[TAForObvReasons]

I'd love some advice for startups that do traditional non-SaaS software sales. However it seems that everything is catered to high-growth SaaS startups. Is there a dearth of material because no one will invest in traditional software businesses or because everyone else is building SaaS these days?

[briandear]

Are there actually startups selling “traditional” software? An actual serious question. The follow up would be: “why?” It seems like recurring subscriptions would have a much better LTV than selling one-time software. If updates and/or support is part of the product, then you’re essentially still selling SaaS even if it doesn’t seem pedantically correct.

Let’s say you are selling a $5000 piece of software and you update every 2 years. If you are counting on selling updates as part of your projected LTV, you are pretty much a subscription business, subject to the same churn considerations as a “normal” SaaS might be.

My point is that unless you are selling a one-time product with no paid updates or paid ongoing support, then SaaS strategies should work for you. Unless you happen to be selling something esoteric such as avionics or infrastructure software, it would seem most SaaS sales strategies would tend to be applicable.

[jon-wood]

Where I work we sell an IoT platform to big corporates, which is much closer to traditional software sales than it is to SaaS. There’s big upfront cost, and then rolling maintenance costs.

Pre-sales is a really long and drawn out process when dealing with big corporates, doubly so when you’re selling what will become core infrastructure. We’re currently a year into what is effectively pre-sales with one client, involving a full due diligence process, in depth conversation with their corporate security department, and a (paid for) trial involving several hundred of their customers.

[joshmarlow]

To play devil's advocate - if you are not selling SaaS, then your infrastructure/uptime becomes much less crucial to the health of your business. A lot of the impetus for Devops seems to go out the window for a non-SaaS product.

[sbinthree]

Where in SaaS you might pay the first month or two as commission, in licensed software you generally pay 10-20% of the gross margin for the first year of the agreement. The mechanics of the sales process are very similar, the people involved are very similar. The difference is the approach to commission, typically, and the quota.

[hodwic]

Two good books on the subject:

- B2B Executive Playbook

- Crossing the Chasm

But in general, the reason no one tells you how to run an actual software business is because why would they tell you what took them years / decades to learn the hard way?

SaaS Startups are a tool to fleece investors, so all the scam artists are happy to tell the world how smart they are at Starting Up. It's personal marketing.

Boring B2B Software is just a normal businesses, ain't nobody gonna tell you the secret to doing that. Get a job in industry and then learn it first hand, that's how you learn it.

[pc86]

"Startup" by definition means a business focused on very high growth early on. If you're a business selling software traditionally, it's very unlikely you're a startup.