1. Iterate or Die: Life in a Startup David Cummings davidcummings.org

2. Iterating is a key for startup success. |0|

3. But how do you measure success? |0|

4. Being a little crazy helps. |0|

5. A good market and agile people are needed. |0|

6. Iterating is natural and healthy. |0|

7. Learning what doesn't work is critical. |0|

8. Hannon Hill was started in late 2000. |1|

9. SaaS is a great business model. |1|

10. The only problem? We were a failure. |1|

11. The market wasn't accepting of SaaS. |1|

12. $30/month was expensive to prospects. |1|

13. Customers needed significant help. |1|

14. We had to change our business model. |1|

15. Installed software seemed right. |2|

16. Low sales weren't sustainable. |2|

17. We finally got our big break in 2001. |2|

18. It was time to build something new. |2|

19. Changing directions was easy. |2|

20. The next product was a fancy CMS. |2|

21. We had no idea if we'd be successful. |3|

22. There was no clear market leader. |3|

23. Customer-driven development is best. |3|

24. Eating your own dog food helps. |3|

25. We launched and won an award. |3|

26. A good product doesn't equal sales. |3|

27. We only sold one license in 2003. |3|

28. Learning to sell was our next step. |3|

29. Cold calling seemed the most logical. |4|

30. 1,000 calls only resulted in four demos. |4|

31. We needed a solid value proposition. |4|

32. We needed reference customers. |4|

33. We need name recognition. |4|

34. Agencies seemed obvious. |4|

35. Agencies didn't work. |4|

36. Agencies make money off their time. |4|

37. PPC ads proved to be our next break. |4|

38. Sales in 2004 pointed to higher ed. |5|

39. Higher ed. needed our product. |5|

40. We could manage multiple sites. |5|

41. Our simple pricing was attractive. |5|

42. Naturally we didn't plan it that way. |5|

43. We were getting close to success. |5|

44. In 2005, we went back to cold calling. |5|

45. I was the sales engineer and manager. |5|

46. Sales tripled and then doubled. |5|

47. We're now one of the top vendors. |5|

48. Success came down to a few things. |5|

49. We never thought of giving up. |5|

50. We made decisions quickly. |5|

51. We loved our product and customers. |5|

52. Iterating is critical for success. |5|

53. Thank You Questions? [email_address] Blog: davidcummings.org