85 How to invest in and grow early-stage B2B SaaS companies with Fred Soneya and Jeremy Luzinda of Haatch Ventures

The EIS Navigator

B2B SaaS is a very popular business model amongst venture capital and (S)EIS/VCT investors. Haatch Ventures specialise in investing in this sector and we get Partner Fred Soneya and Principal Jeremy Luzinda to talk about how they work and how they help the companies scale.

We look at several topics about managing these companies:

• what B2B SaaS is and why it is attractive to investors. We discuss the merits of additional service revenue and when its a positive or a distraction.
• when a company should add new features or when it should expand its product range.
• what metrics are of interest, with Jeremy going deep into how they look at a couple of these.

Haatch has a particular interest in supporting sales processes. Within this we talk about:

• how to develop the right channels and what factors to consider.
• how lead times on sales affects how companies operate.
• how investors can support companies in developing their sales.

We also discuss some of the typical mistakes that founders make and the prospects for the future for B2B SaaS and venture capital investors in this area.

00:45 Fred & Jeremy introduce themselves

04:30 What Haatch does

05:50 What is B2B SaaS

08:00 Why is B2B SaaS attractive for investors

12:00 Merits of recurring revenue versus service revenue

15:00 adding features, roadmaps

18:30 12 metrics of interest - net revenue retention

21:30 how to develop the right channel

23:00 lead times in sales cycles

28:00 expanding from narrow to broad

32:30 when to expand product ranges

36:30 how managers can support companies in these processes

40:45 typical mistakes founders make:

47:00 prospects for the future

51:20 Favourite questions

Links

Haatch website - https://www.haatch.com/

Fred Soneya - [email protected]

Jeremy Luzinda - [email protected]

Subscribe to the EIS Navigator podcast on most services here: https://the-eis-navigator.captivate.fm/listen

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Bios

Fred Soneya, Co-founder & Partner

Fred was responsible for a number of high-profile, large-scale innovation projects across Kiddicare.com and, post-acquisition, Morrisons. Fred created award-winning digital customer experiences by working with cutting-edge early-stage technology start-ups, bridging the online-offline gap at Morrisons. This included the launch of browse-and-order points, mobile payments and electronic shelf-edge labels.

Having co-founded Haatch in 2013, Fred is responsible for the day-to-day running of the Haatch funds. He has led both the completion of over 150 investments into 70+ companies over the lat 10 years and the on-boarding of over 600 investors into the funds.

Jeremy Luzinda, Principal

Jeremy began his career as Chief Operating Officer at a VC-backed start-up that raised from venture funds Forward Partners and Founders Factory, as well as esteemed angel investors such as Sir John Hegarty and Tom Teichman, amongst the first investors in the likes of lastminute.com, MADE.co and notonthehighstreet.com. It ultimately failed, but he learnt a lot in the process.

He then became Managing Director at Surechill, a software-enabled cold-storage company co-founded by Peter Saunders OBE, which raised more than £10m. Following this experience, he joined Playfair Capital, an early-stage VC that has backed companies like Stripe, Thought Machine and Trouva. He worked on exciting companies like Omnipresent which he saw go from £0 to over £500m in value in under 18 months. He leans on this wealth of experience to offer hands-on support to our portfolio post-transaction, particularly on B2B SaaS sales.

Alongside Haatch, he's a GTM consultant at Vencha, built by the early commercial team who built and sold MessageLabs for $700m, supporting B2B SaaS companies with GTM challenges.