What Being Stuck Feels Like in SaaS

"The only way I see out of this is to rebuild from scratch. Then it will be easy to innovate and grow again."

Record scratch. Freeze frame.

"Yup, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation"

I've seen different versions of this a lot. Earlier in my career, I probably even said it myself.

Some SaaS companies are a rocket ship on their way up the hockey stick.

The vast majority are not.

For many, they had enough product-market fit at one point to build a really good or even great business through hard work, luck, and skill.

They scale up to $1 million, then $2 million, then $5 million, sometimes as high as $50 million or even more in revenue. Raising money is easy.

Life is frantic, but it's good!

Then, gradually, things stop working as well.

Maybe the market shifts, or distribution gets more challenging.

Maybe the product starts to buckle right after another deal-closing feature gets promised.

It feels like not that long ago you could leave a meeting with a key prospect or customer and the team would have a new feature shipped in a week - now the team is saying it might take months or that it's impossible.

There's lots of talk about tech debt and the team is frustrated. They suggest massive projects that could take a year or more.

What you may not know is that you should triple any time and cost estimate on big projects like that.

(Hint: you should almost never try to rebuild a revenue producing SaaS from scratch.)

It's less clear what to do. You need to innovate and find ways to leapfrog the competition.

The teams supporting, serving, and selling are losing trust in the product and tech team's ability to execute without causing new issues with every release.

Lots of cash is burning, and it's unclear what the ROI is.

Everyone at all levels is struggling to understand each other fully.

You or others on the team might be wondering, "where's the accountability?"

What used to be a lot of fun every day, despite being challenging, now feels like a grind.

People on the team are burning out.

You are burning out.

The first key person leaves or starts to look for another job. Maybe more are looking to the exits or checking out.

You wonder whether you should be looking for an exit.

I've been there. Multiple times now both as an executive and as a consultant.

It sucks. But it's not hopeless. You don't necessarily have to eject.

Prodyssey can help you navigate a way out, help everyone understand each other better, and make meaningful progress in shorter periods of time.