- I believe that great SaaS businesses
are built on three things.
Number one, you've got product, number two,
you've got market and number three, you've got go to market.
Now, one of the biggest mistakes
that I've made as a startup founder, more than once,
more than I'd like to admit,
is I tended to over index on building product
and didn't do enough on market and go to market.
In this video, I'm gonna share with you
everything that I've learned
on how to actually build out a go to market strategy
so that you don't make the same mistakes
that I did in the past.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up, everybody. Welcome to "Unstoppable."
I'm TK, on this channel,
I help startup founders like you,
navigate the path to the next stage of growth,
navigate the path to product market fit,
and also navigate the path to building
thriving SaaS businesses.
So if you are new to this channel, welcome,
be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon,
because I drop a video like this three times a week,
every week.
Also, if you're back, welcome back,
it's really great to have you here.
If you're building out a SaaS business,
it can be really, really easy to fall into
what I call the one more feature trap.
Now in this channel,
I talk a lot about the prior SaaS businesses
that I've built, that I've raised money for,
that I've exited, that I've helped turn around
and then exit again.
But what I don't talk about as much
are the businesses that didn't go anywhere
and there's been more than one.
The truth of the matter is before I built ToutApp,
which was my venture backed business.
I actually worked at a company called, well...
I wouldn't call it a company.
I worked on an idea called "Recommend,"
which didn't go anywhere.
I worked on an idea called, "Brain Trust,"
which made some revenues, but didn't really go anywhere.
I even worked on an idea called, "Main Street,"
something we built over the course of a weekend
at a startup weekend in New York city.
And that didn't go anywhere either.
This thing though is, ToutApp worked
because I had this one aha moment.
The one aha moment that I had was
I was never gonna be just one feature away
from the product going, boom.
I was never gonna be that one feature away
from everyone in the world, realizing that,
"Oh my God, I need this product.
I'm gonna sign up right now."
In order to make a SaaS business work,
I needed to go beyond product
and actually think about market and go to market.
And in particular, I needed to think about go to market.
This is a hard lesson that I learned.
I'm a technical founder and through those years,
I actually learned this the hard way.
Now, when I say it in this video, it sounds obvious.
Like of course, TK gotta look at all three.
I don't know about you, but it wasn't obvious to me.
I worked on, "Brain Trust" for months on months on months
and built more features and more features and more features.
And I kept telling myself,
if I just add this advanced file sharing
and this real time thing,
then everyone's going to realize how amazing this is
and more people are going to sign up from the homepage.
And the truth of the matter was it didn't matter.
It didn't matter. Those extra features didn't matter.
The only thing that really broke me out of
that inventor mindset, that one more feature trap
was starting to look at my SaaS business
in these three prongs.
So knowing everything that I know
and all the hard lessons that I've learned,
and I'll be sure to share more of the hard lessons
more in the future episodes,
let's dig into the three principles you need to know
to really hone in on my market and go to market strategy.
So if you're excited to dig in,
go and smash that like button,
now I'm gonna walk you through my three principles,
but there's one thing that's worth noting
before you've jump into go to market.
The one thing you should really flush out is market.
One of the things that I realized was
you can take a mediocre team, a mediocre product.
You can put it in a great market.
If the market forces are that strong, the mediocre team,
the mediocre product, the media go to market strategy
will still be okay.
And it will still be a wildly successful company.
That's just the truth.
That's just how business works and market forces work.
So you should spend a little bit of time
on making sure you have your market strategy right.
You have your total addressable market down.
You understand why the market is ripe for disruption
in the way you're going into it.
That's beyond the scope of this video
because I wanted to get into to go to market.
But I did do an entire video on total addressable market
and how to really figure it out
and how to define your market strategy.
You can check it out here.
You don't have to go to a...
I'll link to it below
and I encourage you to watch it after this.
Now let's dig into principle number one,
on building out my go to market, right?
So as a founder, you probably have your product down solid.
You wanna flush out and check out that market video.
Now let's dig into go to market.
The first thing I would do
in terms of establishing my go to market strategy,
this is before content marketing and ads
and all the fancy stuff or outsourcing marketing,
which I don't believe in.
The first thing I would do
is I would work to establish myself as an authority
or an expert or some sort of knowledge broker in my space.
I would actually put myself out there
and put myself as the brand and say,
"Hey, we're in this market,
we're working with these group of people.
We're solving this problem. I'm gonna be the expert.
I'm gonna figure out a way to become the expert,
learn everything that I need to learn."
I did this with ToutApp.
We were entering the sales engagement space.
I ordered the top 10 books on sales.
I hit up people that were VPs of sales and sales leaders.
And I said, "Hey, how does this work?
What do you do? Tell me about your job.
I wanna learn everything,"
because I'm just an engineer,
I don't know how to market and sell.
I wanna learn everything.
And I went deep into that knowledge.
I partnered with influencers to work with them.
I worked hard to establish myself as someone
that could take all that knowledge,
take all that research and put it out with authority
and some level of expert knowledge.
So that's the first thing I would do.
This works in two ways.
One, it puts you out there in the market as someone
that people can follow as an authority in this space,
your ideal customers,
and two, it better positions you to actually think about
your product and solve the problem in the right way.
So net net, it actually is a win-win on all sides for you.
So I would establish myself as an authority
to do whatever it takes,
to learn as much as possible about the space.
Now, this is a big part of go to market.
Putting yourself out there is super necessary
to get out of that inventor mindset.
The second thing I would do and number two,
is I would share my findings with others.
And I did this back in the ToutApp days.
