• SaaS Weekly
  • Posts
  • 💸 Cloud CEOs are done being cheap

💸 Cloud CEOs are done being cheap

November 22, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

ISSUE #252

Money moves. SaaS companies go for growth. Pricing pages get a workout. Oh, and of course, we’re betting on racecar frameworks (say what now 👀).

But wait…let this man cook! I just dropped a new section called “From the Trenches.”

Every Friday, a Growth/ GTM guru from the SW network shares their perspective or lesson learned. (If you’re interested in being featured, let me know.)

In this week’s roundup, we cover:

  • Cloud companies are shifting to growth

  • Lenny’s racecar growth framework

  • How interactive demos can save PLG headaches

Let's dive in!

Ian at SaaS Weekly

INDUSTRY ROUNDUP

📈 Public Markets | Cloud companies are ready to party like it's 2021
After two years of penny-pinching and FCF flexing, public SaaS companies are loosening their belts and betting on growth again. Curious timing too 🤔 – markets aren't valuing profitability like they used to. (Link)

🏷️ SaaS Pricing | We’re ditching the 'pay-per-seat' life
SaaS companies are now charging based on outcomes (like Intercom's $0.99 per resolved ticket) rather than access or usage. Because who wants to pay for a gym membership when you could pay for actual pounds lost? (Link)

🔄 Executive Moves | Meta's playing musical chairs with Big Tech's AI talent
Clara Shih, Salesforce's AI CEO, is jumping ship to lead Meta's new business AI group. Fun fact: She wrote a book called "The Facebook Era" in 2009 – talk about manifesting your dream job. (Link)

😞 Layoff Lookback | (Big) Tech's “year of efficiency” claimed 130K jobs in 2024
From FAANG giants to rising startups, 457 companies kicked off layoffs this year. The plot twist? Even AI darlings aren't safe – turns out building our AI overlords doesn't guarantee job security. (Link)

FROM THE TRENCHES

👷 | Mike Northfield, Marketing first-principlist at Q-SYS
“Buyers, not marketers, are in control of the buying journey”

What’s one growth lesson you’ve learned recently?

“We don’t—and can’t—control when a buyer is ready to engage. They’re making decisions long before they talk to us.

Buyers spend ~70% of their purchase process conducting independent research with their internal teams. By the time buyers start conversations with vendors, 81% have selected a favorite. They spend the remaining 30% of the buying process validating that decision.”

How did you put this lesson into practice?

“Give buyers the keys to self-education. Buyers spend most of their purchase journey independently researching solutions—they need access to material that answers every critical buying question they can consume on their own time.”

“Accept that great marketing often goes unmeasured. Many of marketing’s most impactful moments (early influence) will never be seen—and often can’t be measured.”

GROWTH PLAYS IN PRACTICE

🖼 Frameworks | 15 min read | Dan Hockenmaier & Lenny Rachitsky, Reforge
The racecar growth framework

In theory: You've heard me rant about "lubricated" growth flywheels before. Turns out Lenny Rachitsky has been thinking the same thing - but his view is much cooler 🏎.

Sustainable growth motions are like high-performance cars. Your engine (loops) provides the power, lubricants (optimizations) keep it running smoothly [told you], turbo boosts (one-offs) give you acceleration, and fuel (acquisition) keeps you moving.

In practice:

  1. Start with unscalable turbo boosts: Before you have users or capital, don't obsess over building the perfect engine. Use PR, events, and direct outreach to get initial traction. Only then do you transition to your primary growth engine.

  2. Master one growth engine first: Every breakout company starts with one dominant engine - Snapchat (virality), Salesforce (sales), and Thumbtack (content). If you're trying to run multiple engines at once, you're doing it wrong.

  3. Match your fuel to your engine: Running a paid acquisition engine? You need heavy monetization for fuel. But if you're betting on virality like Dropbox, reduce friction and monetization to help users spread the word.

🛠 Tactics | 7 min read |Leah Tharin, Leah's ProducTea
Interactive Demos: PLG without the headache

In theory: Everyone's obsessing over free trials and freemium, but there's another way to accelerate your PLG motion. Interactive demos - think "Gary from Sales showing you the product, minus Gary" - are driving 2x close rates and 450% lift in trial signups. They're the rare growth lever that both sales and product teams actually want.

In practice:

  1. Start with demos, not trials: Most companies try to jump straight to free trials for PLG. Instead, use interactive demos as your first step - they're lower risk, faster to ship, and don't trigger pricing wars with sales.

  2. Design for the "aha moment": Don't just clone your product interface. Look at how Zendesk tailors different demos for each user type (support agent vs. manager), guiding each to their specific value prop through custom workflows.

  3. Let your champions sell for you: After sales calls, prospects share interactive demos internally. The better your self-serve demo experience, the more your champion can sell when your sales rep isn't around.

SAVED SOCIAL POSTS

I’m hearing whispers that AI SDRs aren’t living up to the hype.

Shocking right?! This is my read on what’s happening…

Kevin White on LinkedIn →

Two years ago, I posted an Airtable open sourcing the go-to-market plays that built ZoomInfo into a billion-dollar company.

It was my most popular post ever.

Henry Schuck on LinkedIn →

TOP READS FROM LAST WEEK

  1. Adobe turned America into a giant gingerbread house (Link)

  2. State of the Cloud | Trends & Benchmarks (Link)

  3. How to build your GTM strategy from scratch (Link)

Thank you for reading this Friday's SaaS Weekly Roundup! Let us know what you thought about this week's articles by replying to this email.