September 1, 2020

August has been a month full of interesting news about tech and non-tech companies moving towards SaaSification.

The highlights of this edition:

Apple to launch subscription bundles soon.
A US bakery-café chain with 2,000 stores launched unlimited coffee subscription and signed up 1 million customers in one month .
Is e-bike as a service the new competitor of Uber in urban cities?
Why there are two types of companies in the world now: the ones that know they are a SaaS (Software as a Service) business and the ones that haven't realized it yet.
Why the New York Times is not a newspaper anymore. It’s a SaaS company.
What it takes to build digital subscription products, which KPIs and best practices you should focus on for collaboration between Product, Content and Customer facing teams

Read more why I’m writing this newsletter. Link

Read the archive of previous issues. Link

Manually curated by @luigimallardo

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News on SaaSed-up companies 🗞

The New York Times looks much more like a SaaS company than a newspaper. Most of traditional media is not waking up—and probably will never wake up. But organizations like the Times have eventually responded aggressively and have caught up. In this interview NYT CEO Mark Thomson talks about how a 170-year-old news brand has been transforming into a global, digital-subscription-first powerhouse ahead of the competition, in just a few years.

"The psychology inside the Times and other newspapers was that all you had to do was get a bigger audience and transfer the wonderful economics of print advertising to digital. I didn’t buy that. I think digital can be useful. I think it’s an important adjunct source of revenue. But I never thought it would save the Times. It had to be subscriptions". "What we didn’t know in 2012 was how rapidly Netflix and Spotify and others were going to habituate users". Link.

News on SaaSing-up companies 📈

Panera, an American chain store of bakery-café fast casual restaurants with over 2,000 locations, implemented an unlimited coffee subscription for $8.99/month and created a monthly recurring revenue model for their business. They signed up over a million subscribers in the first month. How? Because no one wants to pay $300/month at Starbucks for lattes in the midst of a recession... Link.

Apple to Launch ‘Apple One’ Subscription Bundle soon. A Bloomberg report states that Apple will be releasing a subscription bundle, “Apple One,” this October. This bundle will have tiers that offer different services, with the more expensive tiers offering more services. Rumors also suggest that Apple is working on a new subscription service that will provide consumers with virtual fitness classes that will supposedly rival classes from Peloton and Nike. This approach is likely to be applauded by Wall Street, which craves businesses that generate recurring revenue streams. Link.

Rising Stars

Is e-bike as a service the new competitor of Uber in urban cities? Link.

Interesting reads 📖

There are two types of companies in the world now: the ones that know they are a SaaS (Software as a Service) business and the ones that haven't realized it yet. This is the message that we have been giving since 2018 at the Owners' Scaleup Program at IE Business School. In this article (in Spanish) Joe Haslam, Executive Director of the Program, explains why. Link.

Podcasts and Webinars 🎬

What it takes to build digital subscription products, which KPIs and best practices you should focus on for collaboration between Product, Content and Customer facing teams. If you're building a subscription offering, you'll love this interview with the Chief Product Officer at Thrive Global, a fast-growth scaleup that provides behavior change technology and media to support individuals struggling with stress and burnout. Link.

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#5 Apple launching subscription bundles. How…