What A Technical Startup Founder Would Do Differently Next Time

by | Jan 5, 2022

I talked with a technical founder today who never got revenue traction in his startup, but he was able to sell his technology to a bigger software business that wanted the platform he built.

I asked him what he’d do differently next time.

Here’s what he said:

“For every dollar spent on development, I’d spend at least twice that on marketing.

I totally underestimated what it would take to get customers and revenue.”

He would double the marketing investment again if he built a two-sided marketplace, since there are two sets of customers to market to and create active users.

Building software is always hard, but it’s not the hardest part of growing a valuable software company.

The harder part for 90% of software startups is effective sales and marketing that drives customers, revenues, and growth.

Greg Head posted this on LinkedIn on January 5, 2022.

Check out the comments and join the discussion on LinkedIn.

Related Posts

Your ICP is Shifting This Year Because of AI

After years of clarifying their ICPs to grow faster, SaaS CEOs are discovering that the accelerating AI shift this year is causing a shift in their ICPs. Surprise! If you added AI-powered features to your app, launched AI agents to do work, ...

Growing to $10M ARR Requires a Repeatable Factory

Growing from $3M to $10M ARR is almost the opposite game for B2B SaaS companies than getting to $1M in revenue. It's so different that most sales and marketing team members who got you started won't learn the new game to scale. It's a ...

Get the Most Leverage from Focusing on Your ICP

I helped a SaaS founder this week to think through his tricky questions about the ICP for his growing $2M B2B SaaS business. Here's what I told him: 1) The Ideal Customer Profile is usually not simple and not easy, but it is required to ...
No results found.
Practical Founders eBook

FREE 60-PAGE EBOOK

Win the Startup Game Without VC Funding

Learn how all 75 founders on the Practical Founders Podcast created an average founder equity value of $50 million.