Meraj Imani on Refounding: How Product Leaders Navigate the $10M ARR Inflection Point (Part 1)
80% of venture-backed SaaS companies never make it past $30M ARR. Instead, they get stuck in "the messy middle", caught between startup chaos and real scale. When boards go looking for answers, they usually look at product.
Meraj Imani has been one of the people they call. With fifteen years of experience scaling B2B SaaS organizations, Meraj joined Enable as their first product leader with a mandate to transform a services-heavy, bespoke implementation model into a scalable SaaS business growing at 400% year over year.
In this episode, Brian and Meraj explore:
The $10M inflection point. Why this stage often breaks what worked before, and how to recognize when your cost to serve each new customer starts amplifying pressure across the entire organization.
"Refounding" your company. A powerful mental model for founders who need to shift from being the primary salesperson to building new processes and teams for scale.
Creating product vision as a focusing agent. How Meraj built alignment around what the product wouldn't do, and why putting a boundary around your product is essential when you can't be everything to everyone.
The change management reality. Why identifying problems is the easy part, and how the real work is bringing people along, especially in organizations with deep cultural history. Meraj's candid reflection: "When you think you're communicating too much, double it."
The politics of product leadership. Why executive success stops being about product depth and starts being about reading social cues, building coalitions, and knowing when "sure" isn't actually "yes."
