Hey - Marc here.

Happy Saturday morning Motivated B2B SaaS Founders.

Here's at least one tip to keep in mind as you grow your B2B SaaS company

Today's issue takes about 5 minutes to read.

In today’s issue, I share some key takeaways from an interview between Alex Theuma, the host of the SaaS Revolution Show, and Ross Andrew Paquette, Chairman and CEO at Maropost, where they talk about how Ross bootstrapped his B2C CRM to $100MM and a $1.7B valuation.

Note: Ross is a bootstrapped Founder and a friend of mine who I’ve had the opportunity to work with since 2017. He founded Maropost in 2011, a customer-centric ESP (Email Service Provider), and it quickly became one of the fastest-growing companies in North America. Recently, they have acquired a number of companies and continue to grow and expand throughout North America and internationally as well.

Now enter the show!:

How Maropost Started

Ross met his now cofounder (CTO), Jagdeep Singh on oDesk (now Upwork). This is a good reminder that when looking for your initial team you want to find a partner that has a complementary skill set to yours. Ross's expertise was in sales - he was not a coder. Jagdeep and Ross became eachother's "who" to answer the initial questions of "Who can help me sell this product?" and "Who can help me build this product?"

Challenges

In the beginning Ross thought he would continue to sell every deal from start to finish. No plan existed for Ross to let go of being the sole source of sales, which led to scalability challenges as Ross was working 15-18 hour days to continue growing the business.
There were no systems, SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) or infrastructure to start. Now Ross is looking at systems like EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) and SOPs but mentions it is much harder to add these later on than if you start implementing them from the beginning. Ross says "You don't know what you don't know."
As the company grew from 50 people to 100 people and beyond - the systems and infrastructure that were not put in place years ago made it harder to accommodate this growth, resulting in a lot of manual effort and continuing to work long hours.

Advice to Other Founders

Just keep focusing on the product (even if you are having a bad month or quarter). The alternative approach is when a company has a bad year in terms of revenue they find a way to kick someone out of the company and never really solve the root cause of their problems that prevent them from hitting their numbers.
Focus on making those right hires. Pay the premium for experience versus trying to get someone that is okay at a low price and you’ll see a huge change in the approach. Founders struggle with the cost/benefit analysis here thinking they can cheap out on quality work.. Making the investment in the people with the right capabilities, even if it costs more, allows you to avoid repeating the same cycle of interviewing and rehiring for key roles (avoid taking one step forward and 2 steps back)
This is a big one and the one that stood out to me the most: Be extremely cost conscious of anything that is billed in a recurring manner. In particular, if the commitment is for a long term contract (2-3+ years). Think about all the small costs in your business that add up. I am talking about the software subscriptions to tools that maybe cost a few hundred to a few thousand a year each. It's not so much the big and expected expenses that will hold you back (like server costs or employees) but instead the things you overlook like the recurring Sales Navigator subscriptions, marketing software, etc. These can add value when used correctly, but if left unused, they become a sunk cost.
The “grow at all costs mentality” doesn’t always get you the result you want. Raising 1 billion in funding to grow your company to 100M doesn’t make a lot of sense. So make sure the funding makes sense at the end of the day.

Side Note: , Alex, mentioned that Hotjar (another bootstrapped company) grew their business to $10M in revenue in 2 years through the use of operating systems and SOPs. Worth looking into.

TL:DR

Ross was able to successfully build his company without many systems in the beginning, but not every company or Founder can accomplish the same. If he recommends having systems or SOPs in place right from the start to make things easier, then what are you waiting for?

P.S. Here is a link to the full interview if you are are interested in listening to the full episode https://www.saastock.com/bootstrapping-towards-100mm-and-a-1-7b-valuation/

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See you again next week.

Whenever you're ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

1. B2B SaaS Sales SOPs Templates here. (Do it Yourself)

2. 1:1 SOP’s Call (Consultation Call for Guidance)

3. Create your own custom SOP's with our help here. (Done with you Service)

4. Work 1:1 with me to create customized Sales SOP's to remove yourself from the sales process and virtually guarantee that your investment in your next salesperson ensures they will hit their number? (Done for your Service). Click here to see if you qualify.