𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗮 𝗗𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗘𝘅𝗶𝘁

Startup Lessons Decoded: Real Stories and Insights

The startup journey is a bumpy one.

After guiding multiple mergers and acquisitions, I’ve gained some practical insights that lead to saved time and costs—and growing a business.

This series of four posts looks at startup journeys and key learnings from working with successful founders.

They Reached 100% Quality, then a Dream Exit

Years ago I joined a B2B e-commerce company that facilitated tens of thousands of customer payments every day.

Occasionally, the payment processing team made mistakes. The errors were rare, but each one caused clients (including Fortune 500 companies) to miss tens of thousands of transactions, resulting in missing hundreds of thousands of payments and sometimes losing their customers.

Disgruntled clients would call the founders day or night to complain. This shifted their focus from growing the business to spending hours placating clients. The founders also worried this poor execution would derail their exit plans.

"Ideas are easy.

Implementation is hard."

– Guy Kawasaki

The Problem and the Fix

The processing team struggled with a largely manual and inconsistent process for each client, causing them to rush every day to complete all the tasks. Rushing led to more errors and less time to check the work.

The development team that could automate the process, but they prioritized new clients over current ones. When I joined the team, we discussed how client satisfaction leads to retention and mitigates the risks of losing clients. The decision was made to dedicate some of their time to automation.

Next, we created a new team that would review the work with fresh eyes. As an added incentive, and to encourage peer review, we offered the original team a bonus for 100% quality work.

Finally, we talked often about the end customers, folks like us who were trying to pay their bills. This approach turned faceless customers into real people we were servicing.

Within six months, we achieved nearly 100% efficiency. 

Every client renewed their contract, and some upgraded.

The founders noticed the absence of complaints and liked that their focus could shift back to expanding the business.

Revenue doubled annually, and the startup enjoyed a wonderful acquisition by a Fortune 500 company.

In just six months, we transformed our recurring error rate into near-perfect execution, retained major clients, and freed the founders to focus on growth.

______________________________

This post was written by me with AI editing. Photo by Анна Рыжкова.

Our latest newsletter includes "Want Faster Growth? Why You Should Uproot Bad Clients" and "How to Automate and Improve Valuable Team Input" by Ansel Duff.

Each week, we deliver a learned insight and an expert founder's experience with a key takeaway. You can subscribe here.

𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲: 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗣𝗲𝗮𝗸 is a 500-page handbook with over 130 separate articles that ascend into topics like leadership, growth, sales, marketing, operations, finance, and teams. In five minutes, learn the best methods and practical solutions to reach your dreams.