Resilient

10Product Market Fit

From the creation to raising the first capital and all the way to selling the company, I know what it is like to serve this market, one of the most challenging markets to be involved in.

—Heather Hiles, Student Success, Venture Capital, and a Diverse Workforce: An Interview with Heather Hiles, EDUCAUSE. © 2017 EDUCAUSE

The first phase has been written about extensively, and that is the search for product market fit. That phase is followed by a second phase, which in SaaS we call the search for repeatable, scalable, and predictable and profitable sales growth machines. Once you've got that predictable growth machine, you should hit the gas and just scale the business because you know that it's predictable and profitable and it just works. I think this is the most interesting part.

Sales: Remember Predictable, Repeatable Revenue?

Remember that the holy grail for many businesses is predictable, repeatable, and scalable revenue. This isn't just a startup thing but also how I found success with SGI. You want to develop a system where you can say, for example, that if you had one more salesperson they can perform X activity that will yield Y results. Creating a process where we can better forecast our cash flow and invest in our business to grow is one we continue to iterate on today. If you don't have a robust process, you have no idea how much new business a salesperson can bring in or how long it will take them to do it. So how much can you afford to pay? ...