In this episode of SaaS Origin Stories, Brendon Metcalf, CEO of Place, joins host Phil Alves to discuss a wide range of topics ranging from funding strategies, creating a product-market fit, and how to run a SaaS startup when 80% of your business comes from one client.

Brandon Metcalf is an accomplished entrepreneur with a strong track record in building and leading successful companies. A graduate of Harvard Business School, Brandon also hosts the popular Cash & Burn podcast. As the CEO of Place, a financial analytics stack for Salesforce, he leads the company’s growth strategies.

Guest at a Glance:

Name: Brendon Metcalf

What he Does: Brendon Metcalf is a repeat founder and CEO of Place, a Salesforce stack focused on managing sales-to-cash workflows. With his expertise in the software industry, particularly in the realm of Salesforce, he has a wealth of experience in creating, scaling, and managing global businesses.

Brandon on LinkedIn
Place on LinkedIn
Brendon’s Book Recommendation The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

Topics we cover:

The quality of your leadership team makes a difference when seeking funding
Lessons from repeat founding
The first customer and early growth strategies
Leveraging outbound learnings to sharpen the product-market fit
Strategies when 80% of the revenue pipeline is one customer

Highlights:

Quality of Leadership Counts When Seeking Funding

A good leadership team inspires confidence for investors who are looking for answers to three questions: Does the idea solve a real-world problem? What is the size of the potential market? Do you inspire confidence? A high-quality leadership team with successful exits behind them inspires confidence and opens the doors to funding more easily.

“Three things count when it comes to seeking funding from investors, who do you know, how do you connect with investors, and what is the confidence you deliver”.

Lessons from Repeat Founding

Brandon founded Place after a successful exit from his previous startup. He shares some insights and learnings that helped him in founding Place. The biggest lesson he learned from his previous startup was the ability to separate work and personal life and ensure that he devotes sufficient time to his personal relationships. Brandon says he starts early, around five-thirty in the morning, but you won’t find him working after 6 PM on a weekday.

“I ensure that I get downtime with family and friends after six o’clock every day”.

The First Customer and Early Growth Strategies

Brandon explains how they lucked out as their first customer was the company the sales head was working for previously. Early growth came through inbound and outbound marketing to companies in the B2B SaaS space who were also clients of Salesforce. The company closed the loop on customer feedback to tweak the product and accelerate conversions.

“We actively sought feedback to identify specific use case issues faced by the core of daily users of Salesforce”.

Sharpening the Product Market Fit with Feedback From Outbound Marketing

Brandon shares how, initially, the efforts from outbound marketing were subpar. Users who opted for the free trial were not converting after the trial period. The Nos far outnumbered the Yeses. To resolve this, the sales team contacted every lead that did not convert to identify why they chose not to subscribe to the service. Based on the feedback, the company identified additional functionalities that the customers were seeking. These were then added to the product for a better product-market fit.

“We felt something had shifted; that was a better product-market fit”.

Strategies When 80% of Your Business Comes From One client

When the bulk of your business comes from one client, the best practice is to split your workflow and teams into two parts. One team across the workflow focuses on the large client to give them customized and personalized service. Then there is a second team to handle the other customers. Having a single team for the two customer personas runs the risk of the smaller clients getting average service since the internal resources across verticals will be focused on the large client.

“One of our customers is a twenty-four billion dollar client who uses 30,000 licenses globally; putting together the other customers account for 3,000 licenses. We had to have two teams”.

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