"We have a month left" 😨 How to quickly increase your valuation...

Hey folks, 

As I’m writing this post, 76,942 employees in tech startups have been laid off due to the recession in 2022 (according to Layoffs.fyi Tracker). After some epic tech startup fails in the recent months, the VCs clearly stopped believing in the ‘unicorn dreams’.

Now, imagine you had a month of runway left before you run out of funds and have to announce layoffs yourself. What would you do?

Watch but careful, it's a long video

If you remember my newsletter about NRR from a few months ago, you might say "improve my NRR!" 

"NDR rate basically answers the question: "If you had no new customers next year, what would you grow by?" If you can still grow from your existing customers, without investing a dime in sales and marketing - you are golden (for the investors, at least.) It's essentially free money from your existing user base. Achieving expansion revenue from your users also means you're extending their Lifetime Value, while keeping the CAC the same - so by improving your NDR, you also automatically improve your LTV:CAC ratio - another metric essential for your SaaS' valuation! Voila, killing two birds with one stone!  "

But truth be told - it would already be too late. 

You can't improve your NRR in a month. You need to consciously design your company for it. There are no "quick hacks."

As the inflated valuations bubble is bursting, there are a few things you need to start doing now.

How can SaaS companies become more resilient and sustainable, build products designed for driving higher NRR and navigate growth despite the budget cuts? What are VCs looking for in SaaS companies in 2022? Which metrics are the most important? How to achieve growth more sustainably despite funding squeezes? What led to this situation?

We couldn't host this year's Product Drive without answering these questions!

We'll also be holding a special emergency LIVE panel  “SaaS Growth and Funding in the Times of Downturn – VC Perspective” with investors from top VCs. The number of seats is limited, so register now to secure your spot. You don't want to miss it!

Ok, so back to the main question: What can you do now to make your company more resilient and sustainable? 

This year's Product Drive talks are actually bringing the answer: 

• Build an ecosystem moat to make your company more competitive 

With user-generated templates, experts, and plugins. Templates can help you fill in the "empty states", improve your activation rate dramatically (= reduce month-1 churn!) and reduce your support costs. Sounds like a great deal? Make it more scalable by employing...your own users to produce them! You can then also turn your power users into "experts" and leverage their expertise to - you guessed it - again, reduce your onboarding and support costs. But there are a few catches. Austin Yang from Softr will tell you all about them in his talk. 

• Escape the "Build Trap" and leverage Continuous Discovery to test assumptions early, and drive more value for less.

Many large companies or even newer startups, fall into a dangerous place called “The Build Trap”. They continue building feature after feature, without stopping to validate what customers truly want and need. This is, obviously, very expensive.  It can literally cost you...your companies' life. How to get out of “The Build Trap” and make sure you only build what your users will value (and what will drive more $$$ to your business?) Melissa Perri, author of the iconic "Build Trap" and Susan Stavitzky will teach you how to use discovery prior to building anything when testing assumptions, as well as throughout product growth to uncover new and exciting customer opportunities. Join this session to see real-life examples of how incorporating customer discovery prevented my team from making costly development mistakes and losing customers.

• Build an MLP instead of an MVP - on the flipside, some companies have taken the 'minimum' to such extremes that their product simply stopped...being viable. Andrea Saez from Trint will teach you how to bring not only the 'viability', but also 'lovability' back to your MVPs. 
• Learn from other founders' mistakes - last but not least...there are people who have done it before. So why not learn from their experience (and mistakes!)? Especially if it's Rand Fishkin - talking about how he's building his second company with the benefits of hindsight, and Przemek Glosny - who grew Useme.com to 40 million in revenue with...4 people on his team  Who's better equipped than him to tell you How to Scale Up Business with a Small Team and No Funds? 

Here's the link to sign up (and help me beat our last signups record - 2,400 - because we really have only a month left ). I'm 100% sure they will inspire you to build a better, more sustainable and more Product-Led SaaS in this challenging climate. 

In other news...

Had someone told me a couple of years ago I’d be soon(ish) writing a Press Release that would get picked up by TechCrunch, I’d have laughed in their face. 

Especially given this difficult climate - this funding round is a vote of confidence. That Product-Led Growth is something really worth investing in (although we kind of knew that already - from the 750+ votes of confidence we got from our customers so far 😊)

It will allow us to advance our mission even faster: helping SaaS companies grow more sustainably - and survive the current downturn by driving more Product-Led Growth.

That’s why we’re laser-focused on building features aimed at reducing customer support and engineering costs while improving retention and extending lifetime value. (If this is something you're working on - book a call with one of our product specialists today and see how we can help!) 

Onwards and upwards 🚀 

🌉 If you're going to San Francisco...

...you shouldn't wear sunflowers in your hair - it's so 1967. But if you're going to SaaStr next week, you should definitely meet up with me to grab some Product Rantz live and 🍷  on me! 

Send me a DM.

See you all next week!