10 Practical Tips for early-stage SaaS Entrepreneurs

Some practical and actionable tips from Point Nine

I have had the occasion to do a workshop at the SEED Summit organised by HEC Paris last week. It was a good occasion for me to go back there. I shared a few things I have learned as a student, as an aspiring entrepreneur, and as VC focused on SaaS at Point Nine.

Some people have asked me to share the slides after the conference. I thought a good thing would be to share to a larger audience here.

The presentation below consists of three parts with three key pieces of advice per part:

1. 3 Tips for SaaS Entrepreneurs during the ideation phase

2. 3 tips for SaaS entrepreneurs in their first 6 months

3. 3 tips for SaaS entrepreneurs who start scaling

Some of the key points might not be self-explanatory. If you want to learn more, you can put the presentation in full-screen and click the links on the Slideshare presentation. You can also scroll down to the next part.

A large share of the key points derives from blog posts published by Christoph, Rodrigo and Clement in Point Nine Capital ‘s Medium channel. The rest from a few research papers I read last year studying at MIT:

1. Point Nine loves Animal by @chrija: http://christophjanz.blogspot.fr/2012/04/point-nine-loves-animals.html

2. Speed vs. Control by Noah Wasserman, HBS: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/14-090_9901a957-a740-47b2-abce-4f93070d21fe.pdf

3. SaaS Funding Napkin by @chrija http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2017/01/saas-funding-napkin-2017-edition.html

4. A Technical Due Diligence Framework for Early Stage Startups by @decodingVC: https://medium.com/point-nine-news/a-technical-due-diligence-framework-for-early-stage-startups-c24d5408256e

5. How APIs are eating the Product Stack by @clemt : https://medium.com/point-nine-news/how-apis-are-eating-the-product-stack-914a3d6e1216

6. On Hiring and Firing Customers by @DecodingVC: https://medium.com/point-nine-news/on-hiring-and-firing-customers-in-saas-63550687b215

7. Do things that don’t Scale by Paul Graham: http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

8. 7 DOs and DONTs for Seed-stage SaaS Pricing by @DecodingVC: https://medium.com/point-nine-news/7-dos-and-donts-for-seed-stage-saas-pricing-911acf88ca2

9. What’s the Lead Generation Profile of Fast Growing SaaS by @clemnt: https://medium.com/point-nine-news/whats-the-lead-generation-profile-of-fast-growing-saas-7df3d8c86e43

10. SaaS: Three Checklists to Choose your Sales Model by @clemnt: https://medium.com/point-nine-news/saas-three-checklists-to-chose-your-sales-model-17da9680df4b

11. The 8th DO for SaaS startups: Stay on top of your KPIS by @chrija: http://christophjanz.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-8th-do-for-saas-startups-stay-on.html

Hope you’ll enjoy! Feel free to send me a message if you had any comments/further thoughts.