Paul Sullivan

Draftboard v1: A leaky bucket & a broken flywheel I wrote a few days ago about how the length of our feedback loop was a real business killer. But given enough time, would it have actually worked? No. Because we had an even bigger problem: Draftboard referrals weren't getting hired. Even though we were sending super high quality candidates (20% got interviews), those candidates weren't converting into new hires. This was really baffling at first: shouldn't initial quality (read: first interviews) be a leading indicator? Given enough time, shouldn't more and more of those high quality candidates covert into newly hired employees? This is where we learned the hard lesson that every recruiter out there already knew, and that we were naive enough to believe we could change: the chances that even a high quality candidate gets hired are incredibly small. Why? For three interdependent reasons: 1. A new hire is a big risk - time, money, opportunity cost - so the vetting process is necessarily intense 2. This process therefore has many stages, and each stage is creates a more loss-y conversion funnel (resume screen, interviews, take home projects, presentations, background & reference checks, etc) 3. The purpose of an interview process is usually to minimize risk rather than maximize return, so companies always have their fingers on the 'reject' trigger - there is much more of a bias to reject someone than to hire him All of these contribute to a world where even great candidates have a low chance of being hired. This is a problem for us two-fold: First, our pricing model was that we earn 20% of every referral bonus. So if there are no referrals bonuses, then there's no revenue. Second - and much, much more important - was that our scouts weren't making money. If we had built a platform where our scouts were crushing it but we weren't generating enough money, then we would have been able to find some way to solve that (I'm highly confident of that at least). But our scouts weren't making placements, and through no fault of their own. When they started with us they would gush about how fantastic the product was and how much they liked it, but after making 20, 30, 50 referrals without earning a bonus, even those ardent advocates ask themselves a simple question: Why am I still doing this? What else could I be doing with my time? Is it worth my effort to share Draftboard links? And the obvious answer is no, it wasn't worth their time. The whole premise of Draftboard was that incentives drive behavior. So if the incentives are not materializing, then neither will the behavior we desire (more referrals). This is what ultimately doomed us, because scouts would start super excited and make dozens of referrals, only to churn a month later because they saw no success. Sometimes you encounter a problem you can't solve - this was ours. But without recognizing it when we did, there would be no Draftboard v2...

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I am a big supporter of bootstrapping! Mainly because your customer funds your business and you can try little experiments along the way once you have a trusted group of loyal customers. You can tweak the proposition, you can increase margins, and a loyal customer base means that you receive honest feedback regularly. For operators like myself who want to build a business on the side that is born purely out of passion and goodwill, bootstrapping is the way to go!! It’s also low risk and allows you to pivot quickly without pressure from external investors. And it’s fun! 🙌🏼 Women in Product®UK CPO Track®

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On this week in SaaS we're talking HR Tech. Rippling (est 2016) just raised another 200M bringing their funding total to a whopping 1.2B and their valuation to 13.5B. Looking at money raise TriNet has raised a total of 856M ad Gusto 746M for scale. HR tech is FULL of 🦄 Unicorns 🦄 In order of founding year: ADP, Paychex, TriNet, Workday, Gusto, Deel and newest kid on the block Remote. (And that's not even all of them - there's over 3,000 HR tech companies) Why so many? Well it's a huge TAM and employee expectations/changes in the space is creating a lot of innovation. New companies want a piece of that market. In the last 15 years there's been more than 80 new HR tech companies. Thank you Adam Schoenfeld - I used a lot of the research you posted to make this video & 💌Andy Mowat for connecting us to smart people! Fun fact: ADP makes most of it's money from what it does between collecting payroll from their customers and paying out to you. Those 5 days of holding billions of dollars for over 1M companies makes a lot of $$$ for them.

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We’re out… of aioss, but still open for business… -;) Most consider running out a good problem, and I guess to some extent it’s great that we’re way ahead of plan, that the traction is real, and that the interest in aioss is massive. But when we hung up the sold-out ‘pop-up sign’ on our homepage earlier in the week, it was not a good feeling. It followed a week of contemplating how we’d best navigate this ‘good fortune’ and how to mitigate losing our momentum, which has delivered 20% plus compound growth week over week since we launched back in early July. But luckily and if the first 5 days are any indication, we’re keeping pace.. New would-be aioss users are signing up at the pre-sold-out velocity, with the promise that 1) they will be first to receive aioss once we receive our aioss batch 2.0 on November 1st and 2) they won’t be charged until we ship their aioss. We of course have enough inventory on hand to make sure our existing subscribers won’t experience any interruption to their aioss experience. Theo and I are still a bit awestruck and the pace of our growth (has anyone seen an aioss ad? NO..!!), but are quickly getting used to the idea that we are building a power brand and we can’t wait to apply our playbook to the rest of Scandinavia and the rest of Europe in due time. We’re also starting to receive a steady stream of user feedback and it’s pretty awesome to hear from our users the positive effect they are experiencing after only 2/3 weeks of ‘being on aioss’. But that’s for a different post - only to say if you have an unsettled stomach and want to vastly improve your health baseline, get in touch/get yourself some aioss. In other news. We are just finalizing raising a finance round and have a bit of room left in the round, so if anyone is interested in learning more about our case, please feel free to reach out. Have a continued great weekend. Kh_jesper

