Opinion
Maruthavanan: Product-market fit is a fraud mental model and not actionable
“Product market fit. It's not even a framework, it's just a phrase. Some people like to call it a mental model. And I think, you know, it is a fraud mental model. I have not found a single entrepreneur who could look at the definition of product market fit and …”
Insight
Maruthavanan: "Save time" SaaS pitches fail in time-rich, money-poor markets
“So there are some geographies which are time rich, but money poor, and if you sell save time there, it's not going to work. But some geographies which are money rich and time poor, then save time value proposition and messaging is going to work.”
Disclosure
Maruthavanan: Upekkha Threatened to Expel SocialPilot Unless They Raised Prices
“Prasanna, my co-founder, threatened to throw them out of the cohort if they don't increase the pricing. They went ahead and did that, and then they saw that the revenue did not dip, there was a little bit of a churn, and then they become encouraged by that, so…”
Assertion Supported
Maruthavanan: 85% of SaaS Startups Never Cross $1M ARR
“85% of the SaaS startups that start out do not cross a million dollar in ARR? This is statistics from Nathan's Database that he puts together where he tracks the entire SaaS universe. There are about 32,499 startups as of yesterday. And out of them, about 4766…”
Insight
Maruthavanan: SaaS Startups Crossing $10M ARR Become Almost Immortal
“Now anybody in the SaaS industry knows that, you know, if you cross about ten million in ARR, then you are almost immortal. It's very, very hard to Kill that particular startup.”
Insight
Maruthavanan: SaaS founders should target problems worth at least $3,000
“If you are building SaaS, you are at least thinking about solving a problem which is at least worth 3000 dollars. The cost of problem is at least 3000 dollars or more.”
Insight
Maruthavanan: Stalled sales pipeline is usually a positioning problem
“Sales is often a symptom. It's not the root cause. The root cause could be that, you know, you've not done the positioning right. You've not allowed the customer to have the conversation placed in the right box in their head.”
Insight
Maruthavanan: Three Core SaaS Scaling Levers Are Value, Positioning, and Pricing Increases
“Within that, the three most important and the powerful levers are solve a high value problem, make sure that you are positioning in an existing category, and be very deliberate about the pricing, sorry, deliberate about the positioning, and make sure that you …”
Disclosure
Maruthavanan: Eight of ten Upekka 2017 cohort startups crossed $1M ARR
“In our first cohort in, in, in 2017, we had 10 startups that joined us. Eight out of the 10 have crossed about a million dollar in ARR. Ninth took a small exit, and then the 10th one is the one that did not cross the million dollar ARR mark. They are roughly a…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Maruthavanan: iMocha raised ACV from $1,000 to $6,000 by changing ICP
“The code did not change. It just the persona changed, and where they were struggling to sell for thousand dollars a year, here it became very, very easy for them to sell it at 6000 dollars a year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Maruthavanan: Repositioning lifted Neurotags ACV from $2k to $30k
“Earlier they were struggling with 2000 dollar ACV conversation, and this repositioning helped them close deals at 30,000 dollar ACV.”
