ASAAS Manifesto
The times are A-changin’

Innovating in software is HARD

And creating a B2B SAAS that users love, fast is VERY HARD.

The multiples hats of the founder including the product manager is challenging, and often time without previous experience in product management. In sharing our expertise with our SAAS Studio we want to help the founder to design and build better A SAAS.

The ASAAS Principles

1. A for A-must-have. The Feedback Loop

At the end of the day, the only judge is your customer. In the new world the only way to ensure you build what customers want is to engage them continuously. Accelerate Feedback Loop is key. For this reason, we are Human eXperience first (HX).

2. Flexible is the new foundation for SAAS

In a new world with many more SAAS that pop out, and the product as the new centre machine of growth, you have more to win in being flexible than “home-made”, because you don’t know if your “in house”, protected features will still be relevant in time. Everything changes fast, and you need to adapt even faster too to survive. Adaptability in the face of adversity comes from flexibility and integration.

3. Product Success is Collaboration culture on, silo out

Product, Design, and Engineering is all important, but need to work in sync with a clear understanding of the vision of the product. To work collaboratively on the same problems, not focusing on delivering specs in silos but aligned on customer outcomes. In the process of feedback ALL the teams must be heard.

4. Money is King, CashFlow is Queen, Timing is Ace

The most important thing in launching an innovative start-up is timing, and second the team. Be surprised, funding is last…

Source: TedX: Bill Gross on 200 Companies

Money is like oxygen, we don’t live for oxygen, but we need oxygen to live. Creating innovation is really a matter of speed, you must go fast and ask yourself how not to miss your time to market.

5. Innovation starts with a SWAT team

SWAT Teams need to move faster and with laser focus. They need trust, to be highly efficient, and to stay lean. A too large team of people is too slow to change, to drive, to pivot. That’s why you need a small pod composed of minimum a hustler, a designer, a builder. Move fast, learn fast. Learning fast is the new competitive advantage

6. The business Model is the REAL product

Customers don’t care about your solution; they care about their problems. Innovators turn solutions to problems into inventions and into working business models, the product is only a part of the global success. Investors today don’t fund solutions that work, they fund business models that work. Even if you think you don’t have investors, think again, you have, your customers are your first investors. And they invest in their human experience.

7. Traction is the North Star

Traction is the rate at which a business model captures monetizable value from its customers. Investors today don’t value intellectual property, but traction, as evidence of a working business model. Traction isn’t about being first to market, but first to market adoption.

8. The Human Experience first

Your product is a part of a more global experience you want to deliver. Your users don’t want to spend the time to use a product; they want their life back to enjoy. User experience, Customer Experience, Customer Success are part of the global Human Experience. Your customers will remember and judge the Human eXperience, not a subgroup of it. So, think with human experience first in mind to create A better way. HX first.

9. Product led growth, obviously.

Marketing led growth and Sales led growth were really the main system of business execution for years. In any SAAS, the Product is where you invest the most, right? It’s pretty natural then for the product to become a machine to sell itself and lead the growth. The value of your SAAS is the value of your product. Your hive. Your team turns into bees to help the hive produce the better honey. Small caveat: just make sure everyone has the same vision of who’s the hive.

10. Free-first pays well

Free is the fastest way to learn. Your advantage as a software is normally you have low cost, so use it. You have created a lot of value, so it’s tempting to add a paywall everywhere. You can also pre-sell course, and you should, but in the end, you must have a free first approach to learn fast, and scale fast. You must prepare your business model to have a free version of your product that could in time replace your big marketing acquisition cost.

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From Digital Agency to SAAS Studio

Since 2009 we have been creating digital products, but we loved SAAS so much that we focus only on that right now. We did hundreds of digital projects in Agency mode. We even as side projects launch many other businesses. An E-commerce with more 25000 products, and a software for health re-education with virtual reality (backer of Oculus Day one). 5 years ago, we decided to focus only on what we love the most: SAAS. We were challenged and struggled a lot from project to product, and if you do build SAAS, you know it is the hardest right now.

Follow us in our journey

• From digital agency to SAAS studio
• From project to product.
• From nice-to-have product to A-must-have product.

From SAAS to ASAAS.

We’ll share our experience and curation of resources with you by mail once a month