EPISODE SUMMARY
Scaling a SaaS product is something that is needed to help SaaS startups grow. When the product has paid off, it faces the urge for further growth and development. That’s why in today’s episode, we will dive deep into how your SaaS startup can accelerate quickly after launching.
Fireflies.ai Founder Krish Ramineni joins B2B SaaS Sales Coach and Host Matt Wolach in enlightening SaaS founders about how to accelerate your SaaS company’s growth. He also reveals how AI will massively increase your productivity. Read and prepare for your company’s exponential growth!
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: SaaS-Story in the Making
Episode: Episode No. 234, “How to Accelerate Quickly After Launch – with Krish Ramineni”
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS sales coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor
Guest: Krish Ramineni, CEO at Fireflies.ai
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
Pick a Must-Have Product
While creating cool products was very fun for Ramineni, he eventually realized that he needed to do something more to get the traction he wanted. He came up with the idea that he just needed to focus on something that people are going to use every day. Fireflies.ai was born because of this.
Ramineni thought of business meetings and how it would have been handy to have an auto transcriber. The software has actually come so far that it’s now digging into insights and analytics. His hunch was proven correct as the pandemic rolled in and everyone suddenly had to do everything remotely, even business meetings.
Apply the 10x Better Rule
After you have decided what fundamental market your product will be for, make it 10x better than anything already on the market. Do this properly and you are guaranteed to have interest in your product before you even figure out how to make it. Don’t believe it? Just look at the investments in Hyperloop.
Ramineni also points out that doing this would solve the problem of staying relevant as you will be the obvious choice against competitors. He also explained that this is how you managed to bypass people’s natural aversion change. Make the product so irresistible that your company’s scaling will be inevitable.
Focus on the Differentiator
You might be thinking, “Alright. Make a product way better than anyone else’s. Got it … how do I do that?” Ramineni advised you to simply find and focus on your differentiator. What’s a differentiator? The one thing that sets you apart from anyone else.
Product differentiation is a marketing strategy that is designed to identify and showcase the unique features of your product and make it stand out from competitors. By mastering and focusing on this concept, you’re going to be 10x ahead of the competition.
Find the Balance in Product Development
As someone who is quite passionate about innovation, Ramineni advised that it’s not a good idea to be a perfectionist. He says you will never start if you want everything perfect from day one. Instead, you will keep building and building; basically, you are going to be stuck and so will your company.
Of course, the reverse also isn’t good. You can’t just aimlessly create a solution for the sake of selling something. Do not rush the product development process if you don’t want to be forever fixing a seemingly endless amount of bugs. Balance is key as they say and Ramineni strongly urges to find the middle ground.
Use AI to Save Time
They say to take your time when growing but for us in software sales, that’s not enough. We want speed. We want to scale as fast as possible so that we can make better things and make the most out of our company. But for us to be able to focus on that, we need to cut down our time spent on other things.
This is where artificial intelligence (AI) truly becomes such a benefit in the SaaS industry. We all know that AI is so powerful because of its learning potential and capacity to execute things faster than humankind can. Fireflies.ai is an example of how AI can help us maximize the use of our time as it cuts down the need to manually jot down meeting notes and input data into a CRM.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Product Launching Is a Rollercoaster
Launching your products is definitely an exciting and sometimes scary journey. You are guaranteed to have some pretty steep ups and downs. Sometimes you’re just filled with purpose while other times you are drained from the seemingly infinite problems that you have to solve. Nonetheless, Ramineni shares the silver lining that, at the very least, you will never be bored.
Word of Mouth is the Best Marketing
Fireflies.ai is a strong proponent of word of mouth as the absolute marketing strategy of all time. They actually are living proof of how well this works. What’s the secret? Ramineni advised that they never compromised end-user experience and their customers repaid this by spreading the word.
There’s Always an Underserved Market
Yet another instance of Ramineni’s brilliant mind at work, while others shy away from competitors, Ramineni saw it as a sign of being on the right path. He states, “If there’s competition, that means there’s a market and there’s probably an underserved market.” Figma successfully did this as shown by their current boom despite Adobe’s existence.
TOP QUOTES
Krish Ramineni
[7:40] “From day one, our vision was: Let’s democratize AI.”
[12:21] “Every person inside an organization should be able to have their own AI system that helps them complete work during the day.”
[15:10] “And so when we were deciding on building a product company, we said you know what, screw it doesn’t matter how hard it is, I need to make it so that it’s something that people care about, and they would want to use and then I’ll work backward and figure out the technology.”
Matt Wolach
[16:04] “I love that and that same 10x rule, we can apply in sales … Once you can get the buyer to quantify their problem, their challenge and figure that out, as long as your system saves at least 10 times or generates at least 10 times more, then you’ve got an opportunity to be able to close them.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Krish Ramineni and Fireflies.ai, visit: https://fireflies.ai/
You can also find Krish Ramineni on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishramineni/
For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/