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Acquirers when they found a "boring" business to buy 😅 Boring to look at doesn't necessarily mean boring to play with, right? 😉 These may not grab headlines, but they are about solid, reliable investment opportunities with the potential for steady growth and profitability. Boring businesses win niche markets by offering something truly valuable for their customers and becoming an essential part of their workflow. From here, acquirers have a billion opportunities to add resources for growth with strategic improvements. Compounding long-term value is another great advantage of buying these. Usually having a certain operation simplicity, low churn, and low competition, even without exceptional additional growth, acquirers can still expect a return on the investment. So what is it for you? Solid accounting/scheduling /HR management systems or AI-powered/web3/blockchain attention grabbers?? 🤔

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7 online business models that are always going to fail... (from a perspective of an acquirer) 1.) Something that is built around a hot trend (think Pokemon Go) 2.) Something with too much concentration risk 3.) Something that relies on a tactic vs a strategy (ex. PBNs vs SEO) 4.) Low cost productized service (like unlimited graphic design for $47/mo) 5.) Most AI wrappers 6.) Dropshipping a generic product 7.) Founder reliant business (not a bad model to start, but not great to acquire) Want my explanations in more depth? Watch this video!

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Cashflow sets your Go to Market strategy for the earlier stage B2B tech business Inbound, content and outbound are merging into a single buying experience Inbound remains expensive, high volume low quality unless it's a request to meet or a demo request Content is more important than ever, but it's slow to activate and usually only shows a return after nine months Outbound has become harder as engagement rates decrease There are two problems to solve ▶ Create quality lead flow ▶ Make sales targets in the next month/quarter We need to solve sales first otherwise we are not sure what a 'good one' looks like. The easiest way to meet sales targets ▶ On-sell/upsell - sell more to existing customers ▶ Referrals - remain the best-performing sales channel ▶ Lead Generation - has become harder If we focus on Lead Generation In pre Product Market Fit businesses where the messaging and positioning have not locked in activating high-volume sales channels is expensive and generates low-quality leads. Earlier-stage businesses do not usually have the capacity to ingest and process these leads so conversion rates decrease. To make sales targets with Lead Generation ▶ Activate channels where you control the deal cycle to get market feedback, control close ratios and see what is working ▶ Activate channels where you can control quantity and quality so you can flex this to serve sales targets ▶ Start with low-volume high-quality personalised engagements to find the market ▶ Only increase volumes when this works Action Points ▶ Put more energy and effort into Messaging & Positioning than ever ▶ Create powerful compelling visually appealing short-form content (1 minute videos, infographics etc) ▶ Activate channels where you can control volume and quality ▶ Merge Outbound/Inbound/Content strategies sooner Most B2B sales processes can be measured with a single metric - the number of high-quality one-to-one new logo meetings per week. Outbound IS harder It's still the least-worst channel to activate It's usually the only channel that gives you control and fits the budget

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3 ways to get your emails manually pushed to spam:  1. Telling someone they did something wrong. Example = Identifying a “data leak” or “broken links” on their website. 2. Unpolished personalisations. Example = Describing someone as a “Chief Executive Officer”, rather than “CEO”. Or non-cleansed company names like “StackOptimise Ltd”. 3. Excessively long sequences. Example = gone are the days of 8-step sequences. Stop after 3 to protect your domain, protect your accounts and ensure email volume isn’t wasted on inactive buyers.

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A staggering reality check: many SaaS businesses unknowingly lose around 9% of their Monthly Recurring Revenue due to failed payments. Let that sink in. Why are we letting potential revenue slip through our fingers, waiting passively for customers to update their information? This article highlights the importance of proactive churn management strategies. Discover how a straightforward onboarding process, consistent customer communication, and transparent practices can drastically reduce churn rates. Businesses like Airfocus have showcased that sharing product roadmaps leads to a noticeable dip in churn. When customers feel engaged and informed, they’re likely to stick around. Many founders overlook these simple yet effective tactics, favoring one-off gimmicks that only mask the underlying issues. If you want sustainable growth, focusing on true customer loyalty and feedback is non-negotiable. So, what’s the plan? Are we going to continue waiting for things to improve, or will we take action now? I'm curious to hear other perspectives on this. https://lnkd.in/eYgq_MAE

