The fundamentals of scaling a Saas business from 4 experts

At Startup Daily’s recent 2023 Tech Playbook From Idea to Unicorn event, our expert panel unpacked the fundamentals of scaling a SaaS business.

In a panel moderated by Matthew Allford, Content Creator and DevOps Engineer at Idea to Unicorn community partner Parallo, founders and technology leaders discussed the major challenges and opportunities when growing SaaS businesses in today’s climate.

Limited resources, difficulties in planning and having many stakeholders can produce a perfect scaling storm.

“It’s always a balancing act,” notes Joseph Azar, Chief Technology Officer at Forcite Helmet Systems. “I think customers are important, but then employees are important, but then investors are important and you have to kind of make them all happy at the same time, right?”

Here’s some great advice on how you can scale your business and keep them all happy at the same time.

Set up a ‘customer listening’ program

Any pain points in your UX when you’re small will only grow bigger with you. So Justin Bohlmann, Head of Growth at fintech platform Thriday, says his top piece of advice is to “set up a customer listening program from day one and keep it running forever.”

He uses a ‘customer effort score’ to rate how easy it is for his customers to use key features of Thriday’s service. “Then every 30 days we follow up with the same question as long as they’ve performed that action,” he explains. “That customer listening program and that customer effort score can then be aggregated… measured, managed and improved on across the whole business.”

It’s a measurable way of managing customer feedback and working out what you need to focus on to improve as you scale.

At Forcite Helmet Systems, customer feedback is integrated into every aspect of their product and systems. “We kind of involved customers or potential customers from the get go,” says Joseph. “So our product was developed with customers feedback from day one… It’s always a continuous feedback loop, always asking what the customers think, and then implementing what the customers like.”

Left to right: Afonso Firmo from NetNada, Justin Bohlmann at Thriday, Joseph Azar from Forcite Helmet Systems and Matthew Alford from Parallo.

Pinpoint your ‘wow’ moment

Your ‘wow’ is the thing that makes your customers come back for more. The thing that makes their life infinity easier or better; or eliminates a problem altogether; or gives them bragging rights with their friends. In other words, it’s the fundamental part of your service or product that will allow you to scale with ease.

Afonso Firmo, Co-founder and Director at NetNada says the sooner you figure out what your ‘wow’ moment is, the better. Your wow moment is what will drive customer sales, attract employees and interest investors. So, know your ‘wow’.

Hire for broad talent

Your team’s talents should be as scalable as your business.

As Matt points out, most SaaS companies typically start with one or two people “doing 400 things at any one point in time… and that doesn’t scale.”

As you grow, you quickly realise that you need to bring in more people to manage the workload, add fresh ideas and specialise in growth areas of the company. However, it’s a difficult thing to plan and more startups won’t have the means to bring in a specialised team from the beginning.

“We’re series A going to series B, [but] we still act as a startup,” says Joseph. “You can’t hire somebody that does one specific thing [who doesn’t] have enough workload to work all month.” The solution at Forcite Helmet Systems is for everyone to pitch in and work across business functions. At some stage, they’ll be big enough to focus on specific job functions, but not yet.

When you hire, be transparent
about what you expect new recruits to do. The ‘all pitch in’ approach that works so well for startups doesn’t suit everyone.

Matt Alford, DevOps Engineer and Content Creator at Parallo

“Customers are really the key to our success,” says panel moderator Matt Allford from Parallo.

Strategically bring in partners

When specialist areas need more input, working with consultants and freelancers can fill the gaps until you’re in a position to hire direct. “Consulting and hiring somebody outside the company to do [a] specific job when it’s needed, that’s probably best use of your money,” says Joseph.

This is an especially good strategy when you’re moving into international markets. You can hire in-market consultants or even partner with a local company that can take care of specialist areas like HR and marketing. Or for Matt and the Parallo team, providing specialist cloud management services to help accelerate growth for more than 60 SaaS companies and their 250 million+ users globally. It’s a lot to get done, so you can never underestimate the power of tech support.

An added bonus of working this way is you get to work with experts who bring unique cultural experience and valuable insights.

“I think there’s something magical on the creativity side of some people might come in and have ideas or develop new areas of the business that you didn’t know you needed or had,” says Afonso.

“[A] good thing about new hires [is there’s] no sacred cows,” adds Justin. “It’s amazing to get new ideas and fresh ways of looking at things because you kind of get, you know, focused and you just see the same thing sort of day in, day out.”

Take your customers with you

“One of the challenges… when you’re starting to scale with customers or prospects is getting them on board with changing and challenging the status quo of what they’ve always done,” points out Matt.

To get around this, you need to bring your customers along on the journey with you, Justin advises. “Treat them like friends. We’ve got a customer community, so everyone gets added to our Slack community once they become a member. We talk to them all the time, asking them for not just feedback on the product, but if we can help with their businesses.

“We had a customer advisory board… for the last couple years right before we launched. They got shares in the business and they’ve been some of our biggest advocates, you know, so just stay in touch, become friends.”

Take your employees, too

To keep your employees as you scale, hire for a good cultural fit in the first place. “We hire for passion mostly because they say skill can be taught and passion can’t,” says Joseph. “So we try to get people on board by seeing the passion they have when we tell them about the product.”

Joseph also advises being transparent and honest. “The most important thing for us is getting them involved in the decision making. Because if you’ve got buy-in from an employee, they will do everything it takes to get it done. But if they’re being told what to do, then for them there’s no emotional investment.”

Some good advice from Afonso is to keep talking to family and friends about what they don’t like about their work. He listens to their complaints and asks himself, “what’s happening there and what’s missing?” and tries to ensure it’s not missing at NetNada. He also takes advantage of the small size of his team to really get to know each person, including asking about their family.

“We work a lot internationally with employees from all over the world and in learning the nuances in culture, asking about what’s happening in their country, about their holidays, et cetera, really goes a long way to make family happen in inside the business,” he adds. “Bringing that sense of belonging into the workplace is important.”

Experiment regularly

Continual innovation is one of the keys to growth, so leave room in your budget and your workday to play around with new ideas.

Use your team to brainstorm fresh concepts, research new markets, test product ideas and interrogate customer feedback. Formalise the process by implementing a product development process and strategy.

“I would say try everything because if somebody comes in and says, oh, I know the one thing that could improve your business, they have no idea what they’re saying, so just try everything and then one of them will work out,” says Joseph.

Growing your SaaS business? Head to parallo.com to see how they can help accelerate your growth.

Watch the entire 2023 Tech Playbook From Idea to Unicorn session here: