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Case Study · 03

SaaS Ecosystem Discovery & Triage

Triaged a 3-product PE-backed ecosystem. Surfaced strategy gaps, cost pressure, and team-level risk in the primary $2.5M product line.

202330 daysDiscovery & Advisory
Client
PE-Backed SaaS
3-product ecosystem · delivery management
Portfolio
~$2.5M ARR primary product
78 clients · 24 single-tenant instances
Industry
Delivery Management SaaS
Presenting Problem
Unclear product strategy, cost pressure, team in flux
Headline Result
$544K → $908K
Annual Value Surfaced
The Situation

A PE-backed software company operating three complementary SaaS products had reached an inflection point. A key engineering team had just been offboarded, a new CEO was in seat, and the business was spending $1.55M annually to run its core product. At a gross margin 11 points below industry standard.

A 30-day discovery was scoped to assess the commercial and technical state of the business, surface what was actually broken, and provide a prioritized path forward.

Challenge
01

Revenue Concentration

One product drove 2/3 of total ecosystem revenue. Engineering resources were spread roughly equally across all three.

02

Infrastructure Bleed

$53K/month in EC2 spend. A viable migration path existed that would reduce costs 20 to 60%. Unidentified and unscoped.

03

Technical Debt Compounding

The core product ran on ~24 single-tenant instances. Each a copy of the last. Every release made the problem worse.

04

Live Security Exposure

100+ fraudulent accounts created in 48 hours. No mitigation in place. A 1-month fix existed; no one had flagged the risk.

05

Knowledge Hostage Risk

Siloed teams held critical product knowledge with no documentation or cross-training. One departure away from a crisis.

06

Misallocated Talent

A former PM who had previously consolidated the product from 100 to 24 instances was available to rehire. Unknown to leadership.

Actions
Three-product view

Commercial Triage

Revenue concentration, gross margin gap, and engineering allocation mapped against each product. Made the case for re-weighting investment toward the revenue driver.

EC2 · 20 to 60% reduction

Infrastructure Cost Path

Migration approach scoped with concrete cost-out range. Surfaced a lever no one had quantified.

Live fraud · 1-month fix

Security Exposure Brief

Documented the active fraudulent-account incident and the mitigation path. Escalated to leadership with timing and ownership defined.

Re-hire path · documentation gap

Talent & Knowledge Map

Identified the institutional-knowledge risk and the realistic re-hire path that could close it without a new search.

Results

$544K to $908K annual value surfaced

EC2 migration · cost-out range

20 to 60% reduction against $53K/month EC2 spend. The largest unaddressed cost lever in the business.

$544K to $908K

Live security exposure surfaced

100+ fraudulent accounts · 48 hrs

Active exposure that no one was tracking. Flagged with a 1-month mitigation path.

1-month fix

Tech debt path defined

24 single-tenant instances

The compounding-debt pattern named, with the re-hire path that had previously solved the same problem.

Path identified

Portfolio decision unlocked

3-product investment view

Operating partner went from no clear view to a sequenced investment thesis across the three products in 30 days.

Decision enabled
Idea to investment thesis
30 days
30 days · Discovery & Advisory · Delivery Management SaaS
Jenna is a dynamo with an outstanding track record.
Mark F., Managing Director
private equity fund