Top 10 Things I Learned While Taking My Startup through a Silicon Valley Accelerator

Top 10 Things I Learned While Taking My Startup through a Silicon Valley Accelerator

Scott Salkin Founder & CEOALLBOUND

Who I was Six Months Ago: CEO & Founder IDS Technology Marketing

President, Phoenix Chapter Business Marketing Association

Committee Co-Chair Arizona Technology CouncilStartup & Entrepreneurship Committee

Playworks ArizonaArizona Education FoundationBig Brothers/Big Sisters of ArizonaTavan Elementary SchoolVistage CEO Network

Harper Quinn Salkin Jackson Owen Salkin

•  Not cruise control…entrepreneur can never be on cruise control…but let’s just say that I had my “collision avoidance” activated.

Not Cruise Control…

Collision Avoidance

I’ve always thrived off taking risks…

• 1998 – San Diego• 2004 – Cisco• 2005 – Arizona • 2007 – IDS/Colorado• 2008 – Back to AZ

There is painful misalignment between go-to-market strategy and sales execution...

90% of content & training never used by sales

(AMA/Forrester)

35+ hours per month spent searching

for tools and training (IDC Sales Enablement Study)

Millions spent on content, but no way to track/report

(Content Marketing Institute)

Marketing Simple organization,

delivery, tracking of content.

Sales & Channels Real-time knowledge and tools where/when they need them.

Executives Built-in visibility,

analytics and reports.

The right content. Right now.

How it all happened…

2010  

v1.0 “MarketHub”

v1.1 2 Customers

2011  

“PaaSPlay” 6 Customers

June  2014  

July  2014  

Enterprise Opportunity

Thursday  August  7  

Demo for Anthony

Friday  August  8  

Intro to Acceleprise

Tuesday  August  12  

Pitch/Demo to Acceleprise

Meh…

Product/Market Fit? Maybe we have something…

Cool! But no time

Oh SH*T.

August 18, 2014

Hawaii (I take risks, I’m not stupid.)

August 25, 2014

Had an idea of what I didn’t know…

Had NO idea what I didn’t know…

Product + Leadership/Resume +

Revenue

≠

For the next 4.5 months… •  Co-worked, surrounded by

startups and founders •  Learned from industry leaders

and “2nd-timers” •  Networked at startup events

and conferences•  Hung out in Silicon Valley, ie

Palo Alto and Mountain View•  Pitched and went to pitch events•  Met with VCs and Angels •  Started looking at real estate

And I started to see some key lessons and trends…

It is not a master planned community.

(It’s a community)

Us ≠ Vs

BIG companies help drive the ecosystem.

But it’s the NEXT GENERATION who is

paving the way…

Hayley  Barna    Ka+a  Beauchamp  Birchbox  

Patrick  Collison  Stripe  

Aaron  Bell  Adroll  

Steven  Huffman  ReddiA  

Aaron  Levie  Box.com  

Nick  Mehta  Gainsight  

Tien  Tzuo  Zuora  

Lawrence  Coburn  DoubleDutch  

Clara  Shih  Hearsay  

Karen  Naio  NesIo  

Marissa  Mayer  Yahoo  

Mark  Zuckerberg  Facebook  

Mikkel  Svane  Zendesk  

Sarah  Leary  NextDoor  

Density helps, but it’s about more than money and convenience.

(Have you seen the traffic, BART, Muni and UBER?)

It’s all about the RISE OF THE 2ND TIMERS

We are in the third generation of SaaS companies: •  1st Generation: Salesforce, Netsuite, Webex •  2nd Generation: leveraged Salesforce or other web

platforms to scale. •  Now…every business process is being SaaSified.

•  No market is too small (e.g., search-as-a-service) •  More buyers have SaaS budgets (e.g., HR,

Procurement, Finance, etc.)

Nick  Mehta  CEO,  Gainsight    First  Startup…  LiveOffice  

Josh  James  CEO,  Domo    First  Startup…  Omniture    

Mark  Organ  CEO,  Influi+ve    First  Startup…  Eloqua  

Kris  Duggan  CEO,  BeNerWorks    First  Startup…  Badgeville  

2nd Timers to Watch…

Once you have product-market fit and hit initial traction, it’s all a playbook. For a given ACV, basically you scale

everything the same way.They know not just the playbook for this year, but how the

playbook plays out 2-3-5 years down the road.

