SaaStr 2024 Recap: Building Differentiated Products That Improve Customers’ Lives

Last month, I shared some learnings from Procore’s success scaling to $1B in revenue at SaaStr Annual 2024.

Here are three ways to build differentiated products that propel growth.

Unlock the power of solving your own problem

Before working in tech, I spent years traveling as an international DJ. That meant transporting heavy metal crates of vinyl records across borders for gigs. The challenge of that method of performing combined with the emergence of the web & MP3 technology led a group of us to build Beatport.com – an early mover in online e-commerce selling MP3s to DJs. As the founding team were all DJs, we set out to solve our own problem, one we understood innately – creating an online version of a physical record store.

We were our first and best customer. That gave us a competitive edge when it came to building products that addressed the niche requirements of DJs. We knew how to build a digital record store, since we understood the operations and experience of real-world record stores. Like any startup, we confronted obstacles to getting our company off the ground, but our passion to solve our problem of moving from vinyl to MP3 helped us through those hard early startup days when things looked grim.

Never underestimate the power of solving your own problem or the ability to empathize deeply with a customer problem. On your toughest days, return to the heart and soul that got your company off the ground – the future positive impact of solving real problems for your customers – and use it to restore confidence in your mission.

Embrace Method Acting

In most cases, you aren’t solving problems you experience firsthand when building SaaS products. That’s where discovery techniques, like method acting, come into play. These techniques help get every employee deeply engaged and passionate about solving real problems for real people. The passion for solving problems stems from stories about real people, from understanding real people, from hearing firsthand how to make an impact.

Back in the early 2010s, I began leading product at Shutterstock with little understanding of the experience of our photographer and designer customers. While I had an academic understanding of these customers, I lacked an innate understanding. So what did I do? I picked up a camera and enrolled in photography classes, holding mock photo shoots with stock image models. In the theater world, the term for this practice is method acting. “Becoming our customers,” or embracing method acting, at Shutterstock helped us consistently out-innovate our competitors for image search products, at times outpacing much bigger companies thanks to our innate understanding of our customers.

Method acting is one of many discovery techniques at your disposal to promote affinity, understanding, and impact for your customers. Regardless of the technique you use, an innate understanding of your customer gives you insights for differentiated products.

Make Customers Part of Your DNA

The best lessons stem from failure, not success. For me, one of those crucial learning moments came during my time at Patreon, when we revamped our pricing model back in 2017. We spent a lot of time in excel models and revenue projections, but we didn’t spend enough time consulting our single most important input – our customers. Unsurprisingly, those pricing changes resulted in major backlash from our customers – one that we had to roll back and apologize publicly for. Learn from my misstep and make customers central to your DNA in a programmatic way, enabling you to build hand-in-hand with them.

Here’s our playbook at Procore:

1. It starts at the top.

   Our Founder and CEO Tooey Courtemanche puts customers at the heart of everything we build at Procore. To this day, he sends me product feedback that he gets from using Procore on his own construction projects. It’s incumbent upon founders to set the tone.

2. Innovation Labs.

   We host customers from different segments and various construction types at Procore for Innovation Labs, where we think big, build products, host design sprints and partner with the industry.

3. Jobsite Visits.

   I love this quote from Steven Blank: “There are no facts inside your building so get outside.” At Procore, we spend time on the jobsite to understand what it means to use our products with gloves on and the sun glaring on your device. Whatever the jobsite looks like for your business, get out in the field.

Founding a company takes heart, it takes soul, and if you can capture that heart and soul in a bottle, protect it, and orient every employee around it while you add systems and processes to help you scale, you will build differentiated products that unlock exponential scale. At Procore, we remain as passionate about solving our customers’ problems as we were on day one, when Tooey set out to solve a problem he faced on his own construction project. For me that innate passion comes from growing up on the jobsite with my dad, who spent 40 years as a general contractor. Every day I wake up trying to improve the lives of our customers, and it’s that commitment that has allowed us to transform the way the world builds and define the future of construction technology, together with our industry.