Backbone | Launching a SaaS That Generates +$300K 🤑

Backbone is a B2B platform that creates and manages various types of visual content such as pictures, videos, drone footage, and floor plans for real estate companies. The aim is to help these companies market their properties faster. Clients can place an order on the platform and receive their visuals within 24 hours. As the Head of Product, I was hired to develop a strategy that would help the company raise its Series A funding by increasing revenues and streamlining its manual processes to cut costs.

Problem: Clients were looking for more than just the ability to order visuals. They wanted a platform where they could collaborate, edit, and manage their visuals in a single place. Meanwhile, the business needed to increase its revenues and cut its costs, due to its operation's heavy manual processes.

Solution: To increase revenues, we decided to offer clients the additional features they were looking for under a premium service, which they could purchase for a monthly or yearly fee. This would transform Backbone from a transactional platform into a SaaS business. To cut costs, we automated the most costly and time-consuming tasks for both clients and our sales and operations teams.

Turning at least 200 clients into paying subscribers: We measured this by tracking the number of clients who decided to purchase a plan after a free trial ended.

Automate 60% of manual processes: We measured this by tracking the number of orders we could fully automate and deliver to clients within 24 hours.

Strategy: After setting the goals, I created the strategy to achieve them. This included developing the product and business strategies, determining pricing, go-to-market plans, budgeting, and hiring the right resources to execute the strategies.

Leadership: I led two teams, each responsible for one of the goals. Meanwhile, I coordinated with the founders and other stakeholders to keep the process moving forward.

From 0 to MVP: I supervised and mentored the teams through all the stages of customer discovery, defining scope and requirements, selecting the right technologies and partners, and developing the product to create a minimum viable product (MVP).

Streamline business processes: I analyzed all our business processes and identified the most time-consuming and costly activities for both clients and our sales and operations teams. We automated most of the manual steps using AI and created new efficient systems for both teams.

SaaS go-to-market and adoption: As soon as we had a testable MVP, we released our new SaaS offering in beta. This allowed us to test early and pivot when necessary, as well as getting clients hooked on the new features. By the time we publicly launched, clients were willing to pay for what they already appreciated.

We had over 400 paying clients (46% of our total customer base)

We generated an extra $300K in revenues

We automated 60% of labor-intensive tasks for the ops and sales team. This cut the company's costs by about $200K