#008 Field Notes from USA SaaS Expert Carter Perez

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Hear fresh insights out of the USA -Carter shares what he’s encountering, and some practical advice for scaling your SaaS business.

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In this week’s longform article, Carter shares a bunch of lessons for driving revenue growth. Here’s a preview:

• Markets are becoming more nuanced - “If we’re selling to oil and gas companies, we're going to have a very different cadence than if we're selling to Shopify or E-commerce merchants.”
• Fuel the growth funnel via demand planning - “It creates a really productive conversation between sales and marketing. Because it's now fact-based. It's no longer a lot of finger pointing.”
• Outbound is getting harder -  “I used to be able to have an SDR (sales development rep.) team that would book between 15 and 20 appointments, per SDR, per month. That is no longer the case. Now SDRs if they can get anywhere between 8 and 13 appointments a month that they're doing really well.”
• Email channels are saturated - “When you show up first thing in the morning, you open your email box, and there's probably 60, 80, or 100 emails in there. Well guess what, probably 50% of them, maybe more, are either things that are unsolicited, or are things that you might be interested in, but don't have the time to deal with right now. And so, this email oversaturation means that there's a lot of static in that channel. So it's very difficult to differentiate yourself to create some separation and to engage the prospect that way.”
• Unit economics are paramount - For early stage companies, managing cash flow is critical, so you need to know what effect your metrics are having on burn and runway. “Because if you don’t, you can find yourself out of business very quickly.”
• Keep up with AI - A prospective customer said, "Hey, great, I see that you're experimenting with AI, I want to have a deep discussion about exactly what you're doing and how you're doing it before I'm willing to invest.” Falling behind in AI means you’re likely to get passed by one of your competitors. 
• Hiring the best people, in-house v.s. fractional v.s. agency - “That coach, consultant, or fractional leader can also help you find your first full time leader in that function. Having somebody with that pattern recognition that spent their career in marketing or in sales helping you select your first leader can be invaluable, because again, they know the lingo, the terminology and what to look for."

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Trends we’re noticing: SaiS

Forget SaaS. Enter SaiS. Just how long will it be until all SaaS is ai-enabled? There was once a time when software companies referred to using ‘the cloud’ before dropping that on the assumption that everyone was using it.

In Blackbird partner Tom Humphrey’s article, “From SaaS to SaiS”, he explores the opportunities for vertical SaaS products to significantly increase productivity. 

Perhaps best summarised in this excerpt: “Post-AI, the value proposition of vertical SaaS focuses on replacing human workflows through automation, with productivity gains often expressed in the  more meaningful 30-90% range. For example, the Chief Information Officer of Commonwealth Bank recently claimed that their entire engineering team was operating with 30% greater efficiency with the use of Github Copilot, a very compelling outcome for a ~2 year old product.”

Read the full article here.

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Tech Spotlight: Leonardo AI

Leonardo AI is a Sydney based lightning fast AI image generator that's growing just as quickly. 

With a few simple words prompt, you can create production-quality images for media, advertising, assets for games and even 3d renders for architectural drawings. From there, you can expand the image, edit elements, change the style and more.

It’s a truly wonderful tool which the 3rd largest Discord community globally (4 million + members), no small feat on its own. 

Check it out here: AI Image Generator - Create Art, Images & Video | Leonardo AI

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