SaaS founders meetup in FLN 😉

Some quick & short notes for those SaaSholic’s out there that couldn’t attend:

Event Opening — Patrick Arippol, Managing Director of Venture Capital at DGF Investimentos

• Welcome message!
• Small event (150 people), focused on creating a tight network for Brazilian SaaS founders and the possibility to get to know foreign people in the industry as well;
• Brought to you by DGF INVESTIMENTOS, Redpoint Ventures, @Resultados Digitais

The State of SaaS in Brazil, & Panel of Key Eco-system Catalyzers — Diego Gomes, Renato Valente, Flavio Pripas

• Amazing discussion with two community connectors, running some of the most exciting ecosystem hubs: Cubo (by itau) and Wayra ( by Telefónica);
• The discussion was around the ecosystem’s recent maturation and data from the Brazil SaaS Landscape Research;
• Entrepreneurs are getting better and better. These days they know their key metrics from day 1 😉 ;
• Sorry, few notes here as I was on stage ;(

Best Practices for Highly Efficient Product Development Cells: Panel Discussion — Manoel Lemos, RPEV, Bruno Ghisi, CTO @Resultados Digitais | Osvaldo Santana, CTO @OList

• Both RD & Olist use squads, the model pioneered by Spotify;
• They chose squads to be able to scale product on multiple different areas, at a faster pace;
• Osvaldo had to rebuild the team from scratch, focusing on processes, to get more experienced developers. Their hometown, Curitiba, was a hard place to find experienced technical talent, so he had to go remote. Today he has developers all over Brazil and even abroad. Scrum, OKRs and other processes keep the machine running tight. For Osvaldo, remote is a mindset. It requires discipline, process and communication. They use Jira and focus on having a very clear visibility on all team activities;
• Product/Engineering as separate orgs: Some companies split and some don’t. RD right now does not and both areas are under Bruno. Olist has it split. Each model has its advantages and problems. At RD, PMs are always looking for problems, engaging with customers. Once a problem is found, they do a lot of benchmarking and try to validate the solution as early as possible with the customers. For Bruno, Product is responsibility of the role company. Everyone can open tickets, but they have to describe the problem and not the solution.

SaaS Metrics Benchmarks — Nathan Latka, CEO of SaaS Database GetLatka.com

• Brough some amazing metrics from his SaaS companies database. Super cool, check it out!;
• Average ARR per employee in the dataset: $127k. Top companies, such as Segment do more than $1m in ARR per employee. What they do differently is that they have one variable pricing metric that they optimize for. For Segment it is events;
• The most efficient companies from his database raised less than $1m;
• Hot space: Call tracking/Phone infrastructure tech companies are hot right now, growing super fast;
• Bootstrapped companies are not able to do T2D3, but “leveraged” companies can do that;
• Here’s a tactic that works well in the US now: buy your competitors churn. Offer a cheaper product that does a little less. Reach out to your competitors, offer to buy their churned accounts;
• In US, the cheapest money right now is lighter capital, where you get non dilutive financing based on your ARR. It’s venture debt, but without equity conversion;
• In Brazil, the math does work for entrepreneurs, but in Nathan’s impression, not so much for the VCs, because it is a slower growth. You have to grow fast to be a VC backed company;
• Annual contracts can get you lazy on your customers. Focus on finding your utility metric and improving it to grow as fast as Segment;

Structuring Different Types of Sales Machines & Go-to-Market Strategies: —Jacco van der Kooij, Founder of Winning by Design

• “I’m a little worried about Brazil. I already worked selling for LatAm and I’m seeing more and more bullshitters talking about stuff that they don’t know, that they haven’t achieved. You’ll get a lot of talking people giving talks, a lot of book authors. You should focus on looking after people who have done it. We’re not gonna be able to tell you how to do it. You have to figure it out.”. Opens for questions:
• Listen to your customers. Don’t sell what you built, listen. Your future customers will buy because of what your current customers can’t do. Talk to them, stay close, it’s the most important thing;
• In the year 2000, post bubble-pop, SaaS was starting. In 2003 markets were doing badly, but Salesforce was succeeding inventing a new market. The VSB market, very small businesses;
• By the 2008 crisis, they were unstopable, because they were not capex, it was now opex. Leads were cheap and abundant. Try doing a big email campaign today. It won’t work as well. This era is gone;
• These thirty something reps are thinking that talking to C-level execs is something given. Focus on real understanding your customer. This can’t be trained. This can’t be teached.
• Let’s talk now, 2017: Customers are buying faster, paying more. But you need to listen to them. You’re in a small bubble and to get out of it, you need to go outside, engage and learn;
• Ask people: Why did they buy? Go deep into the real reason, not the superficial one. This is where the future growth is. This is the pain;
• VCs need volume and speed. Don’t take the money. Go build the company. If you take money, speed is the name of the game.
• Build layers of revenue based on reps experience. Older teams should have better performance. As they get more experience they sell more;
• Segment your Reps. This will speed up your companies sales;
• People buy for 2 reasons: something bad can happen; it will increase my companie’s revenue. But the focus must be in the pain. Understand your persona’s pain point and build a pitch based on that.

Scaling Your SaaS Sales Machine: — , Farlan Dowell, VP of Sales at Rainforest QA

(Notes by Pedro Filizzola, big thx!)

• From zero to 10 million in Revenue. ACV: from 10k to 72k. Annual deals: from zero to 90%;
• Key points to look for in a VP of Sales: raise ACV, raise revenue/lead, process repeatable, training, reduce sales cycle;
• Elimiate your trials and focus on building a strong CS team;
• He positioned the product as a Platform, not a tool. This helped add value and raise prices;
• Pitching to the right persona helps get more revenue. But the reps need to focus on what matters for who is buying;
• Don’t do a POC. Only if the deal is big or if the customer agrees to pay for it.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay until the end. I was specially curious about the international panels. If anyone has notes to share, please send them over. I’d love to take a look and attach them here 😉

TALKS I MISSED (notes welcome)

• Current US & Global SaaS Trends: — Alexander Theuma, Founder of SaaStock
• Customer Success Best Practices: — @Allison Pickens, Chief Customer Officer at @Gainsight
• International Expansion Cases — Alcyr Araujo, CEO/Founder of Mosyle Manager | Gabriel Engel, CEO/Founder of Rocket.chat | Geraldo Thomaz , co-CEO/Founder of VTEXVTEX | Bianca Martinelli , VP at @ResultadosDigitais (moderator)
• Challenges of Taking Companies Global from Outside the US — @Mikkel Svane, CEO/Founder of Zendesk

See ya’ll next year!

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