The Cadence: How to Create Your SaaS Army
By David Sacks, Co-founder, General Partner Craft Ventures
The Cadence: How to Build Your SaaS Army David Sacks Co-founder, General Partner Craft Ventures May 27, 2020 @davidsacks
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The Cadence: How to Build Your SaaS Army
Let’s Face It Startups are a Shitshow 50 → 500 employees
Wouldn’t It Be Nice to Turn Them into an Army? From To Startup chaos. The team works in lockstep. Disconnected functional priorities. Everyone in the company knows what to focus on. Erratic release schedule and Quarter after quarter, the company unpredictable sales performance. ships and sells.
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How I Learned the Cadence ● First, as COO of PayPal. ● Then as Founder/CEO of Yammer, we adapted it for SaaS -- creating the fastest unicorn SaaS exit. ● Also learned key elements from our main competitor Salesforce.
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The First System Sales / Finance
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The Second System Product / Marketing
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Snapping them together
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Culture There’s an old debate about culture: ● Should startups be run as a sprint or a marathon? Which one works best? ● Answer: Neither. They function best as “Ladders.” ○ Sprint, then rest. Sprint, then rest. ○ Let team recover, celebrate accomplishments, reflect on what has happened. Then start next sprint.
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Summary ● 4 calendars, 2 systems, 1 operating cadence. ● The unit is the quarter (seasons). ● System 1 (Sales/Finance) orients around the quarterly close. ● System 2 (Product/Marketing) orients around the launch event. ● Use events to create cross-functional collaboration (eg SKOs, launches). ● The compounding effect of shipping 4 great quarters/year is huge. Most companies barely ship 1. ● It’s not a marathon or a sprint -- think ladders.
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Thank You