Success Story: Shopperations – From MVP to SaaS Triumph

Today, I’m not writing about the theory or best practices of product management. Instead, I’m sharing an exciting interview with a brave woman entrepreneur from Cincinnati who decided to build her own product based on her expertise, but having literally zero knowledge in technologies or startups.

Her name is Olga, and she is the CEO and founder of Shopperations.com — a successful SaaS product focused on collaboration in the field of shopper marketing.

Shopper marketing is a strategy that uses insights into shopper behavior to influence purchasing decisions at critical points in the customer journey1. It aims to provide people with what they are looking for at the right moment, blending data, creativity, and timing to increase sales and build brand loyalty.

Back in 2015 I helped Olga build the first version of Shopperations. We spent countless hours over designs, tasks, implementing and testing.

Nearly a decade later, it’s fascinating to hear her success story — one that began as a product MVP and gradually grew into a mid-sized SaaS company.

Let´s begin.

How did the idea for Shopperations come about?

I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, that is why you come to America, right? I dabbled in various ideas but none of them felt like I could build a sustainable, profitable business around. At the same time, I kept working in my day job in corporate America as a marketing director. By 2014, I had close to 15 years of experience working in various marketing roles in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry. I remember feeling a lot of frustration because of how manual and inefficient my work was due to lack of tools and process automation.

I begged my management to buy or build us a software for managing budgets, promotional plans, track marketing invoices and simplify management reporting. They heard my pleas and commissioned a contractor to build it. I was supposed to be the beta tester of the software. As soon as I saw its first version, I realized that the software was nowhere near where we needed it to be. Looking back at that moment, I realize that they neither did the proper user research nor practiced agile software development methodology.

Ironically, that same day, my company was doing the reorganization and offering severance packages to employees who voluntarily resigned. I saw that as a sign from above that I had to try to build a software like that myself.

The vision for the software was already in my head, now I just needed to figure out how to build it.

What problem were you trying to solve in the shopper marketing industry when you founded Shopperations?

In the era before Shopperations, more than half of marketers’ time was spent in internal meetings, sifting through multiple Excel documents, manually aggregating, summarizing and formatting data. The data was riddled with errors, obsolete and often incomplete. Answering simple questions like:

1. What is my current budget?

2. How much of the budget is committed?

3. How much did we spend on brand A last year vs. this year?

4. At which retail chains did we promote Brand B last quarter?

5. Who are the biggest media vendors we work with?

6. What marketing tactics are taking up more spend and which ones are declining year-over-year?

7. Etc….

…was really difficult, and took hours if not days, to manually collect information, taking time away from productive activities.

Because there was no one place to see all marketing activities, marketing spend was often seen as a “black hole”, making it difficult for their colleagues and bosses to see and appreciate all the work that the team was doing.

Inability to see the total marketing investment for the brand across multiple retail accounts often resulted in excessive discounts that the headquarter-based marketers unknowingly “layered” on top of retailer-specific promotions, eroding brand profitability.

Can you walk me through the process of developing the MVP for Shopperations? What were the biggest challenges?

My personal experience working in the industry gave me a pretty good sense of what the core features of the software should be, however, I still sought validation from future clients.

The first prototype I built was a clickable HTML front end with no back end. We created it in about a week with a local developer. It was before I knew about UX design software like Figma (did Figma even exist in 2014?), so we probably spent more time on it than necessary. Nevertheless, it was a great way to demo for potential clients and get their initial reactions. Most of my early meetings were very positive, and I could sense that clients were excited about the possibility of having a software that was built just for them by a person who lived through their pain.

My biggest challenge at that point was not necessarily technical, rather mindset related. I wasn’t feeling confident enough to ask for a purchase order. I spent quite a bit of time just showing the prototype and taking notes, instead of asking clients “What would you be willing to pay for it, and can you help fund the development?”. At some point, I found a mentor who told me to exploit FOMO and give clients a chance to sign up for an “Early Adopter Program” that had low cost of entry and gave them a seat at the table to co-develop features and the UX. I had my first sale shortly thereafter.

I also was lucky because my former boss was gracious enough to give me a non-binding letter of commitment stating that the company would be willing to pay for the software if/when I have my MVP ready. That was a very powerful sign that allowed me to get a state grant to build the MVP. The grant essentially paid for most of the MVP and allowed me to test it “in vivo” with my first clients.

Another challenge was to assemble a competent tech team that could deliver the product. I spent some time “dating” potential technical co-founders locally but wasn’t successful in finding a perfect fit. That’s why, once I got a state grant approved, I hired a Ukrainian software development agency to make it happen, and it was a very positive experience.

