Khadim Batti, co-founder of Whatfix, explains how category creation allowed the company to challenge conventional beliefs that enterprise software go-to-market requires local on-the-ground presence.
Insight
Batti: Speed to first $1 million in revenue does not matter
“I think it doesn't matter my personal, that's my personal opinion, it doesn't matter how, how fast you get to first million, because you're figuring out the product market, right? You might have to do one pivot, two pivot, you need to find out the right segmen…”
Disclosure
Batti: Whatfix instituted a mandatory five-day in-office policy years ago
“Probably we are one of the very, very few or one of the first SaaS companies to call all people back for five days office. We did like three years, two and a half, three years back, and I've been propagating because we believed it is not going to work. Every l…”
Disclosure
Batti: Whatfix abolished corporate titles to end tenure-based promotion expectations
“We abolished designations. Because what happened, everybody was asking, I have spent two years in my position. I want to get promoted. Now spending two years in your position doesn't mean you need to get promoted. Promotion means you need to take more ownershi…”
Insight
Batti: Macro factors barely affect early SaaS growth but dominate at scale
“When you're doing, let's say, one, two, three, three, two, nine, that initial journey, I think generally, 99% of the times, I think your time is not a problem, because I think you have enough headroom, enough room to grow. It doesn't matter how the industry is…”
Assertion Supported
Batti: Public SaaS sales efficiency magic numbers have fallen to 0.5
“So one simple metric like sales and marketing efficiency, magic number. I think, 20, 20, 21, 22, I think if you guys have track, it was like.73, point, even eight range. That means every dollar you spend on sales and marketing, you get .7 back net. Today, if y…”
Disclosure
Whatfix removed account expansion quotas from its customer success team
“We changed that success guys will only focus on NPS, ROI, business reviews, quarterly business reviews, and renewals. That's it. No expansions. Even if it happens, give it to sales guys. Your core KPI is this.”