Key Takeaways from everything about: SaaS with Atomico
As we promised, here are some of the key-learnings we took from our session on everything about: SaaS with Ben & Eleanor from Atomico.
We were joined by 30 female-led SaaS startups from all over Europe, and discussed subjects like pricing, business models, fundraising and communications strategies.
We have collected the insights from Ben & Eleanor, we think every SaaS founder (really every founder in general) should consider having a look at.
When it comes to fundraising and pitching your company:
The vision of your business needs to be clear and expressed by the WHOLE founding team. Pro Tip: Clarify the vision team-internally before an investors meeting. Sounds funny? You would be surprised how many founders show up unprepared in investor meetings.
Communicating that vision also includes giving insights into your personal drive and ambition. WHY are you building this company? Why is your team the one that will solve that specific problem?
Offer a demo of your product. There is no better way for investors to get to know your product than trying it themselves. If your product only works with a very specific set of data, also have a demo account prefilled with example data the user can play around with.
Actively call out the “flaws” in your business. No one is perfect, and investors will probably point out the faults of your product by raising tricky questions anyways. Be prepared to openly discuss them and how you want to address these challenges.
Prepare an FAQ document with all the relevant questions that have been asked about your product and business so far, and offer it to the investor or include it in the follow-up.
This is especially important when sending your pitch deck to an investor via email: Get the key-information across on the first 6 slides. If the investor has caught interest by then, she or he will most likely continue to look at if – if not… probably not.
Another thing you need to take into consideration, is how to market your product. Follow these rules, and you are good to go:
Please stay away from buzzwords – AI, machine learning, NLP – you name it. They will only confuse your audience, who most likely doesn’t have the same insights on your business as you do.
“Communicating isn’t about you, it is about your audience.” Always keep that in mind while promoting your product.
At the beginning of building your business, you won’t be able to devote a full time employee to a communications role, so make sure comms is a group activity at the beginning & by creating content yourself, you have to make the team and what you do look exciting to the audience.
“Comms and Hiring are Bffs in the early days of a company” This means that the way you communicate will (hopefully) attract new employees and these new employees – will (hopefully) help to adapt and improve the way you communicate, in order to gain even more potential team members.
Start a relationship with media people and journalists, that will be useful to promote your business in the future, early on. Also, think about how you can help them, before expecting them to help you. Give them insights that show that YOU have insights and that make them feel like you are a person they want to know.
