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How do you get into a saas based company if you have no experience working in one and what are some of the core competencies you need when you are starting out?

Melinda Chung
ex-VP Marketing at VSCO; ex-Dir at PMM Adobe; Founder at Product Marketing Bootcamp | Formerly Adobe, GoDaddy, VSCO, 3x startupsJanuary 13

People often say that you can get into organizations by either function or domain. If you haven’t been in SaaS before, get into a SaaS company through your functional expertise - perhaps marketing, demand generation, or operations, for instance. From there, you can move around.

The core competencies for operating in SaaS as a PMM are not that different from any other company, but I’ll highlight one difference - you should definitely understand the business model and how the company makes money. The motions around gross new, net new, attrition, and ending are fundamental financial notions that you’ll need to understand.

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