Mobile SaaS FTW
By: Nicolas Wittenborn
Tags: Startup, SaaS, Mobile

It’s been over two years that Christoph first wrote about our interest in mobile SaaS and the number of mobile apps from the Point Nine Portfolio has since increased quite notably:

SaaS and non-SaaS P9Family mobile apps (not all fit the screen)

In fact, out of all 27 SaaS investments we did with Fund II, 25% of the companies are mobile-first and another 40% offer at least some of their functionality on native mobile apps. Plus the remaining batch includes companies like Contentful, Algolia, Typeform and Remerge that are riding on the wave of mobile adoption. So yea, it is becoming a real thing in SaaS.

Why mobile matters

The first waves of SaaS tools like Salesforce and Zendesk were essentially replacing big incumbents that were offering expensive, customised on-premise software to BIG enterprise clients. Through digital distribution these SaaS pioneers opened up the rest of the market by making it more accessible, affordable and easier to use.

Mobile is changing this again. The fact that everybody now carries a small computer in their pockets expands the opportunity for SaaS companies into markets that traditionally might not have relied on computers — or have done so to a much lesser extent. Kevin Spain of Emergence Capital has coined these solutions ‘Deskless Enterprise Apps’ in this excellent presentation and it’s an area we are very excited about.

To give you some concrete examples, we have for instance invested in mobile SaaS tools for field services (Jobber), field sales (Handshake), classrooms (Showbie), real estate agents (Happy Inspector) and merchandisers (TBA). All of them have one thing in common: The end-users of these solutions were not in front of a computer five years ago.

What this means

I think there is still a lot of opportunity across most industries: Construction is heating up, health care is still wide open and there are interesting things happening in agriculture (among many other verticals).

These mobile opportunities also come with their own difficulties though: More education might be necessary, ARPAs might be lower & churn higher (at first) and it might be harder to figure out the right distribution channels. Yet I am very confident that time will play in our favour and a lot of big mobile-first companies will be built in the coming years.

A few lessons learned (so far)

To leave you with some practical take-aways, here a few things we have learned along the way.

App stores are not a great distribution channel

In contrast to mobile consumer apps, where an Apple / Google feature can make you, this will most likely not apply to you. Even if you end up reaching the right user (which is hard, as the App Store is so untargeted), it is most likely not the person that would be paying for the solution. So in most cases you are better off focusing on traditional SaaS distribution channels like content marketing or inside sales.

No mobile app can kill a deal

In some cases, not having a mobile application as a companion to your desktop app can break a deal. Especially in competitive spaces and big budgets, a mobile application can be part of a checklist that is hard to argue away. If your buyers require a mobile app, you are probably well off investing in a mobile MVP early on, especially if you have long sales cycles.

Start simple when moving from web

That being said, if you are moving from web to mobile, don’t try to cram all of your functionality into the app. Start with the core use case (or atomic user journey) and then add functionality as you learn more about what your customers need on mobile. If you have the resources, it might make sense to put a dedicated team on this, as it helps to come up with a fresh view.

You want to be on at least two platforms (duh)

Some companies might use iOS devices, others Android. Some might even use Windows tablets (theoretically) and others a mix of all of them. It’s rather obvious that you should be on the two biggest platforms as you will otherwise experience a heavy scattering loss in your marketing activities, especially when you start spending real money to scale.

Know your users

Mobile SaaS plays can be different from traditional SaaS tools as the managers, buyers or administers that you sell to often use a different part of the software (the web version) than the end users themselves (the mobile app). This can lead to an information asymmetrie in which you are building around the requirements of the desktop users and neglect the actual (usually higher number of) end users. Keep that in mind when building your roadmap and try to stay in touch with all of your users, for instance by using NPS or feedback surveys on all usage levels.

To BYOD or not to BYOD

It is also relevant to understand on which devices your application is used. If it is a BYOD environment, you might want to factor that in when you think about what features to leverage. You probably want to avoid spamming users with push notifications in their downtime for instance and be careful not to provoke counter-productive behaviours.