TIMIA Capital’s First Ever #BestinSaaS Breakfast: A Recap
Published on
TIMIA Capital launched a new series to engage and educate SaaS founders: the #BestinSaaS Breakfast. On Friday, Feb. 10, we served up money and metrics best practices for SaaS executives, in partnership with Garibaldi Capital.
“We are looking for ways to build and strengthen the SaaS companies in Canada, and learning from the sector’s best and brightest will spark success for the Founders that attend,” commented Greg Smith, Chief Investment Officer at TIMIA.
Attending founders enjoyed talks and discussion on the topic of Money and Metrics, facilitated by Allan Willie and Barry Yates. If you missed out on this event, watch your inbox for an invitation to our next one! In the meantime, check out recap of the event below!
Allan Willie is the CEO of Klipfolio, and he loves playing an active role in the spread of startup knowledge. His fireside chat at SaaSNorth in November 2016 was a crowd favourite. As a provider of metrics and dashboard solutions to businesses around the world in his role at Klipfolio, Allan had insights on all the metrics questions our attendees had.
Here are some of Allan’s insights:
-
- Follow the 40% Rule: The 40% rule is an intriguing metric for SaaS founders to keep in mind. The 40% rule claims that your annual revenue growth rate + your operating margin should be > equal 40%.
- Segment Your Churn: High churn rates can make make it difficult for SaaS businesses to grow, but they also provide valuable opportunities to learn about your customer. Losing a customer is not necessarily bad in itself, but not understanding why you lost the customer is bad.
- Use Your Data: SaaS businesses allow you to collect all kinds of data about your customers; make sure you’re using that data to understand your customers (and why they’re giving you money) even better.
- Big CAC or Little CAC? Focus more on the CAC ratio, make sure you have a thesis on the lifetime value of your business, and monitor it continuously. This process forms the fundamental economics of your business.
Barry Yates is the former CEO of Monexa, which sold to Netsuite in 2016. Barry is an expert on the relationship between metrics and exits, and shared several important observations with the attending founders.
Here are some of Barry’s insights:
-
- Manage Your Bids: Be proactive and intentional in how you handle bids. Make sure you have more than one bidder, and don’t respond to the first bid you get.
- Know Your Business’s Value: Extracting extra value from your business is important. In many cases, that means being prepared to walk away from any deal to buy your company (with the backing of your stakeholders, of course).
- Focus and Own Your Market Segment: When you really own a segment, other companies (re: Competitors) take notice and are willing to pay a premium to own that segment or remove you from that segment.
Overall, our #BestinSaaS breakfast prioritized a sharing of knowledge and productive, stimulating discussions. Want to stay in the loop on future #BestinSaaS breakfasts and other exciting updates from TIMIA? Subscribe to our newsletter to ensure you never miss an update.
Looking for non-dilutive capital?
TIMIA Capital works with recurring revenue technology
businesses between $2 – $20 million ARR.
