Blue Horizon’s reading list is a curated collection of articles for SaaS founders and management teams. We are entrepreneurs and operators who have lived through the process of founding and scaling software companies. Here are the articles and resources we found useful this week.
Customer Centricity—The Secret to a More Strategic Product Roadmap
by OpenView Partners
You want to get your customers invested in your product by closing the feedback loop, creating a community, and turning them into fans…You want to engage customers with the right level of frequency, and also talk to prospects and non-customers… If everyone in your organization shares genuine empathy for the customer, they will be naturally committed to engaging customers in authentic conversations.
Should Your Website Drive Prospects to a Demo?
by Dave Kellogg, kellblog.com
While it’s a very common practice, I think it’s often a lazy one, done by default, and without regard for either the buyer or seller downstream…used by the product-led growth (PLG) crowd, and a great CTA — provided the company is actually executing a PLG strategy…I’m not against get-demo as a CTA. I just think we need to put more thought into what it means, the options we offer, and what happens to both the buyer and the seller when someone presses it.
Drive meaningful conversion with quality sign ups
by Priyaanka Arora
In general, a good sign up rate ranges between 2% – 5%…As we’ve seen, you don’t want to just increase sign up rates through any means possible, because those sign ups are less likely to stick. If you offer a trial, low trial conversion rate can help identify low quality sign ups whereas high churn is your metric of choice to measure conversion quality for non-trial sign ups. The key to generating more quality sign ups lies in big-picture strategic moves for long-term, sustained conversion.
How Stripe Scaled – Notes from Office Hours with Claire Hughes Johnson
by Tomasz Tunguz on TomTunguz.com
Today, Stripe operates with quarterly OKRs but it used to operate with a 6 month goal planning process. Goal frameworks ensure that the priorities of the leadership team coalesce the priorities of the rest of the organization. The particular framework isn’t important. Rather, the clarity of the goals and the repetition in their communication create internal alignment.
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Blue Horizon acquires and invests in profitable software businesses with stable recurring revenue streams. The Blue Horizon platform combines long-term capital and industry expertise with an operating model that enables businesses and their leaders to focus on growth and profitability.