š Snowflakeās secret sauce, Pricing experiments gone wrong, Why simple ideas stickā¦
This week marked the official start of fall, and while temperatures are starting to cool, TechCrunch shared a few areas in SaaS which are heating up.Ā
They looked at the Bessemer and Forbes Cloud 100 list (which ranks the top private cloud companies) and segmented by sector, finding that Sales/Marketing/CX companies accounted for 19 of the 100 total, and that Data/Infrastructure contributed 17. The Data/Infrastructure feature was no surprise and comes on the heels of Snowflakeās monster IPO, which has (and will continue to) spur investment in the sector.
āļø We had to dig into the archives to find Frank Slootmanās LinkedIn read on creating a high-growth company, but his recent success with Snowflake and previous wins at Data Domain and Service Now made it worth another look. Slootman attributes his companiesā growth to their high pace and high intensity culture, putting the onus on leadership to identify slack in organizations and convert it into productivity. He recognizes that this style of leadership doesnāt create the most popular CEOs, but claims that it undoubtedly drives the best results for both the businesses and their employees, who will end up becoming the best version of themselves.
š SaaSās low product switching costs have shifted many companiesā attention from attracting new customers to keeping the ones they already have, making their customer retention strategies only more important. Profitwell highlighted a few other key factors impacting retention strategies today, including a disconnect between companies and their users around customer experience.Ā In a recent survey, 50% of companies polled believed that their customer experience was improving, while only 11% of customers felt the same. That difference is largely because we arenāt able to objectively evaluate our own work, so Profitwell suggests bringing in a third party (or maybe a friend if youāre on a budget!) to evaluate the experience.
āļø Venture funded SaaS companiesā use of airport billboards have become an embodiment of lazy marketing ā with no real way to track their impact or target who will see the sign, they are fairly unimaginative. Itās an obvious example of where some marketing departments go wrong, which is why we enjoyed this list of less glaring marketing errors that B2B SaaS companies make. They hit the nail on the head with the abundance of purely self-serving content floating around. If youāre wondering if your content actually adds real value, you might want to take a look at Sequoia Capitalās content guide to see if your writing checks all the boxes.
ā· Baremetricsā story of almost imploding when they experimented with Freemium pricing is a great reminder of the risks associated with the model. Their misstep was not accounting for the large jump in users the plan brought on ā their total customer count very quickly tripled due to the new plan (great problem to have) but the increased usage led to performance and database issues that affected everyone, including paying customers (terrible problem to have). They had to drop all product work in order to put out server fires, which resulted in less product additions when they needed them most. This is all to say, if you are going to experiment with Freemium, make sure your product is prepared.
š„ Having a great idea is one thing, making people understand why itās great and the reason they should pay attention is another. In Made to Stick, brothers Chip and Dan Heath take an in-depth and systematic approach to creating ideas that audiences will pay attention to, running through six principles of how to frame ideas in a way thatās unforgettable. The bookās key takeaway is that we should make our ideas simple. When communicating value propositions, teams will often spin their wheels trying to craft narratives on how their product outshines the competition. The problem is your original message gets lost in the fluff, so prioritize the essential elements of your message to make it concise and meaningful.Ā