In Phase 1 (getting 10 unaffiliated customers) the #1 challenge is that everyone in the company, including founders, must be cross functional.
Startup Phase Challenges in a SaaS Company
Jason Lemkin explains why the number one challenge of Phase 1 (getting 10 unaffiliated customers) is everyone must perform multiple job functions, including sales.
Transcript
In SaaS, I think what people don’t appreciate if they haven’t done it before is how cross functional it is. So if you are doing B2C, you need to build something that’s cool and you need to send out (some how get something viral going?) to get more users. The challenge in SaaS is nowadays you need everything, you need sales, you need marketing, you need customer success, you need support, you need DevOps as well as engineering, and how the heck can you do that with (five backs?). Right, it’s impossible.
So somehow you have to find the way to probably do 3 to 4 more functions including sales than you ever thought you’d have to do.
Published Date: Jul 31, 2015
Author: Michael Krigsman
Episode ID: 231