1. Identify a painful problem for a group of people
2. Create a product they love
3. Sell that product to more people like them
4. Grow
At all the B2B SaaS companies I've worked at, it looks like this: 1. Identify a painful problem for a group of people
2. Create a product that slightly annoys them
3. Try to sell that product to more people
4. Get rejected
5. Miss sales projections
6. Chase new customer segments
7. It doesn't work because you don't solve their problems either
8. Neglect your core customers until they threaten to churn
9. Fire some people
10. Hire some experienced directors / VPs who bring a little bit of sanity
11. Try to become profitable so you don't have to rely on VC money when your runway ends
12. Continue to flounder because your product doesn't solve your customer's problems
What has your experience been? Is it like this everywhere? Or is the idea that you can grow your company by making your customers happy just some fantasy that sells a lot of business books?
I love working in tech but I'm tired of unnecessary fire drills, lack of strategy, angry customers and burnt out coworkers.
For context: -10 years at multiple B2B SaaS companies (Pre-A through post C) in sales-adjacent, BizOps, and product roles (some IC and some management)
Companies like this have no ideas of their own and are just chasing where they think the money is. Marketing is used as a substitute for design and engineering. They fail to realize that customers rarely have new ideas, customers only want what they have seen elsewhere. So the company always chasing the next idea instead of having the next idea.
The final state if horribleness is when company starts talking culture and making it more important than competency. This is where they have drunk the marketing Kool aid so completely they believe the lies they're shoveling out the door. Since they've failed at capturing enough market share with their failures at innovation they begin to destroy themselves by ousting those passionate noisy people who've remained through this non-sense pointing out the failures because "bad/toxic culture" must be the problem. They don't realize that their top people didn't shift to being complainers overnight it's not those people that changed it's rudderless management that has be put in place.
My advice is treat these companies the way they treat their customers. Extract what pay and resume enhancements you can and move on.