Finding Success in The Ecosystem As A Startup

How it Starts: FINDING SUCCESS IN THE ECOSYSTEM AS A STARTUP

Contents Introduction � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 3 01� Building Credibility � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 4 02� Selling as a Startup � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 7 03� The New Rules for Customer Success � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 10 Conclusion � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 13 HHoow iw it St Sttaarrttss: F: Fiinnddiinng Sg Suucceccesss is in tn thhe Ee Eccoossyysstteem am as a Ss a Sttaarrttuupp 22

Introduction If there’s one thing to be learned from the last 45 years in Of course, not all startups survive — so what are those companies technology, it’s that innovation can happen anywhere. Garages, who are seeing success doing differently? While there’s no secret one-bedroom apartments, and college dorm rooms were the sauce or standard playbook, there are powerful ingredients and starting places for some of the greatest tech entrepreneur success insights from entrepreneurs in the Salesforce ecosystem that can stories so far. The belief that an idea, along with passion and help startups accelerate their success. perseverance, can define and shape the future fuels new and returning entrepreneurs to create startups every day. “The biggest challenge — and I believe is the The impact startups have on the economy and tech landscape are biggest challenge for anyone — is persistence and undeniable. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, startups created resilience. You have to be ready for rejection, but 1 also ready to focus those negatives into better over 2 million jobs in the U.S. alone in 2015, and recent years have seen investment in startup ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley performance, strategy, and lessons learned.” thanks to lower costs, desire to differentiate, and growing pools of talent. Anthony Diaz, CEO & Founder, Health Hero 1 https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/business-dynamics.html HHoow iw it St Sttaarrttss: F: Fiinnddiinng Sg Suucceccesss is in tn thhe Ee Eccoossyysstteem am as a Ss a Sttaarrttuupp 33

Building Credibility 01 One of the most important pillars to reaching success as a startup lies in building credibility — in other words, how do you convince someone you’ve never met to trust you? This is a challenge all businesses face. Think about it: how many times have you selected one product over another because of Amazon reviews, or decided to try a new restaurant because of a high Yelp rating? And while there’s a high level of startup awareness these days and organizations are more receptive to trying out products and services from a startup, that doesn’t mean companies don’t need to go the extra mile as early on in the game as possible. Understanding your target verticals and industries inside out while working to solidify your reliability is key. CEO and founder Navid Rastegar of FitBliss recognized the importance of leveraging strategic partnerships: “We built and continue to build credibility through strategic partnerships in the industry or vertical. Building your network is critical with industry leaders.” HHoow iw it St Sttaarrttss: F: Fiinnddiinng Sg Suucceccesss is in tn thhe Ee Eccoossyysstteem am as a Ss a Sttaarrttuupp 44

While a startup may be new to an industry or vertical, more often than not the entrepreneur behind the business is not new to the startup world. Call upon your past relationships, partnerships, Credibility is twofold. You need knowledge, accomplishments, and successes to help fast-track your new venture’s success. And if you are new to the startup to establish a right to play in a world, consider seeking a mentor. Hiring a skillful and experienced entrepreneur can help guide the organization. marketplace — you need to have a reason to be in front of a customer. Accelerate with AppExchange And credibility comes from being When it comes to building credibility, Salesforce able to deliver — turning an idea AppExchange can help lay the foundation. Access to into a business case is quite easy. the Salesforce Platform plus thorough security reviews and technical vetting means partners can focus on Actually being able to transmit into development and innovation, with increased solution credibility driven by the Salesforce network effect. a business metric? That’s where AppExchange partners see 4–10x faster product development and 30–60 days shorter sales cycles your credibility comes from. 2 to larger organizations . Richard Forsyth, Sales Director, SightCall 30–60 Watch to learn how SightCall builds trust and wins 4–10x customers in the financial services and insurance vertical. faster product days shorter development sales cycles 2 Guidebook: Salesforce AppExchange by Nucleus Research, released August 2018. How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 5

