#008 Enterprise Virality in Self-Serve SaaS

Zoom: 70,000+ enterprise customers in 8 years

Slack: 85,000+ enterprise users in 10 year

QuickBooks: 750,000+ registered users in 15 years

Previously we talked about impact-scale balance, and how low-impact solutions (annual pricing <$100K) require significant sales & marketing effort to reach a meaningful scale, making it capital inefficient.

But, as always, there are exceptions! Some products have the ability to catch onto enterprise virality – a phenomenon, where certain products become de facto industry standard due to widespread acceptance and usage

In such situations, the cost of customer acquisition can come down to near zero, enabling significant RoI on sales & marketing investment, akin to a high-impact B2B product.

We look for such enterprise products that could possibly mimic a B2C app in terms of sales & marketing effort, while creating the B2B SaaS like impact and stickiness.

For enterprise solutions to be able to catch onto such virality, there are certain conditions that a product would need to satisfy:

1.      Self-serve SaaS: Cloud based, zero touch, intuitive platform for users to download, use and pay on their own

2.      User-driven Networking effect: Immediate value creation for the user; increased value for all with more users on the platform

3.      Universal use-case: Solving globally relevant problem using the same platform / approach

Conclusively, in cases where the solution is targeted at non-critical processes and creating not-so-significant impact, we look for its ability to catch onto enterprise virality to be able to create exponential value for our investors.

Learn more about: CSVP Fund | CGES Index | Enterprise SaaS

~ Vatsal

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