S1E18 - Winning Against Big Competitors: A Product Strategy Guide with Torben Schulz

How can you Win Against Big Competitors? Imagine your product competing against one of the biggest and already established Brands like Excel. What product strategy should you implement to measure up to the biggest market competition? A clear product strategy is crucial in today's increasingly competitive business environment. Accordingly, this is our topic of discussion in today's special live-on-stage episode. Our guest expert, Torben Schulz is the co-founder and CEO of spreadsheet creator Rows.  

Why you should listen to Torben: With a management and consulting professional background, Torben is the founder of Rows, which seeks to become the best spreadsheets in the world. With household competition like Excel and Google Sheets, Rows' product strategy is geared towards giving users a more straightforward interface and data connectivity. In summary, Torben says the remarkable of his company are the reason any SaaS founder should give him a listening ear.

Why a SaaS needs a clear product strategy: Torben argues that a clear product strategy gives direction to the SaaS and its people. With a clear product strategy in place, the designers and engineers in the organization have the necessary freedom and creativity to work on specific tasks.

What is an ideal product strategy: The main building block of a clear product strategy, according to Torben, is a clear vision statement. The vision spells out the ideal customer profile and the problem that the product offers a solution to at present and in the future. In addition, it should articulate the jobs to be done in order to give direction to the people tasked with implementing the strategy.

Importance of integrations in a product strategy: Torben indicates that integrations are key elements of Rows because they offer tangible value to the users. According to customer feedback, integrations is one of the main reason users prefer Rows over similar tools by competition. Although integrations are a major value driver, Rows adopts a freemium model, only charging for them upon upgrade after 10,000 executions in a single month. Our guest expert also addresses the element of churn regarding integrations, stating there is a low probability of churn when various spreadsheets and integrations are used. Free-trial integrations often have low retention because they are easy to use and do not need third-party intervention. On the other hand, integrations dealing with such complex workflows as Bigquery and Facebook, for instance, have lower churn rates because they require professional assistance with the tools.

Time Stamps

• (0:39) Topic and guest expert introduction
• (01:38) Why you should listen to Torben
• (03:43) Why a SaaS needs a clear product strategy
• (04:46) What is an ideal product strategy
• (05:45) Importance of integrations in a product
• (08:23) Challenges with using multiple integrations
• (11:18) Role of a customer in product strategy
• (14:50) Importance of Artificial intelligence for SaaS
• (16:57) Other benefits of integrations to Rows
• (19:08) Common mistakes for companies with their product strategy
• (21:27) Advice to SaaS companies with 10k MRR
• (23:14) Advice to SaaS companies with 1M ARR