Entrepreneur Insights How did you work to build credibility? “There are two ways of building credibility: ‘on paper’ and “Offer free trials. Build lots of social proof and case studies. ‘street cred’. On paper, I have a toolbox full of different life Ask customers for a review on AppExchange.” accomplishments that I can rely on to pull out and use. For street cred, this requires talking with a lot of people. A conversation I had with one person a year ago may have Matt Bullock, impressed them so much that they remember my name and CEO & Founder, share it with others who have challenges that need solved. This Spinify word-of-mouth credibility is earned the hard way — there’s no shortcut or substitution for good, old-fashioned hard work.” Ashley Allen, CEO & Founder, ITequality How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 666

Selling as a Startup 02 There’s a lot of research around how and why startups fail. At the core, startups fail because they lack customers, not funding. Despite how perfectly designed and developed the product or service is, it’s useless if no one wants it, or if you can’t sell it. “The biggest challenge of creating my startup was finding a problem to solve that people really care about, then getting people to believe you solve it.” Matt Bullock, CEO & Founder, Spinify Three ways to build your playbook for growth and thrive in today’s sales climate are to invest in data, fill the cracks, and tackle only what you can digest. Invest in Data Beyond providing the basic sales insights every founder or salesperson needs, collecting relevant customer data will help you understand your early customers and experiment with them until How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 77

you can clearly see both your success and fail points. From there, optimize your offering and messaging based on actual data from your target demographic, while building your playbook for growth. Reach Further with Salesforce Find and Fill the Cracks As anyone in business can tell you, your network is When you look at how your customers are moving through the everything. Salesforce’s brand recognition and the power funnel, don’t neglect to keep an eye on what’s falling through the of the leading SaaS marketplace — with more than seven cracks. What happens between a lead hand-off and a salesperson’s million installs to date — means bigger opportunity first call? The closing of a deal and customer success? When you’re for partners to reach potential customers, including starting to grow your team, consider blended roles as a potential international expansion and exposure to Fortune 500 answer to reduce bumps in your processes. While not a one-size- companies. Access to the entire Salesforce ecosystem fits-all approach, it may be worth experimenting when you are still early stage. uniquely helps partners grow their businesses while contributing robust solutions for all Salesforce customers Don’t Let Your Eyes Be Bigger than Your Stomach to use. AppExchange partners gain access to 150,000 Spend the time to understand the selling motion of the segment customers in 100+ countries, and 88% of Salesforce you are going after including expectations, decision-making, and customer orgs have AppExchange apps installed. Also, purchasing processes. Then, think about what kind of deals you can reduced development and delivery time along with support. You might not be ready for huge deals. Plant the seed and access to cost-effective quality leads means partners can grow it when you identify a successful pattern. increase profits rapidly. “Being able to say we’re built within Salesforce 88% 150,000 has definitely helped us punch above our weight customers in of Salesforce 100+ countries customer orgs and close big deals in financial services and have AppExchange other security-conciscous verticals.” apps installed David Bloom, CEO & Founder, LevelJump How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 8

Entrepreneur Insights What benefits have you seen selling with Salesforce? “Not only does Salesforce have 2x of the CRM market of its nearest “Our sales and marketing strategies are very aligned with competitor, equality is one of its core values. When we launched Salesforce. There are also so many benefits we have as an ISV the first gender equity app on AppExchange, we coupled the power partner—dedicated Partner Manager, Technical Engineer, early of Pipeline with the influence and reach of Salesforce.” access to quarterly releases, access to marketing programs, app and listing analytics, access to beta features and products, and of course the partner community. Not to mention that Katica Roy, 70% of our leads are generated from AppExchange which has CEO & Founder, a huge impact on our sales cycle.” Pipeline Equity Jennifer Mercer, CEO, “Salesforce means a healthy partner ecosystem with great Metazoa partner support, branding visibility, and similar strategies and views on industries and opportunities, like health engagement.” Anthony Diaz, CEO & Founder, Health Hero How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 999

The New Rules for Customer Success 03 Customer success is fundamentally transforming the way companies engage with customers. It is vital to a startup’s ability to scale meeting customer expectations in order to drive revenue and thrive. However, 58% of SMB leaders say meeting customer experience expectations is a challenge for growth over the next two years3. Customer success is now the beginning of every relationship we have in our business. Venk Chandran, Director, Product Management, Salesforce Watch Venk discuss the new rules for customer success. 3 “Small & Medium Business Trends Report”, Salesforce Research, May 2019. How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 1010

