5 TRAPS YOU SHOULD AVOID BUILDING A SAAS BUSINESS
A Keynote presentet on SaaStock
by Dr. Ricco Deutscher
Trap #2: Wrong Mindset
Dr. Ricco Deutscher:
“I have two anecdotes for that. The first is — well I was pretty much a product guy. I had no clue about sales and marketing, to be honest. And in a previous company, we hired a CSO with a fantastic track record according to his CV and he built up a traditional software sales process, because this is what he did in the past, based on outbound cold calls. Okay. After a certain period of time, we figured out we got a lot of leads, but the leads were of poor quality and the costs per lead were extremely expensive. The reason for that was very easy. A customer selects a platform in a very small window of opportunity. Let’s say three months. And that window of opportunity appears once, maybe twice, along the whole company life-cycle. Let’s say 10 years. The likelihood to meet that or to hit that window of opportunity is very low if you don’t know where the window of opportunity is. This approach was very inefficient, but that person was used to it. And this was, obviously, the only technique and approach he knew.”
Dr. Ricco Deutscher:
“And therefore, we came to the conclusion that SaaS business is also a software business but has some fundamental changes, different paradigms compared to the license-based software business. And a CSO should have thought about it and adapt his approaches, how to do sales and marketing. A good track record matters when you recruit management members or team members, but the ability to adapt his approaches is even more important. So, recruit the right mindset in your team, especially management team.
And this is also true for investors which I consider part of an extended team. I had a company with a co-investor which was a state-owned promotional bank. I will not drop the name. When I needed decisions in days or weeks, this co-investor was not able to make decisions within months. That drives you crazy as an entrepreneur and you cannot build up a company if the investor is not as agile as your business, right?”
Dr. Ricco Deutscher:
“So therefore, make sure you select the right investor for your business. Otherwise, it can be deadly to your business and this is my recommendation for trap number two. Old school thinking fails in the SaaS market.”
Here comes Trap #3 >>