#058: SaaS Is A TOUGH Game, vSaaS For Architecture Firms, 30+ Great Interview Questions
One vSaaS breakdown. One biz story. One 'how to'. In your inbox once a week. Written by @LukeSophinos
One vSaaS Breakdown:
SaaS is a TOUGH Game.
0.4% of SaaS Companies make it to $10M ARR.
And Of those, Only 13% do it in the first ten years.
Don’t believe everything you hear about and how easy / fast someone got to $10M ARR. It’s just not the reality in 99.6% of cases!
One Biz Story:
Monograph: vSaaS For Architecture Firms
Three MIT alumns have raised ~$30M to build a vertical software platform exclusively for architectural firms. It’s a $350B+ market that, at the surface level, seems like a blue ocean opportunity. Let's take a closer look at their start-up, Monograph:
Monograph is a cloud-based project management software designed exclusively for architecture and engineering firms. The software helps firms manage their projects, employees, and finances with ease.
It was founded by design technologists with backgrounds in architecture: Robert Yuen, Moe Amaya, and Alex Dixon.
The company was started after they realized that most architecture shops "had no idea" whether or not projects were going to come in ON TIME and ON BUDGET. Additionally, the industry has historically operated via a sea of point solutions:
CAD: AutoCAD
Files: Box, Dropbox
Communication: GMail, Outlook
Management: Asana
Visualization: Rhino3D
Accounting: Quickbooks
Materials: MaterialBank
The goal? Bring it all into one place.
They started very simply. By initially building websites for architecture firms. Then moving fully into helping manage the business side of running a firm. One of the founders had this to say about the early days:
Monograph’s first customer was HDG Architecture, a firm based in San Francisco. The software helped HDG Architecture meet deadlines without stress by tracking project progress in real-time and dynamically resourcing projects based on different needs. From there, they continued to steadily grow their customer base and sign up firms that were running an aggregate of $125M of projects.
In March of 2020 they leveraged that momentum to raise a Seed Round led by Homebrew. WHY the firm invested:
Monograph’s product suite includes a complete set of tools for managing tasks, tracking time, and invoicing clients. The software features interactive Gantt charts, dashboards, and reports that allow firms to manage their projects and employees through each step of the project.
Monograph’s go-to-market strategy is to target small to medium-sized architecture and engineering firms. Architecture is a notoriously difficult market to sell into. My hunch is customer acquisition is done primarily through heavy marketing & outside sales reps.
Today, they offer two different product lines:
Track: offers time tracking, invoicing, payments, and basic budgets.
Grow: the enterprise offering, that layers in a lot more.
Typically, vSaaS management solutions are pretty expensive, i'd guess their ACV is north of $50K.
Continuing the momentum from their Seed Round, Monograph took advantage of a hot SaaS market and, in May 2021, raised a $7.4M Series A. Only a few months later they raised $20M Series B. Investors here were firms Index Ventures and Tiger Global.
Monograph’s revenue figures are not publicly available. However, the company has reported that $500 million worth of projects have been executed on the platform. My guess? With 50-ish employees on LinkedIn, their probably close to profitability and in the ~$10M ARR range.
Given the raise in '21 w/ Tiger, the valuation they have to grow into is likely sizeable. But with an ambitious vision, and solving a true problem, Monograph can overcome this and become a ONE STOP SHOP for architecture and engineering firms.
Here's to the team and what's next!
One ‘How To’:
30+ Interview Questions (Steal them!)
General
What were your key contributions at your last two companies?
Tell me the story of your life. What experiences make you different from everyone else?
If hired, what do you contribute 30/60/90/365 days after you join?
What would your last two bosses & last two peers say about your performance? Are they right or wrong? Why?
What strong belief do you have that the vast majority of people disagree with?
Marketing
What are 3 things we’re doing today that you’d upgrade right away?
What should our budget be?
What have you done to increase win rates / decrease sales cycles?
Rank your marketing skills (Ie. product marketing, SEO, etc.)
What # of MQLs have you contributed (& at what ACVs) each of the last 3 years?
Sales
What ACVs have you sold in the past? Does it relate to ours?
What ARR impact will you have 120 days after I hire you?
Tell me about deals you’ve lost to competitors.
What should daily activity look like for you and your reps?
What was your % of quota attainment each of the last 5 years?
Customer Success
What ACVs have you implemented in the past? Does it relate to ours?
Rank your priorities across: implementation, support, account management, expansion, renewal?
Tell me about the top 3 accounts by ARR that you’ve lost. What happened?
Can you show me implementation decks and QBRs you’ve built in the past?
How often do you like to visit customers in person?
Product
What ACV products have you built in the past?
How should time be allocated on a roadmap, on a percentage basis?
How often do you interact with & visit customers?
What’s your key metric(s) for understanding product performance?
What have you built in the past that didn’t work out? What did you learn and what would you do differently today?
Engineering
What’s your key metric(s) for understanding engineering performance?
How do you balance speed and quality?
How do you measure it?
How much time do you like to spend paying down tech debt?
What languages are you proficient in? Why did you choose those versus others? If you could go back would you have focused on something different?
What are you reading that’s engineering-related right now?
You have a tight deadline. What do you sacrifice in the build? Quality, feature set, testing, etc? Why?
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