Because the current and future rules of customer success are The Perfect Customer Success Help Without the constantly being broken and rewritten, startups have to shift the Success Manager mindset to start thinking about customer success as an integral Think about how you can make it fast, relevant, cohesive, and part of their product and technology — a continuum of the personalized for customers — helping them help themselves, or customer journey. other users in the community. Build self-service into your roadmap to create a seamless experience with little to no involvement Hiring the Right Success Manager from a Success Manager. The trick is to use a sales and product When hiring a success manager, you have to think about more than mindset: every quarter, track the efficiency of your success solutions, adoption. What Venk, a former startup guy himself, learned over the understand what’s working and what isn’t, and iterate. years is that it’s about more than how often your customers use the product, it’s about helping them find and maintain business value. “Customers are going to want to self-serve Know Your Customer themselves before they reach out to a customer The success managers that do the best are the ones who support agent. [..] Deliver success at scale earlier than you’d think.” master “KYC” or Know Your Customer. You need someone who’s entrepreneurial, willing to build relationships with customers without Venk Chandran, Director, Product Management, Salesforce being asked to, and brings thought leadership to the table to inspire customers. Creating customers for life can seem daunting with everything else From there, success for success managers lies in: to focus on with a startup, but putting in the time to think through • Confidence� You’re here to help. Make it a bold statement. your strategy and playbook for customer success is critical to long- • Responsiveness� The speed of response is key. Even if term scale. you don’t have the solution right away, let customers know you’re working on it. • Transparency� Keep it real, and stay honest. How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 11

Entrepreneur Insights How are you focused on customer success? “Customer success and customer advocacy is a priority for “Extreme customer success has been the most significant our entire organization. Our customers are our champions. influencer of our credibility. That means doing a lot of Customer success begins with onboarding and training. We have listening and getting as much feedback as possible, and consistent check-ins. We want to ensure they know the latest then taking that feedback and giving it to the LevelJump features and updates. And, of course, most importantly, get their team – product, sales, marketing – so the whole organization feedback. I can’t tell you how crucial it is to drive your product serves the customer. Particularly early on, we refused to directly from your customers feedback and requests.” build in a vacuum. We continue to build collaboratively with our customers, constantly looking to them for product enhancements and suggestions to drive our roadmap.” Jennifer Mercer, CEO, Metazoa David Bloom, CEO & Founder, LevelJump How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 121212

conclusion Startups continue to discover what’s possible and bring fresh ideas “Salesforce brings a ton to the table for a startup. and innovation to the tech ecosystem, pushing the rapid pace of an From a technical perspective, we’re working with industry already moving at lightning speed. Setting up yourself for some of the best technology in the world. That success by gaining access to the technology, tools, and expertise to become a customer-focused company can make the difference means we can focus our entire team on building between surviving and thriving. a product that our customers love. But Salesforce The AppExchange Partner Program helps anyone build on the also brings this huge influx of value and brand Salesforce Platform, sell on AppExchange, and grow with world- power. When we tell customers we’re built on class partner technology designed to help you do business faster. Salesforce, they know that the product will work every time, it’s secure, and it’s going to get them Salesforce Accelerate is a three-month virtual program designed to value quickly.” to provide the insights, learning, and support that startups need to strategically align with Salesforce and accelerate their time-to- David Bloom, CEO & Founder, LevelJump market with AppExchange. How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 1313

“We’ve had a wonderful partnership with our Learn more at ISV teams and had tremendous support from JoinAppExchange.com the Salesforce ecosystem.” Katica Roy, CEO & Founder, Pipeline Equity “Salesforce has an ecosystem that is like none other. There is a sense of family and unity to take care of one another and help innovation be more broadly adopted.” Navid Rastegar, CEO & Founder, FitBliss “I passionately love, respect, and appreciate Salesforce for allowing me to be my own authentic self because I am keenly aware that not all the big players in tech are as openly inclusive. I know I would not be where I am today as a business owner, nor would I have the freedom to be me, if I had started my company consulting on any other platform.” Ashley Allen, CEO & Founder, ITequality How it Starts: Finding Success in the Ecosystem as a Startup 1414