Will SAAS Die in the Near Future?- Bob Armbrister - Episode #33

Bob Armbrister is the President and CEO of SPARK Business Works. Bob has led SPARK to serve hundreds of clients using a business-first approach to custom software. He leans on his experience as CIO at a national construction management firm to implement "The SPARK Way" – an approach of practical innovation that helps business leaders build tech that gets adopted (and brings ROI).

Discussion Points:

• What myth or bogus strategy do you want to bust?  2:22
• Tell us more about your experience with the SAAS products. 3:21
• How does your billing model work? 6:20
• What were your exit plans to shape your decisions? 9:20
• Tell us more about your statement developers are winning.13:40
• How is your business set up now? 18:00
• Tell us about some of the experiences that you had, during the process of buying other agencies. 21:30
• What would you say was kind of one mistake that you made. 24:00
• Tell us about how you got into this business. 23:32
• Is there any tip or trick that you use to keep your employee's stay? 28:00

• How have things changed w/COVID? 30:50

• How do you manage your team? 34:20
• How have you kept the team connected? 36:31
• Tell us about your experience with offshoring? 39:13
• What keeps you up at night? 49:00

 

Takeaways 

• You don't have to make sure that your idea is going to be the winner, if you're the one, servicing the entrepreneur and so.
• The biggest thing in a SaaS business is churn. You're constantly trying to figure out churn, why are people leaving? What aren't you doing? What features do you need, you're trying to guess.
• Not everybody has the same exit plan or the same strategy in terms of what growth looks like. - Jessie
• The pressure on software-based markets is also the same as the service-based markets.
• Entrepreneurs get it right one in a million.
• The more experience you have, the more value you can add to the customer.
• The more failures we have made in the past, make us able to not repeat them with future customers.
• The Discovery of a problem is absolutely important. But at the same time, the person who is making that discovery also plays a huge role. - Varun

Links 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobarmbrister/
• Company website: https://www.sparkbusinessworks.com/

 

Busted Myths:

• Custom software is going to be needed for a long time.