your competition now matters: building a saas company isn't what it used to be - hiten shah at...
TRANSCRIPT
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Building a SaaS Company Isn’t What It Used To Be: Your Competition Now Matters
Hiten [email protected]
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What are the truths in business?
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Forget about your competitors, just focus
on your customers.
Jack Ma Chairman of Alibaba Group
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I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it.
Walt Disney Entrepreneur
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Truth: There’s a lot of conflicting advice about customers and competition
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Truth: Everyone has competition in some form!
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Truth: Aggressive competition is becoming a constant reality
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Competitive advantage is a company's ability to perform in one or more ways that competitors
cannot or will not match.
Philip Kotler Author and Consultant
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How do you compete?
Before you write any code. When you’re just starting out.
(with a new business or a new feature)
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TODO:
Take the time to do thorough research up front
It’s faster to research than to write code. Upfront depth prevents you from building the wrong things.
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Ask people what tools they have used
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Ask people how they currently do things
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“If you’re above 40% of the people saying they’d be very disappointed, I tend to say you’ve found product/market fit, and if
you’re less than that, you haven’t.
SEAN ELLIS
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We found out that Google Analytics has product/market fit
AND SO MUCH MORE!
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It started with a single question: What’s wrong with Google Analytics site overlays?
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Back in 2005 we put up an early access landing page
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Google Analytics site overlay is only based on page level data
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Crazy Egg tracked every single click on the page
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I was a competitive advantage!
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It started with a single question: What’s wrong with Google Analytics funnels?
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What we learned was wrong with Google Analytics funnels
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• Built in one month from blank slate to release
• Used EC2, S3, Ruby and SQLite (yes, SQLite)
• Horribly slow and ugly code with bugs
• Took 7 servers for just 30 customers
The KISSmetrics MVP of 2009
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We invented a 10x better API
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We invented a live debugging tool for analytics events
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We invented a better funnel report
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The “ghetto” KISSmetrics MVP worked!!!
“I can already tell you that your killer feature (for now, at least) is retroactive funnel definition. Brilliant.”
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Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of
learnings.
Bill Gates Co-Founder of Microsoft
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Your competitor’s most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learnings.
💡
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Funnel reports used to always be top to bottom
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Funnel reports used to always be top to bottom
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After we invented them at KISSmetrics, many other tools
started to add left to right funnels
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If it’s good for customers, it’ll get imitated by competitors
and become the norm.
Inventing Things
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AWS publicly launched EC2 and S3 in 2006
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• We got Crazy Egg on S3 in 2006
• Costs were cut by 50% from switching to EC2
• Continuous improvement and new useful services
• Enables a faster pace of iteration
• Constant price reduction
Why I Love Amazon Web Services (AWS)
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It’s now easier than ever to create software.
And it’s gonna keep getting easier!
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There are only two sources of competitive advantage:
Ability to learn more about our customers faster than the competition.
Ability to turn that learning into action faster than the competition.
Jack Welch Retired Business Executive
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When do competitors show up in customer’s minds?
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Ask your customers about competitors very directly
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Find out how your product can be improved
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Use strategic interviewing to learn why people switch
Jobs-to-be-done Timeline
First thought
Event 1
Event 2
Purchase
Passive Consideration
Active Consideration
Decision
A timeline must be completed for each interview. The goal is to use the interview technique to identify key events that have caused them to hire the product.
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“There’s a rise in all-in-one SaaS software and SaaS platforms.
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2006 2011 2014
Three thriving examples of the All-In-One SaaS trend
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All-In-One Marketing Software
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HubSpot wants to manage all your inbound marketing
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HubSpot wants to manage all your inbound marketing
• Created a website grader to generate leads by identifying a website’s short comings.
• Started by targeting small businesses that weren’t technically savvy.
• Expanded the offering by creating a new suite of SaaS sales tools.
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The single platform for
every customer interaction
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Intercom wants to manage all customer communications
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Intercom wants to manage all customer communications
• Built a single customer communications workflow that serves many different jobs.
• Started by targeting startups who weren’t yet hooked on existing tools.
• Iterated into a platform with multiple products.
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All-In-One Analytics and
Feedback
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Hotjar wants to provide every tool for website insights
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Hotjar wants to provide every tool for website insights
• Put seven feedback and analytics tools next to each other in a single interface.
• Started by offering a cheaper solution to professionals who are already using multiple tools.
• Their product roadmap is shared publicly.
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SaaS product suites and platforms are making a comeback!
~$1.82B market cap
$115.75M funding
213,273 organizations
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This is the one big idea for you to take action on, ASAP!
TODO:
Take the time to do thorough research up front
It’s faster to research than to write code. Upfront depth prevents you from building the wrong things.