Insight
Campbell: Bootstrapping is for lifestyle businesses, while funding targets $1B revenue
“The basic idea is bootstrapping is for lifestyle businesses that want to cash flow. Funding is for companies trying to create a billion dollars in annual revenue.”
What-if
Campbell: ProfitWell likely sacrificed a $1B exit by not raising money sooner
“We sold for over two hundred million dollars, et cetera. But we probably, if we had taken money, we could have had a billion dollar exit or we could have kept going and we should have taken money earlier in our life cycle. This was actually a big mistake becau…”
Insight
Campbell: SaaS retention is highest for daily tools and background automation
“When we look at churn rates across different types of products, those products that are workflow products you use every single day or mostly every single day, or those products you don't have to log into, but you still get the value. That's where the lowest ch…”
Assertion Supported
Campbell: Freemium Conversions Have 10% to 20% Higher Retention Than Free Trials
“Customers who convert from freemium and become paid customers, their retention is typically about 10 to 20% higher than those who converted from a free trial or converted from kind of like a traditional sales process.”
Assertion Partly supported
Campbell: Freemium Customer NPS Is Typically Double That of Sales Converts
“And then on top of that, NPS or CSAT, we measured it through NPS, is typically about double.”
Assertion Supported
Campbell: Value metric pricing reduces SaaS churn 20-25% and doubles expansion revenue
“Churn tends to be about 20 to 25% lower because people will downgrade, but they're using, you don't get this, like I'm paying for so much and end up not doing, you know, not using a lot of it. It's like, oh, I'm using eight seats this month. I'm going to downg…”
Insight
Campbell: Companies with NPS over 20 should raise prices annually
“You should be increasing your overall price once per year. If you're building, if you're not building and your support sucks and your NPS is low, then, you know, don't worry about it. But if your NPS is over 20, which is not a very high NPS, you should raise y…”
Insight
Campbell: Tactical retention issues drive 25% to 40% of SaaS churn
“And if you're past product market fit, This area, this tactical retention, it's typically about 25 to 40% of your churn problem, which is a significant amount, but you don't really look at it because again, you're like, I gotta go focus on features.”
Insight
Campbell: SaaS cancellation flows should ask only two specific questions
“When someone hits that cancel button, we found you should ask two questions. One, why are you leaving? Multiple choice. Don't do the free response. You get like one out of a hundred great responses and 99 are not great. And then the other question we found wor…”
Opinion
Campbell: Standalone SaaS analytics products suffer from poor retention and pricing power
“It's terrible to build a metrics or an analytics product. It's so hard because people just don't appreciate how much work goes into it. Therefore they don't retain at a high rate. They don't want, they're not willing to pay that much, et cetera.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Campbell: Companies with customer research grow 15% to 20% faster
“NPS is higher for organizations that have, you know, customer development functions, or even just ICPs or buyer personas, depending on what framework you're using. Willingness to pay is typically higher. The funnel is more efficient. CAC is typically LTV to CA…”
Insight
Campbell: Customer research is about understanding users, not blindly obeying them
“The biggest misconception about customer research is like, I have to listen to them. You don't have to listen to them at all. You just have to understand where they are. And then you're filtering all of that with all this other data. And then you're making a d…”
Insight
Campbell: Leaders should never share competitive intelligence with product teams
“When you have a competitive intelligence program or you have competitive Intel, I try never to share that with product ever because products should just focus on the customer. They should not give two craps what's going on with, you know, competitor A or compe…”
Assertion Supported
Campbell: CAC increased 110% to 220% across software markets over 10 years
“CAC and B to B is up about a 110% over the past 10 years. Consumer it's up a 145%. If you're selling sales and marketing software, it's up 220% because there's just so much sales and marketing software doing sales and marketing things in the market.”
Disclosure
Campbell: ProfitWell sent white-label research surveys to competitors' customers
“We had white label NPS surveys and customer development surveys going to our competitors customers.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Campbell: In-person prospect meetings boost willingness to pay and significantly reduce churn
“Prospects who meet you in person have 10 to 30% higher willingness to pay than those who didn't. Churn for those folks who you meet in person is typically 20% lower than those folks who have never met you. Expansion revenue is typically 15 to 20% higher.”
Assertion Contradicted
Campbell: Average tech manager tenure is about 15.7 months
“The average tenure of a manager in tech right now is about 15.7 months.”
Assertion Contradicted
Campbell: Tech employees average under 11 months with the same manager
“The average time a report Has the same manager in corporate tech is only about 10.8 months. So just under 11 months.”
Assertion Partly supported
Campbell: Most companies only change pricing every three years
“Most companies don't change their actual number that they're charging once, but every three years.”
Disclosure
Campbell: ProfitWell used pay-for-performance pricing to monetize a 100k-logo TAM
“So our approach that kind of mitigated some or solve for some of these causes and mitigate the problem was freemium. And then these paid products that were all pay for performance, because with paper performance, you could charge a significant amount more in a…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Campbell: Only one in five companies have buyer personas or ICPs
“Only one in five companies have buyer personas or ICPs, only one in five.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Campbell: Only one in ten companies do quarterly customer research
“Only one out of 10 companies actually do customer research or development on a quarterly basis.”
Assertion Supported
Campbell: SaaS startups face 16x more competitors than a decade ago
“Over the past decade, if you're building in tech, particularly in like SaaS or subscriptions, you now have 16 times the number of competitors if you started a business today than if you did 10 years ago.”
Assertion Partly supported
Campbell: 80% of marketing budgets target the top and bottom funnel
“80% of sales and marketing budgets
Tend to go to the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel.”
