My key takeaways from SaaStr Annual 2019
For the last one and a half weeks, we have been in San Francisco and San Jose to visit some of our customers and attend the SaaStr Annual conference. SaaStr Annual is the biggest gathering of entrepreneurs and leading employees of the SaaS industry and therefore a natural place to be for us. It’s always great to learn from others who are much further in the journey and to take valuable to-dos back home. As the conference is such a defining event for the industry, I want to summarize a few things I learned and the general feeling I got from talking to others.
Cloud/SaaS businesses are growing like crazy
One of the most interesting talks was the “State of the cloud 2019” report by Bessemer Venture Partners. They showed how public cloud companies are on the path to 1 trillion USD in market cap, which happens much quicker than expected years ago. This proves that cloud and SaaS companies are becoming more mainstream although there is still a big portion of old-school software around.
They also highlighted that there are now over 55 private cloud/SaaS unicorns, up from exactly 0 ten years ago.
The flywheel is the new funnel
A big part of the sessions covered topics around marketing, sales and especially lead generation. There was a big tendency towards introducing a new model of thinking about the funnel. Brian Halligan, Hubspot CEO and Founder, explained the new approach of thinking about lead generation as a flywheel. The idea is that customer marketing becomes much more important, especially when word-of-mouth drives a big portion of new customers and revenues.
I like this idea as it shows the compounding value of building a great product, one of our core pillars at quintly. If we serve our existing customers in the best possible way, it will not only reduce churn and increase long-term growth, but it will also drive new business in a big way. Although we are already on that path for quite some time, it shows we need to double down on giving the stage to our customers and let them tell their stories. With paid acquisition prices going up, this can open a new opportunity to generate a healthy and long-term growth.
It was interesting to see that the flywheel approach can apply to many areas. In one talk by Amazon Web Services, it was mentioned in a way that lowering prices increases the traffic which allows generating cost savings which again drives lower prices. Thinking about this more deeply, it quickly becomes clear it’s worth thinking about more applications of the model for all of our teams.
Remote culture and heavy growth
One talk I found fascinating was by Seth Shaw, Chief Sales Officer at Invision, as they grew to over 100 million USD in ARR without having a physical office. I learned important lessons on how to build a culture that can work no matter where we are in the world. Seth is a strong believer that a fully remote model works much better compared to a hybrid model where only parts of the company work remotely. It’s definitely an interesting concept and something I will explore further.
New generation of cloud/SaaS with no vendor lock-in
Mikkel Svane, the CEO and founder of Zendesk, talked about a new generation of cloud apps that don’t have a vendor lock-in and therefore are much more open for integrations and future changes in demands. It will be interesting to see how this will develop and if Zendesk’s strategy of going broad into more and more areas will pay off with this approach.
Customer-centric thinking
In a talk by Sandy Carter, VP at Amazon Web Services, I could learn more about real customer centricity. It’s so important to listen to the customer for the problems and not just implement a solution because it’s a cool technology. One concrete step Amazon introduced internally is to write a press release for a new feature before starting the coding for the project. This forces thinking fully about the value proposition upfront and even about concrete things customers would say when they use the new feature.
Product offering for SaaS companies increasing
Like the last years, it was interesting to see that the number of vendors exhibiting in the sponsor area is getting bigger and bigger. This shows that the SaaS industry is growing more and more so it creates a whole industry serving the needs of these companies. Pretty much like inception, SaaS companies offering a SaaS product to SaaS companies.
Knowledge sharing with a great bunch of people
Besides all the talks it was amazing to talk with other founders and people close to the industry. We all face similar challenges in our daily mission to grow our companies, so it helps a lot to share these challenges with others. The SaaStr Annual is perfect for this as it brings together people from all around the world. The SaaS industry feels like a big family where everyone is open to sharing their learnings.
Summary
To sum it up, it was really a great trip, both because of visiting our customers but also because of a great conference. Sometimes I ask myself if these trips are worth it, but when it’s over it definitely pays back with a big multiple. We will definitely be back next year, and we will also visit other European SaaS conferences like SaaStock, which is happening in Dublin towards the end of the year.
