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a startup needs to do just three things to be successful: 1. Solve a problem or fulfill a need or want. 2. Develop a viable business model. 3. Tell a great story.
For a small monthly fee, I delivered a mobile app for any business on any budget. When I explained their national competitors were stealing market share with apps costing up to $100,000, they realized the chance of competing at a fraction of the cost was almost too good to be true.
can’t overstate how important it is to love what you do. Otherwise, what’s the point? You end up slaving away with no sense of purpose or achievement. You don’t always have to enjoy it, but you must love it all the same. When you love something, you embrace it, warts and all, which is how I survived those first few months of Bizness Apps without throwing my phone at the wall!
My cold-calling scheme had worked. I’d acquired around seventy customers and was generating around $2,000 to $3,000 per month in revenue ($39 per month per customer).
Product demos were our bread and butter. It’s what we lived and breathed every working day, so I’m proud to say we got a lot of attention.
writer’s adage, “show, don’t tell,” is as true for selling as it is for writing.
Scaling is all about distribution. You need to find the right channels, the right means, and the right cost.
You have to create your own chances. Importantly, chance favors action.
Why labor to build relationships with individual businesses when I could sell to the people who already had relationships with those businesses? It was the ideal distribution strategy: the right channel (Bizness Apps earned a global presence almost overnight), the right means (Raoul already had relationships with his customers), and the right cost (it cost us very little to white-label our technology).
entrepreneurship is about making your own luck, I mean it. The moment you commit to a business idea, commit to making it a reality no matter the challenges. Yes, there will be moments when you have to throw in the towel. But don’t think of these as failures. Think of them as opportunities to start again stronger than before.
the harder you work, and the longer you pursue your best ideas, the better your chances are of turning at least one of them into a multimillion-dollar phenomenon.
“If you ask for advice, you get investment. If you ask for investment, you get advice.”
CEOs have to fire themselves from everything—from sales to marketing to product development—and then delegate those tasks to other people.
We recruited for entry-level positions and then trained people up and let them carve out roles and increase their levels of responsibility as they learned what to do. I can’t overstate how much this impacted job satisfaction.
you’re there to hire a great team, create a great work environment, and then fend off everything that impedes your team’s progress.
If you want a strong, memorable brand, you need a strong, memorable story,
Bizness Apps, small businesses could create a customized app as good as anything the big players produced, but for a fraction of the time and cost.
Growth then becomes a function of the size of your target market and the number of salespeople you have.
money has never really motivated me. What got me out of bed was helping people, delighting customers, and making my employees happy. This, I think, is what made the company so successful in the first place.
2020, Amazon released HoneyCode, a mobile app builder powered by AWS, the same server architecture that powers most of the internet.
The basics of building a profitable business are the same today as they were thousands of years ago when the first chicken was bartered for a sack of rice.
The belief that your startup needs to be original kills entrepreneurship.
What’s more important is that you solve a problem and solve it well.
me all the multimillion-dollar founders, and I bet you every one of them has climbed to the top upon piles of broken ladders. If you’re scared to fail, you’re scared to succeed.
entrepreneurship is serial. It’s a journey where you learn from each successive venture until you’re happy to put the brakes on.
Making money is really just a byproduct of solving problems.
However, an angel investor diversifies to minimize losses and increase returns, while a traditional entrepreneur often chooses not to.
Not having millions to burn also makes you hungrier to find ways to improve organically, as opposed to attempting to spend your way out of problems and challenges.
Eric Ries, author of The Startup Way and founder of Lean Startup theory would put it, “Don’t be in a rush to get big; be in a rush to have a great product.”
the best time to raise capital is when you don’t actually need it (e.g., SquareSpace). It’s like dating: those who don’t seem to need a partner are often the most desirable. Seeking funding when you’re desperate leads to bad terms and “take it or leave it” partnerships. Coming from a place of strength, in contrast, leads to desirable terms, valuation, and top-flight partners.
A good brand story elevates you above the competition. While someone can copy your products or services, they can’t copy your brand.
keep your story simple. Maintain a sharp, lucid message throughout. It must be clear and easy to understand and told in your customers’ language. Use visuals to reinforce your messaging. Second, know your audience. Discover what your prospects and customers care about most. Take an MVP to market, and ask them for feedback. Stories work best when you elicit an emotion, so you must understand your buyers’ needs, wants, and pain points. Third, be consistent. Ensure that everyone in your business knows the story and that every channel you communicate through maintains the same message.
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finally, be personal. Add color and credibility to your story by including personal anecdotes people can relate to. Giving a little of your background humanizes both you and your brand.
People buy from people, so your business should h...
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Good stories spread like wildfire. Your customers will tell their friends and family. The press will write about you. And you’ll be asked to tell your story on blogs, podcasts, and maybe even TV. So if you want to rise above the competition in your field, start t...
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the competition is a treasure trove of data. You can try their products, read their content, study customer reviews and testimonials, and talk to CEOs, founders, and other industry leaders.
Seventy-eight percent of startups view networking, for example, as critical to their success.8 It helps get a snapshot of the market: what’s working, what’s not, who’s new, who’s leaving, and so on. You might also meet your future customers.
build your brand story about what sets you apart. When customers need you most, the quality, timing, and relevance of your message can improve the perception of your brand9, making a memorable experience for them. Sell your vision, not your products, since this is where you’ll make your mark.
how can you possibly sell successfully? Acknowledge competitors in your sales negotiations. Recommend customers speak to them or research their offerings. This might sound counterintuitive, but it creates trust and legitimacy. Nothing turns people off more than desperation. Customers will return if you’re worth it, and trust could even be the deciding factor.
Startups depend on their customers’ success, so by prioritizing that over everything else, we secured top-tier clients.
instead of talking about services or features, you discuss how to make your customers more successful.
Sales is a process of listening and helping the other person solve their problem. Use every available resource to help them achieve their goals, and you’ll mirror their success.
you should always document your sales process. Outline the behavior you expect from your sales team, as well as tried-and-tested methods from your best reps.
Customer acquisition costs (CAC), lifetime value per customer (LTV), visitor-to-lead ratio, lead-to-MQL/SQL ratio, MQL/SQL-to-demo ratio, demo-to-close rate (DTCR), ideal customer profiles (ICP), and more will vary across different sales channels
best investment you can make is in your team. Respect that, and you’ll go far.
Novelty Hundreds of thousands of startups are created and sold every year. Buyers are spoiled for choice, so to stand a chance of being acquired, yours needs to stand out due to your ARR, technology, or overall proposition. You don’t have to be unique, but you do have to be compelling.
The buyer makes a down payment. Since the repayment terms are shorter, the buyer must put down at least 25 to 35 percent of the purchase price19 as a down payment. Then a larger installment payment at the end, called a balloon payment, settles the debt. The buyer signs and files a promissory note. The promissory note is the legal contract that binds the buyer to the installment repayment plan.
agile SaaS businesses run at around 70 percent profit. That assumes you’re doing most of the work or you’ve found a way to outsource it cheaply (such as using remote teams).
when you’re looking at acquiring your first, you want to ask questions about customer numbers, growth, MRR, ARR, and churn rate to give you an insight into the health and future potential of the business.
Buying an existing SaaS business, however, is a much simpler path to profit. It doesn’t even need to be very big. All you need is to find something good that needs a little help. The missing element—be it marketing, brand, sales, product, or customer service—should align with your expertise
