SaaS Product-Market fit fools you into thinking that growth will come
Mark Andreessen coined the term product-market fit, defined as being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market. Whilst getting to product market fit is job #1 for a CEO at the early stages, product market fit alone leaves gaps that you need to fill to drive sales velocity. There are some fabulous perspectives about these gaps already. Brian Balfour […]
Do these five things to get badass BD SaaS partnerships done
Last year, Jeff Clavier asked me to present at Uncork Capital’s (formerly SoftTech VC) CEO summit on how to do BD deals with large software companies. I was then CEO of an Uncork portfolio company, but the content here draws on my prior experience as GM at largeco (in this case, SuccessFactors/SAP) when I was […]
These 4 terms will kill your SaaS business
A giant caveat: this post is focused on high growth SaaS. Not on mature businesses where you are trying to coordinate the build, sale and adoption of a large portfolio of products. In the world of high growth SaaS, all too often we tend to believe that it is our functional or technical inferiority that will […]
A wartime Customer Success SaaS Leader has these five attributes
Dave Kellogg wrote a solid post about the three types of Customer Success Managers. Contrasting them as product-oriented, process-oriented or sales-oriented, it’s a much-needed primer at a time where the vocation of Customer Success is still nascent. Dave’s post got me thinking that there is also a need to contrast happy time vs war time CS leaders. During […]
Combining functions in a SaaS business is a terrible idea
Ok, here is the punch line: No two SaaS functions should be coupled together. Any combination forces conflicts of interest and while you and the board are busy charting out your world domination strategy, this dysfunctional org design will eat the company from the inside out. The long form: Combining Product and Engineering Why it’s a […]
Kahuna announces a purpose-built SaaS solution for Digital Marketplaces
Five full quarters in the seat at Kahuna and with many many customer co-development hours to show for It, I’m thrilled to publicly share Kahuna’s forward focus. I’m stoked to announce a SaaS platform specifically for marketplaces that helps retain buyers and sellers, and connect them to drive liquidity. Unlike most marketing systems that focus […]
Announcing Demandfest – a SaaS marketing summit for practitioners, by practitioners
B2B Marketing for high-growth companies is hard: marketers are expected to find that magic bullet that drives sales velocity, with limited chips and a fail-fast but not-often, ethos. My bestie Jeff Nolan, Venture Capitalist-turned marketing operator and I have put our heads together over the years to cook the most complex, elaborate menus. And so […]
I’m joining the team at Kahuna as CEO
Today is my first day at Kahuna. Here’s why I joined: I look for two winning elements to get completely fired up about a new opportunity: First, is the customer pain point a big and gnarly one, and does it need solving right now? Second, do individuals on the team have the tenacity and heart […]
Thank You, SAP
I resigned from SAP this week. They say that the luckiest people are those who work the hardest. Whilst I can absolutely attest to that, there is no denying that I’ve been tremendously fortunate. At SAP, I was given the opportunity to build a business at a stellar software company that exemplifies how to excel by […]
Selling Up in #SaaS. Not what it’s cracked up to be
The single most common pitfall I see in 90% of earlier stage product plans is a lethal misconception that aspiring to sell software to the highest levels of the organization, is better. This is blatantly obvious to many product leaders but foreign to equally as many. Trust me. It isn’t necessarily all that. It’s expensive: the […]
