5 Common Challenges in Sub-Scale SaaS Companies

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June 12, 2021

by an investor from University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School in Washington, DC, USA

**I posted this on Twitter and thought I'd share here as well since lots of folks interested in SaaS**

I've founded / been an exec / invested / advised in 25+ SaaS companies.


Here are 5 common challenges I see in sub-scale SaaS companies & advise through the trough.



1) Moving from 1 sales rep to a repeatable sales team. Often, sub-scale SaaS rely on 1 rep who has made the company. Hard to make that transition & start to build a team and processes.



2) Moving from 1 market to adding an adjacent market. Usually there is a niche market that has made the company. But there's a second market where they have###-###-#### customers. And figuring out the GTM / positioning to get there.

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3) Figuring out enterprise compliance. At some point as you grow, you start to get pushed on variety of security & compliance & legal requests - ISO, SOC-2, etc. Can be painful for product founders to lose two quarters of no features but security progress.



4) Investing in Finance & Metrics - Sub-scale SaaS companies are often just trying to stay alive and just doing cash-based financials & monitor cash. To get to next level, need to move to GAAP financials & move to basic SaaS metrics & understand levers of business.



5) Creating a battle-rhythm. It can be overwhelming at times - do I invest in security or a new feature? A new sales rep or HR person? David Sachs "The Cadence" is a great start but key is figuring out a system / rhythm of prioritization and cadence



Bonus - I love the journey in SaaS from sub-scale ($500k-2M ARR) to "slight-scale" $5-10M ARR (starting to build a foundation). I'm always looking to invest / advise on that journey. Reach out & follow along on my "monthly musings" newsletter - http://bit.ly/etamusings

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Reply by a searcher
from London Business School in London, UK
Agreed, lots resonates here. My experience with 1) has been that you also have to move the mentality which has become a stale 'I'll keep trying to get a bit more out of the customers I've long known' to developing fresh business. And on 2) a favourite play is to take the same underlying product and twist the positioning - a quick thank you to those in financial services who pay twice as much for half the core product we do once repackaged!
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Reply by a searcher
from Durham University in London, UK
Customer concentration can also be an issue. Many small SaaS companies I've seen have ~10 customers, of which the largest makes up 40% of revenue. Often the largest customer's revenue isn't fully contractualised; maybe only 30% is a recurring license plus they pay for IT development services by the day / hour (at their discretion) - this way they can control the direction of your product
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