Should You Kill a SaaS Startup?

So, you’re considering killing a SaaS startup. Stop and reconsider.

01:17

Jul 31, 2015
77 Views

For Jason Lemkin, founders and investors kill SaaS ideas too soon. Listen to the reasons why he takes this highly unusual stance.

Transcript

I have pretty controversial views here. I don’t feel that you should ever kill something once you have those 10 unaffiliated customers. Once you have 10 people that you have never met or heard of that by your product, even if it’s just for 20 bucks a month. Okay, 20 bucks a month times 10 customers-- $200 a month, like that’s not making anybody the next Elon Musk or Marc Benioff.

But if this is your passion and your dedicated, if you can get 10, do you think there is any chance you can get 20? Of course you can, right of course you can. I can tell you there's almost 100% chance that you can get 100, and there is more than a 1% chance that you can get 1,000, when you get 10.

So I think in SaaS, people quit too early, they kill things too early. Now, if you never get 10 unaffiliated customers after whatever, six months, 12 months, 18 months, 180 months, however long and however much patience you have as we were, then kill it. But don’t kill it at 10 because product market is harder than ever.

Published Date: Jul 31, 2015

Author: Michael Krigsman

Episode ID: 233