25%.
That’s the magic number you gotta obsess over.
At least when it comes to your trial to paid conversions.
If you’ve yet to have a virtual drink clink with your team for hitting that benchmark… Read More
Growth Engine
Ever hear of a guy named David Sacks?
He has a crazy gift.
Essentially, he doesn’t know how to get involved in a startup and NOT have it turn into a billion dollar success story.
We’re talking about…
… Paypal (sold to ebay for 1.5B)
… Yammer (sold to Microsoft for 1.2B)
… dozens of companies he was an angel investor in (Airbnb, Facebook, Uber)
He’s as close to a “tech oracle” as there is… Read More
Leadpages used *this* strategy to scale their growth at a ridiculous rate.
So did my company Flowtown.
As well as a recent SaaS Academy client who hired an army of over two thousand “salesmen” to promote his accounting software… for free.
If you haven’t caught on…
We’re talking about strategic partnerships.
Partnerships are one of the fastest and most efficient ways of scaling your software business.
It’s essentially outsourcing your customer acquisition… and only paying a pre-negotiated commission if the user converts.
Predictable acquisition costs? Read More
I was recently working with a SaaS Academy client who had a serious churn problem.
So serious that he was letting 18% of his accounts disappear without a fight.
Couple that with skyhigh acquisition costs and flatlining expansion revenue… and let’s just say that this company was playing with some serious fire.
“Scale” wasn’t a word you could use with a straight face.
Make no mistake… Read More
Have you ever tried to collect a case study only to find yourself stumbling over the “ask” before mercifully aborting mission?
Yep.
Happens to just about every SaaS founder.
Even when we get epic results for our customers…
… asking for a case study turns otherwise confident SaaS founders into the chess club captain trying to ask the head cheerleader out to prom.
*awkwaaard*
But it doesn’t have to be. Read More
“Help me. Help you.”
Nope…
Not talking about that epic one liner from Jerry Maguire.
I’m talking about the inner dialogue your customers experience whenever they try to refer your product to their tribe.
One of the EASIEST ways to acquire a new B2B Saas customer is to have your current users refer you at scale.
Just ask Dropbox 😉
Only problem is… most companies make that process painfully hard and complicated. Read More
Has a customer ever punched you in the face?
No?
Has it ever felt like that?
Every time I’ve had a customer sign-up, stick around for a few months, and cancel (aka churn) it sure feels that way.
It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been building businesses, nothing frustrates me more than having a customer that I spent a ton of time, energy and money attracting, leave because we missed the mark.
What’s different about my approach is that I take 110% accountability for customers churning. Read More
Your product or service tells a story.
It either tells one that’s clear and coherent, highlighting the challenges you’re most ready to solve for your ideal customer…
Or it confuses them.
The story you’re telling depends on whether you’re being thoughtful in the process, or building it blindly.
And the difference between the two has a massive impact on your prospect’s ability to buy from you. Read More
Every startup wants to grow fast.
And while there’s value in modelling the tactics and strategies that have fueled the rapid success of companies they look up to…
There’s even MORE value in identifying the core, underlying principles that serve as the backbone for that success.
Over the years, I’ve identified 5 core elements behind the perfect software business.
I learned one of them directly from Jason Fried @ Basecamp.com when I visited Chicago to take his workshop over 10 years ago.
Another from guys like Mike McDerment @ Freshbooks.com, and Ben Chesnut @ MailChimp.com, both early mentors of mine who inspired a lot of the work I create at Flowtown.
In today’s world you see companies like Slack.com, and Intercom.com (disclosure: I’m an investor) shooting for the moon and you wonder:
“How did they do it?” Read More
Have you ever struggled with your marketing website?
Sure, they have templates and super slick WYSIWYG editors.
But that doesn’t deal with the hard part:
The content.
WTF do I put on those pages?
How do I turn lorem ipsum into monthly recurring revenue?
How many pages should I have on my site?
What should those pages be?…
I need a blog, right?… right?…. right?
(read below to find out) :p Read More
