That's a huge question - but in my view it really boils down to four things: 1) A clear sense of the problem they were trying to solve; 2) Crystal clear focus on only the most high-impact things; 3) Relentless pursuit of excellence in execution. 4) Luck. That fourth one mightn't be a popular one...
I would start with some growth hacks to increase your sales without raising your costs that much. 1. Social media - provide valuable content related to your SAAS and the industry it targets. Build traction by showing case studies, customer reviews, how customers use your product and how it saves...
Does your business provider add value beyond money to counter balance? Normally, you would share profits according to your ownership stake. If you aren't happy with the current ownership split, maybe you could buy some of his shares.
First define "successful" and make sure others would see it as the same. If growth is stagnating, that's not what success looks like in an app. The only way you have a chance at selling it at anything above "fire sale prices" is you can say that you have enough actively engaged users, which i...
Use marketing as a means to gather more data and test. Marketing is one of the most underrated and undervalued skills in startups. Startups don't struggle with competition but getting attention. Marketing drives more data into the product, thus you can validate your theories. Pre-product mark...
100M+ in revenues in 5 years or less does not happen very often. As an example of one sector, here is an interesting data visualization (circa 2008) of the 100 largest publically traded software companies at that time that shows their actual revenue ramp-ups from SEC filings (only 4 out of thes...
Do yourself a favour & grab a copy of Venture Deals: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1118443616
A few options: increase your prices, lower your costs and/or increase your volume. Sounds like you've got a low-margin growing business, but as you can see, it's not what you make, it's what you keep. A staff of six on a $300,000/annual budget doesn't leave much room for profit. You might want to...
To answer your question directly, the best way to figure our the optimal revenue model is by doing exactly what you're doing right now: evaluate the trends, challenges in the market and calculate how much it costs to build your user base relative to the revenue (potential) they bring in. Commonl...
First of all: good luck. Seeing how you have a limited budget, I would select the following 3 strategies: 1. Affiliate marketing: offer affiliates a fee for every referral that converts into an actual ‘sale’. This way, you aren’t really paying anything out of pocket, but rather the payment is co...