I did a blog regularly.
I posted on LinkedIn regularly.
I did a webinar regularly.
I tweeted regularly and I kept connecting with people
and my ideal customer profile.
I went to conferences,
but what I did more than anything
was I took everything that I learned.
We tried it in our own place,
in our own companies and worked on with our customers.
And I shared my findings consistently.
I was never shy to get up on a stage and say,
"Hey, I'm not the biggest expert,
but here's what we tried. Here's what we learned.
Here's what we learned from you. And here's, what's working.
Tell me what you think."
And I shared that consistently,
and you have to get comfortable doing that.
If you can do that, especially in the early stages.
Again, this works in both ways.
One, your market becomes aware of who you are
because you're an authority. You're a leader.
You're sharing your insights. They'll engage with you,
but also it'll help you build a better product.
You guys starting to get this.
Now, before I go into number three,
let me just pause here for a second.
If you're getting value from this video,
please smash that like button for that YouTube algorithm.
It means the world to me and my team, and also
building out of SaaS business,
I have a 10 point SaaS checklist
that you should definitely check out.
I'll link to it below.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video. Okay.
Now let's jump into number three.
The third thing I would do is out of all this stuff
that I'm doing, the things that I'm sharing,
the things that I'm learning,
I would actually publish a manifesto.
A manifesto could be a five point guide,
a 10 point checklist, a book, whatever it may be.
I would publish a manifesto
that is the definitive guide
on what I think this space is going on.
What is happening in this space?
What the changes are and how our software product
happens to address those problems.
I would publish that manifesto.
And again, every week, as I'm sharing my findings
and going out there and getting on stage
and being that authority,
I will always link to my manifesto,
which will then link into my team
or me to book a call or to sign up for our product.
And to get you to get things going.
This will actually help you build a go to market machine.
And most importantly, it'll help you build a core audience.
This core audience that engages with you
that looks at you as an authority and an expert
that actually looks at the stories and your findings
and engages with you and contributes back.
That actually consumes your manifesto.
And then books a call with you, tries your product.
This will end up getting your go to market machine going.
Not only will it get it going, it'll get it going
in a very differentiated way.
You'll actually build your brand
and you'll out teach the competition.
You'll actually teach your prospects.
They'll trust you more.
Most importantly, you'll have an audience
that you can sell into.
If you start doing this in the super early stages,
by the time your product goes into market,
you'll have a ready made pipeline
of people that are ready to buy.
If you're already in market,
this becomes a differentiated way
for you to run your go to market.
'Cause on top of this,
you can do all the standard things
that every other SaaS company is doing.
You can do the content marketing. You can do the webinars.
You can run the ads, you can do outbound,
but all of those things become that much more powerful
because you have your core messaging right.
You have your core manifesto right.
You have your authority.
You're lifting yourself up above the competition
and saying, "Hey, we're the best in this space.
We're gonna be the experts in this space.
We're gonna to solve your problems and here's how,"
and people will pay attention.
This is the big lesson that I learned the hard way
I had to snap out of my inventor mindset
because I was a technical founder.
I'm like, "Oh, I can just build this feature.
It will be better. The product will be better."
No one cared.
The moment I put myself out there, the moment I said,
"No, we're gonna be really good at sales.
And we're gonna to be really good at marketing.
And we're gonna teach our customers how to do the same.
And they're gonna use our software.
We're gonna bring everything together."
The moment we did that,
everything changed and ToutApp took off.
Whereas, "Main Street," "Recommend," "Brain Trust,"
didn't go anywhere and no one even heard of them.
So that's what I have for you today.
Those are my three steps.
Just to recap,
in terms of establishing a go to market strategy.
Number one, establish yourself as an authority,
become that expert. Just get into it.
Number two, share your findings with others
and number three, publish a manifesto and always link to it
so that people can consume it.
And then go sign up to,
for a call or sign up for your product.
These are things that I teach
inside of my SaaS go to market program.
We actually teach you how to establish your ICP,
how to create your manifesto and how to run a Broadway show.
So you have a very differentiated go to market machine.
I'll link to that link, our go to market program down below.
We do accept new members,
but I have something more important for you.
If you're not ready to go that deep yet,
I have a 10 point SaaS checklist, it's completely free.
It will help you stress test
where you are in your SaaS business.
If you've got enough of a strategy or on product,
go to market and market.
It'll help you stress test where your SaaS business stands
in terms of all these different levers
that exist for us to startup founder.
If you're interested in that,
go ahead and follow the link below.
Or you can just go to tkkader.com/saas-checklist.
Also, don't forget a link to that video
about how to establish your market strategy.
That's a total addressable market.
So that video will be down there,
I'll link to the 10 point SaaS checklist,
also completely free.
And also if you're interested in working with me
as part of my SaaS go to market program,
I'll link to that down below as well.
That one is application only. It's not for everyone.
The better the fit, the better results you get.
So we always do a little bit of a vetting process,
but you can follow that link
and see if it would be a good fit for you.
Lastly, if you got value from this video,
please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
Also, I drop a video like this
with actionable insights.
Stories from my experience in being a SaaS founder,
three times a week, every week.
So be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon.
And if you're building out a go to market machine,
definitely hit the subscribe button and that bell icon,
because my next video is gonna be digging more
into something that's super important
growing SaaS businesses.
And that's your ideal customer profile.
So be sure to subscribe
that way you'll be notified when I drop an episode
and remember everybody needs a strategy for their life
and their business.
But when you are with us,
yours is going to be unstoppable.
I'm TK, and I will see you in the next episode.
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