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Understanding Your Customers And Building For Them – #99PlaybookRT

Building great products requires us to understand customer needs and its nuances, are more often than not, counter-intuitive to our assumptions. The Design Thinking Roundtable session by Deepa Bachu helped us identify methods to bridge this gap between building great products and understanding customer need. I was lucky enough to be part of the small group of product managers, designers, and fellow entrepreneurs to have an engaging discussion onimportance of design as an innovation strategy. How well do you know your customer?

How well do you know your customer?

Deepa’s opening question “Do you know your customer?” probably got all of us thinking on do we really know our customer. Personally, I somewhat know my customer. Just for that veryreason I am sitting at my client’s front office to fulfill the basic requirement: that of understanding my customer better. Working with Enterprise businesses requires us to learn and appreciate that we have 2 types of customers: 1> Management 2> the Actual End-user. We build our assumptions from our conversations with the management team who are the decision makers, but it’s the end-user that matters. The end-user, who is the employee should stand to benefit equally or probably more than the management, for our product to succeed. Every designaspect, needs to be geared to make the daily user happy. Understand your customers

Understand your customers

After knowing who your customer is, the ascent for a better product begins with sitting down with the end user in an amicable environment to learn about their challenges and their day to day experience. Deepa pointed out the importance of empathy, active listening and observation to help capture the end-user’s experience. Her role play exercise with one of the participants around the difference in the approach on asking open-ended questions while actively listening and observing delivered a completely different set of answers, in comparison to when as an interviewer she was asking closed ended questions and was not actively listening. In short, let your customer speak & take notes!!

Participants in the middle of the interview role play exercise 

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Developing Insights

Remember that the customer is only explaining their challenges or sharing their activities. Value addition to our product comes with inferring from these observations to identify insights. To find that hidden customer need, we will need to introduce adequate structure to the information collected from the customer / end-user. Some of the tools for us to use are:

  1. Empathy Maps to record our observations, which helps us split the talk and action of the end user that we can use to interpret the observations
  2. Ecosystem Maps help us understand the customer’s environment and his / her ecosystem. A map to tell us the sequence of events that are leading upto our solution or after the solution.
  3. Problem Statement helps us see the customer’sview point and their emotionalconnect to the problem. From a product point of view, we can turn a poor customer experience into customer delight by evoking the right positive emotion after using our product. Mind you, these folks are your product advocates. 

Research

Customer Benefit

The core of design principles is not nailing your UI/UX, it is matching your customer need, the problem they are facing in the environment they are using / will use our product. Only when the experience matches this customer need will we really see true customer benefit. Value addition of this benefit requires the need to collect the right metrics to understand if we genuinely made a difference instead of vanity metrics like just increased downloads / users.

By understanding our genuine impact, we can course-correct our product with continuous improvement coupled with rapid prototyping to help us slowly move towards our product goals and vision.

What’s the one thing participants will do differently after the #RoundTable?

different

Overall a great learning experience thanks to Pensaar and iSPIRT for setting up this session.

By Rohit Krishnam, Co-founder of Lima Payments.

Editor’s Note: This #RoundTable happened to the 99th one and there was a small celebration on this occasion. It’s been a great journey so far and we’d like to thank all the participants, facilitators and volunteers who made this possible. Here’s to making India a Product Nation.

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Are you having fun in what you do? #PlaybookRT

Michael Jordan once remarked: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game’s winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that’s why I succeed.”

Ask any entrepreneur, and they will say, well, this is the story of my life. Owning a business is one of the most cognitively challenging jobs. To move from a stable job with a steady income to one where uncertainty is the flavor of the day every day takes courage, competence and confidence. Most of all, it requires an emotional tolerance strong enough to deal with the pressures of change and unpredictability, not to mention the mental fortitude to navigate through it.

As iSPIRT approaches its 100th Playbook Roundtable, Avinash conceived the idea of a completely different roundtable theme. One that focused not on strategies and tactics that a founder could apply to his product but one that focused more on the tremendous evolution that an entrepreneur goes through in his or her journey. And who better than Abhishek Sinha of Eko to facilitate such a roundtable.

The playbook was held at Eko’s office on 3rd June 2017 with a select set of entrepreneurs in the Delhi NCR region.

Taking a leaf from Jeff Bezos’s playbook, Abhishek drafted a 6 pager that covered important phases in his entrepreneurial journey, and all the participants spent the first 30 mins going through it.

In this 6 pager, Abhishek shared real life stories all through his journey of 6d and Eko. These stories touched upon how he became desperate and did more of the same. How he understood for the very first time that it is critical to think different. How he attempted at thinking big and audacious. Why being young and with it being foolish and naïve helped. Once one has started on a big goal why it is critical to developing the understanding of the landscape especially regulations. How he learned the importance of execution, scaling and making money. The mistakes he made when Sequoia and Khosla wanted to write cheques and he couldn’t close the deal.

More importantly the lows in his personal life and how he sought help to get things back on track. How he has personally exhausted all options to lose and hence winning is the only option. Today, as a battle-hardened entrepreneur, why he has the conviction of success.

These thoughts set up the tone for an interesting set of candid discussions and expressions over the next few hours. I have captured some of them below:

Enjoy your journey

Most of us started on the entrepreneurship journey with the idea to create something cool or do something fun. It was never about creating a billion dollar business.  There was a lot of pureness to this thought as we went about solving one problem at a time, and having fun. But slowly we stop enjoying ourselves. We stop thinking differently and start doing the same thing again, and again. This brings in predictability but stops us from experimenting different things.

So when you are questioning your journey and your growth (success or lack their off), just remember you are where you are supposed to be. It will work out fine, just trust in your journey. Sit back and relax and enjoy the ride. You will be surprised where it takes you.

Once you get to the top of the mountain you may come to miss the fields below. So take the climb one step at a time and enjoy the journey, entrepreneurs.

Destiny

Abhishek reflected on near-death experiences in his business and how he managed to get over it. He hasn’t been able to put my head around why a certain deal fails and why one succeeds. Ambarish from Knowlarity too chimed with a similar thought where atleast one or 5 occassions, something happened that kept him and his business going. If one simply applies theories of probability to these random events, the result becomes even more inexplicable.

This has driven Abhishek towards the realm of spirituality and over a time trust in a higher energy which has taken care of him. He has become a strong believer in destiny and a higher power, and that if we pursue our dreams the doors will open up.

At the risk of being cheeky, I couldn’t help but share this SRK dialogue.

Believing in destiny though is not about sitting back, and letting whatever is happening to happen.

Create a Cause or Purpose that People can relate to

Abhishek mentioned how he takes inspiration from religious organizations that create a cause that people can relate to, and inspires them to work towards its goals. Mark Zuckerberg in his recent commencement speech at Harvard also touched upon this, where he mentioned that when President Kennedy was visiting NASA space center, he asked a janitor what was he doing, to which he replied “I am putting a man on the moon Mr. President.”

A sense of purpose truly comes from within, and you can’t find meaning with a company that doesn’t share your values. So one of the simplest ways to cultivate a meaningful workplace is to stack your team with people who share the passions of your company. When everyone is aligned as a part of a bigger movement — that’s when the true meaning behind your work (and your company) shines through.

Ambarish shared how he ensures that all candidates, interns and vendors in his company are interviewed personally by him. This does take away a sizeable amount of him time, but it helps in multiple ways:

  • It keeps his team on the check as they know all vendors and candidates have to get past Ambarish
  • In his interview, Ambarish dissuades candidates to join by spelling out all the challenges of working at Knowlarity. This ensures they don’t just actually hire but let those people who in who really want to join Knowlarity

Driving ownership in teams and individuals

Entrepreneurs are problem solvers and product people, and are able to spot patterns & problems in the current scheme of things, and the relevant solutions very easily. And we immediately get our teams to work on the solution. This is a bottom up approach. You instruct an employee to perform a task or even accomplish a goal. But in effect you still own that task or goal. You tell the employee what you want, you define success and you create metrics to measure that success. That’s accountability. The employee takes responsibility for getting done what you want.

However a top down approach requires entrepreneur to only mention the problem to the teams and outline the contours, and let them come with the solution. This requires patience, and as more often than not, the solution will be staring right at your face while team members will go though their own curve before they discover it. But once the team members do come up with the solution, there is more ownership as this is now their baby.

Ownership happens when an employee comes forward and says, “I’m going to make this happen. Here’s what I will do. Here’s what I will accomplish. And here’s how I will measure progress.”

If you only have one or two employees and you love to micromanage, you can get by with hiring people you will simply hold accountable.

But if you’re truly trying to scale your business for growth, micromanagement soon fails. There is simply no way a chief can be involved in every task, process and decision.

If you foster a culture of ownership, you don’t need to be involved in every detail. You can focus your attention elsewhere, secure in the knowledge that owners will always come to you when they have problems or need help.

Be Different and Not Just Better

It’s not about doing more or better, it’s about doing different. If you can create that which is new and different you stand a greater chance of success. You can find white spaces that you can fill in.

When you break rules, you experience something unique. Ensure you savor this uniqueness even if your ideas bomb because these unique and different efforts will create experiences that themselves are unique.

Create Crisis In Your Mind

An entrepreneur often needs to play mental games with himself or herself. These games allow you to challenge yourself and create a crisis in your mind that pushes you to think creatively and innovate. If fear of the unknown has you tied down, try this: after you find yourself posing the “what if?” question to yourself, answer it. By doing so you bring that unknown fear into reality and make it more tangible and certain. With certainty comes clarity and with clarity comes opportunity to crush all challenges.

