SaaS Go-to-Market: Build a Community Before a Product

Three first-time founders set out to build an account-based marketing platform when most people didn't know what ABM was. Their SaaS go-to-market strategy was radical: build a B2B community first, product second. A single blog post led to a 300-person conference, which grew into a community-led growth movement of 10,000+ people. This SaaS go-to-market approach created category creation SaaS results. LinkedIn, Marketo, Salesforce, and HubSpot all sponsored FlipMyFunnel conferences. The B2B community building gave Terminus multiple chances to succeed - when customers churned due to product gaps, the community brought them back once the product caught up. Sangram Vajre is the co-founder and CMO of Terminus. Before founding Terminus, he led marketing at Pardot through its acquisition by Salesforce. His SaaS go-to-market insight: pursue problem-market fit before product-market fit by building a community around the problem first. 🔑 Key Lessons 🎯 SaaS go-to-market through B2B community building creates category leadership: Terminus didn't compete in an existing category - they created ABM through community events, a book, and education. Salesforce and LinkedIn sponsored their events. 🔄 Communities give your SaaS go-to-market multiple chances to succeed: When Terminus customers churned because the product lagged behind the vision, the community kept them engaged. Those same customers returned once the product caught up. 📉 Mismatched expectations hurt more than missing features: Terminus's community marketing set expectations higher than the product could deliver, causing painful early churn. Invest in product to match the demand your community creates. 🧠 Pursue problem-market fit before product-market fit: Sangram argues founders should go from problem to community to product, not problem to product directly. Community-led growth validates the problem and creates built-in demand. 🤝 Educate, don't pitch, at community events: Terminus never did product pitches from the keynote stage. By educating the market on ABM, they attracted buyers who came to the booth on their own. Chapters Introduction What motivates Sangram - building something bigger than yourself What Terminus does and the ABM market How Pardot experience shaped the SaaS go-to-market playbook Writing a blog post that launched the FlipMyFunnel movement Organizing the first conference with 300 attendees Scaling to multi-city events and 1,500 attendees How community education drove SaaS go-to-market sales High early customer churn and mismatched expectations Product gaps vs. feature gaps and managing expectations Would they have done it any other way The book, the conference timeline, and category building Lessons from Salesforce and thinking 100x How the community conference evolved organically Closing deals through community events not sales pitches Funding journey and seed stage Problem-market fit vs. product-market fit Without a community you're building a commodity Lightning round Resources Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/184 Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email