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Is partner marketing worth the effort? Some founders have told me that it totally made their business but many others have said that it was a bunch of effort just to write low-conversion newsletter posts to another email list and definitely wasn't worth it. It has actually been a big success for us so far Relay.app, so I thought I would share how we think about it. 1) Since we're an integration tool, partner marketing is a really natural fit for our business. We noticed that a ton of companies that don't have extensive native integrations actively recommend Zapier from their website, so there's clearly an opportunity to add value to partners. 2) There's some basic partner marketing that's high ROI and that we should do with everyone. This includes: - Getting listed in their marketplace or integrations page (the Notion one alone drives about 5% of our signups) - Announce the launch on social media and tag their account - Create how-to guides for common use cases on top of that product 3) On top of that, for a subset of partners, we can do deeper marketing, including - Webinars (we've done 2 with SmartSuite that have led to dozens of customers) - Blog posts - Newsletter promotions - Videos How do we decide whether to go beyond the basics to the deeper stuff? We ask 3 questions: 1. What % of their users do we think would benefit from our tool? 2. How good are we relative to the alternatives those users could choose? 3. Is the company excited about working with us, or will it be pulling teeth? By striking the right balance of effort for each partner we work, the whole area has been a big success for us. Hope that helps! p.s. trying out the video clip thing again, feedback appreciated!

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Can your CRM do this?! (I'm not trying to be controversial, I'm genuinely curious because I haven't seen anything quite like it before!) This very useful new HubSpot feature allows users to add additional property columns to index views for any database object (Contacts/Companies/Deals/Emails/Calls etc.) with one click, directly in the UI. While technically still in Beta, this feature is now enabled for all Soundfront Advisors clients. Enjoy your new streamlined existence! 🤣

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Techies, Founders, Leaders, lend me your ears You might just love what’s coming 👇 The next month of Pain in the SaaS is packed with value just for you. Here’s a teaser of what’s to come: - Tom Pennings turning a server off even when could fix it. - Richard Russell explaining why the Google way isn't always the best way. - Nadia Pace’s office that was literally falling down. - Nikos Kryvossidis trying to change the culture and building bridges across departments. I’m dedicated to bringing you the best advice and information from VCs, founders, and sales leaders about how to scale your startup, become a better leader, and hear the real stories of experience. 🚀 It all starts tomorrow at 9am Berlin Time. Be sure to follow #PainInTheSaaS so you’ll get notifications of all the episodes as they drop and won’t miss a thing. #podcast

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When sales makes wild promises to win that deal (or election!). We've all been there. In business and politics confidence sells. But I find myself conflicted. Coming from science and engineering I'm wired to think in terms of data and evidence making me more cautious than sales counterparts. As someone inspired by the Buddhist Eightfold Path for reducing suffering - especially the principle of Right Speech. Which holds that: speech must foster Truth, Unity and Harmony. Avoiding slander, hype, and idle promises. Bringing purpose and value. I see this as fundamental for a good life. For good marketing and business. For sense making in our world that leads to societal and civilisational flourishing. Yet we all know this truth: overpromising and overconfidence often wins. Especially in startups and in politics. Lies, misinformation and fear spread faster than (nuanced) truth on social media. The race to the bottom of our brainstem - to base instincts of fear and anger - is a losing race for all of us. The interesting question is that middle ground where the magic happens. When we stand in the now but are tasked with imagining new futures. Taking the risk of creating products, services. Building companies and even nations! How do we balance the truth of this moment with the bold confidence needed to overcome the odds and inspire buy-in? How do we imagine a better future without losing our integrity in the present? Would love your thoughts Mark Stouse, Alex Kain, Steve Patti, David Heinemeier Hansson! The arc of history is long but it bends toward the truth. Anthony Pierri 🎸, Elena Verna, Obaid Durrani, Jordan Crawford, Marc ✌️ Thomas, Laura Erdem, Steffen Hedebrandt - fellow meme lovers

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Shopify has been very clever in how they have sucked B2B into the Plus world. For pure B2B's that use Plus, they have NOT broken out B2B as a separate platform tier. This boosts their 'Enterprise' penetration as using B2B on Shopify requires Plus. Then for DTC's that want to dabble in B2B and upgrade to Plus to do so (if even for just a few B2B features), this boosts penetration of Plus into these 'Enterprises'. Remember, today Shopify is essentially a payments company masquerading as an eCommerce platform. One significant way to de-risk their business and dependence on payments revs is to boost penetration into the Enterprise tier of merchants/sellers and therefore boost their subscription revs as a % of overall revenues. They believe B2B is a HUGE piece of the Enterprise puzzle. I agree with them... Well played Shopify, well played.

