43. A potential investor just asked to see my SWOT analysis. Is this normal? It’s not normal. When I first read the question I thought it was a lame request from someone schooled in McKinsey-land or Bain-land or something like that from someone with zero operating experience. This is something someone might ask who really isn’t that deep in a space or experienced in it. A reflexive ask like “What’s your exit strategy?” or worse, “What’s your go-to-market strategy?”. But ... now I think it’s brilliant. First, as David S. Rose notes, “It’s really just a simplification of his terrific list of due diligence questions.” Secondly however, there’s a saying that “The job of clever people is to ask difficult questions. The job of very clever people is to ask deceptively simple ones.” Maybe it’s a deceptively simple one? In SaaS in particular I’ve met more and more entrepreneurs off to a great start with great early customers and traction who really understand only part of their SWOT analysis. They know their strengths today but they haven’t necessarily done all the hard work to understand their weaknesses, or at least, what their weaknesses may be 12-24 months down the road. They understand the short and medium term opportunity, how to get to $10m or $20m or even $50m in ARR but not necessarily the true opportunity. SaaS can force you into an almost full-time tactical mindset if you aren’t careful but what’s interesting is if they’ve thought through how to really deal with threats, as the low-end of their space becomes commoditized, oligopolies emerge, etc. I think many even post-initial traction SaaS entrepreneurs actually will “fail” a SWOT analysis done on the fly and I think that’s OK but it’s a great opportunity to learn how they’ll evolve and where their blinders are today. SAASTR.COM 38