People make business happen. Not products, not processes, not hierarchies, nothing.. Quintessential People..

Today, DevX Puts Ahmedabad’s Startup Story on the Main Board (Originally published for Slice of Startup Life on eChai Ventures) In 2017, three friends walked into a half-empty floor in Ahmedabad. The walls were peeling, the floor was still dusty, and the landlord was not sure

Hosting the Sales Masterclass for Startups this evening at GVFL in Ahmedabad. It’s part of our ongoing eChai series that brings founders together to share what’s working, what’s not, and how to build real sales momentum. Joining us are two sharp operators. @yashparallel,

Ahmedabad’s Startup Scene is stronger than ever.

I am low-key excited to see AI getting replaced by another AI 😂

India Test captain: Jasprit Bumrah India T20 captain: Surya Kumar Yadav India ODI captain: Rohit Sharma All 3 will play the IPL for Mumbai Indians under the captaincy of Hardik Pandya 🤯😂

Never missed a test at home to a niggle, injury or non-performance. The only stat of yours that will change after today. @ashwinravi99 : You shall be missed. Thank you for starting your YT channel 👀

As soon as a cricket match is over, @BCCI should bubble wrap @Jaspritbumrah93 and put him in some cryo preservation device. Only 30 mins before a match should he be taken out and re-heated in a microwave or something. Thank you #tiss for the idea.

@HubSpot @clientjoycrm There were a couple more things discussed as well. Do join in the next time if you are around. Thank you @jatin10 and @eChaiVentures for having me in this conversation. If you liked this thread, RT the first one from here and drop a follow -->

@HubSpot @clientjoycrm Building that thought process within yourself and the team becomes important. The team will have to go from understanding requirements and giving quotes to listening to problems and identifying insights.

@HubSpot @clientjoycrm 👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐞𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 Services business has Clients and these Clients have requirements. SaaS companies have customer cohorts and these cohorts have problems. The mindset required to deal with clients vs customers is very different.

@HubSpot @clientjoycrm Building comfort with small ticket recurring payments takes some adjustment. Having customers who you've never spoken to also takes some adjustment.

@HubSpot @clientjoycrm 👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐬𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐲𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 As a services company, we are comfortable with monthly ticket sizes of $4K to $15K. SaaS most likely is 500 times less than that.

@HubSpot @clientjoycrm Not ebooks, not blogs - but spreadsheets or cheat-sheets. We got about 17K subscribers for these resources. 5K of them became our customers over next 18 months.

@HubSpot 👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 At @clientjoycrm, we tried over 10 GTM experiments. 3 of them worked. The one that worked best was building resources that answered our prospect's most difficult questions.

@HubSpot 👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 I wrote a post about building trust as a SaaS company a while back. Here's the link -->

the amount of value your SaaS will build for your customers. I'd recommend competitor benchmarking and then speaking to a lot of customers while running experiments. Pricing is an on-going exercise. It is never complete. @HubSpot is $2B in ARR - changes pricing every 6 months.

👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐠 As a service business, pricing is simpler. It is cost + margin. In SaaS however, it is difficult to arrive at a cost based pricing. Most folks recommend value based pricing but in early stages, it is unclear.

Some founders are able to do it. Most companies that do this achieve a really large scale in one of those two and then start the second one. I wouldn't recommend.

👉 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 In my limited experience, doing both services business and a SaaS business together is extremely difficult. Both of them require more than your full time attention and come with very nuanced problems to be solved.

It was an interesting evening spent with services founders discussing about transitioning from #services to #SaaS at @GvflLimited. Some notes from the conversation. A thread 🧵