Skio’s Post

Skio has achieved $10M ARR + Profitability! 🚀 This achievement speaks volumes about the dedication, talent, and sheer hard work of our incredible team. 💪 From day one, everyone here has poured their passion and expertise into building something truly remarkable. Together, we've weathered challenges, embraced opportunities, and remained steadfast in our commitment to delivering exceptional value to our customers. This milestone isn't just about financial success; it's a testament to the power of teamwork, resilience, and unwavering determination. Each person at Skio has played a pivotal role in our growth and success, and I couldn't be prouder of what we've accomplished together. As we celebrate this achievement, let's also take a moment to reflect on the journey that brought us here and to express gratitude for the trust and support of our clients, partners, and stakeholders. Here's to many more milestones, breakthroughs, and successes on the horizon! 🌟 #Skio #Milestone #Profitability #Teamwork #SuccessStory

**Excited to share we’ve hit $10M ARR + Profitable ($838,688.32 in May)!** To get here in just 3 years (in spite of market conditions) with only a seed/$8.4M raised speaks volumes about the great team we have here and what we’ve been working to build. One of the best parts (practically-speaking) of having a business model that scales with our customers is that we live (or die) by the success of our customers. With this in mind, hitting this milestone for Skio isn’t just a celebration, but also validation that having an engineering/product-first DNA is a winning strategy (our product speaks for itself 😉). Some people have asked why we’re announcing this milestone and I thought this post would be a great opportunity to recap our DNA (and also explain) to our customers (as well as future ones) why this benefits them. Our DNA: * We’re engineering-first. All engineering is in-house (vs. contracted out) and we only recruit the best engineers. This results in a much better product which helps our customers grow faster. * World-class support. I personally find it extremely irritating getting support from someone who doesn’t understand you so we made sure great customer support was a priority from day 1. * We let our product do the talking. Spending our dollars on product over marketing/awareness definitely has some tradeoffs. The con is that there’s potential customers who don’t know we exist (we’re fixing this), but the pro is we’re almost always the best partner for anyone evaluating us vs. other options. * Customer-first instead of growth-first. This requires not losing company control to investors who chase growth at all costs. Given we’re Shopify-first subscription software, we think it makes the most sense to stay capital efficient so it is natural staying laser-focused on being customer-first. This is different from raising as much money as possible (and subsequently being forced by investors to spend money chasing any possible growth). This growth at all costs mentality definitely works for certain businesses, but doesn’t make as much sense here. Practical reasons for announcing $10M ARR + Profitable: * We’re here to stay. Typically, total funding is used to gauge traction/ability to stay in business since businesses don’t want to reveal their revenue numbers. While we may have less money raised, our traction to money raised ratio is exceptional so we’re ok sharing our numbers if it means reassuring customers that we’re stable. * Validation that our DNA works/matters. We wouldn’t have hit this milestone if being engineering/product-first didn’t work. Our existing customers probably already understand this, but we hope any potential customers seeing this post will be more inclined to partner after reading this. Thank you so much to our amazing customers/team/partners/investors for your hard work & support in helping us reach this milestone. Can’t wait to see where we are in 3 years!

Even Sterling admits to have never seen anybody compress the shortcuts. But, Divvy's GTM model defied the odds. How did they build it to a $2.5B exit in 4 years. Am from listening to Sterling Snow, former CRO of Divvy ( bill spend and expense software) on Saastr. For the team to scale the startup to $400m arr in four years, they had to do things different. Sterling agrees they were simple, but not easy. Before I share the insights from the GTM model they used to scale Divvy in record speed, here two key traits to note: 1/ As a small team early on, everyone deserves the feeling of being part of a very high performing team. 2/ And before thinking models, you have to think about the team. The traits of a high performing team that worked for Divvy included: - Speed is key - Extreme ownership - Health competition within the team And the opposite is true ( the team must avoid) - No room for passengers - A culture of fear - Complaining - Excuses Now, the Divvy go-to-market model may seem simple, Sterling emphasises on execution, feedback, and repeat. 1. Align the funnel For example, what do you measure in marketing? Let each cord segment have one clear owner to reduce wastage and friction. 2. Budget, Quota, Goal Put a number to each. The plan for this to beat it and raise. 3. Shorten the cycle As a startup, you have to figure out how to do things faster. Compress the timeframe where possible. From quarterly to monthly, weekly to daily. At Divvy, when things got harder, the team moved the timeframe for feedback, performance closer. 4. T3, B3 What are top three things you are doing well? What are the bottom three things that need improvement? For Divvy, this went both ways: the manager to the team and vice versa. Early on, it's essential to always know where you stand and are working on. 5. Name, Number, North Star Ensure every number in the framework model has a name. The North Star is different for every startup. For Divvy, it was the amount of usage or spend. 6. Sell, Design, Build For product building, work from the buyer backwards. If the audience are not willing to pull out there wallet, slow down on launching the product. Never waste time on the notion ' build and they will come' ..... Divvy was acquired by Bill: for $2.5b, and the above GTM helped them hit $400m arr before exit. p.s: 🚦Repost to other marketers 📧 Get my weekly free newsletters 👆🏿 Follow me for more proven product marketing.

