Turning a start up into a scale up brings another set of challenges. I've been through few and I'm happy I can present a story of Pipedrive, which has successfully made this important step. Originally presented at SaaS Movement conference 2019 in Brno, Czech Republic.

1. How to build and scale an
innovative SaaS product
With an emphasis on the scaling part
Tomáš Řehoř・Head of Pipedrive Prague

2. How to build
and scale an
innovative
SaaS product
How to set up
your teams for
success

3. How do you set up a single team for success?

4. The essence of a successful team
Common goal
Everyone knows what
are they doing and
why
Enthusiasm
The common goal is
so challenging, the
team together is
excited to get there
Fast decisions
All decision makers
are present, decisions
come quickly and
don’t delay anyone
All skills in
place
You have everyone
you need together
and if you don’t you
hire them.

5. So you just take the essence and multiply
it by number of teams, right?

6. Here’s a Pipedrive story to share ...

7. Whoami?
@viliceq
Tomáš Řehoř · Head of Pipedrive Prague
linkedin.com/in/rehor

8. The school of McDonald’s and life
1999
2001
2007
2011
2017
2017
2018

9. TRIBES & MISSIONS
Building dynamic & efficient tech teams
in Pipedrive
MARTTI KULDMA・HEAD OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
This slide is just for sample. Please remove upon usage.
85k paying companies
500+ employees
8 offices
Pipedrive

10. Pipedrive’s employee count timeline
The beginning
5 founders
Current moment
500+ people in total
250+ people in R&D
2010 20192011 2012 2013 2014 2016 2017 2018
Scaling
issues
First negative
employee
growth
2015

11. 17 teams in Pipedrive in 2018
Silos
Common
goals
Resulting into
delivering org
structure, not a high
quality product
Dependency
hell
Fast
decisions
Each decision
depends on too
many stakeholders
and it takes forever
to make them
Frustration
Enthusiasm
From long delivery
times, lack of vision,
increased complexity
of work
All skills in
place
Specialized
teams
Narrow focus of
individual teams
makes it hard to
deliver complex
solutions

12. Which symptoms signal scaling issues?
Product KPIs stagnating
Growth of critical KPIs is slowing down
unexpectedly
Quality issues
More major bugs reported by customers,
more services downtimes
Increased tension and stress
Less smiles, more fights, people accusing
each other instead of finding solutions
together, increasing number of meetings
Slow delivery
Delivery of new features gets slower and original
estimates are continuously exceeded 2 times or more
Ambiguous business priorities
Business priorities keep changing, unfinished
projects get abandoned
People leaving
Retention rate decreasing, feedback of
people leaving pointing on problems above

13. Common root causes for scaling issues
Outgrown architecture
Architecture itself does not support more
developers / teams - typically a monolith
Long deployment process
Deployment of a new feature takes longer
than developing it
Unclear responsibilities
Areas with multiple or no owners with
contradicting or no decisions
Complex codebase
Too many developers on the same code, too
many conflicts, huge overhead deploying
Processes not that agile
Teams spend more time planning than
delivering
Dependency hell
Delivering anything major is impossible due
to too many teams involved

14. Tribes & Missions to the rescue
Pipedrive analyzed root-causes and found
inspiration from industry leaders
Get inspired, but tailor your own solution

15. Built around principles
Big rocks
Common goal.
Minimum steering
after setting it
Less managers
More leaders
Fast decisions. Put the
right team together
and let them do the
job.
Culture of
choice
Enthusiasm. Let
people choose
problems to work on
and when they do,
give them enough
freedom to solve
them
Superteams
All skills in place.
Form the right team
for the problem,
making them a super
team for the moment.

16. A tribe concept
DEVELOPERS
ENGINEERING
MANAGER
PRODUCT
MANAGERS
DESIGNERS

17. Tribe principles
Clear purpose and business
ownership
Full technical ownership
Collocated to one office

18. Common goal
Shared
company goals

19. Big rocks
Mountains everywhere.

20. Big rocks -> Annual Strategy
Annual Strategy is to decide which mountains to
climb.

21. Common goals
Assign mountains to tribes. This becomes their
primary goal.

22. A flat company
Each tribe
contributes to
company goals,
but otherwise
operates
independently.

23. Tribe’s internal organs
Launchpad and Missions
MISSION A
MISSION B
MISSION C
LAUNCHPAD

24. What is a Mission?RESEARCH
MARKETING
SUPPORT
DEVOPS TOOLING
INFRASTRUCTURE
LOCALIZATION
COACHING
MISSION TEAM
A project solving a
specific problem
with clear goals
and a dedicated
specialized team
focused only on
the mission.

25. What is the purpose of a Launchpad?
Keep the lights
on
Monitoring, incidents,
bugs
Improve
quality
Actively look for weak
parts and refactor
Small product
improvements
Work on small tasks
not worth a mission

26. Cross-tribe Missions
“Solving issues with
complex missions
requiring different
skill set not present
in the tribe.”
“Still co-located.”
“Same rules as
other missions.”

27. Guilds
Preventing silos by
bringing people of
common interests
together
Solving common
problems across
tribes

28. Prerequisites for tribes to work
Continuous
delivery
We deliver sooner, in a
more agile way
Independent
codebase
More end to end
scenarios, more
growth loops
Self-driven
people
Better feedback
happier people
Common
company goal
Happier people stay
longer and bring in
more of their friends

29. 1 year aftermath
Faster delivery
We deliver sooner, in a
more agile way
Better product
More end to end
scenarios, more
growth loops
Higher
engagement
Better feedback
happier people
Higher people
retention rate
Happier people stay
longer and bring in
more of their friends

30. Remote work PoCs
Cultivate feedback culture
Improving self-driven organization setup
???
Change is the only constant
How to scale further?

31. Thank you.
@viliceq
Tomáš Řehoř · Head of Pipedrive Prague
Any questions? Email me at tomas.rehor@pipedrive.com
@viliceq