Remove Safety Nets and Bring Focus

Having safety nets or diversions lead to entrepreneurs loosing focus.  It sometimes become imperative to remove these safety nets. When you have safety nets, you are not all in. It makes you timid to jump in with both feet. But when you remove all these safety nets, you have only one choice: take the leap.

Having your back against the wall you are forced to go all in, forced to make it work, forced to believe in yourself.

The session culminated with Abhishek sharing how he is taking inspiration from the Android model and smartphones that creates an unbundled experience for consumers. Feature phone could do (i) calling (ii) messaging (iii) entertainment / games (iv) value added services like calendar, alarm, notes etc. Though all these are fairly tightly bundled and hence customer couldn’t exercise choice – take it or leave it. Smartphone is an unbundled architecture. It offers the same four functionalities though as its architecture is completely unbundled and open – it empowers the customer to make the choice basis their transaction scenario / context and cost. A similar framework could be applied to several industries to create unique products and solutions.

As the session ended, one could sense how Abhishek had been socialised to the highs and lows of business life. The mental game of entrepreneurship often feels like Snakes and Ladders. There were days for Abhishek when he just wanted to run away, where he felt as if he was in freefall and plummeting to the ground without a parachute. But, looking back, those are the moments that defined him. He has accepted – sometimes with a lot of delay and a good fight – that he was the architect of the bad situations and he accepted full responsibility for them. That is how he bought his freedom.

It’s only by acknowledging your failures that you can build on your successes.

Guest Post by Rajat Harlalka, Volunteer for iSPIRT

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0 – 100 customers! How fast can your SaaS startup accelerate?

The toughest challenge in your startup journey is getting to the milestone of first 100 customers. iSPIRT’s 97th PlayBook RoundTable, ‘Zero to One’ was held last Saturday in the hot and humid city of Chennai.

Ankit Oberoi from AdPushUp moderated the RoundTable which was attended by 13 other startup founders eager to know how to crack this. The PlayBook didn’t have formal presentations but rather involved everyone into an engaging conversation that was both informal as well as informative.

First things first, as early stage SaaS startups, “Kneel down and build your product well, when bootstrapped” was Ankit’s advice.

Identifying Target Customers

Emphasis was made on identifying your target customers to help you build the right inbound and outbound strategies. Ankit mentioned that a good way to find your target customer type is to look at your top ten customers. Few entrepreneurs looking to generate quick revenue might tend to drift towards a service model.

Arvind Parthiban, CEO of Zarget had an insight on this trend — “Going the service way will work only if one can scale up right and maintain profitability in the longer run”.

Inbound Marketing Tactics

A majority of the discussion was about inbound procedures. 3 simple things should make up your Content Marketing strategy –

  1. Identifying your target persona
  2. Creating quality content
  3. Setting up distribution channels

Just creating content will not cut it! You need to market it right to do justice to its quality.

Though it is a painfully long process, bootstrapped startups have the luxury of time and they should invest in building on content strategies around long tail keywords. Much emphasis was given as to why content should be created for personas. An example that was pointed out for this was Groove’s blog where the focus is exclusively on founders.

It is right for early-stage startups to focus on generating traffic through content but the real focus should be on giving value to the readers. Conversions can happen even later and not necessarily while reading your content. Growing a subscription list through your blog is not only a no-brainer, but a must have item in your growth stack .

Ankit stressed on how Neil Patel talks about why you need to urge your readers to subscribe right from the start. When you have a subscribers list, you can nurture them to share your content and build a bigger subscribers list which will ultimately increase your brand value and improve your customer base. Initial days of your startup journey are when you can do such things that take time to scale.

Intent Defines Inbound

Categorize your efforts based on intent when you are going all out on inbound marketing. Content writing has to be segregated widely into two types –

  1. Buyer Intent
  2. Value Intent

Buyer intent content are the ones written with the focus on ranking higher on search engines. These should have focus on keywords and the main objective of these content pieces are to sell your product.

Value intent is when you become a Thought Leader of the industry you are in. Helping your customer persona should be the name of the game when you generate such content. At times, you don’t even have to put a link back to your product when you write such content. Educative long form content with simple writing works best.

Just like content writing, content distribution too has to be categorized based on intent.

  1. SEO intent — You share the article/blog with search engine ranking in mind
  2. Sharing intent — You find avenues where people are bound to share the post more
  3. Distribution intent — Sharing in one place that sets off a chain of shares

Be spot on with your content!

Creating a content calendar is a must! Knowledge sharing on this topic pointed out that the calendar should be finalized, ideally, in the first few days of the month. Decide on buyer intent topics with the help of keyword planners. Thought leader articles can be written with the help of community platforms — find answers for the most-asked questions. Quora is a gold mine to search for blog ideas.

The consensus from the more experienced entrepreneurs at the RoundTable was that content has to be tested too. The headline is the most important bit of your article/blog. Ankit spoke about how 75% of your readers don’t actually read your content but rather scan for information. He shared a personal insight on how just a headline change helped AdPushUp make an article go viral overnight! Check out this article here.

As much as headlines, the first few lines matter too! In fact, most people who share an article actually read the intro and then skim through the article. Sharing happens not because people read it fully but because they feel it is relatable to something they would read and want to express to their circles about the type of content they would read. Your formatting should be spot on to help them digest your post in just a few seconds!

Headlines need to be tested extensively. Vengat from Klenty stressed on how testing one variable at a time is imperative for success. Ankit talked about how he narrows it down from a couple dozen headlines for their blogs. A/B test between the best ones to ensure you get the best variation.

Types of articles to try…

The Zero to One #PlayBookRT stressed on a few interesting article types startups should try –

  1. Summarizing Comprehensive Blogs — Found something useful? Write a brief, original summary of the blog. This will rank organically. Ensure author credits are given.
  2. Roundups — Take a pick of useful tips, quotes, tools etc., and do a roundup. Reach out to the people/products/companies you mentioned and they will share it to their followers
  3. Skyscraper Technique — Find an awesome content and piggyback on it. Find linkable assets, make it better by adding in your thoughts or collating ideas. Reach out to the authors of the post and share it on social media.

While on the topic of Content Marketing, the topic of paid promotions came into play and it was agreed upon that paid promotion for articles should be done with the intent only to hit a critical mass. With paid promotions, readership is not improved but only the views are artificially increased. A good insight from one of the attendees was to try and push notifications about blogs through live chat platforms like Intercom.

Hiring your inbound team

There are two types of talent you need on your inbound team for achieving success in your content marketing endeavours. The hustlers & the experts. Hustlers are those who understand the market and the distribution channels while the experts should be the ones strong in content.

AIESEC is one hiring venue that you should consider for smart and affordable talent.

You need to break down your web analytics — group traffic sources and optimize for each and every source. Ankit explained how Google not only ranks posts but also pulls down posts with the help of Ryan Fishkin’s social experiment. He urged people to open a top ranked post and immediately go back to the search results page. The search engine bots picked this up and realized people no longer find the post valuable and dropped it by one position!

We live in a smart world! And to outsmart Search Engines, you need smarter content tactics.

Quick look at a few other learnings

  • Arvind and Ankit then shared their experiences with events generating brand value and how that indirectly helps your inbound conversions.
  • PR is yet another way of getting social approval. It reduces sales cycle as well as helps with search engine rankings.
  • Vengat shared his learnings from Prodpad’s gamification for trial users that kept urging for additional actions for trial extension. This would inevitably lead to more activation.
  • There was a brief session on PPC campaign optimization and how Google’s Quality Score is important

Out-take on Outbound

Ankit stressed on the fact that if a startup concentrates well on inbound tactics and is all set for the long run, outbound becomes considerably easier. Most US companies go all out on inbound tactics. Being in India, we have the luxury to work on outbound marketing at relatively cheap costs.

Tools like BuiltWith, Datanyze, SimilarWeb are in this space. The problem to be addressed would be scaling the process without expanding the existing team. As you reach out to more and more people, the data bulk can be huge to handle if you don’t automate/semi-automate the process.

An entrepreneur’s journey is one to be cherished and the initial acceleration from 0–100 customers is enjoyable though dotted with challenges. The 97th Product Nation PlayBook RoundTable turned out to be a learning experience for everyone who attended and hope this article threw light on what was discussed to those who weren’t lucky enough to be part of it.

Never miss an iSPIRT event again — stay tuned to this page for updates on upcoming Product Nation events. Guest blog post by Kingston David, Zarget

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The cause of ‘SaaS’ Industry is top priority on iSPIRT’s policy radar

‘SaaS’ can drive the future of Indian IT Industry both in International trade as well as domestic front. With changing dynamics in Software sector globally, ‘SaaS’ can help India remain a Software power house. iSPIRT has been following ‘SaaS’ industry growth from this perspective. The realization that there are several policy hurdles for ‘SaaS’ industry was very early conceived at iSPIRT.

Accordingly, iSPIRT made several attempts to ease the problems of ‘SaaS’ industry. One of the belief at iSPIRT is that ‘SaaS’ is basically about ‘product’ first and then a ‘service’. With this belief iSPIRT has been continuously taking up the case of clear distinction of Software product within the larger framework of Digital economy consisting of “Digital goods” and “Digital services”.

In order to stop the exodus of Startups, which constitutes a large number of ‘SaaS’ based startups, a Stay-in-India checklist was taken up with Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). There have been a number of items cleared by DIPP such as Angle Tax, Fair market Value, ESOPs provisions made better, Company incorporation rules simplified, Domestic venture debt made easy, Convertible notes, FVCI norms relaxed and External Commercial borrowing (ECB) eased by RBI etc. Some of these announcements under the shadow of StartupIndia policy. However, iSPIRT has been continuously pushing policy makers to relax all these norms for all start-ups. iSPIRT covered most of these announcements in PolicyHacks blogs given here.

