Are you looking to grow from Series A to Series C, like Lob? Or to take over the market and IPO like Okta? To achieve revenue growth, you’ll need adaptability from your GTM systems and operations. In this cozy chat, Lob and Okta experts share systems-based lessons and even help answer the age-old question–to buy or not to buy?
“Hire someone who can do more than just your basic needs. You can grow further than just hiring for what you need right now.” - Prakash Raina
Having a central technology system is critical and helps to ensure you have the right governance from the start. That’s why it’s important to hire for the future, not just for your needs today. You may be able to roll up the sysadmin role under RevOps for now, but a full time sysadmin can help you think bigger and build out the right tech stack for the future.
“Systems can become a spider web in many companies. It’s a mess and hard to maintain when you become a public company.” - Prakash Raina
Series A companies often make do with manual or internal tools as a way to move quickly without having to evaluate new vendors. But internally built systems can be a hindrance to adaptability, not to mention require even more internal resources for maintenance over time.
Disconnected systems and manual workarounds also cause trouble for compliance and auditing requirements after IPO. Try adding in a middleware tool that can connect all of your systems, manual processes, and data to create an ecosystem that’s connected and scalable.
Should RevOps run your deal desk or should it fall under the Finance team? By Series C, it was clear to Lob that the deal desk should belong to finance because of their focus on usage based pricing, something closely tied to order management.
Okta, on the other hand, put the deal desk under revenue and GTM since they help reps close bigger deals by supporting negotiations and contract terms. This frees up the finance team to focus on the bigger picture, like expansion, rather than daily operations.
“Today, I can’t reasonably build anything that’s better than vendors that are already out there.” - Amanda Garza
Unless there’s something very unique or custom about how you operate, it usually makes more sense to buy software than build it. Vendors have entire GTM and engineering teams dedicated to their tool and are thinking about what their customers will need 2 years from now. If there’s already a good solution on the market, buying is a great option.
Smaller companies have the flexibility to adapt their systems to changes in the market, compliance requirements, and new processes. Maintaining a system that is scalable, flexible, and with the right team in place, will help your team achieve rapid revenue growth.
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