The First 3 hours
If you can work uninterrupted for 3 hours or so on the top 2 or 3 items on your list the first 3 hours can become super important for your real productivity (not business). Benjamin Hardy, PhD is the go-to expert on personal development urges to block the first 3 hours from distraction-free focused deep work.
His advice still makes sense. Read on and reflect. Are you getting all the things done that you want to every day?
Dr Hardy spoke with me for my podcast Bits About Books on his latest book ‘Personality Isn’t Permanent’. Look out for it or just subscribe to my podcast in any of your favorite sources – iTunes, Google Play, Spotify et all.
Vertical SAAS is a 150B+ Market. Are you missing the Purple Unicorn? Revisited
An article by Brian Feinstein from BVP on Vertical SaaS pegged the market size at 150B. This is what I wrote about what is fuelling the growth –
When do startups begin to lose traction?
50% do not get to Round 2. 90% are gone by Round 3. In a report, CBInsights analyzed 1100 startups ( that raised seed rounds in 2008-2010) to answer exactly that question.
Getting to 500
When I decided to write a daily post on Linkedin from 1st Jan 2019 it was ambitious to say the least. Audacious was more like it. My history of writing regularly, if one had to take that into account as proof of intent or probability of success, should have been a dampener. However looking back at the last 499 days it proves that nothing is permanent. Your past is not necessarily an indicator of the future. You can do what you want, if you are committed 100%.
Formula to make your revenue target
Finding a sure shot model to deliver on revenue targets is a holy grail for sales. Ethan Teng is heading growth at Recurly and has delivered some spectacular success. He discussed his co-horted growth model to measure the end to end customer lifecycle – “ from acquisition, activation, engagement, retention, monetisation, and resurrection – and identify the biggest opportunities and points of leverage” in the GrowthTL;DR podcast.
Training the World how to treat you
Benjamin Hardy, PhD starts with this quote : “Be careful what you tolerate, you are teaching people how to treat you.”—Unknown, and sucks you right into this piece. Most of what we are today are results of all the decisions we have taken in our lives and similarly what we will be in the future will also be dependent on what we decide and do today.
Promoting your SaaS blog
Content marketing is the lifeline for any SaaS company. And blogs are a critical component in the lineup. Somehow we are more focused on the ‘Content’ part of ‘Content Marketing’. The ‘Marketing’ part languishes or gets sporadic attention. I have spent a lot of time in the past year writing in LinkedIn but even after paying for various tools I am not focused on the ‘marketing’ part. Every time I attend a meet of companies like SEMRush I come back wanting to implement ideas but they falter. Learning No.1. Nothing that needs real attention can move forward without a dedicated person who is doing that on an everyday basis.
Why we do not focus on Sales?
If you are following the startup discourse on the net with many very knowledgeable founders and VCs and others weighing in for revenue, the primary obsession seems to be with funding. Yet anyone who has raised and spent knows that money in the bank runs out at some point unless it is backed by revenue.
