Hi there,
 

CB Insights is not an inherently viral SaaS product. This is not breaking news.

So it's been awesome (and a bit perplexing) to see us growing our customer base really quickly in Japan. We've not done anything different in terms of our research or marketing, yet new Japanese customers are coming on really quickly.

Our only hypothesis is that a lot of our customers in Japan are telling their network of peers about CB Insights and so these referrals are helping to generate this type of 2nd order revenue.

I'd love to bottle what is happening in Japan and replicate it in other geographies and industry verticals. If only we knew what the heck was happening.

One idea we're debating is to just straight up ask existing customers to refer us to their industry peers. I've always worried this type of request for a B2B company might appear gauche, but maybe it's not totally crazy.

What do you think?

In other news, you'll see a guest blog post below by Dave Ambrose of Steadfast Venture Capital. It's our first ever. Let us know what you think so we can determine if we should do more of these. If you're interested in reaching an audience of ~30k smart investors, angels, and corp M&A/strategy/sourcing folks and have an interesting analysis idea, let me know.

Have a great day,