Instigator Blog

I’ve been involved with SaaS businesses (Software as a Service) for just about 9 years. My previous company to Standout Jobs was a SaaS vendor. And in many respects, so is Standout Jobs.

Byron Deeter from Bessemer Venture Partners recently published his 10 Laws for Being “SaaS-y”. Ten rules to live by when startup a Software as a Service business. Incidentally, not everyone agrees. Martin Snyder wrote some competitive arguments worth reading. If you’re in the SaaS space or thinking about it, you should get the full picture.

Extending and responding to Byron’s 10 Laws, here are some lessons learned & thoughts from my experience in the SaaS business:

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Customers are great. If you don’t think so, you’ll never succeed. Surprisingly, a lot of people consider their customers to be “the enemy” or a nuisance they’re forced to deal with.

Just remember that customers:

• pay the bills
• provide good feedback
• find bugs you’ll never find on your own
• use your product in new ways (which can result in new opportunities)
• recommend your product/service to others
• serve as references

Without customers you don’t have a business. It’s as simple as that.

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Too many companies treat their customers like crap. It’s frustrating and inexcusable. You don’t like being treated like crap, right?

So why treat your customers that way?

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The pros and cons of freelancing are fairly well known. And freelancers have no shortage of stories about bad clients. But what about bad freelancers? Does such a thing exist? Of course it does. And there’s no worse feeling than paying someone a lot of money to do work for you only to have them screw it up or bail on you completely.

So what can a client do in a situation where the vendor screws up?

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It’s simple really: Happy customers will buy more from you and tell more people about you. You want customers buying more and telling more people about you. You want happy customers.

So how do you get happy customers?

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