Avoiding the Fail Whale: Landing Big Customers Without Letting Them Sink You

A Big Fish Can Drag You Down

3

About Me

Matt TuckerCTO & Co-FounderJive SoftwareEnterprise Software since 2001

4

Orca: Gentle Giant or Killer Whale?

6

Big Early Customers are Awesome

• Big customers pay a lot more than small customers

• Provide critical credibility to your startup• Often give incredibly helpful product and market

insights• Battle-test your startup at a super accelerated

pace

7

Big Early Customers are Dangerous

• May give you wrong signals on product/market fit• Can be extremely demanding, hammering your

startup with support and customization requests• Easy to fall into the trap of becoming a services

instead of product company• The “big deal” might be right around the corner…

forever

8

Remember It’s a Partnership

An enterprise deal should be more than just a buy/sell relationship. It’s should be a partnership with the goal of mutual success. Like any partnership, evaluate your potential customer just like they’re evaluating you.

9

What a Whale is Looking For

• Low Cost

• Exactly What They Want

• Low Risk

10

What a Whale is Looking For

• Low Cost

• Exactly What They Want

• Low Risk

SOME PRACTICAL TIPS

11

12

Practical Tips

• Try to convince your prospect or customer that they don’t want/need customization

• Break delivery of project into phases; attempt to push custom features into later phases

• Make a simple and generic versions of the custom features that all customers can use

• Build extensive APIs to head off customizations before they start

13

Practical Tips (cont.)

• If you’re creating a code repo or branch for individual customers then you’re doing it wrong

• Get paid for custom work via professional services; but try keep services between 15%-35% of revenue

• Frankly, beware of East Coast banks• Stating the obvious: SaaS will be easier than on-premise• Find a champion

PARTING ADVICE:

Don’t fear it, go get some whales!

Matt Tuckermatt@jivesoftware.com

@MattTucker

14