Helping SaaS founders build large global businesses. VC @UpekkhaBe
Jan 27, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1/ What is the best way to create and eventually sell a company for $25M or more?
First work for a company that regularly does $25M+ acquisitions. Say CSCO or Goog, or FB, or MSFT, or ….
Become a Principal Product Manager, or Principal Engineer.
2/ Build great relationships with founders and senior management.
Identify a hole in the companies' future roadmap that might be worth $100M+ in new revenue in 5 years. Or a hole that might lead to its untimely demise.
Ideally both.
Jan 26, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
1/ How do you sell SaaS products to enterprise customers?
The hard way or the harder way :). There is no easy way.
There are two major approaches to enterprise that work today.
2/ First is the traditional enterprise sales model, today it might also be enhanced with Account Based Marketing support. This is the harder way. Folks have written tons of books about this.
Apr 24, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Ironies of 2021
- scientists slogged for 20+ years to create a vaccine
- SII failed to scale supply cos they didn't have capital for a new plant
- VC inv in India alone in Q1'21 was $11Bn
- India Govt failed to prepay for capacity to SII while asking them to supply at cost!
/1
Irony contd
Everyone thinks US manuf has all been offshored to China
But US has blocked exports - nano filters, virus bags, etc - reducing Covishield manuf capacity to 60Mn/mo
SII CEO @adarpoonawalla begs on Twitter for @POTUS to spare supplies for Covishield production
/2
Jul 1, 2019 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Founders moving to SaaS from on-premise software products or services seem to confound a few differences that make SaaS distinct from traditional software sales.
1/
The most basic difference between the two is that in a traditional sale, it is a transfer of ownership whereas in SaaS, it's a rental
But since software is anyway an experiential good, this distinction is not easy to appreciate
2/
Jun 25, 2019 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
In SaaS, if you get it right with your first $1Mn of ARR, then you can grow much faster to your $10Mn. If you don't have the "right" $1Mn ARR, then it becomes impossible to grow thereafter, and harder to turn a moving ship.
1/
Assuming you have some initial PMF and some initial revenue (say ~$300K) 0. Know your customers. eg. @amitdmishra of @InterviewMocha spoke to 100+ of their customers and found that they had different use cases, and could be assigned to different segments.
2/
Jun 17, 2019 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
To my friends & class-mates & colleagues. If you're thinking it's too late to startup - you're probably wrong :)
Age & wisdom make a startup far more likely to succeed. Even if you won't get breathless media like a 21 yr old dropout :)
Step 1: Ensure you've built up a nest-egg to manage your finances for 2-3 yrs at a low burn-rate. Get your spouse to support you. It will take time to start getting serious cashflow. Until then you want to reinvest into the business.
/2
Jun 14, 2019 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
How can I start up a SaaS company without any money?
B2B SaaS startups are the easiest among startups to start with very limited resources. 1/
The key ingredient for a B2B SaaS startup to succeed is deep domain knowledge. The most lucrative way to get deep domain knowledge is to build software via a services model for several companies in the same domain in roughly the same areas. 2/
Jul 10, 2018 • 23 tweets • 5 min read
Maslow's for biz
aka @upekkhaAcc hierarchy of B2B needs
Every product bought by a business, meets one or more needs within the organisation. Founders who understand this hierarchy of needs make faster progress towards PMF in a B2B/SaaS context.
[thread]
From lowest in the hierarchy, upwards:
Regulation aka laws & govt.
Workflow aka productivity
Topline aka revenue
Bottomline aka profit
Brand/Innovation aka future-proofing
Jul 7, 2018 • 21 tweets • 6 min read
[Tweetstorm] What's the TAM Chasm? A #SaaS#startup story
Early stage founders typically get thrown for a loop when they're asked for their TAM. Here's two ways to think about it that both make sense, but not really for the same person at the same time!
Let's say you're a domain expert - 10-15 years in manufacturing sw for auto ancillary units. You know the end users, you've done pre-sales, deployment, you know what their problems are, you even know how to solve some
You decide to startup to solve one of the problems Yay!
