SaaS

Rod Favaron, CEO Spredfast

Rod Favaron is currently the President and CEO at Spredfast, a social analytics and management software company. Spredfast is a portfolio company of Lead Edge Capital. Rod is a successful serial entrepreneur.

He was formerly the CEO of Lombardi Software, a business process management software platform that sold to IBM in 2010. Prior to Lombardi, Rod was the CEO of Mediaprise, a brand resource management solution for multi-channel marketing.

Summary Notes on SaaS

Key SaaS metrics

• Must have clear metrics for pipeline tracking and lead tracking relative to marketing dollars spent
• Conversion tracking is critical – win rates overall/per vertical, bookings and booking growth
• Usage patterns are key once customer is onboarded
• Customer success – conducting surveys and measuring happiness (renewals are best indicators)
• It helps to capture KPIs and every 90 days and send these back to customers to make sure they are hitting their business goals

Retention metrics

• Dependent on size of customer and if it’s a 3rd gen product or new product
• For a more mature market with more enterprise customers, the company should have 90%+ renewal rates, revenue retention 100%+
• For a brand new market, a company should strive for 80%+ renewal rates

Best practices on Services

• Important to identify what skills customers have, where they have gaps and if they can fill these gaps themselves
• Why SaaS companies are valuable