From Impossible to Inevitable

If you say you'll “increase revenue” or “decrease costs,” you sound just like everyone else. What's equivalent to money in their mind—leads? Close rates? Social activity? Collections? (Location 737)

these phases (courtesy of Gainsight): Traction ($0–$1 million): What do customers want, and what do they do with our product? Adoption ($1–$5 million): Why and how should customers include our product in their daily business? Retention ($5–$20 million): Why do customers need to keep on using our product after the honeymoon? Expansion ($20–$100 million): Why should customers expand to more seats, more features? Optimization ($100 million–plus): Automation and improvements driven by data. (Location 1534)

What's Expected of Acquia's Prospectors? Send 600–800 cold outbound emails a month. Make 350–450 outbound calls a month. Daily: Mix in some social media touches (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) and personalized emails to executives. Schedule 20 longer demo/discovery calls between influencers and Acquia salespeople, per month. Tally 15 Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) passed to and accepted by salespeople, per month. (Location 2213)

With these two metrics, I know the whole story. I'm interested in one thing: a startup that grows at least 15% month-over-month without hemorrhaging cash after they get to $1 million in revenue. As long as the burn rate is tolerable, if you can grow 15% or more, if you have $1 million in revenue, great founders, and you're in a great space, I'm probably going to write a check. (Location 3602)

Exceptional founders who are better than I am, and the ability to go from $1 million to $10 million in ARR in five quarters or less—that's what gets my attention. Beyond that, I don't really care what your SaaS product does. (Location 3605)

Assume $1.5 million ARR per CSM. So we'll need about 15 CSMs to hit our plan for next year, although we can hire some later in the year, so we can call it 15 for now. (Location 3638)

Embrace your struggle, because it's real and not going away. Everyone else has it too—even when it doesn't look like it. Use your struggle as a fire under your butt to change things, rather than resisting it. Turn it to your advantage! (Location 4442)

Motivation is attracted by action. Ninty percent of the time I don't start working after I'm motivated. It's only after I start something—a workout, writing, drawing sketches—then motivation shows up and keeps me going. (Location 5557)