Growth and software luminaries have preached for decades that "your competition doesn't matter...focus on your customers." While true in theory, Hiten Shah in his presentation at Price Intelligently's SaaSFest 2016, shows us that in the second wave of SaaS, your competition now matters. The shift took place because software is relatively easy to build now with infrastructure and marketing advances. You need to think about your customer first, but if you're not aware of your competition or doing things to circumvent them, you'll get left behind.
14. Competitive advantage
is a company's ability to
perform in one or more
ways that competitors
cannot or will not match.
Philip Kotler
Author and Consultant
15. How do you compete?
Before you write any code.
When you’re just starting out.
(with a new business or a new feature)
16. TODO:
Take the time to do
thorough research up front
It’s faster to research than to write code. Upfront depth prevents you from building the wrong things.
19. Use Sean Ellis’ product/market fit survey on competitors
survey.io
20. “If you’re above 40% of the people saying
they’d be very disappointed, I tend to say
you’ve found product/market fit, and if
you’re less than that, you haven’t.
SEAN ELLIS
21. We found out that Google Analytics has product/market fit
AND SO MUCH MORE!
22. It started with a single question:
What’s wrong with Google Analytics site overlays?
23. Back in 2005 we put up an early access landing page
30. • Built in one month from blank slate to release
• Used EC2, S3, Ruby and SQLite (yes, SQLite)
• Horribly slow and ugly code with bugs
• Took 7 servers for just 30 customers
The KISSmetrics MVP of 2009
34. The “ghetto” KISSmetrics MVP worked!!!
“I can already tell you that your
killer feature (for now, at least)
is retroactive funnel definition.
Brilliant.”
48. • We got Crazy Egg on S3 in 2006
• Costs were cut by 50% from switching to EC2
• Continuous improvement and new useful services
• Enables a faster pace of iteration
• Constant price reduction
Why I Love Amazon Web Services (AWS)
49. It’s now easier than ever
to create software.
And it’s gonna keep getting easier!
50. There are only two sources of
competitive advantage:
Ability to learn more about our
customers faster than the
competition.
Ability to turn that learning into
action faster than the
competition.
Jack Welch
Retired Business Executive
54. Use strategic interviewing to learn why people switch
Jobs-to-be-done Timeline
First
thought
Event 1
Event 2
Purchase
Passive
Consideration
Active
Consideration
Decision
A timeline must be completed for each
interview. The goal is to use the interview
technique to identify key events that have
caused them to hire the product.
55. “
There’s a rise in all-in-one SaaS
software and SaaS platforms.
59. HubSpot wants to manage all your inbound marketing
• Created a website grader to generate leads
by identifying a website’s short comings.
• Started by targeting small businesses that
weren’t technically savvy.
• Expanded the offering by creating a new
suite of SaaS sales tools.
62. Intercom wants to manage all customer communications
• Built a single customer communications
workflow that serves many different jobs.
• Started by targeting startups who weren’t
yet hooked on existing tools.
• Iterated into a platform with multiple
products.
65. Hotjar wants to provide every tool for website insights
• Put seven feedback and analytics tools
next to each other in a single interface.
• Started by offering a cheaper solution to
professionals who are already using
multiple tools.
• Their product roadmap is shared publicly.
66. SaaS product suites and platforms are making a comeback!
~$1.82B
market cap
$115.75M
funding
213,273
organizations
67. This is the one big idea for you to take action on, ASAP!
TODO:
Take the time to do
thorough research up front
It’s faster to research than to write code. Upfront depth prevents you from building the wrong things.