Picture this: you have a soccer team with the greatest footballers in the world on it (Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe, the works). The only challenge is, there's a completely unmarked field with no clear goal line, so no one knows where they're kicking.
That's exactly what we found with three brilliant founders building a SaaS analytics platform.
When Good People Hit Growing Pains
These weren't struggling entrepreneurs. They were smart, driven, and building a retail analytics platform that enterprise clients genuinely needed. But the growth had created some real challenges.
The three leaders were each tackling what they thought was most important, but without a shared roadmap. The CEO/founder was buried in tech maintenance and keeping the lights on, but with no clear product direction. One founder was focused on marketing efforts that weren't connecting to sales. The third was working sales hard but hadn't clearly defined who they were actually selling to. Meetings got tense because everyone was working extremely hard in their own silo, but they perceived each other as not doing the right things.
Then came the wake-up call: their biggest client, responsible for half their monthly revenue, cancelled because of their own financial challenges.
That moment forced everyone to step back and ask: what are we really building here, and how do we get aligned?
What We Found When We Looked Under the Hood
When Switch came in as their Fractional COO for three days a week over 12 months, we started with the most critical issue: their financials were a complete mess.
The books were chaotic with unclear spending, bloated costs, and zero visibility into what was actually driving revenue. They had customer relationships that were draining more energy and resources than they delivered. Without clean financials, they couldn't make smart decisions about anything else.
We ran a full OFI (Opportunities for Improvement) analysis across the value chain and quickly identified the priority order: get the cash situation clear first, then strategy, then people, then execution improvements.
The Work That Made the Difference
We started with the most important OFI first: fixing their financial foundation. We cleaned up the books completely, created real visibility into where money was going, built out a pro-forma, and identified which customer relationships were actually profitable. This gave leadership the clarity they needed to make tough decisions.
Then we could tackle strategy. We facilitated planning sessions to define their three-year vision, one-year goals, and quarterly OKRs. For the first time, the leadership team had a shared target and understood their roles in hitting it.
From there, the other critical changes followed:
We brought sharp focus to their product direction. The CEO/founder had been stuck in maintenance mode instead of driving product vision. We ran an analysis on customer usage and feedback, nailed down their Ideal Customer Profile, and prioritized features that matched real market demand. Suddenly the tech team had clear direction instead of just keeping things running.
We aligned marketing and sales around the right customers. One founder had marketing efforts that looked good but weren't connecting to sales results. The other was working sales hard but selling to anyone who'd listen. We defined their ICP clearly, aligned messaging to what those specific customers needed, and gave sales real guardrails around who to pursue.
We streamlined operations based on financial reality. With clean books, we could see exactly which roles and relationships were delivering value. We made necessary changes and rebuilt lean, with every role tied to clear accountability and financial impact.
We implemented agile execution practices. Weekly sprint planning, standups, and retros using Notion gave the team rhythm and alignment. More importantly, it connected everyone's daily work back to the strategic priorities we'd just defined.
We instilled ongoing financial discipline. Real budgets, regular burn reviews, hiring decisions aligned with cash flow and revenue targets. This gave leadership confidence to make smart investments and secure $750K in grants and other non-dilutive capital.
We structured leadership decision-making. Weekly leadership meetings with shared agendas, clear KPIs, and defined decision rights. Each founder knew their swim lane and how their work contributed to the overall goals.
We made them investor-ready. Cleaned up old SAFE notes, clarified ownership, prepped the data room. The financial transparency we'd built made due diligence conversations much smoother.
We created real customer feedback loops. Regular advisory calls focused on analytics use cases, direct input sessions about reporting requirements. This informed both product direction and sales targeting.
Finally, we upgraded their data infrastructure. Once everything else was aligned and we knew exactly what the platform needed to deliver, we migrated to Databricks on Azure. This gave them the technical foundation to actually deliver on the focused value proposition we'd defined.
The Turning Point
When that anchor client left, it was definitely a gut punch. But within six months, they had not only won back that revenue - they'd doubled it.
The difference? With clean financials and real strategic direction as the foundation, they could finally make smart decisions about everything else. The CEO/founder could focus on product vision instead of just keeping things running. Marketing and sales were aligned around the right customers. And their analytics platform could deliver reliable results to the clients who actually mattered.
No more guessing, no more working at cross purposes. Just solid execution.
What Stuck
The company now runs on clear OKRs and agile systems, with solid financial discipline as the foundation. Their upgraded Databricks infrastructure handles enterprise-scale analytics reliably. Leadership makes decisions together with real data backing them up. And most importantly, everyone knows their role and how it contributes to the shared goals.
In Their Words
"Switch paired us up with an amazing COO, who worked alongside us, quickly assessed our capabilities, aligned priorities, and refocused our organization, driving key results that tripled our revenue in less than a year."
The Real Lesson
Sometimes the smartest people create complex challenges for themselves simply by growing fast. The solution isn't always working harder or being more creative. Sometimes it's getting everyone pointed in the same direction and giving them the tools to execute effectively.
That's exactly what happened here.
