Field notes by Bill Kloza
5 pieces of short-form thinking from Bill.
Saying 'no' is hard. When is it the right answer?
Our largest customer offered us over a million dollars a year to build a new module. We ran the diligence, found the category had defeated everyone who tried it, and said no while keeping them as our biggest advocate.
Bill Kloza Why we treated every customer migration as an opportunity
Customers don't resist change. They resist uncertainty. Handled with a disciplined three-person team, a migration becomes one of the most productive growth activities in the business.
Bill Kloza Why we stopped treating price increases as optional
Some customers hadn't seen a price increase in close to a decade while the cost to serve them rose every year. Treating pricing as a normal operating discipline restored the economics without breaking the relationships.
Bill Kloza How we took advantage of M&A
Four add-on acquisitions in eighteen months. Strategy led every deal — we named the specific gap before evaluating any target, and never announced until we knew exactly how the first ninety days would run.
Bill Kloza Why we built a people operating system
What worked when we ran a fifty-person company broke at several hundred. A single goal-cascade, standard titles, defined career paths, and one system of record gave us faster decisions and better retention.
Bill Kloza Want to learn more? Start a conversation.
We'd love to meet, trade notes on what we're seeing as the software world goes through a generational evolution, and share more about our philosophy for building great software companies.