Navigating SaaS Growth and Funding

Episode Summary:

In this episode of SaaS Origin Stories, Phil speaks with Jon Darbyshire, CEO of SmartSuite, a platform that helps coordinate workflow across all levels of an organization to ensure that team members have the information they need to accomplish their best work. Previously, he was the Executive Chairman at The Archer Foundation. He is also the Founder and the previous CEO of Archer Integrated Risk Management.

They dive head first into how long it can take to build a SaaS product, why SmartSuite chose to have no paid marketing, why you need to keep a transparent and trusting relationship with your customers, and the importance of building a community within a SaaS business. Jon also talks about his unique and fortunate journey into building SmartSuite, delving into why it needed to be perfect before even announcing it.

Guest at a Glance:

Name: Jon Darbyshire

About Jon: Jon Darbyshire is the CEO of SmartSuite, a platform that helps coordinate workflow across all levels of an organization to ensure that team members have the information they need to accomplish their best work. Previously, he was the Executive Chairman at The Archer Foundation. He is also the Founder and the previous CEO of Archer Integrated Risk Management.

A previous colleague at Archer described him as “Visionary, disciplined, focused, family, mentor. These are terms that come to mind when I reflect on my time working for Jon at Archer.”

Jon on LinkedIn

SmartSuite on LinkedIn

SmartSuite’s Website

Topics we cover:

• How SmartSuite helps businesses run their workload
• The long, drawn-out time frame of building a SaaS product
• Why SmartSuite chose to have no paid marketing
• Building a SaaS community 
• The importance of transparency with your customers
• Managing workload
• The democratic process for SmartSuite features
• Taking accountability for bad decisions

Key Takeaways:

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day 

Any sort of product or service, especially in SaaS, will take an incredibly long time to build and polish. Jon acknowledges this, claiming that SmartSuite took about two years to complete, even with the help of a hundred different developers. But don’t let this long, drawn-out time frame discourage you from your craft. Afterall, Rome wasn’t built in a day; in fact, most disruptive and revolutionary creations weren’t.

“We did something that was quite unique: we hired about a hundred developers, and we spent the next two years building the core platform before we made any announcements about what the company would do [...] I was in a unique position in that I had the funding personally to be able to build the company without needing to raise any capital.” 

The Power of Just a Few LinkedIn Posts

When Jon first released SmartSuite into the world, he chose not to do any sort of paid marketing. Instead, he opted to make just a few LinkedIn posts to get people talking. As they gained traction and a few customers came in, they were able to engage with them more and find out what worked for them. Now, much larger companies are coming in, proving that you don’t always need to rely on paid marketing for the success of your platform.

That being said, Jon admits that they will indulge in paid marketing and invest in  a marketing team eventually, but right now they have no use for it.

“We kinda went into a beta programme, but we didn’t announce that. The only thing we did was we turned on our website. We have no paid marketing—even to this point—we just made some announcements on LinkedIn. And our first customer came in, a single user in the Northeast, and that’s how it all started.”

Community: A Core Part of the SaaS DNA

A core part of SaaS DNA is community. Jon talks about how, at SmartSuite, this is definitely put into consideration. With so many people working to make a product great, it’s important that there is a sense of community where employees feel as though they can share ideas with each other without being judged. 

This doesn’t just apply to employees, as they also have a ‘User Group Chairman’: a customer that speaks on behalf of other customers. It’s extremely good practice to make sure you listen to your customers just as much as you would your team; they are the ones who use your product, you need to make sure you know what they think.

“We feel that is our number one feature as a company. We provide a great product with a lot of features, but people love the community aspect of getting to know each other, sharing their successes and sometimes failures, what’s working and what’s not, and just building relationships. That’s a core part of what we’re trying to do.”

The Importance of Transparency with Your Customers

A lot of the time, businesses don’t tend to communicate with their customers about what they’re working on and the roadmap of the product. And sometimes, even when a customer reaches out with a problem, they might not get a response until the next day, or even a couple of days later. It’s incredibly important to Jon and the SmartSuite team that they communicate transparently with their user-base so that they’re always kept in the loop which is a surefire way to keep up customer loyalty and trust.

“It makes it more fun, too. They’re getting to know our customers and interacting with them in a way that makes it more personal, so they don’t just know them as customers, they get to know them as people. And that’s helping build the culture of our company.”

Be Prepared for the Workload

When you’re first getting started with your SaaS platform, it’s easy to forget just how much work you will one day have to manage, should your company blow up. Jon talks about how his team, having already been worn out from just how much time and effort they were putting into the product, were shocked when they realized how many customers they were suddenly attracting, transitioning from five thousand customers to a hundred thousand!

Because of this, they had to make sure they were prepared for more workload and stay at the top of their game. And overtime, they dealt with it and have a good grip on the situation.