Looking for a business idea? Here's three companies ready for disruption!

Downmarket SaaS Opportunities

The theory behind these companies:

• If a multi-million dollar VC-backed company exists, they have proven demand in the market.
• However, due to being funded, the company has no choice but to go upmarket and sell to big companies.
• I've analyzed downmarket niches where the VC-backed companies can't play.
• For each company below, I've listed the name, one niche to compete in, a unique selling-point (USP) that beats the big company in that niche, and a clear vision for how you could build the MVP.

Opportunity 1: CultureHQ

CultureIQ Info:

• Estimated revenue range: $10M to $50M
• Number of employees: 11 to 50
• Funding raised: $7.5M
• Founded: 2014

Summary:

CultureIQ is for HR departments who want to measure and improve culture. Customers rave about it's research-based model and pre-made surveys for getting started.

Downmarket Opportunity:

CultureIQ aims at enterprise customers, with their lowest price point being almost $20,000/year. This creates an opportunity for a B2B product that offers the core of what CultureIQ sells, but instead targets companies with less than ten HR employees.

USP:

The unique selling-point of this product is that you are targeting companies who are experiencing their first growth spurt. Companies like these have money and are looking to efficiently scale their operations.

You are able to position yourself as the (relatively) low-cost software that allows them to apply a research-based model to their culture, and makes it easy to get started in monitoring changes to the culture.

As always, it can make sense to start with an even more specific industry in order to get started. Decide on what type of company you want to start with based on your personal connections.

MVP:

The MVP of the product could look something like:

• A way to import a list of employee emails
• Two or three pre-made, research-backed surveys that analyze the culture of a business
• Software that collects these results into some sort of dashboard, alongside actionable insights.
• (Bonus): A graph of changes over time

Pricing:

CultureIQ Competitors:

Ambassify: Starting at $500/month
TeamMood: Starting at $2/user/month
Clarity Wave: Starting at $4/user/month
SurveyMonkey Engage: Starting at $450/month

Conclusion:

A core product should be able to be priced at $99/month, and have room to grow as the product adds features and value.

Opportunity 2: Catalyst.io

Catalyst.io Info:

• Estimated revenue range: $1M to $10M
• Number of employees: 11 to 50
• Funding raised: $45.4M
• Founded: 2016

Summary:

Catalyst.io is a customer support / customer success software, aimed at managing customer relationships, identifying upsell opportunities, and reducing churn. It aims to be an all-in-one solution for customer success managers.

Customers who like Catalyst.io emphasize it's flexibility, integrations with other systems (notably Salesforce CRM) and ability to help customer support managers (CSMs) identify where they should focus their attention.

Downmarket Opportunity:

While Catalyst.io doesn't reveal its pricing information, we know it's raised over $45 million. This creates a downmarket opportunity for companies who only have a few CSMs, but want a software that supports their workflow.

USP:

You should target B2B companies who have grown large enough to need CSMs, but need only the core functionality and do not want to spend thousands per year on CSM software.

You can position yourself as the "Starter CSM" for companies with 1 to 20 CSMs, who need a way to manage the workflow for CSMs.

One challenge with this product will be integrations. Customers in this market want their CSMs to have a full picture of their customer, meaning that they will want to integrate with their CRM, as well as their product.

You should look to identify a single CRM to integrate with, and focus exclusively on companies who use that CRM. This way, you get the benefit of selling an end-to-end experience, without having to spend years performing multiple integrations. Some research is required to determine what CRM you should integrate with.

Similarly, you should focus on a single product integration (Segment.io is a likely option), as opposed to a larger range of application information.

MVP:

The MVP for this product is likely the most complex one in this email, due to the amount of integrations involved.

An MVP for this product could look like:
Integrate with intercom for customer support information
Integrate with CRM for customer value information
Integrate with Segment.io for application information
Gather this information together into a dashboard, which calculates customer happiness / unhappiness, likelihood of churning, etc.

Pricing:

CultureIQ Competitors:

ChurnZero: Price unknown (demo only)

Gainsight CS: Price unknown (demo only)

SmartKarrot: Staring at $499/month

Conclusion: Due to very few self-serve options, this product has potential to be sold between $99-$499/month.

Opportunity 3: CaptivateIQ

CaptivateIQ Info:

• Estimated revenue range: $1M to $10M
• Number of employees: 11 to 50
• Funding raised: $16.6M
• Founded: 2017

Summary:

CaptivateIQ helps companies handle commissions, as well as manages reporting for those commissions for compliance purposes.

As you can see from GitLab's handbook, enterprise sales commission structures can be quite complex. These are often calculated from an excel spreadsheet for smaller companies, or handled by large, enterprise-grade software for large companies. CaptivateIQ intends to compete with a modernized UI software that is just below the enterprise-grade solutions.

Sales reps typically praise the software for helping them see how much they are making, while accounting teams enjoy no longer having to calculate these manually.

Downmarket Opportunity:

Most of the need and pain for this product comes from enterprise-grade customers, which is why the market targets them so strongly.

However, this has the side-effect of leaving small businesses in the dust. Because of this, the downmarket opportunity for this product is to create a commission tracking software for small businesses.

Many small businesses rely on B2B sales, and have full-time BDR (business development reps). The CEOs of these companies may be looking for a better way to track, analyze, and offer visibility into the commissions these employees have.

Also, the CEOs may wish to provide a more complex pay structure that better incentivizes salespeople, but has avoided doing so due to the complexity. This is where your product can shine.

USP:

The unique selling-point of this product is that you are targeting B2B companies who have between 1 and 10 salespeople, who are looking to better manage the entire commission life cycle.

Consider offering an integration with a popular CRM, and begin your search with companies who use that CRM. This will offer an easy way to identify leads, as well as encourage them to work with you.

MVP:

The MVP of this product could look like the following:

• GUI for creating commission structures

• Some way to integrate sales data, either via manual entry or via CRM integration, depending on how minimal your MVP is.

• Dashboard for analysis of how much commission reps have earned by month, quarter, etc.

Pricing:

CaptivateIQ Competitors:

Xactly: Quote-based (enterprise only)
Easy-Commission by Cellarstone: Starting at $6.95/user/month
Commissionly: Staring at $20/user/month

Conclusion:

This product can likely sit between the $49/mo and $99/mo very easily. There is also the opportunity to sell on a per-user basis, for which you could likely sell for $20/user/month.

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I'm considering making posts like this every week, if there is enough interest.

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Thanks for reading and I hope you found it valuable!