Nigel Hammond-Making SaaS Sticky

Nigel tells Tom about his company Foresight and how it helps other B2B SaaS companies make their customers successful. Nigel didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. He worked at DealCloud with his co-founder when DealCloud went from series A through acquisition and finally to IPO. Nigel worked in sales there but found that unfulfilling. He moved to account management and focused on giving clients more value so they would be more likely to renew, tolerate price increases, and buy additional products. While in customer success Nigel discovered a problem that had no solution and then left to create a company to build that product. One thing that drove Nigel to start his own thing was the fun he had in a small company. Instead of leaving DealCloud to go through the same process of series A to IPO, his partner convinced him to create their own company to create Foresight to address churn in SaaS. Nigel talks about how enterprise SaaS is based on managing individual accounts and how that process can be very manual. Nigel tells how account management is often reactive and fire fighting rather than pro-active and strategic. Nigel's a-ha moment came after making a presentation to a large customer who loved his software but wanted to get best practices. Nigel is able to get good response rates on assessments because they come as part of another process like a sales meeting that's already scheduled or a renewal that's coming up. Tom and Nigel talk about how a tech business can start as a services business, but Foresight was not one of those, and that's why he needed front end investment to get his business going. Tom and Nigel talk about the differences between building a business that sells a dream and a business that delivers obvious value from the start. Finally Nigel tells Tom what he plans to do with the money from his next round, which he is in the final stages of closing.