Hey - Marc here.
Happy Saturday morning, motivated B2B SaaS Founders!
Here's at least one tip to keep in mind as you grow your B2B SaaS company:
Today's issue takes about 5 minutes to read.
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In today's issue, I share some key takeaways from a recent interview between Nathan Latka, the host of Daily Interviews with SaaS Founders, and Robin Singhvi, the founder of SmartCue. They discussed how he got his first $2k in MRR from his community of 1,000.
Robin spent over a decade in the US B2B SaaS space as a sales and solutions leader, playing the quarterback between sales and product teams to develop and execute the best solutions for customers and key stakeholders. He built up muscle memory to identify prospect needs and accelerate deal cycles.
About SmartCue
SmartCue is the fastest sales effectiveness platform with the shortest learning curve for enterprise sales teams, allowing you to:
- Create personalized demos for EVERY prospect
- Close more sales easier, faster, and smarter
- Empower your sales team to sell better!
The pandemic was essentially the perfect storm for Robin to solve this problem of standardized yet personalized product demos. Rather than complicating what he needed to solve, he realized that all he needed was to make it extremely easy for the sales rep to deliver product demos.
That’s when it all clicked for him; if he was to build an effective product for sales teams, the bedrock needed to be reduced or eliminate friction in the sales reps' workflow—and that’s what SmartCue became built on.
Nathan and Robin chatted back on October 13th last year and at that time, Robin was targeting a $2m fundraise at a $10m post-money valuation with about 6 customers and $1k monthly revenue.
Challenges
The pandemic hit and virtual selling become so much more commonplace.
Sales reps could no longer just wine and dine or schmooze their prospects. They have a short 30-minute Zoom call to convince their prospects that their solution or product solves the prospect’s pain points. Now, product demos are even more critical in the sales process.
Advice to Other Founders
Signing contracts is a matter of establishing trust.
Know that what you're building and what you're providing your customers will actually hold its value, irrespective of whether you’re around or not. And of course, the fact that you know you’re trying to give them confidence that you’ll be around.
Personalize demos based on the buyer persona you're pitching to.
If you’re selling to payers, insurance companies, hospitals, pharmacies, or large employers, you have to sell and showcase your solutions differently. That's where you want to ensure that you're able to bring in consistency in your product demos across your teams and customers.
Raise only as much as you need to so you won’t dilute as much.
Last year, they were targeting a $2m fundraise at a $10m post money valuation with about $1k monthly revenue. But they ended up raising a smaller round at $150k pre-seed. A lot of it came from friends and family, while some are from an accelerator part of the equity he can buy back.
Bonus
- Robin just finished reading “The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz.
- Intercom has been a lifesaver for building SmartCue.
- He’s now 37 years old, 10 years married.
- When he was 20 he wish he knew that patience is a virtue that you have to really live by. You have to be patient for good things to happen to you.
TL;DR
SmartCue launched back in 2021. They got paying customers, but the product kept crashing, so they shut it down. They relaunched in September last year on Product Hunt and got 852 upvotes from his community of a thousand people. He now has eight customers paying an average of $300 to $500 a month, making about $2k in MRR. They raised a $100k pre-seed round at a $2m valuation a year ago, SmartCue is hoping to raise another million-dollar round this year at a $10m valuation now that he has a bit more product-market fit with his team of five as Robin looks to scale.
PS Here is a link to the full interview if you are interested in listening to the full episode: How he got the first $2k in MRR from his community of 1,000.
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See you again next week.
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