Time to look back on February and make sure you’ve read the best articles posted in the past four weeks by the top SaaS experts! I’ve been keeping these in my back pocket in anticipation for exactly this post. SaaS is a pretty vague term we use, covering a variety of topics, and personally I like it that way. It allows me to have more creative thought and imagination when it comes to discussing SaaS. Here are what I think are the best articles of the month. Enjoy!
1. Hung Up on Hybrid: The Rise of Cloud 2.0 and What it Means for the Data Centre
As SaaS products become more focused on the cloud it is imperative for us to understand exactly what that entails. I like that Steve Davis begins his article by reminding us that we might be innovators in our field, but we must not let people create better products than us.
2. Becoming Customer Centric at an Early Stage Startup
As Kevin Garcia notes “the B2B SaaS space is universally accepting more customer centric principles.” Not only do I agree with this statement but I’m a firm believer that startups should be more customer focused early on. Your product is for the customer to use, not you.
3. An Open Letter to Rich Startups
Startup culture has been lampooned recently for excess spending. When shows like Silicon Valley make a good point about our spending culture we might want to take a second and breath. While this post isn’t SaaS specific, it does affect all of us and our inspirations. Don’t forget to stay humble.
4. How To Solve Your Biggest SaaS Marketing Conundrums, With Lincoln Murphy
Lincoln Murphy offers great advice in this interview. He points out that SaaS marketers need to remember that when making the pitch to potential customers the customers usually don’t know anything about SaaS. The problem with living and breathing the SaaS community is that you forget that most people don’t know what SaaS even stands for.
5. Why Bottoms Up Selling Is A Fundamental Shift In SaaS
Tomasz Tunguz brings us a very interesting way to quantify the B2C2B marketing of today. Too often we pitch our products to head honchos who don’t really understand the in’s and out’s of the product or other related fields. As we start selling more directly to the IT guys it creates a significant shift in how we word our presentations.
6. Strategies to Increase SaaS Onboarding Success
Adam Sussman provides great strategies regarding how to convince customers to start using your SaaS product. One of the tips I liked most is to always remember to give customers a call. As we lose the human touch in today’s world, people tend to appreciate simple contact such as a phone call.
7. The Rise of the API-based SaaS
API, application program interface, has become rapidly expanding in the SaaS market. Ed Shelley does a great job explaining how API has come to such prominence and which API-based products to watch out for.
8. Behind The Scenes: Intriguing Facts Behind the World’s Greatest SaaS Entrepreneurs
I love inspiration. Learning about how others became so successful and motivate helps me to think outside the box and gives me renewed energy to wake up in the morning and conquer the world.