From a marketplace to SaaS and payments.
A B2B food-supply marketplace was a restaurant-supply marketplace that collapsed when COVID hit. A new CEO hired me to find a new model, not to scale one that already worked, and the North America pivot was the mandate.
What this chapter drove, and what it taught me on the way. Both up front, because the lessons are the point, not a footnote.
The mandate was to find a new model, not scale one that worked. The moment that unlocked everything was saying that out loud and going to the field for the answer, where a paper-based supply chain nobody had digitized was waiting.
New hires sold in 45 days against a four-to-six-month norm, and not because anyone rushed. Ready meant passing a bar, not surviving a schedule. A ramp with a certification is a promise the team can keep during a pivot.
Closing one office, opening another, and a disciplined retreat from the US while Canada got it right. None of those calls were popular; all of them were explained before they landed. Keeping a team rowing through a pivot is not a speech. It is calls made in the open.
COVID did not slow the business down. It deleted the model. A B2B food-supply marketplace was a restaurant-supply marketplace, and when restaurants closed, a new CEO hired me to find a new model, not to scale one that already worked. That is a different job, and it starts with admitting nobody in the building knows the answer yet.
The answer was in the field. The real, unsolved pain was a paper-based supply chain nobody had digitized: inventory, invoices, accounts receivable, moving between restaurants, suppliers, and distributors on paper and fax. The company pivoted to SaaS and payments around that pain, and the product got rebuilt from the ground up off direct customer and distributor feedback, with the payment rails a paper supply chain never had.
The people side of a pivot is the part nobody writes about. I built the revenue org from zero to 23 people across two countries while the model changed underneath them, and made the structural calls people avoid: closed one office, opened another, and later a disciplined retreat from the US to protect the brand while Canada got it right. New hires ramped in 45 days against an industry norm of four to six months, because ready was a certification, not a countdown. Keeping a team rowing through a pivot is not a speech. It is a ramp bar, a cadence, and calls made in the open.
And the pivot was the whole company moving, not a sales department: product rebuilding off field feedback, finance and the board realigning the model through a six-month runway, the support motion rebuilt to 24/7 with tiered self-serve so the margin math could work.
The receipts read like a different company, because it was one. Gross margin from 45 to 70%. Churn from monthly bleed to a real annual SaaS profile, with accounts growing after they landed. Enterprise deal size up seven times, with the biggest names in food and beverage signed while the model was still being rebuilt. 140%+ growth through the pivot, and the multiple went from a 2x marketplace to a 6x SaaS business.
The model died, and the real pain was paper, not orders: inventory, invoices, and accounts receivable moving between restaurants, suppliers, and distributors by hand. The pivot got built around that pain.
Field feedback before product, product before motions: the platform rebuilt off direct customer and distributor input, with the payment rails a paper supply chain never had, then product-led, enterprise, and lifecycle on top.
The hard structural calls stayed human, closing one office, opening another, the disciplined US retreat, while the motions went on rails and new hires ramped against a certification bar in 45 days.
N · NORMALIZE is how the team made it the default way of working. T · TIE BACK is the outcomes below.
How the build unfolded.
What I owned, and what it produced.
The whole commercial number, and the receipts it threw off. Pick a lens.
Rebuilt a dying marketplace into a real SaaS business, and the multiple followed.
What the people I built with said.
See how it played out elsewhere.
Same method, on your workflow.
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