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Do you have an interactive demo on your website? If so, you know how powerful they are in bringing your product to life and engaging prospects. (If not, you’re sleeping on a real opportunity 😴 ). So why stop at your website? One of the most exciting ways I’m seeing GTM teams use interactive demos is by embedding them in sales assets to accelerate opportunities across every touchpoint of their sales cycle. Some examples... 🤔 Want to showcase how you successfully helped a similar customer? 💡 Embed an interactive demo in your case studies to showcase EXACTLY how they used your product. 🤔 Going head-to-head against a competitor and need to differentiate? 💡 Embed an interactive demo in a competitive comparison asset to showcase differentiating features and how you’re better suited for your prospect’s needs. Not only do interactive demos make your sales assets more engaging, but they can be easily updated as you release new features, personalized for each prospect (just swap in the most appropriate demo), shared across buying committees, and tracked for engagements. Interested in learning more? Check out this awesome post from our friends at Navattic https://lnkd.in/gkbuabYP It includes more examples, step-by-step instructions on how to embed your interactive demos into your sales assets, and five templates from AssetMule to get you started—including the two mentioned above! #productmarketing #sales #salesenablement #interactivedemos

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I’ve recorded over 265 episodes of Churn FM over the last 5 years and the ideal customer profile (ICP) was discussed in over 90 of them. Identifying and optimising your business around your ICP is by far one of the biggest impacts you can have on churn, retention, and growth overall for your business. In this week’s episode of Churn FM I chatted to Harrison Rose, CEO & Co-Founder of GoodFit and previous CSO & Co-Founder of Paddle. Harrison shared a data-driven approach to identifying your ICP that had a direct impact on the trajectory of Paddle and how you can use it to identify your ICP too. I loved this particular episode as over the last few months Leah Tharin and myself have been preparing a new course on Maven on "How to find your ideal customer profile in B2B SaaS" and even after all the research put into the course and our direct experience helping startups identify theirs, I still walked away with a couple of golden nuggets from this episode. The link to the episode is in the comments and if you give it a listen I’d love to hear your thoughts and any takeaways you leave with too! If you’re interested to learn more about the course, I wrote a guest post for Leah Tharin's Substack on "How to find your first ICP" that covers a lot of content from the course and is hopefully helpful in isolation too. Or if you prefer to check out the course, it also includes case studies, templates, and worksheets to help you support the process, and is now live on Maven with a 30% rebate (650$) for early adopters and is limited in size to test the material! The first cohort will be taking place between Sep 10 - Sep 17 and if you're interested to check it out it is linked in the comments below too. And hopefully if you read this far you’re a part of our ICP and we will welcome you as an early adopter of the course next month :) Happy ICP hunting!

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Every week, I see posts in the popular business sub reddits around buying businesses But when you look into the acquisition sub reddits out there They're kinda ass Low quality content and basically no moderation So I decided to make one myself :) introducing r/microacquisitions A sub reddit dedicated to the world of buying and selling small online businesses. (link to join in the first comment) Buying a business has NEVER been this accessible before. The mission is really to democratise Private Equity by bringing their knowledge and strategies to the masses with Micro PE. Because of people like Codie A. Sanchez and Alex Hormozi there's a lot of talk online about buying businesses But almost all the info is focused on 7 figure+ deals This seems exciting but you need a lot of $$$ in order to actually negotiate and close these deals. Buying a business has NEVER been this accessible before. I bought my first business for $4,000 as a clueless 21 year old. Since then I've acquired 6 businesses. (Story for another time) The key is that these acquisitions have much lower barriers to entry with low asking prices, easy to understand with minimal operations/ processes and usually run by a solo founder. At the same time they have: revenue, profitability, user base, a clear value proposition with some kind of product market fit I would argue that 90% of businesses fail before they get all of these ^ Reddit being the front page of the internet, info around acquisitions NEED a high quality home to help educate the curious ones. Here's what you can expect inside r/microacquisitions: ⁠- Deal flow: Members share interesting micro acquisition opportunities. - Questions from those keen to learn more or do it themselves. - Due diligence, negotiation, etc. tips: Learn how to evaluate and acquire digital businesses effectively with tips specifically for acquisition. - Growth strategies: Discuss tactics to scale your acquired businesses. - Networking: Connect with other buyers, sellers, and industry experts. - AMA sessions: I'll be hosting regular AMAs to share my experiences in this field. (+ I hope others do too) - And whatever else you beauties want. So what's different with this sub reddit? I will ensure moderation along with high quality people asking and answering questions The other sub reddits have pretty low quality people leading to low quality content I will do my best to ensure there are people with genuine experience in the microacquisitions sub reddit to answer questions and contribute Some general info: But what even is a Micro Acquisition? A micro acquisition is the purchase of a small, often undervalued digital business. Ex: SaaS, Websites, Mobile apps, ⁠E-commerce stores We consider deals under $500,000 to be micro acquisitions, but this sub reddit will focus on deals <$25,000. Hop in the sub reddit pls (link in the first comment) Thanks, love you

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