- After you hit product market fit,
it's time to actually scale the company.
And in the pre product market fit stage,
everything's experimental,
but once you get past that stage,
it's all about operational ruthlessness.
It's about operating a company,
it's about establishing a business cadence,
it's about aligning all the VPs you're hiring.
It's crazy times, awesome times,
but you gotta have the right tools
to ensure that you're aligning everybody
and you're actually making sure, you create this environment
where everyone's pushing as hard as possible
without burning out.
And so in this episode,
I'm gonna walk you through the four principles
that you absolutely need to know
to actually establish a business cadence
for your SaaS business, scale effectively
and ensure everyone's pushing as hard as possible
without burning out
to get to that next stage of growth, intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK.
And on this channel,
I help SaaS founders like you.
Grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an unstoppable strategy.
Now, if you are new to this channel,
welcome, be sure to hit the subscribe button
and that bell icon,
that way you get notified every single time,
I drop an episode with actionable strategies
on how to grow your SaaS business with the TK energy.
Now, if you're already part of this community,
if you're part of channel,
if you're part of my SaaS coaching programs,
my people welcome back,
it's really awesome to see you over here.
Now, I remember that moment
when we raised our series A for ToutApp
at my last SaaS company,
and we were moving out of our 14 person we work office.
We were only six employees at that time.
We hadn't been hit a millionaire ARR,
and we were moving into our own floor.
We had this entire floor in downtown San Francisco
in one of the buildings
and we were moving in
and everything was getting set up.
At the same time I was hiring these VPs,
I was hiring a VP of customer success, a VP of sales,
I was bringing on a director of sales development.
It was crazy times
and I realized very quickly
that we were no longer in that space
of like, hey, let's figure out what works
that was how we got here.
We're now on a period of we know what works,
we need to execute as effectively as possible
and make sure that everyone's pushing as hard as possible
to drive for success.
And this was one of those things
where those instructions don't really come
with the venture capital check.
You kind of have to figure out on your own,
like what are the key pieces we need
to make sure that we're pushing hard
to make sure that we're all aligned,
to make sure that we're checking on the right things
on a weekly basis,
to make sure that we actually hit our growth goals,
that we promised our investors,
to make sure now that we're on the venture treadmill,
we can get to that next stage of growth
so that we can raise that next round.
These were all things that were super important.
And if you fast forward that year
after we moved into that office, we had 300% growth.
And then we went on to raise our series B
from Andreessen Horowitz.
It was an incredible year,
and I learned a few things.
And I learned a few things on how to scale,
how to put in the right operating system to scale,
and how to ensure that all the people you bring in
are able to scale the company
and push as hard as possible without burning out,
which is super important for you as CEO to manage for.
And so, we're gonna walk through the four principles
that you absolutely need to know
to actually scale your company
by establishing a proper business cadence.
If you're excited to dig in,
go in and smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm,
and let's go to principle number one.
Principle number one, is you gotta actually
have a proper financial plan
and bring on either a fractional CFO or a CFO.
If you're in the early stages,
you'll likely bring on a fractional CFO.
If you're in the mid stages,
and mid to late stages,
like in the 100 million ARR journey,
you would probably bring on an actual CFO.
Either way, you need to make sure
that you have a proper financial plan.
I had this thing, I only found out about it recently,
I have this thing called numlexia.
It's kind of like dyslexia,
except instead of words being jumble
numbers end up being jumbled.
So unless in a spreadsheet, everything is color coded,
I literally don't know how to engage with it.
And so I always had trouble with financial plans,
I had trouble with P&L statement.
It's like, literally my brain would not be able
to process it.
And so, I always really, really heavily counted
on the fractional CFO we had,
the biz ops person that we had
to really help me understand,
like, okay, what's going on in the business
from a numbers perspective.
And I realized the value of that
when I truly brought on smart people
that really dug into it.
My favorite CFO farm, especially when it comes to SaaS,
is Attivo Partners.
You can check them out here, I'll link to it below.
They're really great.
They have amazing CFOs
and they help SaaS companies actually help,
this is not sponsored, I just really like them.
I really highly recommend them.
I've worked with one of their,
I worked with their managing director in the past,
they were my prior fractional CFO.
