Our Four Year Celebration That Almost Wasn’t

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Love July — when America celebrates with an ungodly number of hot dogs and parades with overly enthusiastic baton twirlers. I’m pleased to say we’re still marching on, celebrating our 4th anniversary this month. However, early 2024 felt like our parade wasn’t just getting rained on but caught in a flash flood that threatened to drown half our band.

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We survived. But we learned a few lessons of what we could have done differently.

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After celebrating a million dollars in SaaS revenue last year, we dreamed of of bigger hairier milestones. Then, our largest customer was ordered by their holding company to “cut all costs.” We braced for impact. Thankfully, our customer went to bat for us and by some strange act of karma, we had delivered enough value over the years to secure the contract renewal.

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Like many enterprise startups, we relied heavily on one major customer in our early years. When they stumbled, so did we. This is a familiar story for startups our size.

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Fast forward to today, we’re less worried about losing customers. We cut costs, found new clients, and went back to building lean. We decided to operate as if our biggest customer didn’t exist. Though we had to tighten our belts a lot more we’d hoped this year, a new factor entered the picture — AI. But first, let’s rewind to how we weathered the storm.

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When we first started back in 2020, our overheads were minimal. If we didn’t land a deal, we simply moved on. Ironically, that’s how we secured deals. Our lack of desperation reassured clients we weren’t forcing a solution onto their problem.

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“Zero desperation” endeared us to trade show organizers. Because the only thing we really cared about was the well-being of their exhibitors. The small business owners paying a fortune to exhibit at trade shows, only to leave with a handful of business cards. Organizers realized that traditional trade shows were letting exhibitors down.

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“Trade shows are a completely irresponsible way of showing by putting so much money, energy, and materials into a display that is there for a few days,” Rolf Hay told Dezeen. “It’s not the way forward and I think everyone can see that.”

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With our platform, this equation changed. At last count, exhibitors at the shows we support could make three dollars for every dollar invested, thanks to e-commerce extending the duration and reach of the event.

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Now, along the way, our costs went up. We hired. We marketed. We engineered. Every deal became crucial. Even the lousy ones.

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In the Netflix movie Family Affair, Zac Efron plays a movie star who continues to sign on for lousy superhero sequels to support his extravagant lifestyle, despite knowing they’re damaging his career. “Do you know how much my life costs??” he exclaims. “Security, publicists, shrinks, drugs, whey protein!!!”

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The bloat put us on the defensive. The more we were worried about losing a sale, the fewer sales we made. So here’s the first thing we would have done differently…

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Trimmed the Fat Before We Got Fat

When you’re lean, you don’t have to rely on new deals or outside investment to cover costs.

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In 2023, the tech industry experienced significant layoffs, with over 240,000 jobs cut, representing a 50% increase from the previous year. Major companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and various startups implemented substantial workforce reductions. Some companies managed to continue doing business despite reducing staff by significant margins.

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If they didn’t grow in revenue, their stock price certainly did. This proved that many companies were bloated. Many small startups, in particular, had to downsize due to a slowdown in venture capital funding and falling valuations.

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Today, there are various ways to grow lean without adding a ton of people or bringing on a ton of investment.

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One of the strategies we used was fractional hiring.

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“Fractional hires are usually experts in their fields. They are senior- and executive-level professionals who bring strategic leadership to an organization on a part-time or temporary basis. It has become a new recruitment trend, especially effective for growing companies and in uncertain times,”

- says Kathleen Quinn Votaw of the recruitment company Talent Trust.

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For example, instead of spending time looking for a new product manager full-time, we hired a fraction of a very talented product manager.

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Then there’s AI. AI also allows you to go lean. Every staff member could be augmented with their own personal assistant.

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“Neither bots nor fractional hires alone will replace the variety of employment options we must have to thrive in today’s world of work,” adds Votaw.

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Don’t TEMU Deals

Temu hacked the global supply chain and sent items directly from Chinese factories. Temu’ing is a race to the bottom, and so are cheap deals.

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Don’t get me wrong, we still negotiate prices. But unlike last year, it isn’t because we want the deal at any cost.

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We only negotiate on price when

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* The trade show organizers understand the clear advantage of e-commerce but need time to pitch and get buy-in from their exhibitors.

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* The show is still in the growth phase and lacks capital. After four years in business, we recognize the importance of giving new businesses a kickstart, just like we got when we started.

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* The show is in a new vertical we’re trying to pursue, and we need to demonstrate the value.

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“Any sales guy can sell deals at a low price. If you want to lowball your price, you can just advertise it on your website,”

- says Chris Jennings from Chris Jennings Sales Consulting

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No to Custom Driven, Yes to Community Driven

In the B2B world, there are hundreds of micro-use cases. Strangely, some companies will say yes to anything and everything if the customer is willing to pay. We were one of those companies, reacting to bespoke Statements of Work (SOW) that, while profitable led to several challenges:

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* Exclusivity Expectations Customers who fund custom development expect some type of exclusivity, which is understandable, but bad for SaaS.

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* Limited Utility SOW driven customizations only benefit the paying customer, making these unusable by the wider community.

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* Distraction Customizations distract from our roadmap and divert resources that could serve the greater community.

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But there’s another way to approach this.

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SOW driven customizations are specific benefits for a single customer, often exclusively. In contrast, community driven features are designed to be applied to all customers of a product.

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The features can then be configured for various needs depending on the size and needs of the trade show. By shifting our focus to features that address common use cases and know variabilities in the market, we’re lock step with the actual demands of our customers.

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So before we build anything for anyone, we now ensure there is substantial demand across our community. This approach leads to a much more robust SaaS product.

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Now the last point…

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Less is Not More

It’s easier to grow an existing customer than to find new customers. It’s true. But it’s also not a great way to run a startup. Because if the customer exits, so does the growth potential.

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The rule of thumb is no customer should represent more than 20% of your business. We’re almost there, based on our current deal flow. This year, we signed various trade shows and market centers in Europe and North America. We now support eighteen events, up from just one when we first started.

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We have a new sales process that requires us to hit several milestones at every deal stage. This process allows us to move from basecamp to the mountaintop in a more deliberate way.

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How do we plan to reach the 20% target? It goes back to trimming the fat and signing more deals — not just any deal. Most importantly, we focus on speaking to people who are believers. The rest will join when the timing is right.

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In Summary

Here are four key ideas we devised to change our approach:

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* Don’t TEMU Deals

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* Trim the Fat Before We Get Fat

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* No to Custom Driven, Yes to Community driven

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* Less is Not More

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So onwards now, back to the parade. The trombones are playing at full blast. While Year Four has been our year of data, Year Five will be our year of AI. We eagerly anticipate marching on, right alongside those devil-may-care baton twirlers.

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By Vinit Patil, CEO, and Sanjay Garje, CTO, Co-founders of MeetRibbon, a trade show platform with a mission to make trade shows relevant again. http://meetribbon.com