Platform as a Service Downsides

Platform as a Service (PaaS) allows us to create and launch applications in no time at a fraction of what it would have historically cost.

Awesome!

Not so fast.

The provider of PaaS has a goal to make money with their service. They will realize that they didn’t do somethings right and they need to “tweak” what they provide to keep their costs under control, open a new market, or deprecate features that are not used and it no longer makes sense to maintain. Or worse, deprecate the entire platform because it didn’t prove financially viable. All understandable.

However, the platform providers goals don’t necessarily align with the goals of the developer who is consuming the platform. The developer used certain features of the platform so that they could focus on their value adds to their customers. Now that the platform is taking care of that grunt work they are solely focussed on their clients. Except the platform just changed an API, deprecated a feature, etc. etc. Now the developer is working to the agenda of the platform. Their goals for their clients have been side tracked because the platform changed. It may be worth it, it may be a change that helps the developer, but from my experience all too often it isn’t. The developer bought a Platform as a Service to enable them to do something they didn’t want to do. If the platform has done that job they just want to count on it being there so that they can build the truly specialized stuff.

Yes, PaaS allows us to come to market fast, but I am not confident that it enables sustained velocity for the developer who is using it towards value creation for their customers. Choose PaaS with eyes wide open and be prepared for the agenda changes, or probably better, plan to migrate from the platform to what you control once market fit has been proven for your product. Or, bypass PaaS from the start, pick an open source solution for the work you need done, host it on a scalable service, and control all functions of the product that you provide.

A Measure Of Leadership Ability

A measure of our ability to lead and grow is how we answer the question “Can you do this?” Whatever “this” may be. There are many variations of responses but I think it comes down to four possible outcomes;

"Sure" When in reality there isn't a hope in hell of it happening.

- or -

“I don’t have the capacity to do “this” right now.”

- or -

“To take this on I will have to stop doing “something” if “this” is the priority now. Is “this” worth it?”

- or -

“I will need X resources to get “this” done and it will take Y amount of time. Is “this” worth it?”

The further our answer falls towards the last response the greater our experience, ability and influence. Being able to confidently, without putting anyone on a death march, respond with “I will need X resources to get “this” done and it will take Y amount of time. Is “this” worth it?” is a great indicator of leadership ability.

Customer Success

I read a book on Customer Success and spent a lot of time on one of the co-authors (Lincoln Murphy) website, and came to realize that the role of customer success in an organization, but especially software as a service organizations, should be the first hire made. Something I have completely overlooked to date. It took me awhile to understand the flow of the role and what it can achieve, but I think it boils down to this:

• Know who your ideal customer is. Define the profile. Update it constantly. It should be changing.

• Know what they want, what their desired outcome is, their job to be done, not your solution, their problem that they want solved.

• Map the journey they will take through your company to reach their desired outcome.

• Along the map mark the success milestones that you and they want to achieve.

• Determine where you lose them. Where are the gaps in your journey that they sometimes fail to cross.

• Figure out how to bridge those gaps. An intervention. Self serve documentation. A service you sell them. A third party solution. Whatever it takes, bridge those gaps.

• Segment your customers into success vectors. A success vector is a grouping of customers by the lifetime value that they have to your company. Could be as simple as free user, person, business and enterprise, whatever grouping works for you and that has enough statistical / relationship significance to call that collation of customers a group with a more or less similar lifetime value.

• Just like bridging the gap in your journey figure out how to ascend customers up through your success vectors. How to increase the size of the groupings at the top end of your ladder.

• Measure the success of the role by account churn (should be less than 1% per month) and revenue churn (should be 0% or negative). How can you have 0 or less revenue churn? By increasing the lifetime value of existing customers from account management sales such that those sales meet or exceed any revenue churn that you might be experiencing. How? Customer success should be generating highly qualified leads for your self serve (automated purchasing and checkout) and full serve (Account Managers) to sell back to the existing customer base.  Added bonus, measure the number of referrals and testimonials that you get from them.

Makes complete sense to me. Highly recommend the book and Lincoln’s website.

Fear - A Dated Construct

Fear used to keep us alive. It reminded us to hold on when climbing trees, run away from snakes, and not to wrestle with lions. It made sense and in these circumstances it still does.

But, we don’t spend a lot of time hanging in trees with snakes and lions. We instead spend most of our time trying to create a life that we want to live. Problem is fear of not knowing how, of failing, of being judged, tells us to freeze, to run away, just as if we were staring at a saber-toothed tiger. Fear can and does stop us from moving ahead, getting stuff done, of making something truly worthwhile.

It’s time to give the desire for what we want to achieve far greater weight than the fear that prevents us from doing it. Time to realize that fear is a dated construct that has no place in our creative lives.

Who Are You?

If asked “Who are you?” can you answer? Do you know who you are and what you stand for? And if you know, is it what you want to be known for? Or is it what you are known for? And should you mind and heed anyone who can’t answer that question?