SaaS University in Chicago last week was fantastic. The attendees were all very serious about making the most of being a SaaS Vendor or were interested in finding out how to become a SaaS Vendor. The caliber of questions posed during and after my presentation showed that 1) the topic that I chose was thought-provoking and a little controversial 2) those that were in the room for my presentation were in there to learn 3) the SaaS community as a whole is still not sure, divided on, or otherwise unclear about the role Multi-Tenancy plays in the SaaS Business Architecture.
The Answer
Before I went to Chicago, I asked in an earlier blog post if there were any questions regarding the Business Value of Multi-Tenancy. After promoting that question on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other outlets, hundreds of people viewed that blog entry. Alas, only two people asked questions. This tells me that people do have questions about this topic, but don't seem to know exactly what to ask. I encourage you to view the slides embedded below, or if you attended the presentation and didn't get to ask your question, to post more questions in the comments on this post.
Unfortunately only one question was relevant to the topic at hand and its context. That question was posed by Dobes and he said "I'm still skeptical about monetizing aggregate and benchmarking data, who buys it?" The reality is, Dobes, that perhaps no one will buy it. You might not reach a critical mass of users to give your data enough actionable context, or your application might be so horizontally targeted and your data collection methods be so poor, that the data you have, even if there is a lot of it, still lacks that actionable context.
On the other hand, however, you might be in a position to sell the data you have collected. Remember to visit your legal team before exploring your options therein. But, if you have all of your bases covered both legally and governance/compliance-wise (know your market and industry!), then you should be fine. Once you are sure you can "sell" this data, the next step is to figure out who will buy and in what form. Perhaps your users will sign-up for a dashboard that shows how they are doing against the other users. Maybe you can generate reports for industry associations. You could even open up an API for other SaaS companies to use your data in an ad-hoc fashion. Remember, this is another "product" you are selling and you should do as much due diligence on this as you would any other product you want to sell. Don't just assume that if you have it they will buy it. Know your market!
The Slide Deck
Thoughts on SaaS University
Overall, SaaS University was a professionally-produced, well-planned, and well-attended event. I hope it was a big success for Softletter and Rick Chapman. The other speakers at SaaS University were fantastic, too, with some shedding perhaps more light on the topic they chose than the attendees might have wanted. Read Jeff Kaplan's take on the "working lunch" session by Jay Howell of BDO Seidman, LLP... seems the topic of revenue recognition was a little bit more complex than the vendors in attendance realized or wanted to admit. Jay did great, but his topic did little to win him any friends!
I am definitely looking forward to the next SaaS University.
Author: Lincoln Murphy