Dear Reader,
Welcome to the 54th edition of the good reads newsletter by Malpani Ventures. Sharing your weekly dose of articles for this weekend’s reading!
Is Solopreneurship Right For You?
Elena Verna is an expert in all things B2B PLG. She shares her views on solopreneurship. We believe becoming a solopreneur before taking the plunge into full-time entrepreneurship can be a rewarding experience and learning of the highest order.
Solopreneurship - A new way to monetize your skills
Build a one-person company with a predictable, sustainable, and competitively defensible growth model - Read more.
Use your skills to identify product-market fit, unique value positioning, and growth models to acquire, monetize, and retain customers
PMF for solopreneurs
Identify problems in the market that you are uniquely positioned to solve based on your experience and skills
Signals of strong demand for specific expertise, ideally in 'fast moving waters,' lack of supply of expertise, and potential for alternative engagement modes
Personal story - solopreneurship in action
An example of solopreneurship in action in the context of a full-time growth operator
Identifying a market problem of lack of understanding around B2B PLG in scaling companies and offering a solution through advising companies to operationalize PLG
She also shares the growth model, how to acquire customers, monetize, and retain them.
The CFO Handbook for B2B SaaS
https://www.gpbullhound.com/articles/cfo-handbook-for-b2b-saas/
GP Bullhound has launched its first CFO Handbook for CFOs and software companies. The handbook offers insights from high-performing B2B SaaS businesses on how to ensure high performance and a culture of continuous improvement. It covers industry-specific metrics, benchmarks, revenue and cost reporting, and sales and finance processes.
Our view on the emerging cybersecurity landscape in Asia
SaaS companies experienced a huge decline in valuation multiples and share prices in 2022. The current median implied ARR valuation multiple for publicly listed SaaS companies is 25% lower than the average multiple of the previous decade, due to increased market maturity, competition, and changes in interest rates and cost of capital.
But, cybersecurity is at the top of CIOs agenda. Why?
Cybersecurity is always mission-critical
The number of cybersecurity attacks is higher than ever before; 98% of IT and security leaders reported dealing with an attack in 2022
Cybersecurity breaches are increasingly sophisticated, requiring continuous investment in resources
Breaches are a global issue, with high-profile attacks occurring across various industries and sectors
As digital penetration and cloud adoption continue to grow, cybersecurity has become an ongoing concern for executives
January Capital is bullish on cybersecurity and shares its thesis:
Opportunity
Asia presents a massive opportunity for cybersecurity startups as most leading companies are based in geographies such as the US, Israel, and Europe, leaving Asian markets underserved by incumbents. Cybersecurity has rapidly emerged as a core problem for executives in Asia, combined with the whitespace that exists given less sophisticated infrastructure, resulting in a massive opportunity for players to build for local markets.
Localized approach
Disparate regulations and market structures necessitate localized approaches in Southeast Asia and India, which have very different legal constructs and laws versus other developed markets. This presents an opportunity for homegrown startups to solve these localized challenges and build solutions to solve problems such as QR code scanning, faulty recipients, and other localized issues.
GTM strategies
The concept of security testing has evolved from being at the end of the app cycle to development, resulting in different Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) within organizations that can now champion the product. Cybersecurity companies can get a "foot in the door" by either focusing on non-CISO (non-Chief Info Sec Officer) ICPs to adopt the product and champion it or deploying "lite" tools that can drive brand recognition before a targeted selling approach globally.
Until next time!