years a host of companies have tried to disrupt...
1. Speakers who you will not be able to hear any other place in India. While most other conferences will get you the name-brand speakers or practitioners from India, we went far and wide to get you Rahul Sood (head of Microsoft Ventures, founder of Voodoo PC and entrepreneur), Orna Berry (SVP of EMC, a very successful entrepreneur and Charles Phillips (CEO of Infor, previously at Morgan...
