BlumeVentures Organizes #BlumeDay for SaaS companies in its Portfolio
On 30th August, one such meet was organized at Hotel Ragaalis in Bangalore and some of the main issues faced by an entrepreneur while launching and growing were discussed. The meet was a 5 hour affair that started at 4PM with panel discussions on 3 topics post which 7 startups pitched and dinner with networking followed. Some very interesting perspectives were thrown on topics which sometimes feel neglected or less understood. And one of the prominent reasons why the meet had a very focused fruitful discussion as because all companies invited were SaaS companies.
Online Marketing, Pricing for a SaaS product and Inside Sales were the three topics of discussions. Pricing seemed like the one which had been troubling most and some very useful anecdotes were shared here. For instance, Girish, the founder at FreshDesk saw that when he changed the names for his pricing plan from the usual, “Basic, Pro, Premium” to “Sprout, Blossom, Garden” the response had changed! People chuckled over it but it created a lot of positive response. Also, most of the founders from now steady startups; ZipDial, Chargebee, WebEngage, E2E Systems and the likes saw that customers either went for the basic plan or the pro plan! There were relatively less takers for the medium (recommended) plan which is very counter intuitive!
The initial discussion meandered along the key metrics that a startup needs to have; CAC, MRR, Churn Rates, Growth Rates, etc. were discussed at length and the how investors would look at that one or few key metrics for a startup. Do you have a key metric that defines you as a company? Karthik Reddy, the Managing Partner at Blume Ventures had some valuable insights here. Detailing on the aspect, Omidyar Network, the fund that has has helped Blume has a very high level metric; their metric is to spread democracy! Any aspect fostering this metric would be of importance to Omidyar. Taking an instance of a technology company; it is ‘engagement’ for Twitter. Do you have a key metric?
Such and many other topics were discussed at #BlumeDay and networking was at its peak. We at Yourstory.in were present for the event and have managed to get some amazing content for those who weren’t there for the meet which we’ll keep sharing like this. Do read these excerpts from the Blume Report and keep a check on Yourstory TV for more exclusive interviews.
