Top 10 Things I Learned While Taking My Startup through a Silicon Valley Accelerator
Scott Salkin Founder & CEOALLBOUND
Who I was Six Months Ago: CEO & Founder IDS Technology Marketing
President, Phoenix Chapter Business Marketing Association
Committee Co-Chair Arizona Technology CouncilStartup & Entrepreneurship Committee
Playworks ArizonaArizona Education FoundationBig Brothers/Big Sisters of ArizonaTavan Elementary SchoolVistage CEO Network
• Not cruise control…entrepreneur can never be on cruise control…but let’s just say that I had my “collision avoidance” activated.
Not Cruise Control…
Collision Avoidance
I’ve always thrived off taking risks…
• 1998 – San Diego• 2004 – Cisco• 2005 – Arizona • 2007 – IDS/Colorado• 2008 – Back to AZ
There is painful misalignment between go-to-market strategy and sales execution...
90% of content & training never used by sales
(AMA/Forrester)
35+ hours per month spent searching
for tools and training (IDC Sales Enablement Study)
Millions spent on content, but no way to track/report
(Content Marketing Institute)
Marketing Simple organization,
delivery, tracking of content.
Sales & Channels Real-time knowledge and tools where/when they need them.
Executives Built-in visibility,
analytics and reports.
The right content. Right now.
How it all happened…
2010
v1.0 “MarketHub”
v1.1 2 Customers
2011
“PaaSPlay” 6 Customers
June 2014
July 2014
Enterprise Opportunity
Thursday August 7
Demo for Anthony
Friday August 8
Intro to Acceleprise
Tuesday August 12
Pitch/Demo to Acceleprise
Meh…
Product/Market Fit? Maybe we have something…
Cool! But no time
Had an idea of what I didn’t know…
Had NO idea what I didn’t know…
Product + Leadership/Resume +
Revenue
≠
For the next 4.5 months… • Co-worked, surrounded by
startups and founders • Learned from industry leaders
and “2nd-timers” • Networked at startup events
and conferences• Hung out in Silicon Valley, ie
Palo Alto and Mountain View• Pitched and went to pitch events• Met with VCs and Angels • Started looking at real estate
Hayley Barna Ka+a Beauchamp Birchbox
Patrick Collison Stripe
Aaron Bell Adroll
Steven Huffman ReddiA
Aaron Levie Box.com
Nick Mehta Gainsight
Tien Tzuo Zuora
Lawrence Coburn DoubleDutch
Clara Shih Hearsay
Karen Naio NesIo
Marissa Mayer Yahoo
Mark Zuckerberg Facebook
Mikkel Svane Zendesk
Sarah Leary NextDoor
Density helps, but it’s about more than money and convenience.
(Have you seen the traffic, BART, Muni and UBER?)
We are in the third generation of SaaS companies: • 1st Generation: Salesforce, Netsuite, Webex • 2nd Generation: leveraged Salesforce or other web
platforms to scale. • Now…every business process is being SaaSified.
• No market is too small (e.g., search-as-a-service) • More buyers have SaaS budgets (e.g., HR,
Procurement, Finance, etc.)
Nick Mehta CEO, Gainsight First Startup… LiveOffice
Josh James CEO, Domo First Startup… Omniture
Mark Organ CEO, Influi+ve First Startup… Eloqua
Kris Duggan CEO, BeNerWorks First Startup… Badgeville
2nd Timers to Watch…
Once you have product-market fit and hit initial traction, it’s all a playbook. For a given ACV, basically you scale
everything the same way.They know not just the playbook for this year, but how the
playbook plays out 2-3-5 years down the road.
San Francisco/Silicon Valley • 1,390 Deals • $23.82 BILLION • $17.5 Million per deal
Phoenix • 28 Deals • $243 MILLION • $8.7 Million per deal
Tucson • 3 Deals • $13 Million • $4.3 Million per deal
Annual Recurring Revenue
(ARR)
Annual Contract
Value(ACV)
Customer Acquisition
Cost(CAC)
Churn Rate
Monthly Recurring Revenue
(MRR)
Average Revenue per
Customer
Lead Velocity
Rate (LVR)
Engagement Rate
SaaS Quick RaIo = Added MRR / Lost MRR Number should be ABOVE 4.0 WHAT YOU WANT: • Maintain a quick ra+o > 4 • Net new MRR increasing quarter over quarter • Get to $1M ARR in about 12 months aUer launch WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR: • A Quick Ra+o < 2 = churn is too high and sales isn’t working • Net new MRR is flat or down Q/Q • As a result, it takes 18+ months to get to $1M ARR
One VC’s Formula...
“Why Silicon Valley must focus on plain old business”
“Why I no longer want to move to Silicon Valley.”
“Disregard for ‘business’ in the technology business.”
“All the startups that define the bro culture .”
“Women Shouldn't Code.”
“The mythos that is today's Silicon Valley.”
“Uber is…floundering on the business side of things.”
“Marissa Mayer…hasn't really got the business skills to form relationships.
“Twitter…hasn't made of a use case for itself.
“The bro culture is on the engineering side.”
“They’re the 1 percent vs. the rest of us.”
“The themes we all know about: lack of diversity, misogyny, greed, and envy.”
“Bitch and moan about…how we ought to bring things from that city to Phoenix.”
“Apple’s $2B command center is just part of Phoenix’s back-office economy.”
“I can hire phone-based SDRs and CSMs for way less in Phoenix and most of them will kick the behinds of my team in San Francisco.”
“My best simply won’t go there.”
“It’s not as much the lack of talent as it is the drive.”
“They define ‘one step forward, two steps back.’”
“All young people… deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.”
Greater Phoenix • 36% turnout in 2014• 71% were ages 55+
San Francisco • 53% turnout in 2014• 49% were ages 18-29• Petitioning to Drop Voting
Age to 16
Some takeaways…
1. We work together and build a community 2. We go all-in on STEM 3. We get the next generation involved 4. We push our corporations to contribute 5. We change - starting with our mindset 6. We learn from those who’ve done it 7. We stop trying to position ourselves as the
“next Silicon Valley”
SaaStr.com SalesHacker.com Sales4Startups.org Launch.co
GrowthHackers.com KissMetrics.com SixteenVentures.com Pando.com
Angel.co CrunchBase.com B2BCamp.com Acceleprise.vc
San Francisco, CA 25 Taylor Street 3rd Floor San Francisco, CA 94102
Scottsdale, AZ 14811 N. Kierland Blvd. Suite 300 Scottsdale, AZ 85254
Scott Salkin CEO, Founder 602.881.1718 [email protected] @scottsalkin
Sales knows no boundaries…
ALLBOUND
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