What I’ve learned from building a +$20 million business — Part 1

SAAS Entrepreneur
Jul 30, 2017 · 3 min read

In the past three years I’ve grown a business (along with my team of course) from $0/year in revenue to +$20 million/year in revenue. And boy, I’ve learned a lot. I will share what I’ve learned in this article series.

Sales is king

When i was in business school, i never learned anything about sales. The closest thing i learned to sales, was making a marketing plan. And of course it didn’t matter if it wasn’t completely accurate. As it just had to fit the teacher’s theories.

In the real world though, I quickly learned that no matter how much time you spend on planning, making strategies — and all the other business stuff you learn at business school — these things aren’t going to bring in revenue. Sales bring in revenue.

And unless, you already has a well-performing company, you should spend little to no time on making strategies. In the beginning, you don’t have to think 3–5 years ahead. All your attention should be on how you can make bring in more sales today. Of course, once you get bigger — and do have a decent amount of revenue and a well-performing organisation, you can spend more time on strategy and thinking ahead. As your role is going to change, from a executing capacity to a managing capacity. And at that moment, you can create more value managing than executing, as you have an executing team that needs direction. In the first couple of years however — sales is king.

I would even argue that before you have your product ready, you should try to sell it. It will provide valuable feedback from your potential customers. It will tell you whether anybody wants to pay for your product. That information is much nicer to have before you’ve spend throusand or even millions on the product, than after you’ve spent all the money. The worst thing i could imagine is spending all or a significant part of your product development budget on a product that nobody wants. That would just be a waste of money. In order to avoid that, always try to sell your product before you build it.

Once, you have to sold your product to a few customers — and you know that there’s a demand for your product, then you start building your product. You might think: what about the early customers, who you’ve sold something that you don’t have?

Be honest with them. Tell them about your experiement — and give them something extra (a reduced price, a free period etc.) if they still want to remain a customer. You could even let them pre-order the product, so that you don’t lose any revenue from the experiment. You’ll be surprised at how positive they’ll be. If you are building something that solves a real problem, that hasn’t been solved by another product — you’re doing them a favor. You will experience that some people will even thank you for building the product.

I have done this a lot of times through my carreer to validate my ideas for new producs and product features. When you ask a potential customer or existing customer to pay for someting, they are usually a much more realistic, than they would be in a survey. And their behaviour in the situation, will resemble their behaviour in a situation, where you have a ready-made product. So i consider this one of this most cost-efficient ways of getting real useable customer-feedback on your product and product features.

Once, you have validated that your product is sellable, then you start building your product and fine-tuning it. Furthermore you need to find a sales channel that can bring you in these first sales. It would preferable if it’s a sales channel that could scale into a few millions in revenue at least. As it would let you be able to scale the sales, without having to worry all the time about finding a new sales channel. This will free up your mind — and allow you to build a great product in the process.

I hope you enjoyed this story. Follow me on Medium, for more lessons from my startup journey.

SAAS Entrepreneur

I’m SAAS entrepreneur in a +$20 million/year company. I write about my journey.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade