Dirk Sahlmer’s Post

💌 My latest newsletter is out! This time it's about SaaS pricing. 🙂 Over the years, pricing can become a big mess - with dozens of customer groups paying different rates. In addition, there are sometimes various discounts that have been granted to customers in the past. In my experience, this is a hidden growth lever in many SaaS companies. If you haven't already, it's time to clean up the mess and get existing customers on the same pricing as new ones. Questions that will be answered in the article: - What is Grandfathering? - Why is it a problem? - How can you tackle it? - Impact of "De-Grandfathering"? I hope you enjoy reading it! Let me know if you have any feedback. Link is in the comments. #saas #founders #startups #growth #vc #venturecapital #pricing #pricingstrategy

Top list of things that will accelerate your startup: 1. Strong value prop 2. Great product 3. Motivated team 4. Fast iteration . . . . . 1957. Accelerator programs

This chart is so simple, yet many SaaS founders cannot provide it. 😏 If you are seeking investment or an exit for your SaaS startup, you need to provide figures. There is no way around it! You wouldn't believe what I sometimes receive from founders. If they are able to provide anything at all. - Screenshots of MRR Charts, - Badly scanned financial statements, - P&Ls with just 3 lines - ... I'm a numbers person, so I sometimes find it quite impressive how the founders have made it this far. Since investors / acquirers usually work with the figures, you should make them available in a form that allows them to do so. Jpeg / png - a clear no! PDF - acceptable, if it's not a scanned one. Spreadsheets - recommendable! ➡️ Interested in learning what minimum data you need to provide? Check out the newsletter article I wrote about it, link in the comments. ➡️ Interested in the templates shown? Let me know! #saas #startup #founders #vc #venturecapital #funding #mergersandacquisitions #privateequity #exitplanning #exitstrategy #entrepreneurship #spreadsheets

VC investor trying to add value

💌 saas.wtf newsletter update: +55 subs vs. last week - that's a new record! 🎉 ➡️ Open Rate After switching to the new domain, I noticed a slight drop in the open rate (57.8% vs. 58.9%). Possible reasons: 1. The email has not yet been "warmed up" sufficiently and the newsletter is landing in more people's spam. 2. The last two newsletters were just less interesting for my readers. 3. As the subscriber list grows, the open rate inevitably converges towards the average. My goal is to have a highly engaged community and keep the open rate as high as possible. So if you have any tips / feedback in this regard, please let me know! Heard that some authors remove inactive subs that haven't opened any of the last issues. Still undecided whether I should do the same. What if they are happy readers and only block tracking? ➡️ Referral program Last week, I experimented with a referral program for the first time. So far it has been less successful than I expected despite offering small rewards (shout-out + free templates). Only 5 referrals so far. ➡️ Recommendations Something that has worked much better so far: Joining forces with other authors in the space and recommend each other's newsletters. Strangely enough, I have brought far more subscribers to these newsletters than vice versa. New subs generated for other newsletters: 1041 New subs from newsletters recommended mine: 195 Either these newsletters don't generate as many new subs that could potentially be referred to me – or none of their readers are interested in my topics. 😄 #saas #newsletter #newsletters #startups #tech #vc #venturecapital #entrepreneurship #founders

Generous investor sharing proceeds with founders after exiting the business for $5.

💌 My latest newsletter is out! Again one of my favorite topics: SaaS KPIs! 🙂 This time it's about (revenue) retention, a topic that is often ignored by founders for too long. What you will learn: - What it is and how to calculate it - The main factors influencing retention - Adjustments that can be made to improve each of them - Benchmarks + the importance of retention for SaaS valuations - Simple examples to visualize the impact of different retention values. I hope you enjoy reading it! Let me know if you have any feedback. Link is in the comments! #saas #founders #startups #kpi #kpis #growth #retention #churn #valuation #vc #venturecapital

Who thinks it will happen soon?

🎧 New podcast! Recently had the pleasure of being a guest on Shiv's How To SaaS Private Equity Value Creation pod. Topics that we've covered include: - saas.group's “founder-friendly” approach - Why we keep companies forever instead of flipping them - Special characteristics of small SaaS companies - How our shared services model supports long-term growth - Top KPIs we look at to determine asset health - How our due diligence process works - Economic factors influencing our acquisition focus Feel free to give it a listen, link is in the comments! 🙂 #saas #startups #mergersandacquisitions #acquisitions #privateequity #podcast

"If you're trying to put jet fuel into something that isn't going to grow to be big, everyone will be sad and lose." If you've recently started a SaaS company and you are deciding between bootstrapping and seeking venture capital, this is for you. If you don't belong to this group, it's still worth spending the 14min. Or 7min if you watch the video on 2x speed.😉 In this YouTube video, Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel from Y Combinator discuss the pros and cons of both paths. I am an advocate of bootstrapping and capital-efficient companies, but both approaches can make sense. In the end, it's not just black and white. You can also change tracks along the way. Link is in the comments. #saas #startups #founders #bootstrap #vc #venturecapital #funding #entrepreneurship