Insight certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Vertical SaaS holds a structural customer acquisition advantage over horizontal SaaS

Jack Newton · Jack Newton, Founder of Clio | How to Run a Beta Program · PMF Show · Mar 8, 2024 · at 25:39

Jack Newton contrasts the customer acquisition dynamics and media strategies of vertical SaaS versus horizontal SaaS startups.

0:00 / 0:35exact quote · 35.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“It's one of the places, you know, I think that vertical SaaS has a huge advantage relative to horizontal SaaS, where you need to take a much more and a much more expensive, like horizontal and brand based and, Advertising in the New York Times or other mainstream kind of media. You don't need to do that as a vertical SaaS player. You can get very targeted in your approach, get in front of customers through these niche publications that reach maybe only a million or two million readers. But every single one of those million or two million readers is your target segment.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Jack Newton

Insight
TechCrunch press flatters founder vanity while niche trade press acquires customers
“Getting in TechCrunch Is about getting in front of your co-founder friends and feeling good that you've got your company covered in TechCrunch. Where, where you really want to be getting covered is in the kind of publications that your prospective customers ar…”
Jack Newton Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 25:14 Jack Newton, Founder of Clio | How to Run a Beta Program · PMF Show
Insight
Perfecting a product for a single customer scales to thousands
“We often think about building for 10 or a hundred or a thousand customers, but often if you laser focus on the right single customer and just make sure your product is really singing for them, again, you can find 10, you can find a hundred, you can find a thou…”
Jack Newton Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 42:59 Jack Newton, Founder of Clio | How to Run a Beta Program · PMF Show
Insight
Five-person teams face massive communication overhead compared to two-person teams
“The, you know, the communication overhead that comes with even a five person team ends up being enormous compared to the kind of velocity that a really small team can move when you've got the clarity of vision of what you need to build.”
Jack Newton Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 17:30 Jack Newton, Founder of Clio | How to Run a Beta Program · PMF Show
Assertion Supported
Solo and small law firms face the most bar disciplines
“Solos and small firms didn't have this human infrastructure to help support them. And therefore that's what the law society of BC and many other law societies across Canada and bar associations across the US. What they see is that this solo small firm segment …”
Jack Newton Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 5:03 Jack Newton, Founder of Clio | How to Run a Beta Program · PMF Show
Insight
Startups incorrectly treat beta programs as mere bug-fixing stages
“Many early stage startups launch a beta with a presumption and maybe even the dependency that all that's being Tweaked in the beta is, is bug fixes. You know, you'd like, you really don't want to learn anything net new about your customer in the beta. You're, …”
Jack Newton Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 10:40 Jack Newton, Founder of Clio | How to Run a Beta Program · PMF Show
Disclosure
Clio required a mandatory 30-minute webinar to access its beta program
“The friction point we introduced was you sign up for the beta and to get into the beta, you need to attend a 30 minute live Webinar with one of me or Ryan, and we would walk you through the product, teach you how to use it, give you a bit of a tour, and give t…”
Jack Newton Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 13:11 Jack Newton, Founder of Clio | How to Run a Beta Program · PMF Show
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 250 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.