Comments on: If You’re Selling SaaS, Then You’re Selling a Commodity

By: Rene Bastijans

Rene Bastijans — Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:40:50 +0000

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Alex. I agree, having a strong brand and healthy company culture certainly helps with attracting both prospective customers and employees. In the case of Basecamp, though, I would disagree that “tens of thousands of paying customers choose it for the deep resonance of the founders’ beliefs in calm, bootstrapped companies [= their founders’ brand]”. Customers buy Basecamp because it helps them make progress in their busy and stressful (work) lives. As Jason Fried, Founder & CEO at Basecamp, puts it: “Basecamp’s a graduation moment for [our customers] — something that helps them steer their business away from random chaos and towards intentional control.” – Source: https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-why-before-the-why-c5492520acf0

The Basecamp team made a big investment in truly understanding their customers’ lives, including their struggles, hopes and expectations that led them to buying their SaaS software product. And the insights gained from their customer research has helped the team define the brand, align the itself around a shared vision AND build a product that makes their customers come back and use it time and again. You can read more about Basecamp’s latest research findings in the above article. This blog https://jtbd.info/ is also well worth a read.

By: Pulkit Agrawal

Pulkit Agrawal — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 04:55:54 +0000

Hey @alex_turnbull:disqus I’d love to hear how this translates to tactical advice and at what point in the company’s life…

What intentional changes did you make and WHEN as Groove grew to enhance the brand and culture?

We’re a seed-stage team and now have clear mission, values and tone. However it’s hard to know as a CEO how much time to spend on thinking about culture and brand vs. core product or marketing / sales etc.

Thanks in advance!

By: Dibya

Dibya — Wed, 13 Sep 2017 08:00:55 +0000

Great read @alex_turnbull:disqus .

Completely agree with the importance of Brand and Culture, this is actually core to everything. I have encountered many scenarios where people just copy features/products but never able to get a true traction like the source.

Why Apple is just Apple and neither the Mi nor Oneplus 5 and many others are able to get that acceptance level in the market.

There is something core to this, which cannot be copied and that is “THE CULTURE”, “THE SHARED BELIEVE/VISION”.

By: Felipe Cardoso Barbosa

Felipe Cardoso Barbosa — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 13:36:31 +0000

Following Product Hunt and Betalist I noticed that everyday people share new products that do the same thing as other products also do. Project Management? Check. Communicating with customers? Check. Automating your emails? Check. CRM? Check. Creating bots? Check.

Tons of options with little difference. SaaS products are a commodity indeed.

The other day I was reading about product management and there was one part like “if you take too long to deliver an improvement to your users, they’ll find the same thing somewhere else.

By: Humberto

Humberto — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 21:18:31 +0000

thanks Alex, 100% agree. Also we are working to create a brand and culture in Vozy because as IBM is the only way to continue.

By: Nathalie Lussier

Nathalie Lussier — Sun, 10 Sep 2017 20:58:37 +0000

YES! I think it’s so easy as software folks to focus on the software, the features, etc… and forget about the *people* that interact with you (and your brand) and who replies (your team).

Great thought provoking ideas as always!

By: Harshal Katre

Harshal Katre — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 18:01:11 +0000

Great choise of topic Alex.
It was very insightful.

My startup – ProfitBooks is about financial accounting which is also a very crowded space. Its tough to differentiate the product based only on features.

There is a limit to the amount of innovation you can bring to your product. So, your points makes a lot of sense.

Keep creating such wonderful content.