📕 Preparing for an Acquisition; The Proactive Pivot; Your Scorecard for Hiring...
Good morning from San Francisco! We slept like babies after a fantastic day at TechCrunch Enterprise. Admittedly, we’re a bit wiped from all of the speakers and perhaps a few post-event drinks, but expect a rundown of the top talks next week.
What other B2B SaaS conferences and events are on your radar? Let us know—we’re always trying to find new meetups. And be on the lookout for our own Ed Byrne at SaaStock Dublin (Oct 14-16)!
🗺️ The number of GTM roles in SaaS companies are not only increasing, they’re getting a bit confusing too. As startups have evolved, their roles have become more specialized, and individual companies often define these roles in their own unique way. So how should you decide who in your company is responsible for which areas, and for what size customers? You can always use your funnel as a map to normalize and assign roles. We suggest the bowtie funnel (see below) or something else that breaks out your customers’ annual contract value.
📊 When it comes to funnels, it’s not just bowtie or bust. We live in a world of funnels, and as creepy as it might sound, nearly every online action you take moves you through one. The difficulty with all of them (including your businesses’) is illustrating how users jump back and forth through different segments, for example, if they were to quit and revisit. Ultimately, you’re playing with a balance of precision and accuracy. Our advice: know your audience and understand what story you want to present, along with the dangers of simplifying it.
🥧 It feels like pivoting startups get a bad rap, so we’re attempting to come to their rescue. The negative connotation probably comes from the stories of reactive pivots, where companies change gears in a last second effort to turn things around. But when done proactively, pivoting generally has a positive outcome, especially when companies aren’t being forced into making the change. These pivots don’t have to be large-scale; try smaller experiments with the sole goal of learning more about your potential market.
🔎 A cue that signals it might be time for a proactive pivot is when you find yourself adding new features with little uptake. This shows the problem is at the core of your product, not the edges, and big change is needed. So instead of building more features (with likely similar results) opt for a zoom-in pivot. Popularized by Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup, this pivot makes a single feature become your whole product, “highlighting the value of focus and minimum viable product, delivered quickly and efficiently.”
🤑 Many investors reach out to VC firms in hopes of taking part in a high-return fund, filled with glamour investors like athletes, actors, and celebrities. But as Mike Raab points out, these firms’ incentives can be misaligned—they receive management fees whether or not investments succeed, giving reason to raise large funds and rapidly deploy capital. Their future fundraising and success can also be more reliant on the amount of deals closed than the quality of deals, and no one want their investments taking dumb money. There are obviously situations where VCs provide great returns, but it doesn’t hurt to look at what’s motivating them before going all in.
🤝 Acquisition is the pinnacle of a founder’s career, but for a first-time seller, it can be daunting. No two acquisitions are exactly the same, so it’s not something you can easily prepare for. That being said, there are a couple things you can do that will help smooth out the process. For one, getting to know the potential buyer and understanding their vision for the business should put you at ease. Founders should also consider if they want to be involved post-sale? If so, a buyer’s vision will matter even more.
🗂️ Hiring can be one of the most difficult tasks in scaling a startup, especially without well-crafted process in place. Geoff Smart and Randy Street’s Who proposes “The A Method” (because, you know, A team players and all). The most important of The A Method’s 5 steps is the Scorecard, which outlines the role to be filled, what is expected from the hire, and the characteristics required. Another tip: conduct a variety of interview types with each candidate to assess their performance in different environments.