A major problem area for ‘SaaS’ startups is also the payment gateway systems. ‘SaaS’ industry has to resort to either relocate to a foreign geography, or open a subsidiary abroad or seek expensive international payment gateway services. On domestic front the ‘SaaS’ industry suffers from recurring billing problems. Both these issues were taken up in PolicyHacks sessions given here. iSPIRT believes Indian ‘SaaS’ companies should be able to carry of out international trade of digital goods without moving out of India seamlessly and using Indian payment Gateway systems.

The belief at iSPIRT that a futuristic industrial policy at Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) is required to meet the challenge of Indian IT industry was followed up with a National Policy on Software Product (NPSP) at MeitY. Being the administrative ministry for this Industry MeitY has in past played highly catalytic role in making of IT industry that India is proud today. A similar renewed thrust is required to push the Indian Software Product Industry.

One of the main emphasis in NPSP draft being followed up at MeitY is the ‘‘SaaS’’ segment. iSPIRT team is continuously engaging with the MeitY officials to educate them and influence on the importance and the need to focus on ‘SaaS’ segment.

There is recognition in Government system for need of this strategic shift. Honourable Prime Minister’s speech at Germany (Link here see 12th Minutes segment) is the evident of this realization of need for change that can lead to companies like Google to be born out of India.

iSPIRT is striving hard in this direction to see the ‘SaaS’ as the next big leap by India.

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The End Doesn’t Justify The Means: A Public Statement

[Given the course of events that have unfurled recently, iSPIRT created IGCC to investigate, and strengthen governance. Sharad Sharma, who has previously apologized and accepted responsibility on Twitter, has reflected further on the topic, and written this post. We are putting it out to ensure that this starts the right discussion inside iSPIRT and outside – Sanjay Jain]

“There will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right. It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – Albus Dumbledore

What is IndiaStack

Over the last week, iSPIRT has asked itself fundamental questions on who we are and how we conduct ourselves. As a pro-bono partner in the development of the India Stack, this team has had the privilege of designing systems that have eventually seen adoption by the state in a quest to solve said hard problems. Our work results in technology platforms that have positively impacted the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians. However, technology is merely a tool whose potential for misuse must be checked. This demands accountability both of the tool and its makers.

No system is perfect. And when one embarks on an endeavor to build a public platform that impacts an entire nation of over a billion people, some imperfections are bound to emerge. These imperfections should rightly attract criticism and concern from civil society. It is at this point that a natural conflict develops. Between the individuals that built the system with a great degree of dedication, application, and indeed love, and the individuals that are wary of how the said system can be used against the very people it was meant to benefit.

This conflict when left to fester without a set of rules of engagement is bound to devolve into an uncivil discourse that attacks and hurts people on each side, without actually achieving the objective that both parties hold very dearly. We are blessed and privileged that we can build for and speak for millions of our countrymen. Our privilege stems from our education, our abilities, our stature, our connections, and our life’s work. And for the most part, it must be acknowledged that individuals on both sides of this divide tirelessly endeavor to leverage this privilege to better the lives of those less fortunate among us. We build and speak, for our people. And so it is our responsibility that we conduct ourselves with dignity, grace, and generosity of spirit, while fiercely battling on the right path to that better future.

And on that count, I as one of the builders have stumbled. I condoned uncivil behavior by some anonymous handles over a period of ten days. I have owned up to this transgression. It was investigated internally by the iSPIRT Governing Council: Sudham as a team stands dissolved, and I will no longer be communicating on behalf of iSPIRT externally for 4 months.

I am clear the end cannot, and should not justify the means. But the larger lesson here is that we must develop systems and processes internally, and a framework and principles within which we will operate.

In the process of building, there is a set of factors that influence policy making. And this pie chart is an indicative representation of these factors.

IndiaStack2

Facts on the ground: Half of policy making is the policy itself and the data points in reality that led to it. It comprises of everything from the problems the policy endeavours to address, the people who are victims of these problems, previous attempts to solve them, and the data that can back up this approach. It was traditionally a major chunk of all that was needed to make a policy, particularly in a highly centralized society where a chosen few had the privilege and the power to craft and enforce said policies.

Mainstream media was the other major pillar of policy making. By serving as the primary medium of crafting public perception of millions, a chosen few reporters and their editors had the privilege of being the exclusive custodians of the court of public opinion. If you wanted to get the word out and have the people be on your side, these were the people you’d turn to.

The most significant shift in policy making in decades is the rise of social media. The emergence of platforms where individuals could transform into influencers by consistently generating unfiltered content is shifting the balance of power in the perception game. An ever increasing audience of online content consumers now turn to these platforms for their news and information. So much so that it has become a primary source of news for these early adopters.

A simplistic but useful rubric to describe the nature of discourse on social media is to classify into two categories, namely civil and uncivil. Civil discourse is exactly what is sounds like, a respectful engagement, where all parties concerned conduct themselves with a degree of basic human decency. And while the conversation may be informed, or not, backed by facts or utterly fabricated, the debate never descends below a certain level of decorum. In such discourse, there is always room for one to see the reasoning of the other side. It leaves space for empathy. And empathy is the foundation of collaboration. Both parties in such conversations can at times work together once it’s made clear that their objectives are aligned.

On the other hand, there is another side to the conversation on social media. Specifically, the kind that tends to unravel on Twitter. Uncivil discourse is marked by abuse and trolling — where one willfully sows discord and makes inflammatory, extraneous, often untruthful remarks about a topic or an individual with the express purpose of upsetting the target to evoke an emotional response. Such conversations often find themselves unfolding through anonymous handles that can employ such tactics without fear of retribution. Such behavior is malicious and dishonorable, and in the long run saps the soul of the perpetrators themselves, while simultaneously hurting the targets. It is the lowest form of engagement that leaves both parties poorer for it.

Having danced with such tactics myself for ten days in May, I can say with certainty that it is conduct unbecoming of our prior actions and accomplishments. Put it simply, I have learnt my lesson. One that should have been painfully clear to begin with. Such behavior — uncivil comments made while hiding behind anonymity — is loathsome and abhorrent. And I will never engage in or condone such methods ever again.

That brings me to the question, how does one stand up for what one has built, and the cause of inclusion that it aims to serve, while accommodating the concerns of its detractors? To answer this, here is a set of potential principles.

  • True North: If one truly believes their work to be the right thing, it must be showcased in both the intent of how one chooses to engage with critics, and in the stories of impact that showcase how what’s built has actually improved the lives of the people it aims to serve. By making the citizen our north star, and having their best interest guide our actions, we can at the very least be assured of having done the right thing. Regardless of what slings and arrows one takes in the process.
  • Empathy: To truly believe deeply in our hearts that even our harshest critics come from a place of wanting to protect the citizen and to make an effort to understand why they have framed their criticism in that manner
  • Openness: Our policies must be made visible to the community at large through various stages of evolution through discussion papers and roundtables
  • Fervor to educate: A gospel that isn’t sung is never heard. We will work hard to showcase the positive impact of our work and spread the message far and wide.
  • Commitment to civility: No trolling, no anonymity, no abuse. Ever.

Given the course of events that have unfurled recently, I accept the IGCC decisions, and reaffirm my commitment to the iSPIRT mission and values, and to help it emerge as a better organization. This will be my last public post for some time. I look forward to accomplishing our goals (the End) through Means that we can all be proud of.

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Smart tools for SaaS founders to handle inbound & outbound sales processes – #PlaybookRT94

When #iSPIRT announced a roundtable on ‘Building & Scaling Growth Teams for Saas Founders’  with Ashwin Ramesh (Synup) leading it, I was thrilled to join it, assuming it would be a direct take off from Ashwin’s session at #SaaSx4. Well, we were not disappointed. I am sure the other participants share my feelings on the outcome – It was an action-packed interactive session on the strategies one can use to be successful in SaaS.

Most fellow founders who joined the discussion chimed up with a common theme, with questions on how to get good inbound leads, how to scale up, crack the game, and most importantly – how to switch from outbound to inbound.

In this post, I want to provide a summary of all the tools that were discussed in the roundtable to help in content creation and distribution, and tools that will help you do outbound in a structured way. The sheer number of tools that we discussed was overwhelming to the group, to say the least.

WhatsApp Image 2017-05-05 at 10.36.03 AMContent is still King, so let’s lead with it.

Content: Good content is more important than the fact that it is a blog or a post or guest post. It could be anything that attracts folks, and gives your product or service the attention span needed. Some of the examples of good content that were discussed include websites,  checklists (e.g. http://localseochecklist.org/), videos, visualisations, infographics, data driven content, Quora ads, & Answers wiki.

If you need ideas on how to create great content, take a look at https://tympanus.net/codrops/. 