And what they were able to do, was help me really understand
all the moving pieces in the business
from a numbers perspective,
and really help us understand
where we are, where do we need to go?
Where can we actually improve?
And that was super important.
Before that, I kind of looked at the financial plan
as a formality in the board meeting.
After that, I learned to use it as a tool
to really understand the pulse of the business.
So for you, if you really connect with P&L statements,
then awesome, good for you.
If you don't, then find a really great partner
that can partner with you
to help you understand that
and help you feel those moving pieces
because when you look at that on a monthly basis,
and you should look at that in a monthly basis,
you should have time set aside with your partner
to look at it,
it'll help you understand how the business is moving
and what course corrections you need to make at the top.
It's super, super powerful.
Principle number two, is on a weekly basis
looking at pipeline coverage.
Now, pipeline coverage,
a lot of people don't realize this,
but it's the lifeblood of every SaaS business.
And you need to have a 3X to 5X pipeline coverage.
What that means is,
if you're trying to hit a certain number,
whatever your revenue number is for this quarter
or for this year,
you need to commit to generating 5X
of that pipe in pipeline,
you need to commit to generating maybe 3X,
but more likely 5X,
depending on how conservative you want to be.
And I always like to look at pipeline coverage
because it helped me understand across sales development
and marketing, and partnerships.
We didn't have partnerships in ToutApp,
but we had it in Marketo.
It helped us understand,
are we generating enough pipeline
to even stand a shot at hitting our number?
A lot of times, yeah, like sales had a 20% win rate,
but if we don't have the pipeline,
that 20% win rate doesn't even matter.
And so a lot of times it's too late.
And so it's super important to understand early on,
are we generating enough leads?
Are we generating enough awareness?
Are regenerating enough pipeline?
And are we hitting that 5X pipeline coverage number?
And we looked at that every week
because that helped us understand,
do we even stand a chance at hitting our number?
And if not, what do we need to tweak?
Where do we need to put in more money?
What do we need to cut to actually make up for that?
So, number two is pipeline coverage.
Now, before I go into number three,
let me just pause you for a second.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
Are you starting to see the power
on somehow some of these tools
and making sure you have this weekly meetings
and these monthly meetings, one with your CFO,
one with your pipeline dean,
will actually change how you operate the business
because you'll be looking at what matters.
It's not about culture, it's not about rah rah,
is everyone feeling good?
It's about the cold hard numbers.
And once you have the cold hard numbers,
then you've earned the right
to focus on all these other things
that are just as important.
If you're starting to see the power in his,
can I just get a yes in the comments below,
also smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that.
Now, if you're in this stage,
if you're in the multiple millions of ARR stage,
you're driving to 100 million ARR,
whether it's next year or in the coming years.
And you want a framework to follow
on how to scale your business,
establish a business cadence,
establish a growth strategy.
Up-level your strategic narrative.
This is exactly why I created my SaaS Scale
and strategic narrative program.
I'll tell you more about it at the end of this video,
you can also check it out at TKKader.com/scale
I'll link to it below as well,
but let's go to principle number three.
Principle number three, is you need to have a sales pipeline
and deal review.
This was religious at ToutApp
and also at Marketo.
We used to have a global pipeline review every week.
It was like Thursday at 3:00 PM
and Marketo and ToutApp
we used to do on Mondays.
What you need to do, is actually go through your pipeline,
go through your deals.
And a lot of times there was a before and after,
there was a before where like as CEO,
I'm like, "Oh! Like sales will take care of that."
And then I learned to embrace sales
and start to embrace that more
because if the CEO is not involved
in the deal by deal review,
then you won't be as successful, you just won't.
Because when you're going through the deal reviews,
you'll start to understand who are the customers,
are there people in your network
that you can reach out to help move deals along?
Are there things that salespeople are missing?
Is there any way you can add executive support
to really move a deal along?
There's so many levers you can pull
to in short deals close,
especially as it gets in a more sophisticated deals.
And so, it's super powerful
to actually have a pipeline and deal review
on a weekly basis
to ensure that everyone has proper deal hygiene,
everyone is falling up on deals,
we're truly understanding where deals sit
if there's a likelihood of closing.
Is it this quarter or is it pushing?
And that will allow you to accurately forecast.
