How to go from $0 to $5m in SaaS revenue within a span of 3 months without any VC funding

SaaS solutions aren't going away anytime soon. This is mainly due to their ease of use and affordability, especially for the SMBs and start ups. 2020 has seen a huge increase in the industry with customers increasingly adopting a subscription-based pricing model to meet the demands of their growing IT needs. This may be due to the global pandemic with companies shifting their focus to remote working and having SaaS solutions that are easy to adopt and roll out. However, this doesn't mean every new SaaS startup will succeed, in fact 90% new startups fail, 75% of venture backed startups fail, under 50% of businesses make it to their 5th year and only 33% make it to the 10 year mark. Even though it's not the most positive stats, our latest podcast is going to focus on the 10% of startups that do succeed.

In this episode our host Anika Zubair chats with George C. Huang, Director of Customer Experience and Success at Remo , a tech startup behind Remo Conference, an interactive videoconferencing platform for creating interactive online experiences that rival live, in-person events.Their topic - How to go from $0 to $5M in SaaS revenue within a span of 3 months without any VC funding.

A large part of Remos’ success is directly related to customer success and their customer experience. They have scaled and grown their business but specifically their CS organisation over the last 3 months. We discuss how focusing on CS from the beginning can lead to astronomical growth.

How does a trained plastic surgeon become a Director of Customer Experience & Success and lead a company to a $5M SaaS revenue growth in 3 months? Early in his business career, George was rightfully accused of being an entrepreneur, masquerading as a plastic surgeon. After retiring from the medical world, George worked with entrepreneurs around the world, providing strategic guidance, marketing, and conversion copywriting services.

His shift into CS came via the correlation of working with patients who required a lot of care and had a higher level of expectation. His job required him to listen to his patients, validate their concerns and help them navigate the challenges of plastic surgery. There are a lot of similarities with this methodology for CS. George learnt how to really listen to people - validating their concerns and goals and asking the right questions. You need to be their trusted advisor.

One of his top “pet peeves” is lousy customer service. That’s why he’s having the time of his life setting a high bar for the Customer Success team at Remo.

When it comes to startups, there's an emphasis on pushing marketing to get new customers. But George believes that the real value is in the customers you already have. Once people start buying your product, you need to invest in the time to onboard, adopt, listen to them and get them to understand the value of your product.

George believes that it’s really important to focus on CS from the start. Remo is a customer centric company which means it’s critual for them to learn from their customers, to understand why they're using the platform and what they are trying to accomplish while using it. They have developed a reputation amongst their customers as being a company that genuinely cares and wants to know how their customers are doing. They actively reach out to the community to give them an opportunity to share their thoughts through Remo Success Labs - a dedicated space to take Q&A, demonstrate new features and run experiments with their customers.

With fast growth also comes larger challenges and churn quickly became an issue in conjunction with their skyrocketing growth. This was difficult to combat as there were so many moving parts within the company but George handled this problem head on by implementing Tutorial Tuesdays and Success Labs - this enabled larger numbers of customers to join and explain their frustrations, complaints and how the company could address them, it enabled them to really understand how the customers are responding to the platform and how to improve it.

For more on George and Remo’s story, listen to the full Podcast today.