Now that you have the content, let’s shift the focus to distribution. The traditional models of distribution have become saturated. No one’s going to come just because you wrote and published something. So you need to come up with innovative ways to distribute content. Well written content, if it is not reaching the intended audience, is a dead investment and one has to have deliberate policy of setting aside a budget, even if it’s a small one, for distribution of each piece of content. You should try the following options:

  • Start contributing on reddit, and especially to a subreddit specific to your industry, business area or technology. The strategy suggested is to become active participants of a specific community, engage in discussions, post comments, contribute and build your credibility. The content you may share here would be actively promoted by other participants and also gets picked up other channels. The key is to build credibility and be supportive to other members.
  • Another idea is to sign up to https://inbound.org/ and once again be an active participant, and a slowly become a regular contributor. 
  • A third option is to use services like QUUU to distribute or share content across social media including Twitter , Facebook.
  • Investing in FB paid ads also has been found effective for many businesses.
  • If you feel that the above strategy is high on investment and low on initial results, start using article syndication services like Outbrain or Taboola to engage your target audience while they are browsing or reading interesting content on the web. 
  • A good way to use Taboola or Outbrain would be to use it with  Bombora, one of the best B2B intent engines. It gives you better options to identify / reach your B2B customers. There are integrations available for Bombora with Outbrain, and you need to decide on the budget. 
  • If you need to reach out to key influencers to help you share your content on a wider scale, use Buzzsumo to build the list and also get an idea about what your competition is sharing.
  • Once you have the list, use Buzzstream to manage the outreach that is desired. It helps manage the relationships and also monitor the content sharing. 
  • One related area which may be of benefit is to reach out to journalists using tools like Haro and Bite Size PR. 
  • If you have good content, you can choose to distribute the same through newsletters. Look for a curated list of newsletter sites or owners and get your content into these newsletters. It is an ongoing challenge for newsletter publishers to get good content for their readers, so reaching out to provide them content becomes a win-win proposition

Social media is a powerful medium for reaching out to a wider audience.  Tools that may be used for leveraging social media audience are:

  • Lead Sift ( twitter )  – This is used to keep track of potential customer who are engaged by  your competition . Helps in qualification of leads and setting up engagements faster 
  • EngageWise : To help present your content to a wider audience based on the interest they show in similar content. This helps in growing the pipeline using the reach of social media.
  • Lead Feeder :  Identifies the visitors to the website thereby qualifying the visitors and makes better / faster engagement possible. Offers and integration to CRM as well.
  • Ad Espresso :   One can create and test FB Ads in a very short time and run ad campaigns instead of single ads to effectively reach the different sections of audience thereby reducing cost and increasing efficacy of the ad.

Any website / online content strategy has to consider SEO.  Some of the tools that can be used for SEO include ( apart from the tools offered by Google ) 

  • Screaming Frog   – This can be used for in-depth technical analysis on your site .  It is a website crawler, works very fast & quickly allows one to analyse the results in real-time. 
  • All in one SEO  :   It can be used to optimize WordPress site for SEO. 

Another key element of growth involves reaching out to prospective customers. For that , email is still the most effective mechanism.  When it comes to using outbound emailing, getting good data ( email ids ) is equally important as the mail content and delivery strategy . 

For Creating the Data ( emails ) the options available are 

  • Scrape websites for data  
    • Screaming frog : The custom extraction feature allows you to scrape any data from the HTML of a web page using CSS Path, XPath and regex
    • Scrappy :  An open source and collaborative framework for extracting the data you need from websites, in a fast, simple, yet extensible way.
  • Some other common tools are 
    • Builtwith  :  One may get to see leads in your list by known technology spend, the usage or non-usage of competitor or other technologies as well as the usage or non-usage of entire categories of technologies like A/B Testing.
    • Limeleads : Access to a large repository of business leads across multiple verticals
    • Zoominfo : ZoomInfo’s Growth Acceleration Platform offers the most accurate and actionable B2B contact and company intelligence 
    • Buy data from publishers like D&B . This link is useful for Indian websites only.

Once you have the data , cleansing or cleaning up email list is the next key activity 

  • External agencies may be employed to clean up the email list. There are many service providers engaged in doing this for an acceptable consideration.

Once the email list has been curated, then you have to decide on the best way to engage the prospects or identify a delivery mechanism. There are many tools which support a structured approach to sending mails in a personalised manner, away from the mass mailers.

  • Klenty : This is an outbound sales automation tool for your inside sales team to prospect, outreach and follow up at scale. 
  • Prospect : A simple tool for sales automation. Works well for cold emailing and drip marketing. 
  • Quickmail : Another simple tool to automate outbound emails. 
  • Outreach  : Yet another platform that supports emailing and calling. 

Any inbound process revolves around the sales funnel. Organisations constantly look for increasing the conversation across all stages of the funnel or improve the funnel itself. Some of the recommendations that came out of the extensive discussion included usage of Google Analytics and other exclusive tools for understanding the user’s journey in your website and app through session recordings, heat map analysis, etc.  It would be good if cohorts are defined before initiating analysis so that patterns can be identified. 

  • Heap: Automatically captures every user action in your web or iOS app and lets you analyze it all retroactively.
  • MixPanel: Follow the digital footprint of every user across mobile and web devices. Know precisely what happens inside your product.
  • Inspectlet: Inspectlet records videos of your visitors as they use your site, allowing you to see everything they do.
  • Hotjar: Can be used to understand user behaviour as it visually represents their clicks, taps and scrolling behavior on your website.
  • Crazy Egg: Through Crazy Egg’s heat map and scroll map reports you can get an understanding of how your visitors engage with your website. 

Other tools that were mentioned include marketing automation tools and A/B testing / multivariate testing tools. One common suggestion which came up was to use best in class tools rather than using all in one kind of tools. A few examples of specific tools are mentioned below. Since all of them are well known, I don’t think it’s necessary to add a description of what they do.

Marketing Automation tools / Communication tools: 

A/B – MVT Tools 

A big thanks to Ashwin and the roundtable participants for listing these tools and sharing their experiences in using them.  I may have missed out one or two of the tools discussed. Look forward to your comments on these tools and also suggestion of other equally valuable tools for inbound / outbound processes.

WhatsApp Image 2017-04-29 at 7.01.02 PMDisclosure :  I am Neel Padmanabhan part of Team Lucep and head India Operations . Lucep is an instant response call back tool that is currently being used by several businesses around the world for handling inbound leads. The tool is designed to encourage visitors to the website to contact the sales team and get a response as quickly as possible.

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The curious case of B2B SaaS Startup’s inside sales and marketing

Amazing but how? This question pops out of every startup founder’s mind while reading success stories. Persistence, determination & hard work, great to know, but nobody tells the real thing. Where are the techniques? With any magic, the logic behind is what a technician always looks for. So, where is the secret formula of startups having millions of dollars of revenue in SaaS?

‘XYZ’ startup got Series A $3M from ‘The one who every founder dreams of’ 10K Signups in a month (What were you doing? Tell me NOW!) $1M ARR in just 4 months of product launch (Who are these rich kids?)

These stories are highly inspiring, and to achieve such fabulous growth you need experience, the right product and perfect techniques of sales and marketing (Yes, funds could wait!). Being an early stage startup founder and that too into SaaS B2B, also an engineer who codes. I personally feel this is a deadly combination, where people like us know EVERYTHING when we start out BUILDING and half the way we realize about SELLING(hopefully we do!), the path to revenue, well the only reason we could be SUCCESSFUL.

The Invitation

While I was looking for my answers reading the book traction, building flows and learning by experimenting different traction channels, SaaSx happened (SaaSx was not like any other conferences or meetups, but really an experience to cherish, I now literally wait for the next one to happen) and there I met Avinash, he invited me to the PlayBook RoundTable Zero to One — Marketing and Inside Sales — SaaS happening in Delhi.

The invitation looked something like this..

Roundtable Focus Areas
– The PlayBook Roundtable will focus on how Early stage SaaS startups can get their first 10 and then the first 100 customers.
– The founders will share their experience of the initial steps to be taken, key metrics to focus on and the team structure for inside sales and marketing.

Facilitators
1. Sachin Bhatia (Ameyo/Inside Sales Box)
2. Ankit Oberoi(AdPushUp)

Bang On! it is very few times when you get the opportunity to hear from those who are just steps above you in the ladder, their learning from successes and failures could help you make the most out of your current situation.

Hops and Drops

11 founders at different stages of their startup journey in one round table conference hitting the bottom line with the right questions and right people to answer them.

  1. First 10 Customers, hacks to reach them? (Ankit’s hacks make you realize it is not that difficult)
  2. When to start marketing and help generate leads even before the product launch? (Conversations, Sachin even mentioned how first 100 conversations helped him get the Product Market fit)
  3. What is the actual Traffic / Conversion / Cost per lead from their experience? (These numbers helped to validate stuff you dream of)
  4. Initial Teams, Hiring Experiences and Compensation plans? (Most of us, funded or bootstrapped are struggling with this)
  5. Key learning in the initial lead generation and sales efforts?
  6. Content Marketing Strategy, to build for Google or Readers?
  7. Medium vs WordPress vs Your Own Blog? (It is not good for me to answer this here!)
  8. Launching product in the foreign market, the Hows of it? (SaaS businesses largely aim countries outside India)
  9. How to make your website the best marketing tool? (The number of leads generated from there, some mind boggling statistics we went through)
  10. To put pricing or not? (A million dollar question in itself)
  11. Hacks around Adwords and minimizing cost per click
  12. SEO, Keywords, On Page, the real metrics, and the lead generation techniques
  13. Tools to trigger drip marketing campaigns
  14. Social Platforms their reach and how to maximize with minimum efforts and cost
  15. The strategies worked for DIY tools
  16. Lead tracking, Website Chat
  17. Content — Blog / Ebooks / Video
  18. To go for PR or not?
  19. How to experiment more with current traction channels?
  20. Mistakes which led them to lose customers, and how reduce churn rate?

And much more.. A day full of insights, no presentations, no mind-boggling figures but real conversations based on the real fears we as founders and startups face everyday.

To not let go..

The journey of a founder has lots of ups and downs, engaging with the right people who could help you in a way you just imagined could be a path breaker.

