3 Custom Objects You Should Build Right Now
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I have sat in countless board meetings where a founder presents a revenue graph that looks like a hockey stick. Everyone nods and smiles. Then I ask to see the underlying Salesforce report.
That is usually where the panic sets in.
Most companies I invest in have a Salesforce instance that is a graveyard of good intentions. They rely entirely on standard objects like Leads, Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities. While these are fine for a company doing their first million in revenue, they break down rapidly when you try to scale. As an investor, I am not just buying your current revenue stream. I am buying your ability to predict future revenue.
If your data model is broken, your forecasts are guesses.
When I deploy capital into a company, I often bring in a Revenue Operations leader immediately. My mandate to them is simple. I want you to build a system that reflects the reality of our business model, not the default settings of our CRM.
To do this, you need to move beyond the standard architecture. You need custom objects that capture the nuance of recurring revenue, partner ecosystems, and product consumption.
Here are the three custom objects I require every one of my portfolio companies to build.
The Subscription Object
The True Source of ARR
The biggest mistake I see in SaaS reporting is using the Opportunity object to track Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR).
Opportunities are transactional. They represent a moment in time where a deal was signed. They are not designed to track the state of a customer over a multi-year relationship. When you rely on Opportunities for ARR, you run into immediate problems with mid-term upgrades, downgrades, co-termed contracts, and early renewals.
If a customer signs a deal in January, upgrades in March, and downgrades in October, and you try to track that current state using only closed-won Opportunities, you will fail. You will end up with a fragmented history that requires a complex spreadsheet to decipher.
This is why you must build a Subscription (or “Contract Line Item”) custom object.
The Architecture
This object sits between the Account and the Opportunity. It acts as the single source of truth for what a customer actively owns right now.
When an Opportunity is closed-won, automation should fire. It should take the line items from that Opportunity and either create a new Subscription record or update an existing one.
Key Fields to Include:
