SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2024

One of the biggest mistakes I see after $1m in trying to enter new market segments, new verticals, where you have zero traction. Let me list some of the ones I see most often going from say $1m to $10m in ARR: Chasing the Shiny Penny. It’s one thing to invest in an area where only 5% of your business is today.

Scaling 283

Scaling Revenue Underperforming Technical Team Market Segmentation 283

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

If you’re growing, generally, you’re focused on a market or market segment that’s also growing. economy remains strong, the stock market is at all-time highs, AI is fueling Cloud growth, and yet … many folks are cutting their tech budgets, and especially, those that sell to startups are struggling. Not shrinking.

Churn 208

Churn Market Segmentation AI Cloud 208

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2024

So HubSpot had a great quarter, despite there being many challenges in the sales and marketing segments overall in the past 18 months: $2.5B ARR 23% Growth 22% Customer Growth 15% Operating Margins (non-GAAP) That’s about as good as it gets. But … that doesn’t mean it got easier.

B2C 226

B2C Mobile B2B Payment Features 226

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 26, 2022

Vertical software companies pursue a particular market segment like car dealership management or hotel management software. A former venture capitalist, Mark Leonard started Constellation in 1995 with $15m of outside investment & a goal of buying vertical software companies with a moat & good unit economics.

Software Review 244

Software Review Investment Software Acquisition 244

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

Another way to look at it is any vendor sort of has to ignore any market segment that is < 10% of their revenues. Many they don’t do mobile as well, or social as well, or whatever. 10+ year old platforms are powerful. But they were architected for a different age. It’s just immaterial.

Startup 240

Startup Healthcare Marketing SaaS 240

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

Unlocking a Larger TAM Samsara has taken its initial total addressable market and actually, 50x’d it. So how did they take an initially undervalued market segment and grow the company to the billions? So that’s what got folks interested and the name stuck.

Scale 271

Scale CTO Coach AI New CTO 271

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

It gets you to build that new edition, go upmarket, add more value, compete in new market segments. When you have to earn more revenue from the base. But late 2022 and 2023 was different: we enforced more revenue from the base. We didn’t earn it. We forced it.

Scale 248

Scale Market Segmentation Customer Success Pricing 248

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2021

Another way to look at it is any vendor sort of has to ignore any market segment that is < 10% of their revenues. Many they don’t do mobile as well, or social as well, or whatever. 10+ year old platforms are powerful. But they were architected for a different age. It’s just immaterial.

Healthcare 285

Healthcare Market Segmentation Mobile Churn 285

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Ten years ago today, I wrote a post titled “ Choosing market segments on customer profitability. ” How healthy are the business’s underling customers? Today, that question matters more because of the recession than at any point in the last decade. Selling to very profitable customers benefits a startup.

Startup 216

Startup Market Segmentation Pricing Enterprise 216

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2023

Small markets are often, though not always, less crowded. If that’s the case, sometimes starting there and then expanding into a larger market segment can work out well. A small segment of a large market is often where most of us star t. A good example below in e-signatures.

Sales Recruiting 203

Sales Recruiting Marketing Sales Hiring Market Segmentation 203

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2021

A great look back at how Chime built its brand, where it struggled, the market segment it wanted to win, and how it scaled. #7. . #6 “Ringing the Bell on Competition with Chime’s CEO Chris Britt” OK this session was just A+. I loved it.

Scale 283

Scale Finance Market Segmentation Enterprise 283

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

certain market segments, or verticals, or use cases, or workflows). A slightly improved version of an industry leader is rarely enough. Even the top leaders have gaps though, gaps that matter to paying customers. Important pieces of white space that they just aren’t chasing (e.g., Are you sure?

Startup 269

Startup SaaS Interviewing Market Segmentation 269

User Pilot

JULY 16, 2024

Dock gets a competitive advantage by focusing on a specific market segment. Dock gets a competitive advantage by focusing on a specific market segment Dock is a collaborative workspace for leads and customers. Dock’s differentiator is its specialized market segment.

