The SaaS community is well-known for its collaborative environment. Perhaps it’s because the nature of the business is online, or maybe software entrepreneurs are just extra neighborly! Either way there was a lot of exciting information shared on Twitter yesterday through SaaScribe’s October twitter chat, #SaaSChats.
For those of you that are new to the term “twitter chat,” it’s a scheduled time in which people are invited to tweet to the same hashtag to join in a conversation. #SaaSChats took place yesterday from 2:00 - 3:00 ET. For those who are interested in getting involved in upcoming events, the next twitter chat will be held in December.
For today’s twitter chat, SaaScribe and L-Spark took turns answering ten questions about disruptions in the SaaS industry. Here is a recap of those questions, along with some of the participant’s answers.
Q1: “Before we get into it, let’s take a few moments to get acquainted - please introduce yourselves!”
There was a great turnout for #SaaSChats today, including SaaS information providers, business owners, marketers, and consultants. Each had interesting perspectives to add to the conversation.
*Click here to see all of the answers to question one.
Q2: “What industries have been totally reinvented by #SaaS companies in the past few years?”
- “Industries that have had legacy IT (CRM, booking systems). Now - every spreadsheet, every tedious process is being SaaSified” - @jmarovt
- “Shopify for e-commerce, Dropbox & Box for shared storage, Salesforce for CRM, AirBnB for Rental Property, Uber for transport” - @facestrategic
- “Accounting software, HR software and CRM” - @mrjosewilson
- “Taxi, Telephony, Productivity, IT infrastructure, Software development” - @GetAnth
*Click here to see all of the answers to question two.
Q3: “What are some SaaS companies causing major disruption right now?”
- “Companies causing major disruption in #SaaS: Intercom, HubSpot, Slack” - @NikkiElizDemere
- “Zenefits w/ its free all-in-one HR, Intercom w/ super easy SaaS support, Rainforest QA w/ painless QA-as-a-service” - @jmarovt
- “I think Xero is also doing great stuff” - @sunstonecomms
- “Wildcard, but Facebook's FB@Work is totally disrupting work communication for us.” - @mattddrchs
- “Optimizely's Personalization, making it possible for smaller businesses to do more w/ their data like Amazon & Netflix do” - @denisechan26
*Click here to see all of the answers to question three.
Q4: “What are some of the significant benefits SaaS can bring to an industry?”
- “SaaS offers massive growth potential, speed to market, global accessibility and unprecedented measurement & analysis” - @facestrategic
- “Lower initial cost and painless upgrades for the consumer to acquire services from a SAAS provider.” - @zination_com
- “A customer that is successful with your company is a loyal customer. Revenue uplift due to customer loyalty can be quantified, which is the basis for Customer Success Management. Customer Success helps reduce the cost of customer acquisition.” - @NikkiElizDemere
- “SaaS tends to simply, smooth and accelerate processes that are complex, difficult, and slow.” - @CaraHogan27
*Click here to see all of the answers to question four.
Q5: “What are ways you identify an industry that needs disruption?”
- “Best heuristic is current lack of modern software. Right now healthcare, construction, real estate, law, etc.” - @jmarovt
- “One way to determine industries that need disruption is to discern where customers can or do increasingly have a voice.” - @NikkiElizDemere
- “Industries that are highly commoditized, price sensitive and competitive (look at what AirBnB did to the rental market)” - @facestrategic
- “One way to determine industry ripe for disruption is to look at its pain points i.e. healthcare - ux; auto - gas” - @startup2hack
*Click here to see all of the answers to question five.
Q6: “Name some CEOs who are killing it with their #SaaS companies.”
- “A CEO who is killing it with his #SaaS company: @stewart of Slack” - @SaaSCommunity
- “SaaS CEOs I admire: @parkerconrad (Zenefits), @asanwal (CBInsights), @benchestnut (MailChimp), @bhalligan (HubSpot)” - @jmarovt
- “@tobi from Shopify and Steven Cody from 4BetterSoftware”. - @zination_com
Q7: “Why is SaaS the way to go when building a new B2B or B2C software product?”
- “SaaS provides cost savings, rapid product delivery & updates, high scalability, accessibility and global compatibility” - @facestrategic
- “High adoption, lower initial costs, painless upgrades, seamless integrations.” - @NikkiElizDemere
- “SaaS is the way to go if you want to speed up feature deployment, get data faster, validate assumptions…” - @damolade
*Click here to see all of the answers to question seven.
Q8: “What are common metrics that #Saas startups use to measure their success?”
- “Here are 16 #startup metrics (not all #SaaS) as outlined by @16z” - @NikkiElizDemere
- “The BIG metrics is MRR then cost of acquisition, run rate, and onboarding cost.” - @zination_com
- “Most important SaaS metrics: LTV/CAC, MRR, Churn, LVR. My top 20 ones also here” - @jmarovt
- “Some danger too many metrics for #startups as well. Focus in this as in everything” - @sunstonecomms
*Click here to see all of the answers to question eight.
Q9: “What resources (websites, thought leaders) do you recommend for #SaaS startups?”
- “I highly recommend @BostonVC, David Skok who’s SaaS blog ForEntrepreneurs is a superb resource” - @facestrategic
- “We love the content from @saascribe! As well as @hnshah, @priceintel” - @LSPARKGlobal
- “A new #SaaS community I recommend checking out is SaaS.Community” - @NikkiElizDemere
- “We put together a list of 29 of the best #SaaS blogs here - inc @lincolnmurphy & @hnshah” - @katykatztx
*Click here to see all of the answers to question nine.
Q10: “What words of caution do you have for SaaS #entrepreneurs looking to cause disruption?”
- "Think about distribution from Day 1. And, if possible, build a product your customers use on a daily basis." - @jmarovt
- “Don’t skip Customer Development. (Read The Startup Owner’s Manual if necessary.)” - @NikkiElizDemere
- “Work on customer retention, in a SAAS model, churn rate is very important.” - @zination_com
*Click here to see all of the answers to question ten.
Would you answer these questions differently? Let us know in the comments below! And be sure to subscribe to our blog for more updates about the SaaS community.
