I recently worked with a founder who hadn’t slept in weeks. He’d invested €100k into a consultant-led GTM motion, hoping for growth. But twelve months in,
Momentum just wouldn’t catch. Traction stayed flat.
By the time his company (let’s call it “ACME 18”) reached out to Pivotal, the burn had already reduced their leeway to about 9 months.
Out of the 33 pivot cases I’ve accompanied in the last 18 months, this is one of six painful mistakes I’ve seen repeatedly:
Trying to scale like a Software as a Service (SaaS) company when your business was never built to.
In the case of ACME 18, an energy-tech venture, the founder believed the answer to their growth problem was investing heavily in traditional SME SaaS sales.
We ran a joint analysis with Pipo, and uncovered the harsh truth: their model wasn’t scalable.
That realization often lands hard. For many founders, it feels like losing their licence to operate.
But here’s the thing. “Not scalable” doesn’t mean “no business”. It just means you need to adapt.
For ACME18, it meant moving away from a SaaS-inspired strategy and pivoting to a service-first model that actually fit their market, margins, and delivery ops.
The shift wasn’t easy. Investors were skeptical.
But it worked. The company began charging heavily for its services and achieved break-even in six months.
Now, ACME 18 is on course to empower independent energy consultants using their core tech. Smaller footprint. Bigger margins.
What to take from this case:
- Not every venture is meant to scale like SaaS, and that’s okay.
- The sooner you stop forcing it, the more time, cash & energy you save.
- Adapting to the reality of your business model can lead to break-even within 6 months.
This was mistake #1. I’ll break down five more over the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
If you’re trying to scale and nothing’s catching, don’t wait to find out the hard way. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.