A tech executive describes scaling ARR 60-70% yearly while Australian investors demanded profitability in 2023. The mistake: founders don't repeat their strategy enough. Jeff Weiner's rule: simplify the message and say it 10-20 times so staff, board, and investors actually hear it.
There are so many different influences as you go through this journey of growth, which include managing the expectations of investors and stakeholders. So, how do you, you know, what advice do you have for other CROs, other CEOs, and founders who are dealing with these different pressures? You know, how did you continue to keep moving forward quarter in, quarter out and making progress?
Yeah, look, so there's a couple of points there. One is that sort of getting the right balance between shareholders, investors, and your own quest as a group of executives. And yeah, for— and Daba found that challenging towards the end because we were just growing rapidly, revenue growth. When I say growing rapidly, ARR growth, 60% to 70% year on year. Even when we matured, it was still growing at 10% to 12% per quarter. And so whereas our Australian investors, shareholders, most of them were saying by 2023, yeah, growth is good, but where's your path to profitability? And we had a level of stubbornness to say, we'll get there. We will, you know, let's— can't really use the D word, but we'll anyway— let's dominate the market and then profits will come after that. And so a lot, a lot of tech companies at the start of 2023 really missed that strong direction from shareholders about, no, no, okay, what our preference is, you know, dial back revenue growth at all cost and show us that path to profitability. Get your sort of EBITDA margins up. But that was a tough balancing act. But for me, look, it came back to the basics of that Jeff Weiner quote. You've got to reiterate the message 10 to 20 times before not only your staff really start to listen, but your board, your major shareholders, current investors, future investors, You've got to simplify the message, not make it simple, but simplify it, and then just reiterate it until you're sick of telling it, because by then that community are only starting to understand it.