Branding 89

Branding Market Segmentation AI Search Education 89

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 6, 2021

Third, it’s important to be in a segment where competition can’t kill you. Because it will take you 4 years >longer< to get to $10m ARR, it’s important to be in a market segment where direct competition is weak. This doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It just means that in your sweet spot of deals … you usually win.

Sales Hiring 361

Sales Hiring Venture Capital Scale SaaS 361

User Pilot

AUGUST 14, 2024

TL;DR Customer segmentation is the act of grouping customers based on shared characteristics, such as purchasing behavior, values, or location. Customer segmentation differs from market segmentation as it focuses on dividing existing customers, while market segmentation separates the entire available market.

Strategy 78

Strategy Software Underperforming Technical Team Market Segmentation 78

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2021

A market or at least, market segment, that if small now will be huge. But CRM is a big market. The ability to get to that future, no matter what. To recruit amazing teams. To break things and fix them. To pick themselves off the ground, 5, 10, 50 times. To never, ever quit. Related to seeing the future.

SaaS 327

SaaS Market Segmentation Product Marketing Marketing 327

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2020

Focusing on Segments That Are Thriving. Not enough SaaS companies have segmented their sales teams and marketing efforts into Green, Yellow and Red market segments. It’s worked for Zoom and Slack. Maybe not even most of you, not really.

Strategy 306

Strategy Travel Market Segmentation Onboarding 306

User Pilot

AUGUST 22, 2024

In 2019, Maja expanded her influence as an advisor, working with EKWB, a global leader in PC liquid cooling solutions, where she supported the company’s growth in enterprise and mass-market segments. Today, Maja empowers businesses with the knowledge and tools needed to succeed through her own consultancy practice.

Scale 90

Scale Blockchain Growth Hacking Consulting 90

User Pilot

APRIL 29, 2024

A segmentation survey is used to gather the data necessary to segment customers. A market segmentation survey is a market research tool. In contrast, a customer segmentation survey focuses on existing customers and their characteristics. Segmentation survey built in Userpilot.

Payment Solutions 79

Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payment Methods Payments 79

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2021

Win rates should go down as you scale, and push into new market segments. Win rates in fact should go down as you do more marketing. Marketing will bring in leads that are tougher to close. In fact, a very high win rate often means you aren’t really doing any effective marketing at all.

Scale 296

Scale Market Segmentation Leadership Engineering 296

Baremetrics

MAY 18, 2021

1 What is Customer Segmentation? 2 Pitfalls of Not Segmenting Customers 3 Benefits of Market Segmentation 4 How Baremetrics Helps. What is Customer Segmentation? Customer segmentation is the process of grouping your customers according to certain criteria. Try Baremetrics free. Table of Contents.

Strategy 59

Strategy Marketing Market Segmentation B2C 59

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2021

The #1 biggest mistake I see from $1m to $10m ARR is chasing new market segments, new categories, new areas where you have 0 or almost no traction. You’ve gotten 50, 100, whatever # of businesses to pay you $1,000,000 a year. There are 10,000 new apps out there. It’s “impossible” to get to $1m. You did it. We all want to grow faster.

Sales Hiring 310

Sales Hiring Headcount Pricing Market Segmentation 310

Baremetrics

MAY 26, 2021

Value-based: This segment is grouped by the economic value the group seeks. Needs-based: This grouping is defined by each segment's particular needs. More sophisticated market segmentation strategies look at a combination of these models, or they mix and match criteria to come up with in-depth marketing insights.

Social Media 105

Social Media Market Segmentation B2C Churn 105

SaaStr

JANUARY 13, 2022

And as the number of SaaS companies continues to grow and explode, and as SaaS changes and penetrates more and more market segments … it seems like there are more and more exciting SaaS companies without a natural acquirer. The fourth had an IPO, eventually. At least that I can see, or believe.

Market Segmentation 268

Market Segmentation Mobile Technology Cloud 268

SaaStr

JULY 6, 2020

If yours is, invest more there and worry a little less about pressure to do new things, new market segments, etc. Double down there. You can screw up a lot of other things. Most products are not beloved. 4/ If you need a little more $$$, and you are doing well — we will help. I needed just a little more money, but not a ton.

