saas lessons learned

SaaSlessons learned

i am an entrepreneurand live in Barcelona / San Francisco

i started teambox a couple years ago

now it kinda works on its own

+40k more

and this is how it looks like

but i’m here to share some stories

“build it, they will come”

1. find a real problem

“We help [people in your market] do

[something] better”

2. solve that problem (with your product)

3. measure your progress (with metrics)

time to define your product

chosing a business model

Freemium

Try-and-buy

Shareware / lite

Pay-per-use

+ virality

+ sales cycle

+ adoption

+ upselling

how much are you worth?

quantify the ROIfor the buyer

are we saving them money and pains (aspirin)or just making their lives better (vitamin)?

“Users with Teambox increased by30% their billable hours”

choose a pricing model

per user

per usage

per company

choose a nice name for your baby

Our first namewas Saiku, at

http://saikuapp.com

We spent $1000to acquire

http://teambox.commuch morememorable

go single currency if you can

recurring billing is painful

cash is also an i18n issue

a bad gateway will cost you money

paypal

yourcustomers

legal costs are friction

iterate quickly

from “Minimum Viable Product”

to “Maximum Buyable Product”...

and start sales as soon as you can

selling is simple

sales is like sex

let them find you

acquisition

a first good impression, get their number

activation

the next dates...

retention

time to cash in for your effort

revenue

let friends talk about you

referrals

because that’s the easiest way to your next phone number..

activation

AARRR!

AARRR!Acquisition

Activation

Retention

Revenue

Referral

From Dave McClure’s“Startup Metrics for Pirates”

Acquisition

Activation

Retention

Revenue

Referral

the whole funnel!stolen from Dave McClure’s “Startup Metrics for Pirates”

CAC

LTV

ARPU

Churn

Cohort

Virality rate

Customer Acquisition Cost

LifeTime Value of a client

Average Revenue Per User

% of Clients you lose a month

Evolution of users who signed up

Users invited per user

metrics you should watch

and now for a chart

watch your users grow and go away

cohort and churn

LTV > CAC

if you get this, you win

you spend $25 to get a customer, she pays you $50

Scalable pricingMore features

ViralityFreemium

High churnLow satisfaction

High touch sales processOutbound marketing

LTV CAC

things to watch to make that happen

If each user invites at least one more user, you win

Invitations sent * % accepted > 1

virality is, like, free users

keep track of your key performance indicators:

signups, clients, % of conversion, etc

build your dashboards early on

don’t underestimate support costs

once you’ve found your model, build processes for ittime to optimize and scale

public service announcement

ruby || jsdevelopers

Teambox is looking for people in Barcelona and San Francisco

serious javascriptas in node.js or backbone

you should probably follow me on twitter

@micho

you should totally check out my product

Teambox