𝗤𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗮 𝗗𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗘𝘅𝗶𝘁

Startup Lessons Decoded: Real Stories and Insights

This series of four posts looks at startup journeys and key learnings from working with successful founders. These posts provide practical insights to save time and costs.

100% Quality to Reach a Dream Exit

I joined a B2B e-commerce company that facilitated tens of thousands of customer payments daily.

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

Disgruntled clients called the founders at any hour to complain, causing them to shift from growing the business to spending hours placating clients.

The founders also worried that poor execution would derail their exit plans.

"Ideas are easy.

Implementation is hard."

– Guy Kawasaki

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.

The development team that could automate the process prioritized new clients.

However, we discussed how client satisfaction leads to retention and the risks of losing clients, and compromised to dedicate some of their time to automation.

We then added a new team to review the work with fresh eyes and offered the original team a bonus for 100% quality work to encourage peer review.

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

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 they could focus on expanding the business.

The company continued to double in revenues and size annually. They had a wonderful acquisition by a Fortune 500 company.

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

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

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