Here is the original office where ForecaaS was born… Thinking about launching your own B2B SaaS business? As the founding partner of ForecaaS Software Inc., here are the two most obvious but critical questions to answer beforehand and how we got there ourselves:
1️⃣ Are you solving a real challenge and are you passionate about it?
You obviously need to be convinced that your solution really matters, or else you won’t move the needle with any potential buyers. Here’s where industry experience makes the biggest impact as it’s hard to understand the complexities of some organizational challenges without being elbow deep in it yourself.
After 20 years working in sales and revenue teams, I’ve seen the huge negative impact that inconsistent data and reporting can have… people will start having many diverging opinions on what they think the “number” is, which leads to all sorts of unproductive discussions, and eventually a fundamental mistrust in the data. Many meetings will then be spent on discussing these opinions and disagreements, time that would obviously be better spent on real strategy discussions, if only the data could be trusted…!
That’s what helped define the mission statement of our first product ForecaaS ARRow: “Equipping SaaS and subscription-based companies with key recurring revenue metrics to drive overall performance and value”. In other words, moving from Opinions to Evidence. Getting feedback from our clients when they start experiencing that reality is just 🔥 !
2️⃣ Can you define a clear ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)?
At ForecaaS, we specifically look for SaaS or Subscription based organizations generating 5-50M ARR selling B2B solutions. Within that ICP, we target both the Finance function and the Revenue Operations team tasked with the typical challenges of producing consistent, provable recurring revenue metrics.
Do some of our clients fall outside of this defined ICP? Of course!
Is every piece of content or messaging targeted to those within the finance or RevOps department? Not at all.
There will always be outliers that can still benefit greatly from our solutions and services, but when it comes to the bulk of our corporate strategy, resources, and effort, it’s centered around creating the ideal solution for our ideal customer.
So if you have that business idea, a great first exercise is creating a mission statement and defining and researching your ICP. Depending on how easy or difficult it is to do, it can serve as an early indicator of how well connected you are to your idea. And if you are lucky enough to have connections in your ICP that can help you confirm early on that your idea is interesting to them, it’s even better!
P.S. don’t be intimidated by established competitors, it means your initial idea has some legs! Instead, learn everything you can about them to see how you can differentiate yourself.
Throwback Thursday picture!
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