[SaaS Club] Finding the ideal SaaS customer

Hey Reader

I hope you're doing well.

Here's a quick round up of what's been going on at SaaS Club:

🎧 Podcast

The Journey to Discovering Our Ideal SaaS Customer

As a consultant, Alex noticed many non-technical clients were hiring freelancers to help them tackle complex and manual data work.

He envisioned a tool that could help automate this work.

In 2017, Alex launched Parabola, but struggled for years to find product-market fit, despite attracting many enthusiastic early customers.

During that time, the business generated little revenue.

Some years later, Alex added collaboration features to his product. And that's when he realized he'd stumbled upon a much bigger opportunity.

Focusing on collaboration sounds like a minor pivot.

But when Alex repositioned Parabola as a collaborative data automation tool, the business finally got traction, and revenue grew faster.

Today, Parabola is a 7-figure ARR SaaS business used by thousands of teams. The company has raised over $34 million to date.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How Alex spotted early 'false positives' i.e. customers who loved the product but weren't his ideal customers. 

• Why Alex believes a vertical focus is essential for horizontal products to stand out, even if that means turning away potential customers.

• The important insights Alex gained from paying attention to feature requests that got him to pivot Parabola from a solo to a team tool.

• How being prudent with capital allowed Alex the breathing room to find product-market fit without rushing to scale.

I hope you enjoy it.

Listen to the full podcast episode

📗 Book of the Week

This week's book recommendation comes from Alex:

The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, Kaley Klemp

🌐 Around the Web

YouTube Channel

Here's a link to the full video episode.

😍 Let's Get Social

Want to get more social? Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Have a great week!

- Omer

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P.S. whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

1. SaaS Club Plus: We're re-launching a brand new paid community for SaaS founders with an exciting new offering. Join the waitlist!

2. SaaS Club Launch: A 3-month coaching program that gives you the tools, knowledge, and support to get to your first $10K MRR faster.

3. SaaS Club Clarity:  Book a 1-hour consulting session with Omer to get unstuck and gain clarity about your SaaS business.