Here we discuss the key points discussed in the talk so that you can apply them to your own business model:
Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 10:26 am
Never give up : According to Pepper, he was funded back in 2006, before they even met him, even though at the time it was believed that you couldn’t make money selling software because Salesforce was already quite successful and SaaS wasn’t what it is today. However, Marketo continued to believe in their vision, ignored the “no’s” and continued to look for investors.
See the real potential to solve a problem through technology: According to this Marketing Director, Marketo married an incredible market category and saw beyond the need to solve a problem.
Keep your mind on explosive markets: The truly explosive markets are those that could not have existed two or three years ago because the need did not exist, much less the solution. The Marketo team spoke to 75 CMOs before they decided to start the company and they recognized that they had a need to automate their processes, since by 2006 marketers were using digital advertising, email marketing and Google Ad Words.
SaaS as a solution: According to Pepper, there was something that needed to be automated, and the solution was ultimately SaaS, as CMOs didn’t have access to capital expenditure budgets. That way, they could pay for the software on a monthly basis with a simple user interface that even non-technical people could use.
The secret to a good team in a SaaS company is a unique perspective: it expresses usa company email list the ability to build a product and mitigate risks by knowing that founders can work well together.
Try again: Marketo, in their first $3M investment, failed to deliver what is called a minimum viable product. Only 2 years later did they get a truly innovative product to market. Simply put, they abandoned the initial product and rebuilt it, and that was the best decision possible.
Don’t be afraid of team changes: In Pepper’s words, “…I think we all like to believe that we hire well and that the team members that we have on board will be able to grow with the company. And Marketo very, very early on had to make a very significant team change around the first VP of sales. And it probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but one of the big drawbacks of the Marketo team was that early on they were too product-oriented, too engineering-oriented, and some VPs felt like they didn’t have the DNA to build a great team to go to market. And so firing the first VP of sales was, in some ways, more than just giving up revenue and delaying revenue. So we brought in someone named Bill Bench, who is currently head of sales at a company called Pendo, but who took Marketo from zero to 250 million ARR, and it’s incredibly rare for a VP of sales to make it that far in the journey.”
Focus more on your product and vision than on your competitors: Always keep in mind that any software category is going to be competitive. You should be scared, rather, when something is not competitive. Know what your win rates are against your competitors, but keep the focus on your product! Focus on your own customers and your own vision.
Be innovative – even be innovative in how you bring your product to market. John Miller, the founder of Marketo, taught customers how Marketo uses Marketo itself to power a truly effective inbound funnel for SaaS businesses to market.
It will never be fast: A SaaS company has constant challenges, in Pepper’s words, “…if you’ve just gone from one to two million and investors are telling you that you’re not growing fast enough, just keep going. Keep going because you can see here how long it took us to get to scale and obviously it turned out to be a wonderful outcome in the end.”
Finally, this Marketo investor emphasizes that if you have the right market, you are in a great moment because : you sell, you have created the right product and you are focused on it and innovating, and you also have the right team, you can achieve the same type of success that Marketo also achieved.
See the real potential to solve a problem through technology: According to this Marketing Director, Marketo married an incredible market category and saw beyond the need to solve a problem.
Keep your mind on explosive markets: The truly explosive markets are those that could not have existed two or three years ago because the need did not exist, much less the solution. The Marketo team spoke to 75 CMOs before they decided to start the company and they recognized that they had a need to automate their processes, since by 2006 marketers were using digital advertising, email marketing and Google Ad Words.
SaaS as a solution: According to Pepper, there was something that needed to be automated, and the solution was ultimately SaaS, as CMOs didn’t have access to capital expenditure budgets. That way, they could pay for the software on a monthly basis with a simple user interface that even non-technical people could use.
The secret to a good team in a SaaS company is a unique perspective: it expresses usa company email list the ability to build a product and mitigate risks by knowing that founders can work well together.
Try again: Marketo, in their first $3M investment, failed to deliver what is called a minimum viable product. Only 2 years later did they get a truly innovative product to market. Simply put, they abandoned the initial product and rebuilt it, and that was the best decision possible.
Don’t be afraid of team changes: In Pepper’s words, “…I think we all like to believe that we hire well and that the team members that we have on board will be able to grow with the company. And Marketo very, very early on had to make a very significant team change around the first VP of sales. And it probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but one of the big drawbacks of the Marketo team was that early on they were too product-oriented, too engineering-oriented, and some VPs felt like they didn’t have the DNA to build a great team to go to market. And so firing the first VP of sales was, in some ways, more than just giving up revenue and delaying revenue. So we brought in someone named Bill Bench, who is currently head of sales at a company called Pendo, but who took Marketo from zero to 250 million ARR, and it’s incredibly rare for a VP of sales to make it that far in the journey.”
Focus more on your product and vision than on your competitors: Always keep in mind that any software category is going to be competitive. You should be scared, rather, when something is not competitive. Know what your win rates are against your competitors, but keep the focus on your product! Focus on your own customers and your own vision.
Be innovative – even be innovative in how you bring your product to market. John Miller, the founder of Marketo, taught customers how Marketo uses Marketo itself to power a truly effective inbound funnel for SaaS businesses to market.
It will never be fast: A SaaS company has constant challenges, in Pepper’s words, “…if you’ve just gone from one to two million and investors are telling you that you’re not growing fast enough, just keep going. Keep going because you can see here how long it took us to get to scale and obviously it turned out to be a wonderful outcome in the end.”
Finally, this Marketo investor emphasizes that if you have the right market, you are in a great moment because : you sell, you have created the right product and you are focused on it and innovating, and you also have the right team, you can achieve the same type of success that Marketo also achieved.