Dear SaaS Founders,
The idea of a community for SaaS founders by SaaS Founders came together in 2018 between Girish, Suresh, Krish, Manav, and Avinash (read the genesis story here) resulting in the not-for-profit foundation “SaaSBOOMi”.
Looking back, SaaSBOOMi’s growth has been more than spectacular in the last 5 years and it exceeded the community’s expectations.
In hindsight, it seems very fitting that we christened ourselves “BOOMi”, implying earth in most Indian languages — laying a strong foundation for our community initiatives and ambitions.
It is now time for us to take our movement to the next orbital level — we call this SaaSBOOMi 2.0.
If SaaSBOOMi 1.0 was about laying the foundation, SAASBOOMi 2.0 would be about taking our rocket ship off the ground into orbit.
The most critical part of this evolution is the creation of an organizational structure that can take SaaSBOOMi to the next level.
In any organization’s growth journey, there comes a time to set up a formal BoD and governance structure to gear it up for the next phase of growth. That time for SaaSBOOMi is now.
We truly believe that this new structure will provide transparency, openness, and inclusivity to drive the long-term growth of the SaaS Founder Community.
As per the new structure, the SaaSBOOMi foundation will be driven by 4 core pillars
- Founding Team & Bylaws
- Fiduciary BoD
- Chairperson & Governing Council (Operating BoD)
- CEO, Operating Team & Fellows
The founding team will play a minimal on-demand role in this new structure centered around owning and ratifying changes to the bylaws as required, which is expected to be very rare.
The bylaws of SaaSBOOMi define the immutable aspects of the foundation like the name of the foundation and the core structure of the foundation’s operating model. These bylaws can only be modified by a majority vote from the founding team.
The Governing Council (GC) is the Apex Operating Authority of the SaaSBOOMi foundation. Except for making changes to the bylaws, everything else comes under the purview of GC’s authority. The GC will be similar to the BoD of a company defining quarterly, and annual goals for the foundation and will meet once in a quarter. The GC will NOT be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the community. The GC consists of representatives from 2 founding members, 2 venture/ecosystem partners, 2 Independent SaaS Founders (or ex-SaaS founders), and the CEO of SaaSBOOMi totaling to a 7 member GC. The tenure of GC members will be for a period of 2 years and it can be extended for an additional 1 year. A mandatory gap of 2 years is required for re-election into the GC. The GC members do not have any fiduciary responsibilities.
As per the company law, nonprofit organizations require a fiduciary BoD. Hence, a 3-member fiduciary BoD is automatically created by including the Chairperson of the GC, the CEO of SaaSBOOMi, and one of the founding members in the GC. The fiduciary BoD is more of a compliance requirement and mostly will ratify all the GC recommendations as long as it does not conflict with any legal aspects.
The GC has the authority to appoint the CEO of SaaSBOOMi who will be responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the SaaSBOOMi. The CEO and GC will collaboratively identify experienced SaaS Founders / CEOs as “Fellow” volunteers to drive various community-building initiatives. The CEO of SaaSBOOMi will create and manage a team of professionals to assist the “Fellow” volunteers to execute on their initiatives.
The first Governing Council consists of Ashwini Ashokan, Co-founder & CEO of MadStreetDen, Manav Garg, Founder & CEO of Eka Software, Mohit Bhatnagar, Managing Director and partner Sequoia Capital, Shekhar Kirani, Partner Accel Partners, Suresh Sambandam, Founder & CEO Kissflow and Vinod Muthukrishnan, co-founder of CloudCherry & CCO Uniphore. It also gives me great pleasure to announce that Avinash Raghava, co-founder of SaaSBOOMi will be the full-time CEO for SaaSBOOMi.
I am personally super thrilled to see SaaSBOOMi grown to this level in the last 5 years and I am super confident this new structure with a powerful 1st governing council will take the SaaSBOOMi mission to a whole new level.
I want to end this post, by thanking all the SaaS founders and our ecosystem partners Accel, Sequoia, TigerGlobal, Westbridge Capital, B Capital, 8 Roads, and March Capital who have been unequivocally supporting the SaaSBOOMi cause through their sponsorship. Thank you and I look forward to your continued support in building the most valuable community that helps SaaS founders succeed in their respective journeys.
– Suresh Sambandam, Founder & CEO, Kissflow.com