Thanks a lot to the team at iSPIRT — Avinash and Rajat for making it accessible to the community.

Ankit and Sachin were as candid as they could be, the secrets of their business are going to help us take leaps with our startup.

If you wish to know the answers to the above asked questions, reach out to iSPIRT. I’d love to hear from all of you who are at different stages and learning like all of us in the space.

Guest Post by Anshuli Gupta, Co-Founder @WidelyHQ, My twitter handle @anshulix

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Inadequate liquidity for Indian Startups

Recently was having a conversation with a Private Equity friend and was trying to explain the challenge that has captured my imagination and full attention, ie exits for software product startups in India. He felt that the data about the exit structural deficit that I was trying to point out felt too bearish to be true. My counter argument was that my intent is not to sound bearish but instead be a realist, after all acknowledgement of a problem is first step to solving one.  Post that conversation I thought should put this data out publicly so that through crowdsourcing can at the very least improve my understanding if it is off by wide margins.

2012-2016 VC vs M&A

India VC vs Exits 

India VC vs M&A


India Software Products VC  (in $m)

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016*
$801.00 $1,021.00 $4,883.00 $6,526.00 $2,419.00 $15,650.00
147 123 173 330 223 996

India Software Product M&A  (in $m)

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016*
$205.00 $308.00 $799.00 $1,350.00 $1,339.00 $4,001.00
43 39 59 137 113 391

Source iSPIRT M&A Report https://www.slideshare.net/ProductNation/india-technology-product-ma-industry-monitor-an-ispirt-signalhill-report?ref=http://startupbridgeindia.com/

Israel VC vs Exits 


Israel Software Product VC  (in $m)

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016*
$1,878.00 $2,404.00 $3,422.00 $4,307.00 $4,775.00 $16,786.00
567 667 684 706 659 3283

Israel Software Product M&A (in $m)

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016*
$8,149.00 $3,704.00 $4,493.00 $6,462.00 $6,782.00 $29,590.00
74 81 109 98 86 448

Source IVC Report, http://www.ivc-online.com/Portals/0/RC/Survey/IVC_Q4-16%20Capital%20Raising_Survey-Final.pdf

Above data indicates that Israel was able to generate 1.8X of the money that went in while in India in the same period it was 0.2X. The right comparison is exits from 2012-2016 with VC investments from 2005-2009, iSPIRT report does that comparison but results are even less encouraging.

Exits follow a power law distribution, however in India it seems like a power law’s power law.

Not only is the volume of exit a challenge but also the structure, any ecosystem exits follow a typical power law. For every $1 bn exit, there are ten $100m deal, for every $100m there are hundred $10m deals.

Top 7 deals in India account for ~$2.5b of the $4b in exit. About 250 of 391 deals total a deal volume of $97m which means the size of an acqui hire i.e in long tail is about 0.5m, which is inadequate even for an angel investor (in other ecosystem long tail is >$10 m, hence being referred to as power’s law power law). Lack of many $10-100m deal means there is a missing middle of the long tail.

Source iSPIRT M&A Report https://www.slideshare.net/ProductNation/india-technology-product-ma-industry-monitor-an-ispirt-signalhill-report?ref=http://startupbridgeindia.com/

Anything in the data above that does not feel kosher  ?

 

iSPIRT M&A Connect program takes a multiyear view to design interventions that can address the middle and long tail of the market coordination challenge.

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Getting SaaSier every year #SaaSx #Chennai

With almost 150 SaaS founders, a set of investors, and the volunteers, SaaSx was rocking content-wise from 10am to 9:30pm, with the @Zarget beachside dinner kicking it into the next gear. How do we know it was a good event? Well the NPS score of 76, with 91 responses says it all!

Probably only event that was worth being a part of in the last 1 year. Happy to volunteer next time!

The most earth shaking session every year? After all, “Chumma Adhirudhulla.” is the dialogue of his favorite actor! @mrgirish rocked the stage with his sheer authenticity, wearing his heart on his sleeve, and talking about the challenges in building a business like Freshdesk, the mistakes they made on their journey and the learnings from them. More than one founder approached me later saying, ‘If even someone like Girish makes mistakes while growing the business, then I should not fear my mistakes but grow faster by learning from them’.

Best part was how approachable, upfront, honest and open all the big guys were..

It takes a special form of courage to go (metaphorically) naked on stage in front of your peers. And get critiqued by the best in the business. And we saw that from three very special founders in the Product-Tear-Down. @WidelyHQ  @GetOmnify @99Tests, were three SaaS startups at different MRRs, at different stages of their product/market lifecycle. Read up on their experience at

These three were chosen by the panel from seven initial conversations, from a shortlist of a few dozen startups who had applied. The startups they picked were in different stages, had to be easily understood by the audience, and yet have enough lessons to learn from. The goal was to create teachable moments, and the audience loved it with many founders volunteering to get their products torn down, something we’re working to do at scale. If you’re interested follow @saasxin to get notified.

Fantastic event with priceless learnings.

The constant refrain on the SaaS side has been ‘move up market’. But what does that mean? Well if you were at SaaSx, @Sudheer_Zenoti spoke candidly about their journey from SMB->Enterprise. What’s the largest single $ value sale done on the phone from India, for an online sale product? I nearly slipped off my chair when I heard a 7 digit number. In US Dollars. Whoa! And here we are discussing whether Inside sales can work at $30,000. It must be something in the Chennai water that Arun Kumar, COO Zarget drank over his 13+ years of inside sales experience. Or was it in the product? In India, we have enough developers and product managers, to build any product we need. But as Srikrishnan Ganesan pointed out, ‘Market trumps everything’, and if you are in a bad market, or too early, or too late, then there is little you can do to win. There are many paths to $1M ARR. Some have angels that give you loans, and others take some time to light, but then take off like a rocket. If you were there till then end, Ashwin Ramesh of Synup, and Girish Redekar of RecruiterBox, shared their paths to where they are. The only truth is that there’s no one path, you’ve got to make your own!

SaaSx4 was fantastic. I started implementing few of my learning from Saturday (18th March) itself.

The morning #SaaSFaQ unconference turned out to have some great questions on product/market fit and GTM from early stage startups. Fielded by Shekhar Kirani, Avlesh Singh, Krish Subramanian, there was a great deal of interactive learning concentrated on the floor. Learning for next time, break it up into smaller sub-sections, to get even more interactive and participatory.

In Product Teardown session, it was evident that Bharat’s inputs blowed everyone away.

Do you have more than $1M ARR, facing growing pains in your org and model?? Well, in the morning, the dynamic duo – Suresh and Girish, ran a closed door session for a few founders, getting into serious topics that were only for founders’ ears. What happened inside, stayed inside.

Every SaaSx runs purely on the passionate, high-energy,  super-committed volunteers, themselves serious SaaS founders & thinkers, who create the strictly curated content that makes for a great experience. This year the volunteers were @MrGirish, @SureshSambandam,  @cbKrish, @ArvindParthiban, @Avlesh, @avinashraghava and @sKirani. We sorely missed  the ever-energetic wisecrack @vinod_cc. Like every year @_rakeshmondal did a kickass design and website, bringing SaaSx to virtual life online.


Here’s to an even better #SaaSx5 next time around!

 

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Deep And Wide Product Adoption Are Key To Reducing SaaS Churn

Who am I writing for? SaaS product managers and founders.

We recently had someone move on from Wingify (the company that owns VWO and Pushcrew). After they were gone, admin was doing a review of our software expenses and found a line-item for Popcorn Metrics with no clear owner. The person who had left was the only one using it, and no one knew why, or what it was used for.

Removing Popcorn is as easy as removing a code snippet, so I reached out to them asking to cancel.

This is the problem when your product hasn’t been adopted widely or deeply. You might have sold the product in that a customer is paying for it, but you haven’t truly sold it until they’re using it extensively.

Width

By width, I mean that multiple hierarchies across departments in a company are using the product. Best examples would be:

  • communication platforms (Skype, Gmail)
  • HR & performance management software
  • document editing and management (Google Docs, Office 365)

If a product solves the basic needs of any workforce, it’s likely to be adopted widely. The more widely a product is used, the more value it’s providing and consequently, it’s difficult to remove.

Depth

By depth, I mean the level of dependence on a product. For me, defining features of deep adoption are:

  • the product supports a key process, eg. the company’s sales process runs on a CRM, performance & payroll management is done on an HR software, or technical support delivered through support software
  • the product has important data that companies don’t want to lose
  • the product enables, or connects with multiple other data silos to make 1 + 1 = 3
  • the product is mouldable to support the company’s workflow

Placing the products we use at VWO on a depth/width graph, here’s what I came up with:

Explaining the graph above:

  • Recruiterbox comes in the middle-ish because it’s mostly used by hiring managers and HR. It is used across all departments, but not across enough hierarchies. And the data it contains isn’t as valuable… mostly resumes/profiles of candidates who weren’t a fit.
  • Canva, the easy graphic design software for non-designers, which I put to show a product that has minimal width or depth. It mostly comes up when designers aren’t available. Going by Canva’s initial positioning, they might get slightly deeper adoption if they are able to tap into social media marketing teams.
  • Clearbit, connected to Salesforce and used for lead enrichment. We hardly ever login to the product, but I suspect we’ll keep using it until the contract renewal date rolls by and they raise prices. That’s when we’ll probably look to BuiltWith or something similar. I’ve included Clearbit to show a product that takes care of a small but important part of a business process, and as long as it does its job and the business process remains the same, it’ll keep being used.
  • I’ve put Namely in the middle because even though it is HR and performance management software, at Wingify we haven’t adopted it fully. I notice that everyone uses it, but only for a few days every quarter during appraisal time. It could have deeper adoption if we had big-company kinda HR processes, but since we don’t, maybe Namely is suited to big companies with more sophisticated HR policies and management?
  • Salesforce is probably the best example of a product completely owning a process, owning data, deep integrations and being used extensively by executives. I admire them for this, though I will never recommend them to anyone because of the painful experience it is dealing with the company and the product.

