David Skok

What is the whole, not the drill, that the customer is looking for and find a way to give them that.

And sometimes it's really important to have services doing that.

And in particular, in the really early days of a startup, I actually really like having services that are deeply engaged with one or two customers because that's how you really learn whether the product's actually going to work or not work and what are the issues that could make it work better or that are holding it back from working well.

And if you really are permanently stuck with a long services need with customers, then what you would do is find a channel partner and create a channel program and hand that skill over to them

And just keep one or two customers that you keep familiar with what the services need is and be able in a position to train those partners.

But I don't worry about it because ultimately, to me, so long as this company is really sensitive to how to get the customer the benefit that they are looking for.

And if services are a part of that, then I'm actually very on board with that.

I do have one thing that I look for.

It's actually very hard to achieve in the early days, which is I like to see them running the services at a zero gross margin, zero contribution margin.

And tell folks what that means.

So what that means is if you've got five people and they cost you, let's say, $100,000 each, so you've got $500,000 of annual expenses in your services group, you want to be getting as much revenue to cover that.

So $500,000 of revenue per annum in the services area.

That's great.

And again, I will warn people, don't try to get that too early.

It's sometimes the wrong time too early in the business.

So I'm not looking for that to happen immediately.

That's kind of – you know, I talk about businesses being –

Find a way to get your repeatable sales.

That's the first thing.

Then try to find a way to make it scalable.