Subtle difference between the pipeline coverage
and the deal review.
This is more about closing the deals,
this is more about, are we even getting enough at-bats
and it's tends to be different teams.
So you want to look at these separately
and optimize them separately to ensure success.
All right, number four is actually,
this is slightly different.
A lot of this stuff is around the numbers
around on the business.
It's the sales, the marketing, the finance, right?
But the last piece that's missing,
that's equally important,
is your product roadmap review, right?
You need to look at product roadmap.
And one of the toughest things as you start to scale,
is that there's this opposing force
between actually doing work
that increases the stability of the product,
versus actually driving momentum around the product.
This is super subtle, but it's super important
There's gonna be a bunch of stuff
that you needed that are bug fixes, that improves things.
Inevitably, there's gonna be engineers
or engineering leaders.
They're like, we need to rewrite the whole thing, right?
That's what I call stability work.
But at the same time,
in order to stay relevant in the market,
in order to compete,
in order to stay ahead of the competition,
in order to actually close deals,
there's gonna be momentum feature requests.
And so, what you need to do
is figure out with your VP of engineering,
how to actually optimize for both,
how do you actually do enough stability,
but also enough momentum?
How do you actually drive it at a certain cadence?
And how do you actually deliver on features
that really matter once a quarter
that excites customers
that marketing can use,
and sales can use to really drive deals.
This is super important
and ultimately I learned this the hard way.
At one point at ToutApp,
we went from being the fastest engineering team in SaaS,
to the slowest, and that sucked.
And one of the things that I learned the hard way,
is what matters the most is agility.
Agility and speed of execution
is literally the only thing that matters.
And so, as you're working with your VP of engineering,
you need to figure out
what is the product roadmap going to be,
and how do you ensure speed
to delivery every single quarter
in terms of momentum features,
and at the same time, you're increasing the stability
of the actual product and the platform.
So let's recap over here
in order to establish a proper discipline
on how you run the cadence of the business
in a right drive, this ruthless execution.
So you can get to that next stage of growth
and you can actually make sure everyone's pushing
as hard as possible without burning out,
and they're also celebrating, these other toolings
that you wanna put in the things you wanna review
on either a monthly or weekly basis.
Number one, financial plan.
You want to do this on a monthly basis
and really understand the levers around the business.
Number two, pipeline coverage.
You want to do this on a weekly basis
and make sure you have three to 5X pipeline,
and your team is adjusting accordingly to ensure that.
Number three, you wanna do a deal review.
You want to do that weekly
to make sure that the deals are set to close
and setup for success.
And number four, you wanna do a product roadmap review.
This one can be every month
to ensure that engineering is committed
to stability and momentum,
the right balance between the two.
And there they're actually optimizing for agility
because that's all that matters.
If you got value from this,
go on and smash that like button
for the YouTube algorithm.
Also, if you're at that stage
where you're scaling your SaaS business,
you're on multiple millions of ARR
and you're driving to the 100 million mark,
This is exactly why I created my SaaS scale
and strategic narrative program.
Inside of this program,
we give you an actual framework to follow,
to actually build a growth strategy for your SaaS business.
We teach you how to understand what's going on
in terms of the competitive dynamics.
And we also work with you
to up level your strategic narrative,
so you can compete better, align your executives
and actually build out a growth strategy and execute.
So this program is new,
It's got a bunch of CEOs in it
that are getting so much value.
I'm really excited about, so we're promoting it more.
To learn more about it,
just go to tkkader.com/scale tkkader.com/scale.
I'll link to it below as well.
And in it, you'll get all the details around the program
and you get a link in there to actually apply to join.
And then we'll get on a call
and see if we can help or not,
and if you have the right fit.
Super easy, just go to tkkader.com/scale
Now I drop a video like this two to three times a week
on actionable strategies
and how to grow your SaaS business.
So be sure to hit the subscribe button
and that bell icon
that way you will get notified every single time
I drop an episode.
If you have a fellow founder, a fellow CEO group
that would get value from this video,
please share this video with them
we put a lot of love into them,
it would mean the world to us.
And lastly, remember everyone 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'll see you in the next episode,
or our strategy call for the SaaS Scale Program, either way
(upbeat music)