More thoughts

Not all products can have wide and deep adoption, but that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. If a product can capture even one important process for a team, the likelihood of churn reduces significantly. For example, Canva could if it targeted teams that need quick, good-looking images without relying on a graphic designer. First thing comes to my mind is social media teams in B2C businesses who are running campaigns all the time. Or take Recruiterbox from above, not widely or deeply adopted in the org but does a damn good job of streamlining the recruiting process.

Products tend to have higher a lifetime if they have some of the following properties:

  • Are the “source of truth” in an org for important process/data
  • Are in the core departments of finance, HR, sales, manufacturing/production/product and R&D
  • Are used by practitioners and executives for different purposes
  • Some or all parts of a team’s KPIs are reported by the product
  • Are heavily used by senior management
  • They are close to the value provided & realized by a company, like product, R&D or revenue/profits

Salespeople are trained to hack the selling process by reaching the highest decision maker as soon as possible. No doubt this still works, but in a world where hierarchies are flattening, practitioners who’re going to be actually using the product are becoming important factors in the buying process. Making a quick sale without adequate follow-up support from customer success managers leaves you at a risk of being upended after the contract period.

The Customer Success function can have a massive impact on increasing lifetime value if they understand that their goal in the first few months is to increase width and depth of adoption of the product, and they’re incentivized towards those goals.

Based off my Canva point, I realize that when you’re creating a product, it’s important to think of the process and data that you’re going to own, and for the teams + hierarchies that you’re going to own them. And this needs product + human effort.

I’m surprised why products don’t integrate more deeply with email. There’s this entire hullabaloo about AI and chatbots right now (early 2017). I’d instead focus energies on much a deeper sync with Gmail and Outlook. After all, that’s where the majority of decision makers spend their time.

Guest Post by Siddharth Deswal, Lead Marketing at VWO. This post originally appeared on http://deswal.org/saas/to-reduce-churn-your-saas-needs-to-be-adopted-widely-and-deeply/

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How GST will work for software exporters

GST council has yesterday cleared all the bills required to implement the GST. Finance minister wants to kick-start from July 1 2017. This can be easily achieved is the model laws can be enacted in the current session of parliament. The GST is therefore set become a reality from the second quarter of the current financial year.

GST is going to catalyze greater IT adoption. We can see the business going digital in future and a Digital India emerging.

Apart from receiving GST as a catalyst for Software product industry growth, we also need to get prepared for adopting GST our selves. Not everyone has prepared for GST though. At iSPIRT we are starting discussion group on GST so that community can take advantage from shared learning. This blog is the first in series of this effort.

Few fundamental changes in the Goods and Service tax (GST) as it is called are

  • It is supply based and not sales based tax system
  • Being an indirect tax, it applies where the consumption happens
  • There are three statues and taxes that are part of GST i.e. SGST (state GST), CGST (Center GST) and IGST (integrated GST = SGST+CGST)
  • Both state and center will get tax on Goods and services supplied unlike earlier only Center received the service tax
  • The GST subsumes many of the indirect taxes prevalent at present

GST will significantly change the way of doing business. Also, it is bound to greatly impact the international trade regime e.g. excise duty will merge in GST and deemed exports benefits under excise laws may come to an end. The exports aspect will impact Software exporters, irrespective of whether they are operating under SEZ, STP, EOU, EPCG or outside as these export schemes. GST on Import is going to impact every one, as in globalized world with cloud penetration, everyone is bound to use goods and services imported.

In this blog we cover in brief the application of GST on the import and export of goods and services.

How it impacts Import?

Basic custom duty (BCD) is not covered under GST and it will remain same. There will be two components on each import to be paid i.e. Basic Duty + IGST.

IGST will subsume currently applicable countervailing duty (CVD) and additional duty of customs (SAD).

Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) means tax levied under this Act on the supply of any goods/services in the course of inter State trade or commerce. IGST has two components SGST and CGST. A supply of goods/services in the course of Import into the territory of India shall also be deemed to be a supply of goods/services in the course of inter-state trade or commerce.

The levy of IGST will be payable for each transaction, as against the monthly payment in case of IGST payable on domestic interstate transactions.

The other difference in GST is aboput IGST computation. The IGST will be computed on transaction value of imported goods plus duties and taxes etc. charged under any statute other than the GST Law. Hence, ISGT will be applied on total landed value, basic customs duty and any other charges.

On import of services GST will be based on reverse charge method just as the Service tax is today i.e. IGST will apply on reverse charge mechanism. Hence, all Software or a SaaS bought online will be subject to reverse charge basis IGST.

But there is a input credit allowed in ISGT on imports. The service provider, trader or manufacturer of imported goods/services shall be eligible to offset IGST paid on import of goods/services against his output liability. The same does not apply to BCD as BCD is not part of GST.

Although it does not apply to Software sector, the anti-dumping duties and safeguard duties will continue to be applied as they were and have not been subsumed in the IGST.

Impact on exports

Exports under GST will be Zero rated i.e. there will not be any exports duty except on items that enjoy an export duty levy currently. Software exports will be zero rated.

The biggest impact will be on units presently enjoying exemptions on inputs like service tax in SEZ. Under GST all duties and taxes will be payable at the time of a transaction when procuring input goods/service and the exporter can get refund for these after exporting. Exemptions will be replaced by refunds after exports.

This will put lot of burden on arranging working capital for the inputs. This burden will be higher for manufacturing firms than services firms.

On pursuance of commerce ministry, in a recent announcement, the finance ministry has agreed to relax the refund pains. The finance ministry has agreed to refund 90% of the duties paid by exporters within a period of seven days under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. If duty refunds could not be made within seven days, then government will pay interest to exporters. However, it is yet to be decided how much interest will be paid to exporters in such a scenario, as per announcement. (Source: livemint news item)

The remaining 10% refund will be made after verification by tax authorities.

This is a bit of relief to exporters. Compliance process will change from presently exemption based compliance to a refund claim filing in time.  The crux here is to use digital technology to automate many of these issues in GSTN.

Whereas these announcements have been made, the details will depend upon how rules are notified.

GST will undoubtedly make the efficient in long run. However, the next one year will be full of challenges and adjustments by Ministry of finance to oversee a smooth rollout.

Should you have further questions on GST, please write to [email protected]

 

 

 

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A personal introduction to #SaaSx4, and why I believe Chennai is the place to be right now for SaaS startups

I have worked with iSPIRT for many years now and one of my key lessons has been around the dynamics behind community and ecosystem building. I have learnt that just having a plethora of startups in one geographical location doesn’t make that place the natural epicenter or capital. There is something more to it, an X factor that goes beyond mere arithmetic.

This X factor is something that I think Chennai has.

There is no doubt in my mind that Chennai is the capital of SaaS startups in India today.

Firstly, the numbers themselves are mighty impressive. Just between Zoho and Freshdesk, two of India’s bellwether SaaS companies, there is around $400m in revenue, about a $100+ million in funding and around 4000+ SaaSemployees.

But what is more significant is that around tentpole companies such as these, a massive ecosystem for many other SaaS companies has been created in Chennai. And this is going from strength to strength as we speak.

To explain why I am personally excited about Chennai and its focused and committed founders who are building companies in this same mould, let me go down memory lane a bit. If the story seems a bit rambling, please indulge me as it is a personal story that is close to my heart.

When Chennai was Madras

My early memories of Madras are when I was probably seven years old and my uncle was posted at the Tambaram Air Force station. When we travelled from Delhi to Bangalore by train, the GT Express would halt in Madras for 5 hours as the engine would get changed. Our uncle would pick us up and we would go to one of the beaches. It was also probably one of my early experiences by the sea. I also got to spend holidays a couple of times in the quiet and green Air Force Base in Tambaram.

Image Courtesy — FriendsofChennai

I got placed by NIIT as a GNIIT in a Madras-based software company called RiteChoice technologies (Yes, I was a GNIITian!). They had built the back office software for the National Stock Exchange and I joined as a Support Executive to help them with the sales/support/installation of the software in the Delhi region. We got intensive training about the stock market and how the software functions at the company headquarters. It was great fun those days as you worked for 6 days and the 7th day would be an off site with colleagues who had come from different cities. In those days, North Indian food was hardly available in Chennai and it was tough to have idli/dosas for almost two months (no offence to all my South Indian friends!). The software segment was just picking up at that time and there were very few IT companies.

Ritechoice was a product company at a time when we really did not know the demarcation between a service and a product organisation, and their other software was called Suxus. I remember interacting with the founding team; they were full of passion and keen on building more products.

The Ramco mafia

I moved on from Ritechoice after six months as we were not able to sell/support the software in Delhi. There were lot of changes being done at NSE and in hindsight, I now understand that we were not able to find the product market fit. I continued with my journey of working with Internet startups with DSF Internet & Trisoft Systems, until NASSCOM happened in 2002. I was again able to interact with a lot of software companies.

In the early days whenever we used to talk about products, the company which drew all the limelight was Ramco. It was probably one of the fastest growing companies then, selling ERP software and making a big impact in the user community. It was fighting SAP in those days. I remember that there were around 60 ERP companies at one point of time. Other notable companies in Chennai at that time were Polaris Software(now acquired by Virtusa) and MyAdrenalin. Apart from these companies, there were a few IIT-Madras incubated startups like as well.

