EP26: The SaaS Black Hole

Are you building a SaaS product but have not yet got your first paying customers? You might be in or about to go into the SaaS Black Hole.  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the SaaS black hole and covers how to think about pivoting, building your team, and bringing in outside help when you’re in this phase of building your company.  TL;DR: 3:40 - The SaaS black hole is the time when you are going from having trial users to charging for your product and working on getting your first 10 paying customers.  8:30 - The black hole phase looks different for every company. Sometimes, in rare cases, you nail the product and people want to sign up and pay right away. More often a few people convert, but there is real hesitation about paying and the value of the product. Depending on what happens in the black hole, you might need to go all the way back to customer discovery and really make sure you understand your audience and problem. 14:20 - The black hole can lead you to decide you need to totally pivot your product, to change focus to a new audience, or to realize that there is a problem or audience you didn't plan for, but that loves your product. 17:30 - It is very difficult to build a team while you're in the black hole because you don't know the answers to a lot of fundamental questions about your business. 20:45 - Most bootstrap founders don't plan big launches and instead choose to just go live. You don't need to feel like something big needs to happen when you start asking for your users to pay for the product. 24:30 - It makes sense to have a small team in this phase because you want to be able to make decisions quickly and take fast action when you need to pivot. When you have someone in marketing at this stage, they are going to have whiplash and struggle with the change of direction. 26:30 - From a growth consulting perspective, it makes sense to work with a company in the planning and preparation phase, pre-black hole or once a company is out of the black hole and has their first 10 paying customers. 

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Growing a SaaS? Yeah, that's hard. Growing a SaaS without a clue what you're doing from a marketing and growth perspective? Pretty much impossible — especially if you want to break the $1M and $10M ARR marks. Kim Talarczyk sits down with Asia Orangio to extract and unpack all the strategic insights she holds in her brain from working with hundreds of SaaS companies and interviewing thousands of their customers. Together, they break down how to diagnose and troubleshoot growth challenges across every part of a B2B SaaS business. About your hosts: Asia Orangio is the CEO & Founder of DemandMaven. Asia helps founders of PLG SaaS companies troubleshoot their growth across GTM, acquisition, activation, retention, and expansion and get unstuck. In early 2018, Asia founded DemandMaven — a consulting firm dedicated to helping bootstrapped and funded SaaS companies build revenue-generating growth engines. Previously, Asia served in a number of marketing roles, but most notably as head of marketing at Hull where she helped the team 10.5x in growth, and #FlipMyFunnel / Terminus as demand generation manager. Asia also served on the board of Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Kim Talarczyk is the Client Services and Operations Manager at DemandMaven, where she ensures all client engagements are executed to the highest standard. With a strong background in client-facing roles and professional service firms, Kim has played a key role in scaling operations and delivering exceptional experiences for both B2C and B2B brands.