Why design partners can be dangerous

A prospective customer wanted to hug Rami Tamir after his pitch. Six months later, she rejected the product. That early lesson in misleading enterprise SaaS validation shaped how Salto grew from a self-funded idea to 8-figure ARR with $69M in funding. Founders will hear why building enterprise software in a new category is harder than it looks.

Rami reveals why he refuses design partners after a previous startup overfitted to one customer's $500K use case, how targeting discretionary budgets let director-level buyers approve enterprise SaaS deals without procurement, and what forced the team to reprice and move upmarket when the 2023 downturn wiped out their entire enterprise go-to-market strategy.

Salto helps teams manage and automate configuration of tools like Salesforce, NetSuite, and Okta. Rami previously built and sold three startups to Cisco, Red Hat, and Oracle - but selling to large companies in a brand-new category brought challenges even serial entrepreneurship couldn't shortcut.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🎯 Early enthusiasm is not enterprise SaaS validation: A prospect wanted to hug Rami after his pitch but rejected the product six months later. Vague pitches let customers fill gaps with imagination that never matches reality.
• 📉 Design partners can overfit your enterprise go-to-market: Rami turned down a $500K design partnership because it led nowhere. At another startup, a $1M first customer couldn't be replicated for a year.
• 💰 Price for discretionary budgets to shorten sales cycles: Salto priced so a director-level buyer could approve enterprise SaaS deals without procurement, enabling fast land-and-expand across teams.
• 🔄 Reprice and move upmarket during downturns: When the 2023 downturn eliminated discretionary budgets, Salto raised prices and shifted ICP to larger companies - recognizing that selling to large companies requires higher deal values.
• 🏢 Build a two-layer qualification process for events: Salto filters visitors first for persona and ICP fit, then engages qualified prospects deeper. Medium-sized industry events outperform flashy conferences.

Chapters

• Introduction
• What Salto does and who it's for
• Rami's background and three previous exits
• Revenue, traction, and funding
• Where the enterprise SaaS idea came from
• The "can I hug you" moment and misleading feedback
• Getting the first 10 customers
• The dangers of design partners
• Growth channels - events that work
• Why Salto offers a free tier for enterprise software
• Targeting discretionary budgets in a new category
• How the 2023 downturn forced a pricing shift
• Lightning round

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/440
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email