And there was another small company called AdventNet, which had just started making some noise.

The Role of Proto.in

I was introduced to the Twitter/blog world by Kiruba Shankar & Vijay Anand. I remember following them and getting to learn about social media through some of the sessions at NASSCOM. In the early days of the startup ecosystem, very little action used to happen in Chennai, but Proto made a big dent by getting all startups under one umbrella. For me attending Proto gave me exposure to the startup community. I got to see Ashish Gupta surrounded by many people and later on got to know that he was one of the founders of Junglee. The event was at IIT-Madras and it was hard to get into any of the halls. They were just full. The man behind the show was Vijay Anand. There were others, of course, nothing in our ecosystem is a one man show, but Vijay did a magical job of getting it all started.

I remember how Shalin Jain proudly demoed DoAttend which got built because of Proto. Wikis were used quite extensively first in Chennai for Proto: I’m yet to see another event, even in these event-rich times, which uses Wikis extensively.

Some of the companies that showcased at Proto 1

Some of the well known companies like Myntra, iXigo, Drishti (Now Ameyo), ValueFirst, iCreate (Now Fintellix), Novatium, etc launched their products at Proto 1. Do take a look at Proto 2 as well. Thanks to Amit Ranjanwho continued to upload all these decks and also write about them at WebYantra. If Proto was alive today, it would have probably been the biggest enabler of the startup ecosystem in our country. Pity that it isn’t, but we need to remember that the movement actually started in Chennai.

Me at NASSCOM, and how the Emerge community took off

Some of the initial people who really made the EMERGE community happen were people like Suresh Sambandam of Orangescape (now KissFlow), Late Mr. Raja from Coromondel Infotech, Lakshman Pillai of LPCube, and George Vettah of Kallos. These were also product companies and played an important role in building the community. I continue to stay in touch with Suresh and leverage him as much as I can in building the ecosystem.

Apart from Delhi, it was the EMERGE conclave in Chennai that was a roaring success. So many people took ownership of the event. It was almost completely driven by people in Chennai and we successfully were able to build a community for product companies.

For the first time, Sridhar Vembu of ZOHO spoke at a NASSCOM conference. It was at the EMERGE that ZOHO won an Innovation Award for the work that they were doing to hire freshers and train them. They continue to do so and it’s also very impressive to see the ecosystem that ZOHO has built in Chennai. The ZOHO mafia (Girish/Freshdesk, Arvind/Zarget, Sridhar/Credibase, Krish/ChargeBee) has created many founders (around 42, says Quora). The other Vembu brothers are also still going strong. Clearly ZOHO has played an important role in creating a culture in Chennai.

The unfolding story

In the early days of iSPIRT, I did get to do some playbook roundtables at the Orangescape office. I remember Ashwin Ramaswamy of PipeCandy(in those days it was called ContractIQ) volunteered for most of the playbook roundtables. I remember I got introduced to Girish Mathrubootham by Sairam Krishnan for the first time in their small office….met them in the boardroom and i remember one of the members was working in the boardroom as they were falling short of space 🙂

First Playbook by Shankar Maruwada in Chennai

I did get to do some playbook roundtables in the early days of iSPIRT, basically i would use Chennai to validate some of the playbook roundtables. Most of the playbooks were done at Orangescape and more recently Aditya Sanghi(Hotelogix) got some 6–7 founders from Bangalore to learn SaaS scaling from Freshdesk. I remember, it was one of the insightful playbooks and I got to meet Sanjay Parthasarthy from Indix for the first time at their office and also did a tour of the ZOHO campus which was quite far from the city.

In 2014, I was in Chennai for some meetings. It was around the time of SaaStr and it was then that it struck me that two large SaaS companies are already based out of Chennai, that and many others like KiSSFlow, UnMetric, Indix, Chargebee, Pipecandy and Zarget were all SaaS companies. It became clear to me that this city had a strong DNA of building SaaS/B2B products.

I and called up Shekhar Kirani from Accel (I consider him to be the Force behind the SaaS ecosystem in India). I bounced this idea off of him, asking for support for something around SaaS in Chennai. I got a green signal after which I reached out to Suresh and Girish. I got full support from them and in less than 20 days, we pulled together SaaSx Chennai.

Full credit to Suresh Samabandam for coining SaaSx. By the way, EMERGEOUT was also his coinage. The energy at SaaSx is always very high and we did the first three editions every six months. The beauty of SaaSx is that it is by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs and some real sharing is been done by people like Girish, Suresh, Avlesh, Paras, Krish, etc..

Playbook Led by Avlesh(WebEngage) & Suresh(KissFlow) at SaaSx

As iSPIRT, we are blessed to have strong support from such people who believe in paying it forward and are happy that we have been able to create a robust & safe place for SaaS founders. We will continue to stay focussed, curate the audience, and ensure that the platform becomes a meaningful one for SaaS founders in India.

Audience from the first SaaSx

We are all excited about the fourth edition of SaaSx in Chennai on 17th March, and I’m proud to continue to bat for the city (like Krish Srikkanth) and make an impact in the SaaS ecosystem.

Edited by Sairam Krishnan & reviewed by Sumanth Raghavendra

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SaaS: Where are you in this 2×2?

Some SaaS ventures lead to category leadership while some lead to imaginary frozen quadrants. Here’s a little 2X2 to assess where you are in your journey to SaaS nirvana. When amazing products are sold in amazing ways, it produces the almost mystical flywheel effect.

Let’s dissect this.

Red: Weak Product and a Weak/Average Sales Team

This is a highly incremental quadrant where a single provider may be serving the exact needs of a handful of customers. It’s an equilibrium that doesn’t last too long. I’ll leave this quadrant at that.

This is a highly incremental quadrant where a single provider may be serving the exact needs of a handful of customers. It’s an equilibrium that doesn’t last too long. I’ll leave this quadrant at that.

Blue: Weak Product and a Strong Sales Team

When people say “that company is sales driven” this is what they are referring to. Founders of companies in this quadrant have a knack of story-telling and projecting a product market fit before a product is actually ready. What happens next is catastrophic. Sales drives the company’s culture, narrative and product building. Both product and engineering go into a wild-balancing act of fixing the problems while trying to add features in a near random fashion.

It is unsustainable. It bloats customer service and support and pre-sales. Lack of a strong product causes politicking and confusion and populism in every department, which leads to relationship-driven rather than value-proposition driven outcomes. Unless a startup iterates on product rapidly or brings in a disciplined and creative leader, there’s a significant risk of revenues plateauing at $5m-$10m mark.

So why is it blue? Because it is fairly cushioned for a while though sales > everything is bad karma.

Yellow: Strong Product and a Weak/Average Sales Team

This quadrant probably causes hackers amongst us the most heartburn. A lot of strong products start with nobody focused on sales. They continue to write amazing code, design amazing screens, and setup amazing data pipelines, but they just don’t know how to position, craft a story people remember, distinguish themselves from 99 other guys who may have had the same idea. Many product founders suck at sales and often hires the first person who blinks.

Even for successful startups, this can be a transient stage, but successful founders realize their mistakes and then quickly hire a sales leader and move to the next quadrant. The good news if you’re yellow is that just like in real life, you can cross the traffic light before too much damage happens.

Green: Strong Product and Strong Sales Team

This is jazz improvisation zone. You can have a strong product and sales culture. It all starts with respect for both and it certainly involves finding the right talent that can craft what really works uniquely for you.

That’s why very few founders get there. A scalable sales model is crucial. A product alone can take you so far. For every Dheeraj Pandey ringing the IPO bell, there’s a Sudheesh Nair driving the quota home. For every Jyoti Bansal getting acquired at $3.7bn, there’s a Dali Rajic digging into sales capacity, and for every Jason Lemkin, there’s a Brendon Cassidy. When phenomenal founders and product builders pair up with their sales counterparts, that accomplish that sight to behold – a startup on a flywheel across the sky.

In each of these cases, the sales counterparts were able to hit their targets, because of a product which was able to either create demand or was superior to incumbents. If there was a product market fit, based on the narrative, the product scaled to bring in a perpetual stream of renewals and sources of new revenue.

Hopping in the 2×2

I hope you’ve found your color by this point. So how do we transition from a shitty part of the quadrant to an awesome one?

If you are Blue or Yellow, scale to Green quick. Here are some things that increase your chances in a hop

  • Listen to early feedback from customers and employees and suppliers. Setup key feedback loops
  • Iterate the product every week, every day, every hour. Continuous Beta. A living element.
  • Once you cross $10 million, press the gas pedal. Go. Go. Go.

Good luck and let me know if you think of additional colors.

Thanks to Leena for flywheeling this post! Reproduced from Indus Khaitan’s blog

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Place of Effective Management (POEM) of a business

Finance minister had announced during budget 2016 that place of effective management (POEM) will determine if a company is resident in India or not. Accordingly, this was notified in Finance ACT 2016 as under.

Finance Bill

The details of what will determine the place of business rules was not decided in the Finance Act 2016. The POEM provisions was supposed to become effective from April 2017. The detailed guidelines of what rules and conditions will determine the POEM has been issued by CBDT on 24 January 2017.

Ever since the announcement in 2016 there were many apprehensions on POEM, especially in SaaS companies.

In order to clear this apprehension a PolicyHacks session of iSPIRT was conducted.

The video discussion on POEM attended by Girish Rowjee, Founder CEO of Greytrip; Mrigank, Mrigank Tripathi,  Founder CEO of Qustn Technologies; Sanjay Khan Nagra, of Khaitan and Co.; Avinash Raghava and Sudhir Singh, iSPIRT  is given below.

