A B2B SaaS startup was stuck at $800K ARR. Platform instability was losing them enterprise deals at the final evaluation stage.
A Melbourne B2B SaaS company serving the construction industry was experiencing a familiar problem: the product that got them to $800K ARR was preventing them from growing beyond it. Platform instability and an engineering culture of heroics — rather than systems — were losing enterprise deals at the final evaluation stage.
Our fractional CTO spent the first month embedded with engineering and sales teams to understand both the technical reality and the commercial requirements. The root cause of instability was a multi-tenant architecture not designed for isolation — one heavy customer could degrade performance for all others. There was no on-call rotation, no incident runbooks, and no SLA reporting.
We rebuilt the multi-tenancy layer using a database-per-tenant pattern for enterprise customers, implemented comprehensive observability with Datadog, established 24/7 on-call with escalation procedures, and introduced quarterly engineering planning cycles. We also rebuilt the sales-engineering interface — turning technical evaluation from a liability into a competitive advantage.
ARR grew from $800K to $4.1M over 16 months. Support ticket volume dropped 68% as platform stability improved. The company closed three enterprise contracts exceeding $500K ACV each that had previously been lost to competitors. The CEO promoted their senior engineer to VP Engineering and used the engagement’s processes as the foundation for a successful Series A.
Growth does not come from building faster — it comes from building the right things on a stable foundation that enterprise customers trust.
Book a free call with a CTO who has 27 years of hands-on experience — and a track record of measurable outcomes.