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If you're at a SaaS startup that tries to solve a churn or burn problem by moving upmarket, run. It means your leadership can't think of a way to make the busi

If you're at a SaaS startup that tries to solve a churn or burn problem by moving upmarket, run. It means your leadership can't think of a way to make the business work other than to get bigger checks from the same size customer base. "If only all our customers could pay us an extra zero!" Moving upmarket doesn't work that way. They are totally different companies with purchase requirements and habits that will generate tons of work orthogonal to your core product. Spend a few quarters on compliance accreditations so you can tick boxes, multi-month sales conversations where you aren't even sure if you're just there to pressure the real Belle of their ball, etc. If you can't do it small, you can't do it.

thegginthesky 5y ago
Agreed. I've been on companies that did the opposite from going small to big. They started big, very big, with Fortune 50 costumers. That meant they hired a small but very specialized sales team with the right connections very early on. Because the burn rate was very small (due to needing just a few engineers and employees and a small infrastructure) and the sales cycle took months, we could easily develop a strong product with the requested features, and then it turned out when we moved down to medium and small businesses most of the features were already in place all we needed to focus was on scaling the architecture. Plus, big costumers pay very good and are loyal as long as you don't cause them headaches. The only downside of this approach is if we hired the wrong sales people, the company would never take off.