Struggling to grow your SaaS? Just keep going, you're not alone! 🏃♂️ ChartMogul has just published its benchmarks for Q1/24 – and things are not looking good in terms of revenue growth. If you zoom out, you can see a clear downward trend since 2021, with no sign of a recovery. This affects the broader SaaS market, not just individual segments. SaaS founders and execs everywhere are complaining that their previous GTM approaches are no longer working as they used to be. On the other hand, revenue retention - both gross and net - has remained pretty stable. You can't see it here, but I'll add the charts below. This means that the problems lie primarily in the addition of New ARR, and not so much in retaining / expanding ARR of existing clients. You should still try to win new customers. But not at all costs. Might be worth trying out some growth hacking tactics / unconventional methods. However, it is usually much more cost-efficient to achieve growth by retaining and expanding existing customers. So if you've been ignoring it, now is a good time to work on improving your Gross / Net Revenue Retention. Formulas: Gross RR = (Starting ARR - Churn - Downgrades) / Starting ARR Net RR = (Starting ARR + Expansion - Churn - Downgrades) / Starting ARR Top things to look at: 1. Pricing / Packaging 2. Stickiness of your Product 3. Customer Success / Support #saas #startups #founders #growth #bootstrap #vc #venturecapital #funding

Why we changed our startup's goal from revenue💰 to 'obsessed customers' 🫶... When you build a thing and start selling it, it's hard not to get sucked into the never ending obsession with ARR. We got sucked in. Revenue is a simple and powerful metric. The numbers don't lie. And if customers are truly loving your product, revenue should ultimately go up. So this was our focus. But as customers added up and time became our most precious resource, we asked ourselves a theoretical question: Would we rather have lots of revenue but very few customers that love us, or lots of customers that totally love us but not as much revenue? The better sign of product-market-fit would be the latter. And the more product-market-fit, the more we believe the revenue would follow. So we switched our KPI to '10 obsessed customers.' And we don't mean customers that like us...the long version is '10 customers who are so obsessed with us that they would threaten to sue us if we stopped providing the service' 😅 Of course revenue matters, but that's ultimately secondary in the pursuit of product-market-fit.

As your SaaS startup grows, what worked yesterday might not work tomorrow. Temporary tactics might win early customers, but scaling requires new strategies. How are you evolving your customer acquisition tactics to keep up with your growth? What changes are you considering to ensure your marketing and sales efforts scale with your company? Discuss the transitions and transformations that have, or haven’t, worked for you. #ScalingStartups #SaaSMarketing #BusinessGrowth

Does it feel impossible people excited about what your startup is doing? If growing your startup feels like walking up hill through mud... this video is for you. Understanding your Ideal Customer Persona will help you unlock: - An army of fans that sell for you - Growth that feels automatic - Word of mouth referrals Learn how to make this work for your startup by watching our latest Lunch and Learn session!

Interesting thoughts here by Dirk! Revenue growth is declining for SaaS companies, it´s time to go back to the drawing table, revisit your Value Proposition Breakdown and try to make a pivot!

⚡ SaaS Pricing Insights with Kyle Poyar! Shoutout to Kyle for shedding light on the pricing puzzle. He surveyed over 1000 SaaS startups about how they price their products! He found that average contract value (ACV) jumps by more than 100% during the journey from $1M to $100M+ in ARR. ⛏ What else did he find? Seed to Expansion Stage: 🌱 B2B buyers? They're not overly price-sensitive. 💪 Strengthen that product fit, and customers willingly invest more. Expansion to Growth Stage: 🚀 There's untapped value waiting to be seized. ⚙ Concrete proof—your ROI story is resonating. Growth to Exit/IPO Stage: 💲 When plotting your roadmap, factor in "willingness to pay." 🔒 Distinguish between customer inquiries and actual purchasing intent. Anything else you would like to include? Share your insights below! 👇 #saas #pricing #growth

Most likely, your next product launch will fail, but you are not alone. Even though I have launched successful products, the journey is filled with mistakes, failures, and lessons. Thanks to Mind the Product got a chance to share a few of them and my thoughts on product failures. An excerpt about Zeda.io - “Now when I look back we were dumb. We didn’t question whether they were real users. Zeda.io solves for B2b SaaS companies, Tata 1mg is a B2C company. We fell into this trap because they were so big.” Do read more here - https://lnkd.in/db6y93PR Thanks Eira Hayward for the opportunity.