With SaaStr Europa getting rolling this week, we wanted to revisit a fantastic session from SaaStr Annual here in the States that we attended in February. “Growing and Scaling SaaS Businesses from $1M to $500M in ARR with Intercom” was a standout session featuring a conversation between Byron Deeter, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and Karen Peacock, Intercom COO and former SVP of Small Business for Intuit.

The fireside chat focused on three main topics: how your role as COO interplays with the CEO, what to avoid while in the $1M-$10M journey, and finding the perfect product market fit. Here are the topics broken down into further detail.

How COOs Interplay with CEOs

Because there are so many moving parts and factors to account for, it is tough to gauge when the best time in a company’s growth is to bring on a COO. However, one thing is for certain — the CEO should not bring on a COO until they are ready for that person to “both drive the bus and pull on the wheel,” says Peacock. The complexity of the business should necessitate two senior leaders driving the “bus” in the correct direction. If a COO is brought on at the wrong time, it can derail the direction the organization is going.

The average tenure of a COO is 8 months, and a majority of the time this is due to not having the right fit with the CEO. A common myth is that CEOs should hire COOs to do all of the things that they do not like doing. This ends up pulling the company off in different directions because the CEO and COO are polar opposites — like oil and water. Instead, a CEO should hire someone that has expertise in areas that they lack, but also compliments them in a variety of ways. Having this overlap allows both to see eye to eye and have the same vision for the company’s direction.

The COO and CEO are obviously extremely important to the success of the company. Having alignment between the two creates a dynamic that allows the company to grow quickly.

What to Avoid During the $1M-$10M Journey

Although it seems counterintuitive, Peacock stressed this throughout the whole session — the more you focus on revenue, the worse off you will be. Rather, what you should focus on first is value and active engagement.

In order to grow your business, you need to deeply understand the value that you provide to your customers. Once you do, make it crystal clear on what that value is and make sure it’s compelling to your customers by aligning to their goals and understanding their problems. Clearly defining use cases for various situations will help draw visitors to your website that turn into quality leads, which eventually convert to paying customers.

On the engagement side, make sure that people are actively using the product. If you’re in a marketplace, such as the Salesforce AppExchange, both sides of the marketplace should be utilizing your product or service.

Focus on increasing value and active engagement and an increase in revenue will naturally come. If you focus on only revenue, the company ends up in what Peacock described as a “hamster wheel,” meaning you’re stuck in one place trying to squeeze a small amount more out of a single situation rather than focusing on the long-term growth driver — value.

Finding Product Market Fit

Peacock shared how her mentor at Intuit, Scott Cook, broke down how to find the perfect market vortex in just two simple steps: fall in love with the problem, not the solution; and watch what people do, not what they say.

Focusing on the problem rather than the solution relates back to focusing on value and active engagement rather than revenue — the more attention you put towards the long-term, the more successful you’ll be down the road. When you focus solely on revenue, you can only see the solution to short-term, specific problems. These problems change often, and you’ll be so busy working on the solution to that specific problem that your product or service becomes much less valuable or even irrelevant quickly. When focusing on the problem, you are always aware of what the consumer actually needs and can pivot.

When gathering feedback on your product, you must watch how people behave and react to it rather than their verbal feedback. Peacock suggests to figure out what the “pie” in your product or service is — meaning look for what makes customers’ eyes light up when they see it, the main reason they bought the product in the first place. Once you identify your pie, you can evaluate what makes that part of the product or service so appealing and develop out from there.

Throughout the process of finding product market fit, it is essential to interact with customers in real-time. Having the ability to connect with customers instantly can have a massive impact on the trajectory of customer adoption. Immediately answering any questions during consideration will drastically improve conversion rates.


Scaling a SaaS Businesses from $1M to $500M in ARR is no easy task. Hiring the right COO at the right time, avoiding common mistakes throughout the journey, and finding the right product market fit all contribute, but there is much more.

Attending SaaStr Europa? If you feel inspired to talk about your product or next features after attending all of the great sessions, feel free to drop us a line!