In a SaaS startup there are not thousands of subjects. Nailing down the ‣ and nailing down Revenue operations, along with ‣, are probably the most important topics. This whole part of the OSS playbook aims at accurately describing and helping you navigate this phase. It contains our standard deliverables and how to get there.
Make something people want. Do it ASAP.
⏰ When : while the MVP is being defined (as soon as 4 weeks in)
✔️ Check : when the first strategy is validated
Get close, prove value
⏰ When : while co-building
✔️ Check : when the GTM strategy is defined, you get to 150Ke ARR signed w. co-builders
Co-builder presentation and choosing
End-to-end customer journey first iteration
Sales and closing material + strategy
Prove the scale of what you want to do
⏰ When : while co-builders are being satisfied
✔️ Check : around 500K ARR signed to be deployed (5 to 20 clients)
Content strategy (incl. sebsite, launch post)
Customer success and deployment playbook
Make it repeatable, believable, scalable
⏰ When : while scaling to 1-3M ARR
✔️ Check : 3M ARR
Be customer obsessed.
Automation matters. Technique matters. Human relationship and empathy skills matter even more. Be mindful of how you interact with your potential buyer and take great care of what they say to you. Be client centric, don’t fall in love with ideas, fall in love with solving problems for your customer.
If you have data, we will decide according to the data. If you have an opinion, we will decide according to my opinion.
Only data is worth something. Everything is positional. Act accordingly, starting with having data.
It's not what you are, it's not what you do, it's the impact you have.
Nobody gives a damn about your feature coverage and your life story. What problem are you solving, and what value are you creating.
Empathy beats suits and ties.
Nobody gives a damn about which school you were at, and your track record. Who's your buyer, and what does he want. Do not teach, sell. Do not patronize. Your buyer is someone who has real issues and problems and is dying for you to solve it.
Failing an experiment is fine. Failing to experiment is not.
Growth is highly dependent on context and advanced growth tactics are discovered before crafted. Do not copy and paste cute tricks. Experiment constantly and what was true before can be false after.
It's never too early to sell.
Do not be that engineer guy waiting to have everything perfect to start the growth journey of your startup. It's never too early to start and nurture growth, and as a rule of thumb it's always too late. Also : sell. Don’t “partner”, “free until (...)” or things like that. Sell.
Iteration beats planification for breakfast.
Stop overthinking everything. Just do iterations and stop complaining about lack of time / not mature enough product / whatever. Fill that pipe and be human about it. Also, strategies and tricks are only hypotheses until they work.
It's not the intern's job. It's your job.
Growth is your job as much as product and HR. It's an integral part of your company journey, so own it. No, you're not an expert, but starting now you are expected to become one. At least for the first million euro of your company. And no, you won’t “hire someone senior to do the sales”. It’s your job.
Sound beats fancy every day of the week.
Cute "growth hack" tricks from linkedin marketers selling their trainings could sound nice, but those guys are selling themselves, not impact. Your experiments are your experiments, not copy/pastes. There's no silver bullet and there's no substitute for thinking and experimenting. Do the work and try simple first.