Sitting with Reality
I saw an inspiring post on LinkedIn last week.
Sarah Hum is the Founder and CEO of a bootstrapped b2b SaaS company called Canny, a tool that helps teams build better products by listening to their users.
In the spirit of building in the open, Sarah shared that this year was the first year Canny experienced zero growth.
She reflected on her company's other metrics:
💰 $3.3m ARR
🙏 583 paying customers
💕 16-person team
She shared the reasons for the 0% growth trend:
A pricing mistake
A soft market for SaaS
And she shared what she’ll do to address the growth issue next year:
Fix the product's pricing/feature mix
Clarifying the product's ROI for core customers
In this same post, Sarah also mentions some personal milestones:
Her crafting hobby (which BTW, I didn't know keycaps were a thing and now I might be obsessed with them...)
A big upcoming location move
You might be wondering,
“Why is this worth mentioning in a newsletter about Founder Finance?"
Here’s why:
When the going gets tough in your business, you have a choice.
You can bury your head in the sand and lie to yourself that everything is fine,
Or, you can:
Dig into the data
See reality for what it is
Set a plan for the future
And show up to face that challenge with your full self.
Are you facing some harsh realities this year?
The honest truth is, it's been a crappy year for startups.
MANY are feeling the squeeze.
Seeing your reality for what it is
And sharing with others
Is often the first step
To getting through it.
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