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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

#41

Post by jonathancordeau »

standrews wrote: post #28
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.

...but if you had to pick one thing, what would it be? Curiosity abounds.

Context; I've been a paying PipeDrive customer for a couple years. Not sure how I originally was exposed to the product, (not appsumo), but I've stayed because the of the product.

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

#42

Post by blumkvist »

paulmckeever wrote: post #39
Kenji wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Not according to the American Marketing Association. Their definition - which is used as the textbook definition of marketing - goes like this: "Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." Marketing is _not_ simply about communicating the value of products. Adver…

Oh my god! It's the same article and the same comments, just different words are used. Being Seth Goddin surely helps in getting the point across though...

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

#43

Post by jonathancordeau »

wooyi wrote: post #33

Successful people always attribute luck because they usually underestimate their own special qualities or don't acknowledge it. This is the reverse Dunning-Kruger. While non-so-successful people will attribute other's success as luck because they think they also possess such qualities but didn't have the "luck". Creating a great product has less to do with luck than product/market fit. That is extremely difficult.

The probability of "luck" increases with marked investment in preparation. Preparation includes understanding the market and the problem, and building a product to solve the problems identified for that market. A great product does not beget product/market fit. Rather, a product that delivers a solution, communicated well to a market that needs that solution, may result in product/market fit (growth). Hence, understanding the needs of a market are critical. Therefore, research (preparation), a marketing discipline, is a crucial precursor for the elusive luck we all seek.

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

#44

Post by adidash »

downandout wrote: post #18
simonswords82 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest why do you think they have managed to reach 10,000 customers?

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.

So you mean Everpix must have hit really rotten luck?

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

#45

Post by philod »

blumkvist wrote: post #24
standrews wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

I'm sensing a marketing academic. I agree with some points and the echo chamber is very real

However, while I wish there were more people reading peer reviewed journals and debating the full spectrum of marketing, the literature is unfortunately 5 years behind what's actually going on in businesses and online (we are talking about SaaS here).

Research and empirical work takes time but consumers move quickly, especially online, so by the time reports and data are published it's out of date. The only half decent way to keep up with developments is to buy into some of these "neologisms" or you will be left behind.

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

#46

Post by csq »

blumkvist wrote: post #40
PuffinBlue wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Segmentation-targeting-positioning' doesn't support your assertion and you're conflating marketing and product development. This thinking can occur because often entrants to a competitive marketplace will assess their competition, identify a weakness and deploy a product to meet the need. The development of the product in this scenario is not 'marketing' as you assert.

Product development is dictated by marketing strategy. How would you build your product if you don't know what the market conditions are? How do you find out what the market conditions are? By segmenting the market by behaviour/need/price sensitivity, then targeting a segment which is underserved (or you can serve better), and finally positioning your product to cater to that particular segment with specific product…

Marketing doesn't write the specs for the product. Product management does. It's okay, man. Marketing is a thing. It's just not all things.

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

#47

Post by softdev12 »

I think the key sentence in this post is where they mention launching the MVP with 20 companies. If these are all paying, large businesses that seems like the founders had deep relationships already established in business. For most startups, launching with 20 businesses out of the gates would be a huge win.

In fact, one could argue that the real value of accelerators isn't their mentors but the fact that they provide an immediate source of other businesses willing to try (and pay) for the product. So for a company in an accelerator, it seems much easier to get to 10,000 paying customers than for a company that is building a product in a garage (without an accelerator).

In my opinion, going from 0 to 20 paying businesses seems to be relatively harder than going from 20 paying businesses to 10,000 total customers. Meaning that if you get traction with 20 businesses that probably means you're touching 2000 people indirectly (assuming 100 people companies) already.

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

#48

Post by standrews »

jonathancordeau wrote: post #41
standrews wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...but if you had to pick one thing, what would it be? Curiosity abounds. Context; I've been a paying PipeDrive customer for a couple years. Not sure how I originally was exposed to the product, (not appsumo), but I've stayed because the of the product.

One thing in addition to the product? The hustle in the beginning to get the product in the hands of the right people. Appsumo was part of it, but not a very big part of it compared to hundreds of hours that founders spent in pitching and "doing things that don't scale".

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

#49

Post by Iftheshoefits »

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…

Two things.

First, marketing is not a scientific discipline. Full stop. Calling it a science does real science a disservice, and reeks as we say down south of putting on airs.

Second, you're trying to make marketing encompass every piece of a business, from product idea to design to construction and beyond. It isn't everything. It isn't about designing or creating a product (other than marketing materials or services), even if marketing may help shed insight into the targets' needs. At some point you're going to realize that by attempting to fit everything into the marketing bucket that the term marketing ceases to have meaning.

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

#50

Post by graeme »

gk1 wrote: post #13

I think "How we did it" case studies are interesting and useful, but the moment you turn it into "Here's how you can do it too!", you're on snake-oil territory. Edit: My beef is with the prescriptive tone of the post, as if getting 10,000 paying users is as simple as 1, 2, 3...

>but the moment you turn it into "Here's how you can do it too!", you're on snake-oil territory.

You seem to be interpreting the post very literally. The author's tone is clearly different from snake oil salesman who have a flashing $299 course on SAAS scaling at the bottom of the page.

A helpful habit when reading an article is to ask yourself how the author would reply if you asked them a question. If you ask a snake oil salesman if they're certain, they'll say yes.

Whereas the impression I got from this article was that the author was constantly learning, testing assumptions. If you asked them "are you sure this worked? Would this work for anyone, in any circumstances?" I got the impression they would say "perhaps not" and discuss where they had uncertainties.

You can't include all uncertainties when writing. Such an article would be unreadable. Any writing requires reading between the lines.

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