@rajabel For the travel startup:
- Sounds like what they care about is revenue but usually you would look at the sales funnel and identify the bottlenecks to improvise first. Is the best spot to get 10x growth on impressions, page visits, bounce rate, conversions, etc. If you have 200k visits but only 2k conversions then maybe targeting is the issue, or maybe user journey. If you have 3k visits and 2k conversions then maybe look at how to fill the funnel in coordination with the marketing strategy.
- Which channels have more of your target demographic? No point using a channel that is mostly high school kids.
- what stage is the startup in? As a general rule I choose B because I am a go big or go home type of person but if the company is seed stage and struggling to get first traction then A is the right choice. If the company is rolling but growth has slowed and is having difficulty breaking the barrier to the next order of magnitude (as the 10x question sort of implies) then B is the right choice.
For the b2b saas startup:
1. tough question without knowing their strategy and what they have already. Number one is they need a good idea of who their customers are, why they make buying choices, who their competition is, and what your positioning is relative to them. If they have that already then the North Star is reinforce that positioning. There’s a good book on the nature of competition called When Coffee and Kale Compete, but the nugget is that customers will have limited money in their budget, they will need to take money away from something to give it to you, and therefore you need to communicate to the customers why they should do that. The theory is that a customer has a job to be done and “hires” your product to do that job. Classic example is coffee at home is to wake up, a ritual to start your day. Starbucks is a third space apart from work or home where you feel comfortable to spend time. Starbucks competes more closely with a bar than with Folgers. So anyway once you know that the North Star is to cement in the customers mind why they should hire you over the competition. Also with B2b know who the customer is. A company is many people. Who has the budget? What problem do you solve for them? If you want a pithy saying to sum it up, Know Your Customers.
2. talk to customers. In series A stage you might spend as much time getting feedback about the customer experience, their jobs to be done, how well you meet their needs, etc as you do communicating externally. You could develop use cases, adjust the user journey, all sorts of things but you need to talk to your customers. They use you. Why?
3. sounds like a personality question. I don’t know. Block time for deep work and keep office hours for last minute things? If you have five tasks and time for two how do you choose? Financial impact, time to finish, importance of customer, and how time sensitive it is?
4. dollars and cents. In general communicate value proposition. How much does not solving the problem cost? How much does the company risk by not solving it? How much can they increase revenues/efficiency by using you? Now as the company size you deal with gets bigger it might be less effective, you might deal with cost centers who don’t care about return. But still they care about budget and whether your solution fits into it. They care about convincing their boss that they made the right choice and again it comes down to value proposition. How does your value translate into money?
5. I consider branding super important with a series A b2B saas. It increases trust. Companies moving to SaaS will have part of their business depend on yours. If you fail then they scramble. You need to communicate that they can trust you with their stability. If they make 500k per year in revenue and are choosing whether to use your software, they need to trust you are stable, and a strong brand recognition, good design, and proper positioning help communicate that even if you don’t say it directly. As the business size goes up, the branding becomes more important. Trusting a 50m dollar production line to rely on the software of a series A startup is a big risk even if the price is low. Branding helps them make that choice.