How to bootstrap and scale your SaaS startup the RIGHT way
Base it on the nature of your business and take your time
The decision to bootstrap
The initial product idea for BizTalk360 was seeded at the Microsoft Global MVP Summit in Seattle in February 2010. The first version of the product was very well received by MVPs in 2011, which led to me to officially launch the startup the same year. Within a year, we onboarded 65 customers.
As we started to launch new products, we sort of banked on the success of our previous products and reinvested the revenues into the company to fund them. All our products have their own engineering, marketing, and sales teams working on improving the products and acquiring customers.
Today, our parent company kovai.co has 1500+ customers. We have not had to seek external funding since all our products are generating revenues.
Great products will sell
When we launched BizTalk360, we knew that we still had a long road ahead. Building the product was not much of a challenge since I have the required technical know-how. Selling the product was the tricky part as I didn’t have much experience doing that.
I started blogging very early in my career. My blog used to be very technical in nature as I specialized in a particular domain which is the BizTalk server and gradually I was able to build an audience of 15,000 followers.
When I developed BizTalk360, the blogs helped me get my first customer (a casino) all the way from Hong Kong, which was completely unknown to me until that point. While my blogging activities might’ve landed us the first customers, it was the value of the product itself that kept customers loyal.
So no matter how good your acquisition is, the retention will always come down to quality.
Scale at the right time
In my opinion, most startups fail due to premature scaling. That’s why knowingwhento scale your startup is one of the most crucial decisions you’ll face as a founder.
Most entrepreneurs just assume that once their product has been successfully launched, it’s time to scale up. But that’s not how it works. The product has to be periodically monitored and improved to make sure that it is not being overtaken by competitors. Your product needs to scale up along with your business.
Since our flagship product, BizTalk360, is a niche segment, we were able to be the market leaders right from the beginning and still continue to do so. The product matured completely in about fives years and the goal was all about maintaining the product, taking care of existing customers, and adding new ones. We then decided to diversify and move to new products, we simply replicated what had worked for us in similar situations.
Another thing you should do is structure your work model and business process. You should have systems in place to effectively monitor the stakeholders and processes in the organization.
But once you actually pinpoint problems through that monitoring, you need to react to them the right way. Many startup founders think that just hiring a person can magically solve all their problems, but let me be clear:it doesn’t work.
For example, hiring a Sales Manager when your product isn’t working properly is a rookie mistake. You need to be extremely patient and persistent in the process. Ensure that your product is a market-fit product before you consider scaling your startup.
Scaling your startup might seem tempting sometimes, but nothing is better than the slow, steady, and organic growth of your startup.
Check your finances — cash flow, sales, expense, and revenue — before deciding whether you want to scale up. It’s easy to overlook certain aspects when you are trying to manage multiple things at the same time. Even then, you should have an elaborate financial plan with forecasts for the future.
The bottom line is: take time to lay the groundwork before taking your startup to the next level.
Story bySaravana Kumar
Saravana is a Microsoft BizTalk server MVP since 2007, blogger, international speaker, and active community member in the BizTalk area. Befo(show all)Saravana is a Microsoft BizTalk server MVP since 2007, blogger, international speaker, and active community member in the BizTalk area. Before founding Document360, he founded two other enterprise software companies: Biztalk360 and Serverless360.
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