The Big 3: Company-Scaling Imperatives in SaaS and TES
If you’re the owner-operator of a SaaS or tech-enabled services (TES) business that’s growing at over 20% and approaching profitability…..savor the ride because you’re flying in rarefied air. It’s not every day an entrepreneur “bootstraps” their way from the risk and uncertainty of the “fuzzy front-end” to demonstrating a strong value prop and product-market fit on little to no institutional capital.
So what does the road ahead look like? You may feel that your best and maybe most challenging work within the business is still to come. Bending the growth curve presents a new set of problems for you and your team to tackle. How do we become the category leader in our market niche? How do we double, triple or quadruple our revenue over the next several years? How do we grow our profitability at the same time? How do we preserve the company’s culture as the business expands both inside and out?
The good news is that all of these questions represent “high-class problems” and you are certainly not alone. Almost every TES business at this stage in every segment of the market faces the same growth challenges; you can think of them as “The Big 3”.
So what are “The Big 3”?
- Team: Building and developing your team from top to bottom. Read more of our thoughts on Team Building Best Practices.
- Operational Scaling: Growing the operation as you approach un-chartered territory. Read more of our thoughts on Operational Scaling in SaaS and TES.
- Demand Generation: Finding and expanding the number high quality customer prospects at the top of the sales funnel – efficiently. Read out thoughts on Demand Generation.
There’s no rocket science here. You’ve probably been dealing with the first two since you launched the business and chances are you’re losing sleep thinking about next year’s demand gen. The secret sauce isn’t in figuring out what the hurdles are but rather how to take up the gauntlet for these critical success factors in the most expedient, capital efficient and sustainable way. In doing so you’ll also help ensure that every invested and/or re-invested dollar in the business will generate the highest returns.
Companies that successfully address these company-building imperatives head-on will be well on their way to achieving the long term value creation milestones for their business.
Explore all of our thoughts on best practices, tools and methods for each of The Big 3.