We’ve now set our sights for $10M ARR. What next…
Where do we look for inspiration? A few companies have recently come across my radar that have helped to inspire me. Shopify Plus, Taxjar and Hotjar which are founder led SaaS companies that have achieved $10M ARR and share eclectic cultures similar to Justuno.
What’s to learn.
Shopify Plus:
In 2018 we found a common thread amongst our top tier customers in which they each had their own custom needs which we were accommodating. How were we accommodating? Robbie Hammett who was leading our Customer Success department at the time had been trained since day 1 back in 2012 to do whatever was needed to make the customer happy. This translated six years later to simply put Justuno getting taking advantage of. We were bending over backwards, providing the most incredible customer service but not charging enough for the service. We were giving it away. We stepped back and asked ourselves how do we make this work for both parties… We looked towards the industry and recognized that this was the solution that Shopify had rolled out with their own Shopify Plus. Shopify had finally found a way to allow a shared code base to be customizable and provide flexible solutions, we shared similarities with our platform and recognized value in highly customizable solutions. Part of our DNA has been to say yes to customers as Travis built our platform to allow for outside customization (part of our DNA is to count on others to help provide resources). So, should we stop giving away our customer service and generate a new plan? We wanted to validate our decision and sure enough we found Taxjar who just by chance had just announced a monster $60M raise.
Taxjar:
We were on the right track? Well, Taxjar had just shifted their entire model around going upstream and selling a “Plus” version of their platform and successfuly closed a $60M PE raise. So, we felt we were onto something.
Co-Founder Ryan Thompson was kind enough to share his further insights and while this was still a new direction for themselves, it was clear this was the call. So, we diverted major resources and in a rapid 3 month period we did what we always do… we doubled down and launched Justuno Plus.
Hotjar:
I had the pleasure of briefly meeting David Darmanin of Hotjar while on visit to San Francisco from his island nation of Malta. Yes, Malta (For those like many not familiar, let me save you from Googling). David helped remind me to get back to the basics of our business which is the pillars of success. You can learn more in his podcast here, but essentially it really gave me a kick in the ass to realign the focus within Justuno.
What happened with Justuno? With new department heads in place, new hires happening weekly, my own selfish lack of focus enjoying my first born son and needing a breather we simply lost focus on our own pillars of success. This only became glarlingly apparent for me personally after hearing David speak on his podcast interview. We had lost focus and was now time for me to do the part that is expected.
Today:
Three Pillars have allowed us to continue to grow; our Product, our Customer Service . and the fact that we are Self Funded. Each of these require their own blog post. But what I realized after a deep introspective is that a lot of my own time and department head time was being spent else where. As a company unless we are delivering on our core principles of success we are failing. After a deep dive, we were failing miserably in many areas. I was embarrassed, this was my own fault as a leader and must be fixed. In order to hit $10M ARR, as a company we have to work harder than ever and I’m committed to sharing our adventure. Enjoy.
$10M SaaS ARR with Justuno 