Companies go through a number of stages as they grow. As they work to develop their product, reach those early customers and establish market differentiation, startup companies slowly evolve into expansion-stage companies.
Expansion-stage companies can begin investing in new sales and marketing resources and feel confident that those resources will result in predictable revenue gain and continuing value. The expansion stage is when businesses really ramp up their growth — but if you’ve never been through it before, then chances are you’ll need a little help to do it right.
Enter: OpenView. OpenView is a venture capital firm that focuses exclusively on B2B software companies in the expansion stage. They offer not only the funding, network and resources you need to grow but also consulting services to help ensure you make the best moves for your business.
Partnering with OpenView and their hands-on team of operators readies your company to accelerate every aspect of its go-to-market strategy. Because they’re experts in the B2B SaaS space, they know the right trigger points to find the best customer segments, generate demand and sell the product as efficiently and effectively as possible.
With the relatively small marketing team at OpenView, you might not expect the company to put out as much quality content as they do. Yet, they’ve become thought leaders in the business, even coining terms and concepts like product-led growth.
While it’s unique for venture capital firms to invest what they do into marketing, the trust they build with their prospects makes the selling process run as smoothly as possible. At New Breed, we’ve definitely taken inspiration from this innovative company.
So what exactly makes OpenView experts in their space?
OpenView works with companies who have developed their minimum viable product and reached product-market fit.
Product-market fit is the degree to which a product has met strong market demand. Reaching product-market fit involves meeting with early adopters, gaining feedback and adding or changing product features to meet the minimum requirements for satisfying them.
Once you’ve met those minimum requirements, you have your minimum viable product and can begin focusing sales and marketing energy toward customer acquisition. In other words, your company has entered the expansion stage.
Expansion-stage companies must have:
A go-to-market strategy with profitable results.
A well-developed core product value proposition with enough product functionality to satisfy early adopters.
Adequate operational methodologies to support additional resources and business.
OpenView helps expansion-stage companies “cross the chasm” to reach a mass market. At that point, you’ll need help selling and marketing your product, which is what the capital you receive at this stage of growth is intended to do. Acting as a true partner at this stage, OpenView helps you organize and amplify your go-to-market strategy from product differentiation all the way through to customer success.
Working with OpenView, many companies have reached a mass market, achieved economies of scale and been able to shift their focus from developing their product to adding new features or products to develop their business as a whole.
From then on, it’s important to put effort into differentiating your brand. As Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce, once said, “a brand is a company’s most important asset.” Your competition can always copy your product and features, but they can never rip off the way people identify with your brand.
Luckily, OpenView ensures that by the time companies reach this stage, they have all the knowledge and resources they need to shape the future of their industries as thought leaders themselves.