This Live SaaS resource list is being built as we develop, launch and grow
a new product. At first there will only be a few links available to click in
this list but it will expand day by day.
What's unique about this SaaS resource list?
We'll list our current SaaS lessons learned by referencing the blog posts,
podcasts and videos we've read AND state how we're using those lessons learned
for a new product we're launching later in 2021.
What will it contain?
We'll do a Q&A for each resource, explain what we tried and learned and
the specific techniques we're using to develop the new product. Later we'll
use our newly built product itself to provide a unique new type of learning
experience.
What will you get out of this?
You'll see all the assumptions and adjustments we made to build this new
product and, if successful, see a rough blue print for product development and
marketing.
Who are we?
Upscope is an 8 person SaaS company based out of London which provides
no-download interactive screen sharing for support, sales and success teams.
What's the new product we're building?
It's a unique way to explain anything on the web. Right now people create
blogs, videos, help sections and more to explain things. This takes time and
effort. We believe we've found a new 100X simpler way. This idea came about
because our existing product "HelloScreen Co-Browsing" is live interactive screen
sharing for explaining things. However, not everyone is available for live
screen sharing so you also need automated guidance. This new extension to
HelloScreen Co-Browsing is the automated guidance part.
How have we broken down the resource list and why?
We first list the priority parts of our SaaS journey, each with a Q&A
session on lessons learned. Below that is a more conventional resource list.
Most important lessons learned
Positioning
Positioning correctly can mean the difference between 1X and
100X.
Go-to-market strategy
Go-to-market strategy does not equal marketing
strategy.
Enterprise sales
Enterprise SaaS sales is weird and obvious but first it's
weird.
Creating new products
Creating new products takes heart and
maths.
Talking to your customers
Talking to customers is the fastest way to
grow.
Total Addressable Market
You don't think about TAM that much early on but later it hits
home.
Security and sales
Bug bounties, ISO, HIPAA, SOC2, Audits and filling in security
forms.
Features and competition
Comparisons, moats, worrying about competition, your own
path.
Health scores
Why have them, what do they do to your
perception.
SaaS Metrics
The metrics we see quoted. The ones we
understand.
Funnels and ratios
In the early days we had no idea how many leads we
needed.
Content marketing and SEO
Time taken. Strategy. SEMRush.
Copywriting
APP, Bucket brigades, FAB, PAS, the 10
questions.
Pricing and value
SaaS pricing based on underlying
value.
Remote working
This takes dedicated effort and ownership as it's easy to half do
it.
Software we use and why
Intercom
Vitally
Salesforce
Oribi
SEMRush
Using Slack
Camtasia
RoamResearch
SaaS blogs to read
SaaStr
For Entrepreneurs
TomTunguz
SaaS podcasts to follow
SaaStr
A16Z
The Startup Chat
SaaS Twitter accounts to add to a list
Tomasz Tunguz
Jason Lemkin
David Sacks
If you're just starting
It's just chaos in the beginning of the SaaS development journey and there's
really no easy way around that sometimes. Below we'll capture what we did then
and what happened.
Our early marketing
Our early sales
Our early tech
Our early hiring
Our early support
Our early software
Our early team development
Mental models
This section will contain the underlying thought models we use. This stuff can
seem subjective but it's something we might think about daily when approaching
new or working on existing products.
What would this look like if it was easy?
The best part of Tim Ferris's Tools of Titans was the advice to ask yourself
"What would this look like if it was easy?" as that's a great mental model to
visualise other ways of building products without fighting obstacles we didn't
need to fight.
For example, we're building a new form of automated guidance for websites.
It's very tempting to imagine this vast system of features to make it happen.
However, if we think back from the outcome we want and also think "what would
it look like if this was easy" we suddenly realise we're putting up cliffs to
climb that we don't need to.
It does not mean it will be easy but it means we won't do it the extra hard
dumb way that we first imagine it'll require.
The market is the primary decision maker
In an age of automation and rapid distribution you can have two identical
teams, identical in skill, personality and luck, working in two different
markets and one can be earning 10 times more than the other.
The market you build a product for makes all the difference. You can be a
genius but if you're working in a tiny market, while you might eventually
pivot, you could spend years making less money than the idiots in the fast
growing market.
Our relationship with that market is then really important. We're either
making something we wish we had and it turns out millions of others want it
too or there are enough people directly or indirectly indicating they need a
product and we build it for them. The greater the number of people or the
value of fixing that problem, the greater the success.
You are not the chosen one. The market is the chosen one. Unless of course you
build a product for yourself and it just so happens that millions of others
have the same problem and buy it. In which case YOU ARE kinda THE CHOSEN ONE.
First principals and positioning
Elon Musk mentions 'First principals' thinking and Paul Graham says that first
principles thinking can cause damage to new startups. Why do they differ?
If you're launching a new cheap rocket ship where you need to find brand new
cheaper ways to build parts then thinking of rockets as just being made of
atoms that need to be re-arranged differently, as long they obey the laws of
physics, is probably right.
If you're building a new CRM then you don't need to re-arrange atoms, you
might need better positioning.
If you thought from first principles you might say a CRM is made of fields in
a database and a database is stored in memory and you've come up with a new
form of Random Access Memory (RAM) and that's why your CRM system is better.
The problem?
It's hard to sell a CRM called 'Advanced RAM CRM' where it is faster and
better but no-one really wanted that, they wanted a better gmail integration.
The advanced RAM CRM may in fact be better positioned as a new form of RAM
right? Seems obvious but it's strange how many times hard core devs have
worked on projects without thinking about positioning.
For our new product we are doing some ground up reconfigure the atoms type
thinking but most of the iterations are focused on making it simple to
understand and use and we've already researched potential markets or problems
to position against.
Thinking backwards
Thinking backwards is the now Amazon classic model of writing your press
release first and then working backwards to building that product. It's a
simple way to focus on outcomes.
It's strange how writing that press release consequently impacts the product's
front page header which impacts the customer experience the product provides
which impacts the features we prioritise to achieve that customer experience.
Inversion
“Many problems can’t be solved forward.” Charlie Munger. You might actually
live longer if you just avoid stupidity.
Example one. Rather than figuring out how to be innovative, we should look at
what might be stopping innovation in our company.
Example two. Rather than thinking about the best way to live, also consider
what will definitely be a bad way to live and could get us killed. Addiction
to narcotics kills a lot of people so don't do that.
Example three: How is our new "Flows" product going to succeed? There's a
number of different ways. However, let's also consider how we'd screw it up.
We'd screw it up by making it too complicated to use by thinking we need to
add all these features when they don't even understand what it is.
