Over the past couple of years, the Software as a Service aka SaaS business model has been attracting a lot of attention in the business world, especially after the success of Salesforce, Adobe, or Shopify.
The SaaS model has gained so much traction even well-known software like Adobe Photoshop has changed their licensing model to SaaS. However, behind these successfully seemingly easy to execute ideas are the dozens of SaaS startups that failed even before they could take off. In this article, we explore one inspirational startup founder Thomas Mazimann who launched his SaaS business. The difficulties he faced and how he overcame some of the most challenging situations in the early stages of his business.
The Journey
A dedicated business person, Thomas worked for the greatest companies in the industry before eventually starting his own venture. As a key player in these companies, he learned an important lesson that behind the integrated team there are countless benefits. Today, he embodies this lesson through his startup that aims to embrace other companies through team retreats.
Thomas is one of the most unassuming and hard-working entrepreneurs. He found that work was never going to be easy, and realized at an early stage the importance of following his dreams and delivering products that stand out from the crowd and bring real value to customers. With this in mind, he decided to launch TeamOut—a platform that creates life-changing experiences for employees working remotely. The startup is just like Airbnb for online and live activities integrated into an extensive system. Organizers get the opportunity to manage all activities and participants from a single platform.
Working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic can make it difficult to build and maintain a cohesive team. TeamOut seems like a great startup that caught on to a timely idea and brought it into reality. Its mission is to keep up team spirit. In his journey Thomas had to overcome hurdles and challenges that no one had even thought about or read about online. Here are some of the things that Thomas learned through experience in the early stages of his journey as a startup founder:
Convincing people to follow your decision even if they disagree with it
Every founder has to make tough decisions that will define the future of the company. Some of these decisions may be harsh and although the decision-making process involves suggestions from advisors as well as company employees, the right decision is not always the most popular one. The best solution for this problem is to define a clear decision process and explain your rationale before making any important decisions. In that way employees will feel respected and a part of a team with a shared purpose.
“I saw some startups where employees felt totally disconnected from their CEO because they didn’t approve of really important decisions. The gap continued to widen until a point where employees felt totally disengaged and left the company.”- says Thomas.
Dealing With Your Own Weaknesses
An entrepreneur’s responsibility, in the beginning, is to handle all aspects of the business. You need to wear multiple hats and do something you probably suck at doing. The solution is to be brutally honest with yourself and audit all your personality attributes to determine what are your strengths and weaknesses. Focus on building an incredible product that customers will beg to use and practice important skills in all areas of your business.
Mastering the Art of Focus
The methodology is simple, you define your quarterly objective on a sheet of paper, and you can only achieve 3 objectives per quarter.
Make the objective actionable and quantifiable: this quarter we must increase sales by 30%. Now you need to define your weekly objectives. This should be done every Monday morning or at the end of the workweek, you can only have 3 primary objectives each week.
Reading can also be very beneficial, Thomas personally used these two resources: The power of focus book and the focus planner.
How Do You Define Them?
The trick is to review your quarterly goals before defining the weekly ones and break down what you need to achieve this week so that you can stay on track for the quarter. Once you have three weekly goals, you should define three primary daily goals each morning. You can also set secondary objectives, but you’ll only be allowed to get to them if you have completed your daily goals first.
Dealing with the Competition
It can be especially discouraging and frustrating to see one of your biggest competitors release a product or feature you have been working on for months. How do you handle this on a personal and professional level?
Learn From the Competition
It’s important to evaluate the competitive landscape before making any big product decision to determine where you stand and make the right strategic moves accordingly.
Focus on Your Product
When you have done this, focus on building your product and delivering value to your customers by listening to their feedback. Also, note something important, another company might be shipping a product that does not work for your customers, or this could just be a bad product.
Never Stop Learning
It can be hard to devote time to educating yourself on important topics when you have so much on your plate already. Many entrepreneurs face this challenge. Research indicates that reading, as well as all other learning activities such as taking an online course, talking to people in your field, are crucial. A good way to do something on a daily basis without thinking about it is to make it a habit. Thomas for instance wakes up everyday an hour earlier and reads for one hour before getting to work. The routine helps him stay informed and focused, it also brings rhythm to his daily cycle which translates to successes in business.
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