Part-Time VPE 258

Part-Time VPE Scale Finance Market Segmentation 258

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2023

A few enterprise clients continued to come in through inbound, but the company carved out a winning market segment with the under 5K employee focus. Customer Impact : A much better PMF for SMB & Mid-Market customers. “You Twelve months later, WorkRamp went from 18 new logos per quarter to 87 new logos in a quarter.

Scale 195

Scale Scaling SMB Marketing 195

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2019

I found an excellent list in Kotler on Marketing that I adapted for startups. Which market segment should we pursue? How many of these questions can you answer about your business? What is our company’s story? What is our pitch? How do we differentiate our product from competition?

Product Marketing 220

Product Marketing Startup Marketing Interviewing 220

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2023

Discovering the entire market and mapping out all potential verticals early in the process. The incredible power and value of the mid-market segment. His five lessons are: A single metric that helps guide decisions of when to pivot, when to iterate, and when to pivot. Going multi-product early.

Scale 258

Scale Scaling Strategy Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hacker

APRIL 30, 2024

34:33 – Aligning multiple go-to-market motions across market segments. 46:18 – One thing that is working for Eric in go-to-market right now. 6:31 – Upwork’s challenge of the status quo in hiring contract talent. 9:40 – How Eric chooses the right companies to work for.

Scale 97

Scale Enterprise Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 97

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2021

Shopify is #1 in so many market segments, but for “bigger” SMBs BigCommerce (and perhaps less-custom enterprise deployments) is arguably #2 to Shopify. It’s much smaller than Shopify, at $170m ARR vs $3B+ ARR, but it’s still plenty big for us to learn a lot from this big but not #1 player in the market.

Outsourcing Services 229

Outsourcing Services Payments Merchant Services SaaS Payments 229

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

The LMS market segment is big, and Docebo thinks about it in two folds. At Docebo, 65% of their customers use it both externally and internally. It’s essential that messaging doesn’t get confused when communicating with these different use cases.

Sales Hiring 210

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Outsourced Development 210

User Pilot

JULY 14, 2024

TL;DR Customer segmentation separates users into smaller groups based on shared characteristics to personalize user experiences and optimize marketing campaigns. Customer segmentation is different from market segmentation since the former focuses on the existing customer base, while the latter considers the entire market.

Software Review 83

Software Review Underperforming Technical Team Customer Lifetime Value User Experience 83

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2020

2 often has a better product, at least for some market segments. #2 But, #2 can win with just a 30% better product than #1, if #2 is already a leader and in the game. Post-traction, with a brand. Then, it’s down to which is better for me, #1 or #2. #2 2 Can Win as a Better Partner. See above. #1s 1s can get arrogant, worst case.

Innovation 251

Innovation Market Segmentation Pricing Branding 251

Totango

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

out of 10 and more than 397 reviews on the site, Totango earned its spot as the best of the customer success software category thanks to testaments from our customers across industries and market segments. “ What our customers are saying With a trScore of 8.1 The bomb in customer success software!

Customer Success 116

Customer Success Software Review Technical Review Enterprise 116

Baremetrics

APRIL 27, 2021

Learn more about the customer segmentation tool from Baremetrics. What Is Customer Segmentation? Types of Market Segmentation 1. Behavioral Segmentation 2. Demographic Segmentation 3. Geographic Segmentation 4. Psychographic Segmentation 5. Target Your Market Segment!

Strategy 59

Strategy Marketing Market Segmentation Outsourced Development 59

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 11, 2019

Jonathan asked: Can you share trial length by market segment? Consequently, earlier startups might have a lower conversion baseline, whereas a business at $20M in ARR has spent several years optimizing trial. But statistical tests indicate that the differences in conversion rates aren’t meaningful. This was a good intuition.

Payment Services 184

Payment Services SMB Benchmarks Market Segmentation 184

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

The Sequence Specialist runs through a second round of approvals by SDR managers for each market segment, all team leads, and the VP of Business Development. They can hit the ground running with dozens of sequences tailored to market segment, industry, and persona. The Sequence Specialist writes the content.

Scale 105

Scale Technical Review Sales Systems Review 105