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MenuWhat is a best practice roadmap to setting up a SaaS company?
Domain purchase. Software deployed. Customer acquisition strategy? Go to market strategy? Free at outset or charge nominally for beta users? Business partner strategy? Roadmap available? Metrics and KPI targets?
Answers
"What type of car should I buy?"
As you can imagine, the answer to this question is highly dependent upon a number of factors.
Similarly, you're asking some very specific questions. I anticipate that a number of experts here would love to help you with answering with specific questions -- but those answers are highly dependent upon your unique needs.
That said, for many experts, this type of consulting is their livelihood and should be compensated.
The advice you will get for free is likely to be very general and may not suit the specific needs and targets of your company.
In general, your roadmap will concurrently address your funding, customer acquisition, development, and growth opportunities. It is best to have "poor, good, better, best" targets and contingencies in each of these categories. Lastly, your metrics and KPIs are uniquely dependent upon the objectives of your business. For example, a well-funded operation has very different KPIs and metrics than a boot-strapped enterprise. One is not better than the other, but the characteristics of the operation dictate these types of measurables.
I, along with many others on this forum, would be happy to discuss specifics with you. All you need to do is book an appointment for a call.
All the best,
-Shaun
Howdy. Well you have all the major strategic points listed. What is remaining is the tactical.
Those answers are going to be unique depending on who your target market is, what your product/service is, what your capital resources look like, etc.
Got a bit of experience in sussing this all out if you would like to schedule a call.
My best advice would be to get to MVP as early as possible.
When I say MVP I mean functional, not beautiful. It just needs to show basic functionality and can be worked on and enhanced from there.
Your SaaS product needs to get in the hands of users as soon as possible as they will show the direction it should take or that it's not worthy of their time (and/or money).
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How can I get a list of startups (SaaS, software, online gaming) which are unfunded, seed funded or series A funded?
Use Mattermark.com to find them. They have a 14 days free trial. The tool will let you filter by founding and type of company, so it will probably give you what you need.JC
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What are some tried-and-true metrics for enterprise/ARR-based SaaS companies?
In my experience, the longer sales cycle requires more attention. The metrics will be unique to your business, but you can't go wrong with these: Marketing & Sales Metrics Look at metrics that will help you scale and project growth, and then accelerate opportunity to close velocity #s and conversion rates of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) #s, time, and conversion rates of MQLs to sales qualified leads (SQLs) #s, time, and conversion rates of SQLs to opportunities #s, time, and conversion rates of opportunities to sales Customer Success Metrics An ARR SaaS business may have a guaranteed 12 month customer lifespan, but that doesn't guarantee the customer actually uses the product and won't churn at renewal time. Measuring product usage will help you discover patterns that cause churn, increase the perceived value of the product, and improve the customer experience. Financial Metrics Each Reporting Period (I'd recommend monthly) look at Values & Rate of Change Customer Acquisition Cost Average Value of a Customer look at Values, % of total, & Rate of Change Revenue from New Subscriptions Revenue from Renewal Subscriptions At the early stage, businesses will see new Subscriptions significantly outpace renewals. As the business matures, the % of total ARR from New Subscriptions will begin to decline, assuming churn rates are good.RE
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Which is the best hosted free bug tracking tool for a team size of up to 10 members?
Being a freelance developer for the last 10 years or so, I have seen and used almost every project management software you can think of, open-source and closed, and I have found that the "best bug tracking tool" completely depends on your process. I employ and direct teams in an Agile process that involves loose story-based requirements with point-based estimates, two-week cycles of iterative development, planning and retrospective sessions, and look-ahead and show-and-tell meetings with the stakeholders. It's important to me, then, that my tools have a method of capturing all those pieces with as much detail as I need but no more. On projects, I've successfully used Pivotal Tracker, Unfuddle, Redmine, Codebase HQ, Basecamp, Trello, and many others. I usually recommend people to Trello for light, agile management; it's essentially a digitized version of sticky notes and swim lanes. If your team actually needs a full-featured ticketing system, see Redmine (Rails), Trac (Python), or Mantis (PHP), depending on your language preference. Hosting a version of these yourself is fairly trivial, and numerous options exist for cheap or free hosted versions. For something in the middle, Github Issues is a good fit and the open-source clone GitLab.org replicates most of those features nicely. However, if you're looking for a hosted version, you're probably looking to offload that tricky "backup" thingy, and in that case, how important is your data? How proprietary? What's your business model? If you're working on an open-source project, Github will give your team a free account with private repos, issues, wikis, and the like. If you're okay with your project being "readable by all", public projects on Pivotal are still free. I'm mostly a consultant these days, leading small groups of junior or intermediate developers into a more productive, more mature, fully operational teams of senior software developers. One of the first things I teach folks is how to use a project management system... and why! It'll save your bacon if it's simple, effective, and reliable. With a few minutes of discussion about your project, I can probably help you select the right tool and service for your team. Let me know if I can help with that. Best of luck!DR
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What would be a good approach for marketing a software development businesses?
For software development business LinkedIn ads, content marketing and Google Adwords don't work well. The best and most cost effective method is email outreach. Try to find the contacts of key decision makers in Bay Area from your target companies. You want to present yourselves as custom mobile and web development specialists and highlight your core competencies to get an initial call to discuss their mobile strategy or software development needs. Attaching your case studies how you helped other similar businesses and your portfolio can be extremely helpful as well. Try to always focus on the benefits in you pitch that they can get by working with you and point their missed opportunities of not having certain types of software or apps for their business. Clients love that software development companies have not only strong execution but also ideation skills. Hope this helps. If you have any questions I am also available on call for your convenience.AA
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How can a small offshore development company find companies/software sales people to sell their service in the US/UK?
My company does a lot of consulting with offshore firms who are looking for a way to generate new business, so I hear this question a lot. My first reaction is that you need to totally reverse your mindset when you talk about your own company. You mentioned that you have: a great software developers team, proven track record, passion, real value But, everyone says that. There a 10,000 companies that have those things, so a customer isn't going to notice it. You need to figure out what your company is best at (doesn't have to be technical) and present it as a solution to a specific problem that clients have. Maybe a speciality, or really good project management, really good communications, a special expertise or experience, a personality, experience with a certain type of client.. really anything.. But, there must be some thing that makes your company 'special' otherwise you will be lost in the mix. Don't worry about things like rates, or the fact that you have 'great' developers. Those are generic. Think about why a client would really choose you, and try to build on that! After you understand your company identity, it gets much easier to identify and engage marketing channels because you understand your target.DH
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