They’re HACKING their way towards changing the world.

(And building economies)

It’s a methodology, not a trend…

Fast. Efficient.

Unconventional.

It’s WHEN. Not IF.

(If you have numbers)

IT’S A GOLD RUSH.

They invest more $$, in earlier rounds and more often.

San Francisco/Silicon Valley •  1,390 Deals •  $23.82 BILLION •  $17.5 Million per deal

Phoenix •  28 Deals •  $243 MILLION •  $8.7 Million per deal

Tucson •  3 Deals •  $13 Million •  $4.3 Million per deal

NUMBERS really do mean everything. (Well, that and leadership)

Annual Recurring Revenue

(ARR)

Annual Contract

Value(ACV)

Customer Acquisition

Cost(CAC)

Churn Rate

Monthly Recurring Revenue

(MRR)

Average Revenue per

Customer

Lead Velocity

Rate (LVR)

Engagement Rate

SaaS  Quick  RaIo  =  Added  MRR  /  Lost  MRR  Number  should  be  ABOVE  4.0      WHAT  YOU  WANT:  •  Maintain  a  quick  ra+o  >  4  •  Net  new  MRR  increasing  quarter  over  quarter  •  Get  to  $1M  ARR  in  about  12  months  aUer  launch    WHAT  TO  WATCH  OUT  FOR:  •  A  Quick  Ra+o  <  2  =  churn  is  too  high  and  sales  isn’t  working  •  Net  new  MRR  is  flat  or  down  Q/Q  •  As  a  result,  it  takes  18+  months  to  get  to  $1M  ARR  

One VC’s Formula...

They couldn’t CARE LESS about what we think. (As long as we keep hacking)

“Why  Silicon  Valley  must  focus  on  plain  old  business”  

“Why I no longer want to move to Silicon Valley.”

“Disregard for ‘business’ in the technology business.”

“All the startups that define the bro culture .”

“Women Shouldn't Code.”

“The mythos that is today's Silicon Valley.”

“Uber is…floundering on the business side of things.”

“Marissa Mayer…hasn't really got the business skills to form relationships.

“Twitter…hasn't made of a use case for itself.

“The bro culture is on the engineering side.”

“They’re the 1 percent vs. the rest of us.”

“The themes we all know about: lack of diversity, misogyny, greed, and envy.”

“Bitch and moan about…how we ought to bring things from that city to Phoenix.”

“Apple’s $2B command center is just part of Phoenix’s back-office economy.”

“I can hire phone-based SDRs and CSMs for way less in Phoenix and most of them will kick the behinds of my team in San Francisco.”

“My best simply won’t go there.”

“It’s not as much the lack of talent as it is the drive.”

“They define ‘one step forward, two steps back.’”

They are early adopters, they embrace change

and they vote.

“All young people… deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.”

Greater Phoenix •  36% turnout in 2014•  71% were ages 55+

San Francisco •  53% turnout in 2014•  49% were ages 18-29•  Petitioning to Drop Voting

Age to 16

We will likely never, ever be Silicon Valley.

(Unless we build a Hyperloop terminal)

BUT WE CAN STILL BE GREAT.

(2,000 People this Week??)

And all you really need is a HOOK.

Some takeaways…

1.  We work together and build a community 2.  We go all-in on STEM 3.  We get the next generation involved 4.  We push our corporations to contribute 5.  We change - starting with our mindset 6.  We learn from those who’ve done it 7.  We stop trying to position ourselves as the

“next Silicon Valley”

SaaStr.com SalesHacker.com Sales4Startups.org Launch.co

GrowthHackers.com KissMetrics.com SixteenVentures.com Pando.com

Angel.co CrunchBase.com B2BCamp.com Acceleprise.vc

San Francisco, CA 25 Taylor Street 3rd Floor San Francisco, CA 94102

Scottsdale, AZ 14811 N. Kierland Blvd. Suite 300 Scottsdale, AZ 85254

Scott Salkin CEO, Founder 602.881.1718 [email protected] @scottsalkin

Sales knows no boundaries…

ALLBOUND