What does the above POEM ruling incorporate in finance bill imply?

In simple terms the place of effective management in above act means a place where key management or commercial decisions that are necessary for the conduct of the business of an entity are made, in substance. This implies Indian resident status on a company will apply even when the entity is incorporated outside India, if the place of effective management is proven to be in India.

The guidelines issued on 24th January 2017 by CBDT will be used to determine if a business of non-Indian entity or a subsidiary of Indian entity will fall under the place of business rules or not. The Guide lines can be accessed here.

POEM is an internationally recognised test for determination of residence of a company incorporated in a foreign jurisdiction.

Why this regulation has been brought in?

POEM require Indian firms with overseas subsidiaries or foreign companies in India to pay local taxes based on where the business is effectively controlled.

The main intention of this regulation is to capture the income in shell companies incorporated outside India that are held by resident Indians with a basic intention of retaining the income outside India.

The regulation is not intended to discourage valid Indian businesses to setup an entity outside India or operate in global markets.

Does it impact Software sector?

It is very common for the India Software companies to open an office in foreign geography, many times as a subsidiary of Indian company and sometimes a new entity with mixed local and Indian management. Hence, the POEM has been worrying entrepreneurs in this sector. For SaaS segment, it is very normal to have a foreign entity, either for reasons of funding or market penetration.

As mentioned above, for a valid global business the POEM will not be a hurdle. Businesses, having global operation but not retaining income in foreign companies (i.e repatriating profits to Indian company) through authorised route and after complying with other regulations, POEM will not be a a worrying factor.

There may be a very few Software Companies, who may need to be concerned, to pass the test of POEM. Any determination of the POEM will depend upon the facts and circumstances of a given case. The POEM concept is one of substance over form. If POEM is established to be in India for businesses operating outside India, they will be taxed in India.

It is not possible to generalize the impact of POEM on Software sector or illustrate few used cases. Whether a business operating outside India will get classified as POEM can only be ascertained after detailed examination.

Exemption for turnover less than 50 Crore

There is good news for startups as per the Press release accessible here, it has been decided that the POEM guidelines shall not apply to companies having turnover or gross receipts of Rs. 50 crore or less in a financial year.

This was not clear before video discussion and doubts were expressed during discussion, as this rule has not been described in the guideline circular of CBDT but has been mentioned in the press release of same date from CBDT.

Hence, we can expect that the rule of less than 50 crore income shall be embedded in income tax rules to be notified later.

Other salient features

  1. The provision would be effective from 1st April 2017 and will apply to Assessment Year 2017-18 and subsequent assessment years.
  2. The Assessing Officer (AO) shall, before initiating any proceedings for holding a company incorporated outside India, on the basis of its POEM, as being resident in India, seek prior approval of the Principal Commissioner or the Commissioner, as the case may be.
  3. Further, in case the AO proposes to hold a company incorporated outside India, on the basis of its POEM, as being resident in India then any such finding shall be given by the AO after seeking prior approval of the collegium of three members consisting of the Principal Commissioners or the Commissioners, as the case may be, to be constituted by the Principal Chief Commissioner of the region concerned, in this regard. The collegium so constituted shall provide an opportunity of being heard to the company before issuing any directions in the matter.

The point 2 and 3 mentioned above will ascertain that there is no arbitrary discretion exercised by Assessing officers on ground.

The Guidelines issued can be accessed here, also provides examples that explains when an active business outside India will be treated as Indian business based on POEM. These examples do not explain each and every case.

Also the exemption of 50 Crore is neither given in Finance Act or in the Guidelines but mentioned in press release.

CBDT may therefore issue further circulars to clarify these positions.

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A Framework For Building SaaS Products That Don’t Churn

When you say “reduce SaaS churn”, most people will immediately imagine tactics like drip email campaigns, great onboarding, customer marketing, gamification and automated alerts when users show signs of leaving. But this post is not about tactics. This post recognizes that users are smarter than any of the cute tricks we can come up with, and it attempts to get to the core of why there are some products that business users keep paying for, and others they discard.

A Framework For Building SaaS Products That Don’t Churn

If you’re a founder or product manager, I’ll encourage you to think deeply about this stuff, versus thinking about your next “growth hack”.

Products on which company processes are based

There are products on which organizational functions are dependent and processes are built. These are usually CRMs, Marketing Automation, HR software and Support software. The defining features are

  • they’re used by decision makers for reporting purposes and are often used to track teams’ KPIs and goals
  • they’re used to run day-to-day functions of the team and organization, for example, the process of applying for and approving employee leaves, or changing the stage of a sales opportunity
  • some people are logged in to the system during their entire working day
  • others log in once in a while to complete certain tasks
  • the system collects and retains valuable data that companies are not comfortable losing

Some observations about these products are

  • the sales cycles are usually longer than a month
  • customers will rarely buy these products without first being sure of the processes that are dependent on them
  • they need extensive API support and data integrations, because the data they collect becomes more valuable once combined with other data
  • heavy cross-functional training is required after the sale, and the product takes the blame if a customer org. doesn’t adopt and use it to the best of its capability
  • you need a lot of quality documentation so that you’re not overburdened with support tickets

An important note about products used by decision makers

When I started out at VWO a few years ago, the most important metrics were “free-trial signups” and “paid customers” (about 95% were self-service monthly subscriptions). Back then, Google Analytics (GA) was our most important source of data. We recorded free-trial signups, upgrades to a paid subscription and revenue in GA so it was what we looked at everyday.

In the past couple of years, we’ve started serving more mid-market and enterprise customers. Because of this, a few things have changed:

  • The average deal size has increased from $x00 to $x0000
  • The quality of free-trial signups matters as much as the quantity
  • A large amount of revenue comes from payments made through bank-transfers and other offline methods
  • “New MRR” is now more important than “new customers”

Because of all these changes, Google Analytics isn’t important anymore. Instead, the big decision are made after looking at reports in the CRM and our database, where all lead/deal/customer/revenue data sits. Through this shift I observed how when businesses evolve, the metrics that matter to them change, and this has a domino effect on the SaaS products that fall in and out of favor.

Now here’s another interesting anecdote: VWO has a large number of ecommerce customers. For the majority of these businesses, Google Analytics is the “source of truth”, so we simply had to build an integration with GA. In fact, we once lost a big customer because their VWO test reports didn’t agree with their GA data (completely possible and for good reasons, read this to understand why). The internal VWO champion tried to fight it out and explain the difference to management, but we lost the customer after some time.

So my point is this… it is well worth your while to build capabilities that will be used to make the important decisions, and if that’s not possible, then align your product with the primary reporting tool used by your target market.

Products that give results with minimal effort after initial setup

Some of these are:

  • Lead generation pop-ups, sidebars
  • Landing page software (specially when tied to on-going PPC campaigns or SEO keywords)
  • Retargeting software, like Perfect Audience and AdRoll
  • Exit intent pop-ups, almost always tied to lead generation
  • Personalization and behavioral targeting
  • Email automation like Vero and Intercom

While you’re building a product that keeps producing results with minimal interference, give a thought to how you can add public branding for that little bit of ‘virality’.

It’s also important to note that products tied to performance will quickly be removed when that performance isn’t enough. In this case, the product itself may be great, but it is dependent on something else working. For example, landing page software gets abandoned when the Adwords campaigns it was used for aren’t working out.

Products that monitor and provide reports and alerts on a recurring basis without needing additional effort

Few that come to mind are

  • Mention (social mention tracking, we’ve had it on for at least a couple years… rarely log in but open almost every daily email report)
  • Server Density (server monitoring)
  • SEOKeywordRanking (SEO keyword rank tracking; old school interface and not updated in a long time, but am sure its creator Will Reinhardt doesn’t need to work anymore)

While building your product, talk to users about the data they find most useful and want to look at everyday, or see what parts of your reports are accessed most often, then send that data out as daily/weekly emails. It becomes a part of users’ morning routine to check the emails and note/discuss/alert if something’s going right or wrong.

Products that enable data flow between different systems

Think Zapier, PipeMonk, Jitterbit and Informatica. Admittedly, data integration is more of an enterprise problem, but the good thing is that once put in, they’re very difficult to remove. That’s because they’re usually implemented after someone high enough has identified the need to have all the various data silos talking to each other, and that robust decisions can’t be made without a complete picture of the issue at hand.

Case study: Hubspot
  • Processes are based around the product? Yes, for marketing and sales
  • There’s someone almost always logged in? Yes, marketing
  • Managers use the product to report on performance? Yes, primarily marketing qualified leads, then customers and revenue
  • Product collects and retains valuable data that customers are not comfortable losing? Yes
  • Has components that produce results without needing on-going effort? Yes, lead-gen landing pages, website personalization, automated rule-based emails
  • Components that monitor and alert automatically? Yes, primarily alerts to sales owners about lead activity, and other alerts around social media, monthly/quarterly goals, etc.
  • Components that enable data flow between different systems? A well maintained and documented Salesforce connector, otherwise they have a platform for developers

As you can see, Hubspot is doing pretty well in minimizing churn. It seems to me that would be the case with most large, successful SaaS products. In fact, understanding the reasons why organizations keep paying for products is why large successful software are large and successful, as compared to just large.

I hope you’re able to use this post as a framework to think about what makes products stick, and apply those principles to the products you’re managing or building. Also, do you have anything else I can add to this? For some reason it seems to me the list is incomplete.

Guest Post by Siddharth Deswal, Lead Marketing at VWO.