#16 SaaSification revamped. Expectations. What's new.
December 15th, 2023
I wrote the last edition of the SaaSification newsletter more than two years ago. I have good “stories” for having discontinued it for so long but what it counts now is that it’s a great time to get back with the same passion to share.
Topics
The two key topics of my content are the same I have been passionate for a long time. They are now more relevant than ever:
How to build and scale “healthy” go-to-market strategies and engines if you are a SaaS startup or scaleup selling primarily into Mid-Market and Enterprise.
How the “SaaS mindset does not apply to startups only but also to big corporates willing to reshape the way they operate, identify the right KPI’s and re engineer processes to ensure consumers are always at the heart of everything we do”, as the CEO of a public listed consumer brand company said after having worked two years together.
What you can expect
This newsletter will bring on average once per month in your inbox my latest blog articles plus insights, learnings and real stories of SaaS (Software as a Service) startups & scaleups as well as companies in traditional industries adopting SaaS go-to-market models. It’s food for thought about Customer-Centric Growth and Efficient Recurring Revenue Models.
Why read and recommend.
If I look back at the 15- 20 businesses I’ve been working with in the last 10 years, the last two years have finally brought the validation I was aiming for. I consider the “diversity” of these experiences as my USPs (Unique Selling Points):
The four out of four B2B scaleups I’ve been involved with higher intensity (in three of these as CRO as a Service since 2018), they all got acquired between 2022 and 2023. Woffu, Tiendeo, Wide Eyes and Whisbi. What % of startups get an exit in the tech industry?
In 2021 I worked hand in hand with the CEO and the leadership team of the marketplaces Japanese group Lifull Connect (was at $50M+ in yearly revenue and profitable) for building a new SaaS business in Asia and Latin America from scratch. I supported the build up of value proposition and sales motion, working also on the ground with the sales and marketing teams. In two years the SaaS revenue went from $0 to 8-digit ARR.
In 2021-2022 I worked closely with the CEO and Founder of San Francisco-based B2B Enterprise SaaS Cloud Academy in the growth journey from $15M to $30M in ARR, linked to his earn-out after having sold the company to a Private Equity firm. Spotting issues, redefining processes and data, hiring successful AEs and SVP Sales USA.
A few early stage (Seed) startups I’ve supported by building on the court the Fundamentals of their go-to-market engine from scratch (GTM focus, value proposition & pitch choreographies, Sales and Customer Success playbooks and teams) are keeping on doing great in their journey:
Frenetic, Enterprise SaaS platform for AI-driven magnetics component production, which I supported at the start in 2020 and more recently in early 2023, just raised $12M Series A to keep on growing in US.
In 2019 I had great time working with BDEO to bring efficiency and higher margins to the insurance industry through Visual AI, and also with Caravelo to bring subscriptions to the Airline industry. They both raised in 2023 from VCs to keep on executing their mission and I look forward to their exit at the right time.
Out of the tech sector, since 2022 I’ve been intensively working with a public listed consumer brand company, British American Tobacco. I drove a successful implementation of my SaaS framework for the scaleup of their reduced-harm GLO platform, working hand in hand with the Marketing Leadership Team of Central-South Europe, the CEO of Italy and their marketing and brand activation agencies. The implementation of the framework has been instrumental in increasing retention rate substantially and move to the next level the way the company is building a "true" customer-centric approach for customer acquisition and adoption, in order to move smokers to better alternatives to cigarettes that reduce harm.
Content of this new SaaSification newsletter edition
For this first edition after so much time, I thought it was a good time to update the articles of my Blog that received more views and engagement since I started to write in 2020. There are 4 that stands out. For the next editions I have a few new articles I’m drafting that I trust you’ll find interesting.
I've also manually collected news in the last 12 months about companies and industries that are adopting SaaS-like approaches to grow healthily and become more Customer-Centric. I’m sharing these insights below.
If you find my project interesting and useful, please share with your network and recommend your peers to subscribe to this newsletter.
I count on your support.
Thanks!
Luigi
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on pexels.
From my Blog:
How to deal with the fear of devaluation, write-off or survival without exit.
What have been the consequences of the 2020-2021 VC bubble and its unreasonable valuations? What should be the plan to regenerate value? Link.
The Fundamentals of Go-To-Market Playbooks
I wrote a Linkedin post in Summer 2023 to share how too many SaaS B2B startups and scaleups are still following a Go-To-Market Playbook that is obsolete although it used to work well in 2015-2020.
Nevertheless there are some basic “Fundamentals” of a Go-To-Market Playbook that do not change with time or specific circumstances or industries. Link.
How the most valuable consumer brands become SaaS-like “true” Customer-Centric organisations
SaaS go-to-market best practices provide a great framework for customer centricity. Nike and Starbucks are as SaaS as Microsoft and Adobe. What are the Mantras to become SaaS-like? Link.
Game Plan for a Healthy Go-To-Market in early-stage B2B SaaS
For gaining traction in Middle Market and Enterprise in B2B SaaS you need a game plan of 4 Pillars and its 10 main Fundamentals. Link.
News on SaaSed-up companies
It took Nike 7 years to hit $1M in revenue. Now they make $1M every 10 minutes. Growing fast matters, but growing for a long time matters more.
Nike has been one of the first companies to adopt SaaS-like customer-centric GTM models up to the point to hire their current CEO, John Donahoe, from a SaaS company, Service Now. I found this linkedin post and podcast quite interesting.
Amazon expands healthcare push with One Medical benefits for Prime members
Prime members in the US who opt in will have access to unlimited, on-demand virtual healthcare via One Medical, the subscription-based group that Amazon acquired last year for $3.9bn. Link.
Amazon is also testing grocery subscription service for Prime members. Link.
News on SaaSing-up companies
In October 2020 I shared in this newsletter that Pret A Manger had launched a subscription model in UK. It seems that the experiment worked out and the company is scaling the model to other countries. LINK.
Rising Stars
Do you know Vendr? They raised a series B of 150M$. It’s a real-time database of thousands of negotiation insights, collected from a community of customers and negotiation experts. For finance and procurement leaders, this means access to the art of the possible for every SaaS negotiation, to maximize outcomes. They want to fix sales by making sure that software buyers and sellers have equal access to information. I found it quite interesting.
SaaS
Amazon and Microsoft under investigation.
UK’s CMA competition authority will conduct an investigation into ‘hyperscaler’ cloud market share. Amazon and Microsoft dominate, obviously, so they’ll be looking for abuses (and we might get some interesting data)”. Link.
The gurus of Product-Led-Growth are in trouble.
Product-Led-Growth (PLG) framework for SaaS VC-backed startup has not delivered. OpenView, one of the most influential VCs following the PLG wave, laid off most of its staff and will no longer make new investments. Link.
AI Agents as a Service
AI agents will democratise services that today are too expensive for most people.
This recent article by Bill Gates is easy to understand and helps visualise how the future belongs to Agents as a Service. Link.
Interesting reads 📖
Is the growth of subscriptions in several industries creating inequities?
Interesting perspective in this article about the risk that the economy-wide transition to subscriptions may take away consumer choice — and it can exacerbate the existing inequities in the way we shop. Link.
Customers’ forgetfulness when it comes to subscriptions can boost companies’ revenues by up to 200%.
This is according to economists at Stanford and Texas A&M. Link.
Every company is a software company. Finally a Big Three consulting firm finally realise SaaSification is a “big thing”
Also big consultancy firms like McKinsey start to realise there is a big opportunity in helping traditional industries and consumer brands adopt SaaS models. Link.