Ready or Not, Here Comes Growth: Growth for PE-Backed SaaS Companies

⁣As growth consultants in the B2B software space, we’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes to scale a high-growth company. To start, we realize how difficult and all-consuming it can be. Content on best practices and how-to’s is always a nice-to-have, but if you are responsible for growth at a B2B software company you don’t have time to find and read long white papers.
That’s why we are going to start sharing what we’ve learned about driving fast, efficient growth through a series of short, easily digestible reads. Although our company name calls out marketing specifically, our content will cover everything that has an effect on successful growth.
Ready or Not, Here Comes Growth
For most of the PE-backed software companies we work with, something went incredibly right – strong product, ripe market, good timing, unmet need. To grow successfully post-investment will require a fundamentally different approach (in other words, what got the company from A to B is not the same path that will get them from B to C). Almost all the executives and leadership teams we work with recognize this and, as a result, are highly focused on building a go-forward growth strategy, in addition to the long list of other post-transaction to-do’s like developing a budget, preparing for the first board briefing, hiring for key positions, etc. but often forget to ask a key question – is the organization ready for transformational growth? And we’re not referring to things like strategy, processes, talent, technology, etc here. This needs to be about the organization’s culture and mindset.
TL;DR
The post-close excitement and motivation is really only tangible for the few people who were involved in the months of diligence and negotiations leading up to a transaction or deal. For everyone else in the company, it’s all brand new and largely unfamiliar. One of the most important jobs of a leader is to convey this excitement and optimism about the company’s future to the rest of the organization by sharing a growth vision which includes:
Clear articulation of what future success looks like
Well-defined growth goals and targets
Identification of key growth levers
Our next Mosaic Minute will elaborate on how to develop a compelling growth vision and gain buy-in at all levels of the organization.