I agree. Something to add for anyone starting a B2B SaaS, here's 2 big take aways:
- Pick an uncomfortably narrow niche and stick with it until you reach $10k-$100k MRR
- There are 4 main growth channels:
1. Inbound
2. Outbound
3. Partners
4. Ads
Pick only 1 for the first 12 months and master it.
If you're pre-revenue, I'd suggest to stay away from inbound & ads. You didn't prove yet there's demand for the problem you solve and that you provide value. And SEO takes too much time to get ROI back.
I personally suggest to start with outbound. Identify your niche, start reaching out (LinkedIn/emails/groups/forums/etc) and speaking with them. Get their advice on how big the problem you think is and how you're solving it. After giving their advice, if it is a valid problem, they'll be interested to learn more about your product and give it a go.
(Ideally do demos/onboarding for every customer <$10k MRR. You'll get invaluable amount of feedback by doing this)
Partners is another great channel for early stages B2B SaaS because of very low CAC. Find companies that share same customer profile and where each of you can provide value to each other.
P.S. - Going back to Inbound. SEO is not only inbound channel. One that is being very big right now and I recommend is LinkedIn. E.g. lemlist added 1m ARR via LinkedIn, just by building their personal brands there, posting and sharing a lot of valueable content. While doing outbound, you can also start posting on LinkedIn and building a network of your ideal customers and position yourself as an expert in the niche/problem you solve.
What do you mean by inbound and outbound? Based on 'outbound' description, I can sort of guess 'going out to find people' vs. 'waiting for people to come in', but that can't be quite right because then I don't see the distinction between ads and inbound, or rather surely ads is a (dominating!) subset of the latter?
Outbound - reaching out to people, whether it's email, cold calling, linkedin, what not. This is your sales team (SDR).
Inbound - blogs, vlogs, podcasts, guides, templates, checklists, webinars, content, answering quora, guest blogging, case studies, organic LinkedIn/social media. It's all about people stumbling on your content/online presence whether directly or indirectly, and then coming to you.
Ads - is a completely different beast. You're actively spending money to advertise your product.
> surely ads is a (dominating!) subset of the latter?
- Pick an uncomfortably narrow niche and stick with it until you reach $10k-$100k MRR
- There are 4 main growth channels:
1. Inbound
2. Outbound
3. Partners
4. Ads
Pick only 1 for the first 12 months and master it.
If you're pre-revenue, I'd suggest to stay away from inbound & ads. You didn't prove yet there's demand for the problem you solve and that you provide value. And SEO takes too much time to get ROI back.
I personally suggest to start with outbound. Identify your niche, start reaching out (LinkedIn/emails/groups/forums/etc) and speaking with them. Get their advice on how big the problem you think is and how you're solving it. After giving their advice, if it is a valid problem, they'll be interested to learn more about your product and give it a go.
(Ideally do demos/onboarding for every customer <$10k MRR. You'll get invaluable amount of feedback by doing this)
Partners is another great channel for early stages B2B SaaS because of very low CAC. Find companies that share same customer profile and where each of you can provide value to each other.
P.S. - Going back to Inbound. SEO is not only inbound channel. One that is being very big right now and I recommend is LinkedIn. E.g. lemlist added 1m ARR via LinkedIn, just by building their personal brands there, posting and sharing a lot of valueable content. While doing outbound, you can also start posting on LinkedIn and building a network of your ideal customers and position yourself as an expert in the niche/problem you solve.