Moving Upmarket for Growth - with Process Street's Vinay Patankar
Dec 11, 2023
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Vinay Patankar, Founder and CEO of Process Street, discusses how they identified market needs, monetization strategies, transitioning to larger customers, revenue from inbound channels, differentiation amid competition, and advises founders on product and go-to-market strategies.
Delaying monetization enhanced Process Street's growth curve, making them a more attractive investment opportunity.
Process Street found success by focusing on specific use cases where they outperformed competitors and provided greater flexibility, customization, and brandability.
Deep dives
Process Street's Successful Feature Adoption
Process Street has successfully implemented an AI feature that has achieved 20 to 25% adoption, surpassing the average adoption rates of other features. This improvement in adoption is a direct result of A/B testing, which demonstrated that promoting the AI feature increased conversion rates. While not the most successful feature overall, the AI feature has proven to be a valuable investment, providing substantial utilization and customer value.
Key Decisions in Process Street's Growth Journey
Process Street, a work management software company, initially identified the need for a solution to manage campaign and content management workflows efficiently. They focused on solving their own problem without extensive market analysis, assuming that other business owners likely faced similar challenges. In the early stages, their first set of customers were friends, and subsequent traction was gained through the release on beta list. It took them three years to achieve their first million in revenue, leveraging a free product for two years before monetization. Delaying monetization enhanced their growth curve and made them a more attractive investment opportunity.
Transition to Mid-Market and Enterprise
After reaching one million in revenue, Process Street made strategic shifts in their marketing and sales approach. They shifted from a support-driven sales approach to a structured sales process, which included hiring sales representatives and implementing a CRM system. Additionally, they transitioned from serving SMBs to focusing on mid-market and enterprise customers. As they expanded into larger deals and targeted specific industry use cases, their product became more complex, necessitating additional sales resources and a more sophisticated go-to-market strategy. The challenges they encountered included achieving product-market fit for multiple use cases within the enterprise segment and navigating competition from direct, indirect, and vertical competitors. Despite these challenges, they found success in focusing on specific use cases where they outperformed competitors and provided greater flexibility, customization, and brandability.
Leveraging AI and Lessons Learned
Process Street integrated AI features into their product, resulting in higher utilization and customer value compared to other normal features. Their strategy evolved from focusing on a self-serve product to targeting mid-market and enterprise customers. They emphasized specialization in specific use cases and differentiated themselves from competitors through areas such as flexibility, customization, and brandability. They also shared the lessons learned during their growth journey, including the importance of clear strategy, delay in hiring go-to-market leadership until proven channels are established, and the benefits of assembling a team of experienced senior engineers rather than relying on junior talent. They also highlighted the challenge of competing with enterprise service providers with larger ad budgets, underscoring the need to focus on economic viability in marketing channels.
This week on How To Win: Vinay Patankar of Process Street, a workflow management software company. You'll hear why they didn't monetize for the first 2 years, how going upmarket increased retention and revenue, and why they focused the product on specific use cases.
Key Points: 01:15 Identifying market need from personal frustration 03:00 Deciding not to monetize for 2 years to optimize fundraising 06:15 Recognizing larger customers have higher retention and expansion 07:00 Transitioning from SMB to mid-market and enterprise 14:30 Having over 50% of revenue from inbound channels 15:00 Needing specialized use cases to differentiate amid competition 19:00 Advising founders to get very clear on product and go-to-market strategy
