Would you believe that we’re already towards the end of the first month of the new year? Be that as it may, it’s also time for the fourth edition of our weekly roundup that brings everything that happened in the fast-paced world of SaaS at one place. So without further ado, let’s begin.
News of the week
Frontify raises $22.3M to help businesses manage how their brands and logos get used
For a brand, it’s important to ensure that its logos are properly used by others. Enter Frontify which solves this problem by ensuring that everyone in the team has access to the latest brand assets. The company dubs itself as a pioneer of a new category called Brand Management, and also provides integrations for design tools like Figma and Adobe XD.
SaaS startup Uniplatform Tech raises undisclosed amount from Frontline Strategy Funds, SucSEED Ventures, others
SaaS is touching even traditional industries such as real estate. Multiplymyleads is a website that brings together real estate brokers, developers and builders as well as consumers at one place. The service also combines leads from multiple sources, and while currently, it’s operational in Hyderbad, will also expand to Delhi after its recent fundraise.
In numbers
SaaS funding in India crosses $1 billion for the first time in 2019; has shown a 20x increase since 2009
Related read: Huge opportunity for Indian SaaS companies make investors bullish
Must reads
From being spurned for a loan to creating a unicorn: the Girish Mathrubootham story
Freshworks is one of the most successful SaaS companies out of India, having raised ~$400million and on the way to reach $1billion in revenue soon. Girish Mathrubootham started the company back in 2010 as Freshworks to offer customer support, CRM, etc. to companies. It has come a long way since then, with its IPO planned in the next year.
Should your free edition… be even free-er?
As far as conventional wisdom goes, SaaS products shouldn’t offer too many features in their free plan so that users transition to the paid plans. However, if you look at the popular software like Slack and Zoom, then a case can be made for the free service to be really good to ensure a sticky use-case, which in long run, helps in converting them to paid subscribers too.
“B2B saas companies today are not driven by marketing, it’s driven by product first. Figure out your niche and while you’re building a product/service, build towards building a moat.” – Digbijoy Shukla, Head of Startup Ecosystem, @awscloud #YSInvestorSummit
— YourStory (@YourStoryCo) January 31, 2020
Listen to
CircleCI CRO Jane Kim on scaling up your sales managers: 5 mistakes new leaders make
This podcast is certainly not limited to the SaaS industry as it mentions 5 mistakes that any new leader is prone to make. Be it micromanaging, hiring wrong people or not knowing it all, it certainly offers some meaningful pointers.
The power of events for growing SaaS Startups with Jói Sigurdsson, CrankWheel
If you’re wondering whether going to events can be an effective acquisition strategy or not, then give this a listen. CrankWheel’s founder and CEO shares how his company uses it to reach potential users.
ClickFunnels: the $135 Million self-funded SaaS startup – with Dave Woodward
Meet ClickFunnels, a product that helps businesses in creating sales pages, landing pages, order forms and more… basically the entire sales funnel. What’s even more interesting about the company is the fact that it hasn’t raised any VC money, and is able to reach a significant amount of revenue by doing things differently.
Watch
How to use your SaaS growth ceiling for positive change
Dan Martell is a popular coach for SaaS businesses, and in this video, he talks about how to find your growth ceiling (https://www.nickelled.com/saas-resources/growth-ceiling-calculator/). He also guides how companies can ensure that their service can grow beyond the saturation point.
6 SaaS product onboarding mistakes made by 1000 companies
For a SaaS tool, user onboarding is one of the most important things. Watch this video to see the common mistakes that most companies do on the basis of research done for 1,000 SaaS services. From having no welcome screen to not having checklists, these are some of the easy-to-fix issues to ensure that you are able to create a better connection with your users.
