INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Last week at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, we hosted a panel on the Extra Crunch stage on “How to build a billion-dollar SaaS
company.” A better title probably would have been “How to build a successful SaaS company.”We spoke to Whitney Bouck, COO at
HelloSign; Jyoti Bansal, CEO and founder at Harness, and Neeraj Agrawal, a partner at Battery Ventures to get their view on how to move
through the various stages to build that successful SaaS company.While there is no magic formula, we covered a lot of ground, including
finding a product-market fit, generating early revenue, the importance of building a team, what to do when growth slows and finally, how to
resolve the tension between growth and profitability.Finding product-market fitNeeraj Agrawal: When we’re talking to the market, what
we’re really looking for is a repeatable pattern of use cases
So when we’re talking to prospects — the words they use, the pain point they use — are very similar from call to call to call? Once we
see that pattern, we know we have product-market fit, and then we can replicate that.Jyoti Bansal: Revenue is one measure of product-market
Are customers adopting it and getting value out of it and renewing? Until you start getting a first set of renewals and a first set of
expansions and happy successful customers, you don’t really have product-market fit
So that’s the only way you can know if the product is really working or not.Whitney Bouck: It isn’t just about revenue — the measures
of success at all phases have to somewhat morph
You’ve got to be looking at usage, at adoption, value renewals, expansion, and of course, the corollary, churn, to give you good health
indicators about how you’re doing with product-market fit.Generating early revenueJyoti Bansal: As founders we’ve realized, getting from
idea to early revenue is one of the hardest things to do
The first million in revenue is all about street fighting
Founders have to go out there and win business and do whatever it takes to get to revenue.As your revenue grows, what you focus on as a
Zero to $1 million, your goal is to find the product-market fit, do whatever it takes to get early customers
One million to $10 million, you start scaling it
Ten million to $75 million is all about sales, execution, and [at] $75 million plus, the story changes to how do you go into new markets and
things like that.Whitney Bouck: You really do have to get that poll from the market to be able to really start the momentum and growth
The freemium model is one of the ways that we start to engage people — getting visibility into the product, getting exposure to the
product, really getting people thinking about, and frankly, spreading the word about how this product can provide value.Photo: Kimberly
White/Getty Images for TechCrunch
