Flow – How to Turnaround a Struggling SaaS Company

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Daniel Scrivner is the CEO of Flow, a task and project management product that's used by over 300,000 teams.

In early 2019, Daniel was hired to help lead the turnaround at Flow. The company was about 10 years old and in trouble. It was losing customers and revenue at a worrying rate.

The team had been spending about $100,000 a month on paid acquisition advertising but it wasn't moving the needle. In fact, revenue was still declining by about 5% month over month.

When Daniel joined, continuing to spend any money on acquisition wasn't an option. So with a core team of 6 people, he had to figure out how to lead a turnaround – and do it fast.

It was a huge challenge. But Daniel had to deal with one more – this was his first job as a CEO.

In this interview, we talk about why an unlikely candidate like Daniel was hired as CEO and how he and his team went about diagnosing and fixing some major problems.

We dig into why and how he rehauled the Flow product by improving the design, making it more modern and lightweight, and reducing friction for end-users.

And we explore how the team went about fixing their marketing and sales funnel so they were able to improve how they acquired, activated, and retained customers.

Today, Flow is growing again. And Daniel's role has evolved from a turnaround to growth CEO.

Whether you're working on a SaaS business that's not growing fast enough or one where revenue is in decline, there are a lot of great lessons in this interview.

We often look for silver bullets to solve seemingly insurmountable problems. But this story is a reminder about the importance of nailing the fundamentals, constantly improving small things, and eventually seeing them compound into meaningful results for your business.

I hope you enjoy it.

This episode is part of our PLG & Growth series.

Book Recommendations

Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great

by Jim Collins

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