Slides from my talk at SaaStock 2019 in Dublin. Official Description from the Agenda: It’s not an easy road, but identifying and investing in growth levers enabled Personio get to eight digits in ARR in just over three years. But while doubling, tripling or quadrupling is much easier while the absolute numbers are small, it gets much harder to continue on that growth trajectory once you pass $10m in ARR. Hanno will illuminate the trials and tribulations (acquiring a company to add a new product line, entering new markets, tapping into new channels) of fast-paced growth. We’ll take an honest dive into mistakes made and lessons learned, and explore how, often, you have to repave the road to get to the destination.

1. Fast growth
continued
How to maintain high growth rates
past €10M ARR
SaaStock 2019

2. How fast do I need to grow to
obtain category leadership?

4. High growth rates are easier
when numbers are small!
€2M
€6M3x
€18M
€6M
3x

5. Establishing
fast growth
Maintaining
fast growth

6. The cloud-based one-stop platform for all HR-related
manners along the employee life cycle!

8. HR Transformation
Higher
Productivity
Improved
Performance
Business Strategy
Optimization
Digitization
Insight

9. Funding History

10. Headcount Growth

11. >200.000
employees managed
with Personio
~2.000 HR teams
spend more time on
value creating activities
Customer Growth

12. Growth Lever
New Channels Acquisitions
New Packaging
& Pricing
New Markets
New Products

13. New Channels
Outbound
Partner
Adding scalable channels +
expert hires
Content Marketing Hired S&M leadership
Always-on Inbound marketing Established S&M functions
Referrals and direct Founder-led sales

14. New Markets
DACH footprint
Established a strong customer base
Global usage
Users in >40 countries worldwide
Expansion 2019
Spain, UK&I, Benelux and Nordics

15. New Packaging
& Pricing

16. New Products

17. Acquisitions

18. Takeaways
● Don’t expect your company to scale just like your
excel model
● Look into additional growth levers early
● But only do as many as you and your
company can tolerate in terms
of complexity
● High growth rates are easier when numbers are small