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How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

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Re: How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

#21

Post by standrews »

robotkilla wrote: post #20
blumkvist wrote: post #2

>Pipedrive could have grown to 10,000 paying customers without any marketing and the next paragraph >The main thing that got Pipedrive to first 100, 1000 and 10000 customers was having a great product. Building a great product IS marketing. It's the most important part of marketing. It's at the beginning of any marketing plan. Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market, and later on, navigating the mark…

This article itself reads like a piece of marketing to me.

The aim was to share what has worked for Pipedrive. Of course, I hoped to show myself and Pipedrive in good light in the process - sorry if the balance wasn't right for you there.

Re: How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

#22

Post by downandout »

standrews wrote: post #19
downandout wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer: luck. Yes, they have created a great product and yes they did some marketing - the same things that their competitors did. Once the prerequisite hard work has been expended, there are innumerable factors that are completely beyond anyone's control that determine which products succeed or fail.

If I could pick just one of the three - great product, luck and marketing - I'd say great product trumps luck. Because without a product all that luck can get you is a winning lottery ticket. And hustling and marketing increases the probability of "luck".

>I'd say great product trumps luck. Because without a product all that luck can get you is a winning lottery ticket.

Of course you would say that, because that's your experience. In your case, the entry fee to the lottery was creating a great product, doing marketing, and generally hustling - just like your competitors. Once you paid the entry fee though, the controlling factor was luck. You won, and your competitors lost. I am not trying to take anything away from your success, because you paid your entry fee through hard work, but as I said it shows a lack of perspective to just say "we are successful because we made a great product". Great products fail every day.

Re: How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

#23

Post by Kenji »

blumkvist wrote: post #2

>Pipedrive could have grown to 10,000 paying customers without any marketing and the next paragraph >The main thing that got Pipedrive to first 100, 1000 and 10000 customers was having a great product. Building a great product IS marketing. It's the most important part of marketing. It's at the beginning of any marketing plan. Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market, and later on, navigating the mark…

>Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market, and later on, navigating the markets the company operates in.

No. See Wikipedia: Marketing is the methodology of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling that product or service.

Marketing is about communicating the value of the product. Regardless of the actual quality of the product. Building a great product is not marketing.

Re: How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

#24

Post by blumkvist »

standrews wrote: post #4
blumkvist wrote: post #2

>Pipedrive could have grown to 10,000 paying customers without any marketing and the next paragraph >The main thing that got Pipedrive to first 100, 1000 and 10000 customers was having a great product. Building a great product IS marketing. It's the most important part of marketing. It's at the beginning of any marketing plan. Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market, and later on, navigating the mark…

Hey, thank you for chiming in. I'm not sure how you got the impression that I insisted we "don't do any marketing." - sorry if I wasn't clear. What I aimed to say was that product was the main reason for getting to 10k, and marketing tactics and strategies I described each contributed further.

I wanted to make a more general point to all the people who misunderstand marketing. Actually, the overwhelming majority of people associate marketing with advertising or design on flyers. The point I wanted to make is geared towards people in startups who misunderstand marketing and thus completely avoid the topic, which more often than not, reflects on their success.

It also leads to inventing terms like "content marketing", "inbound marketing", "growth hacking". Oh, the irony with the last one. A marketing term, to trick people who hate marketing, to do marketing...

I'm sure it pans out great for people like Rand Fishkin, Dharmesh Shah and Sean Ellis. The problem is, the people who fall for these neologisms get disconnected from the much, much larger marketing community. They get inside of an echo chamber. Instead of reading thorough articles, by authors which credentials are checked, claims are investigated and arguments - reviewed by peers, they get moz.com and quicksprout and kissmetrics, unbounce and optimizely. Well, I guess people get what they ask for - something easy, which does its "magic".

My last line in the previous post was a cheap shot and uncalled for. I'm sorry about that.

Re: How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

#25

Post by standrews »

downandout wrote: post #22
standrews wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could pick just one of the three - great product, luck and marketing - I'd say great product trumps luck. Because without a product all that luck can get you is a winning lottery ticket. And hustling and marketing increases the probability of "luck".

>I'd say great product trumps luck. Because without a product all that luck can get you is a winning lottery ticket. Of course you would say that, because that's your experience. In your case, the entry fee to the lottery was creating a great product, doing marketing, and generally hustling - just like your competitors. Once you paid the entry fee though, the controlling factor was luck. You won, and your competitors…

I've been on the failing side as well, both with Pipedrive marketing activities (at least 1 mentioned in the post too) and my own startup. With the latter I had "luck" in getting decent press and some influential users, but it failed because the product wasn't there. So I guess we both have a point.

Re: How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

#27

Post by blumkvist »

Kenji wrote: post #23
blumkvist wrote: post #2

>Pipedrive could have grown to 10,000 paying customers without any marketing and the next paragraph >The main thing that got Pipedrive to first 100, 1000 and 10000 customers was having a great product. Building a great product IS marketing. It's the most important part of marketing. It's at the beginning of any marketing plan. Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market, and later on, navigating the mark…

>Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market, and later on, navigating the markets the company operates in. No. See Wikipedia: Marketing is the methodology of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling that product or service. Marketing is about communicating the value of the product. Regardless of the actual quality of the product. Building a great product i…

Well, I spoke too quickly about the wikipedia article then. It must have changed, or I've read another page. The page which says that is wrong. Communicating product value is only part of the marketing mix.

Building a great product is most definitely part of marketing. For example there are methods and techniques which faciiliate it and are subject of marketing journals and marketing academia. One of these methods is the "segmentation-targeting-positioning" framework.

I can get you many more citations if you wish, or you can spare me the time, and search for them yourself. Perhaps you will learn something of value in the process.

Re: How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

#28

Post by standrews »

porter wrote: post #26

A decent product is just entry to the game. It sounds like what made pipedrive successful is AppSumo.

AppSumo promotion definitely played a role, but if I had to pick just 1 thing behind getting to 10k customers, this wouldn't be AppSumo. Furthermore, this wouldn't be any one thing.

Re: How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

#29

Post by freebs »

Kenji wrote: post #23
blumkvist wrote: post #2

>Pipedrive could have grown to 10,000 paying customers without any marketing and the next paragraph >The main thing that got Pipedrive to first 100, 1000 and 10000 customers was having a great product. Building a great product IS marketing. It's the most important part of marketing. It's at the beginning of any marketing plan. Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market, and later on, navigating the mark…

>Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market, and later on, navigating the markets the company operates in. No. See Wikipedia: Marketing is the methodology of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling that product or service. Marketing is about communicating the value of the product. Regardless of the actual quality of the product. Building a great product i…

Marketing and lying about a crappy product does the company no good. People will either pick up on it right away, or leave soon after using/buying it.

Good marketing teams will evaluate your product VS the competition and use the good parts for communicating the message. Amazing teams will also take the bad parts and bring them up to the product teams so they can confirm weak parts and put them in the queue to get looked at.

Marketing a bad product will only last so long.

Re: How Pipedrive went from 0 to 10,000 paying customers in SaaS

#30

Post by blumkvist »

100timesthis wrote: post #15
blumkvist wrote: post #2

>Pipedrive could have grown to 10,000 paying customers without any marketing and the next paragraph >The main thing that got Pipedrive to first 100, 1000 and 10000 customers was having a great product. Building a great product IS marketing. It's the most important part of marketing. It's at the beginning of any marketing plan. Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market, and later on, navigating the mark…

>Marketing is the science of bringing a product to market... Marketing is not a science

How come?
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