How did you approach market validation and building your first user base?

Once I had an MVP (which, by the way, was very robust and complex) and several early clients, I began my marketing and sales efforts. I started learning about inbound marketing and hired a local Hubspot partner agency who set up the CPM & Marketing automation system for me and taught me now to blog, write white papers, build landing pages, distribute my content on social media and via email. I soon discovered that my niche didn’t have much content clutter, so I was able to gain awareness and brand recognition relatively quickly. I love blogging and discussing industry issues, reminiscing about my past experience working in the corporate marketing role and sharing the story of Shopperations. One of my first blog posts converted a major client for me, I was able to schedule a demo and close the deal in less than three months (very fast by my industry standard).

My early clients were awesome, patient and very supportive. They agreed to co-present case studies at the industry conferences and share their experience automating their marketing planning process and working with Shopperations.

There is no one single way to find early clients. You have to reach out to your existing contacts, do cold emails to complete strangers, network on LinkedIn, publish engaging, authentic content and build a reputation in your niche. After 10 years, I still feel the same, only now we have a large user base who often switch employers and recommend us to their new companies, i.e. referrals are a bigger part of the sales process.

Can you share any decisions that contributed to Shopperations’ success?

I believe that the fact that I decided to quit the corporate world “cold turkey” and focus on Shopperations 100% for some time was the right decision. It allowed me to go faster and sent the right signal to potential investors and clients who wanted to see my full commitment to the idea. Fortunately, I was able to afford this lifestyle due to generous severance from my old employer and my spouse’s income.

Another decision I had to make that ultimately worked for me was to hire a dev partner, rather than continue looking for a technical co-founder. The team I ended up working with is highly skilled, well-staffed and professionally run. I learned from them how to do agile software development and what great project management looks like. We are still working with the same company 10 years later.

Focusing efforts on in-bound marketing rather than only on outbound sales was also a good call. It felt authentic, natural and less forced to find like-minded professionals who sincerely reacted to my content and engaged in conversations with me. The content I created 8 years ago is still relevant and driving traffic to my site.

Finally, hiring and retaining a super-talented customer success lead was absolutely the right thing to do. She is very strategic, comes from the same industry and can speak to clients with authority about their business challenges, not just about technical issues related to software. She keeps current users happy while I can focus my attention on winning new accounts.

What were some of the most difficult decisions or setbacks you encountered, and how did you overcome them?

Losing a major account was a big blow in 2020. We discovered that their IT department contracted a competitor and piloted their software in another country, and that my current users didn’t have a major stake in that decision. While our US deployment was successful and we delivered significant cost savings and efficiencies to the client’s local marketing team, we didn’t have a strong relationship with their IT organization. Lesson learned - network inside an enterprise and understand the “hidden” decision makers or influencers.

I also lost one major RFP because I tried to negotiate harder. I was under the impression that the RFP was just a formality because the future users loved the demo. However, in the process, Procurement stepped in and brought in alternative suppliers of similar software. I got the client’s counter offer, which I considered to be low-ball, attempted to counter it back, and lost. Lesson learned - low ball offers may be ok for strategic accounts, just to get your foot in the door.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs looking to launch an MVP or scale their product?

If you are building a B2B product, look for early adopter clients who are willing and able to take a risk and fund your MVP. Do not do free trials because when there is no skin in the game, they will not give you enough attention and will not give you honest feedback.

How do you find those clients? Someone had a great suggestion: while networking, bring up a very futuristic topic and see if their eyes light up. If they geek about the possibilities that technology will bring and love to try new things, they will likely be able to appreciate what you are building.

Use Figma or similar UX design prototyping software to share your vision of your product with clients. Take feedback and come back to them ASAP to demonstrate how you address their input, then don’t wait too long to do the “ask” - there will be many people who will love chatting with you but who don’t have any power to give you a sale. The worst that can happen is they tell you no and stop wasting your time or make an intro to someone in their company who holds the purse strings.

When you have a decent idea of what your MVP is and have excited clients who are willing to give you a purchase order, you can raise money faster. But raising capital is not always necessary. If you can afford to build an MVP using your personal savings and co-develop with clients who prepay your software, you can maintain 100% of your company and be less distracted raising capital and managing investors.

Don’t wait for the MVP to be finished to begin marketing it. In hindsight, I could have started my email and inbound marketing efforts way earlier. It takes time to build a following and to warm the leads to a point where they are ready for a sale. Your early inbound efforts can be focused on finding early adopter clients, that is what I should have done.

Bonus question: Do you follow the latest AI trend in Shopperations, and build any AI features?

I am watching this space carefully and dabbling in AI myself, automating many of my day-to-day tasks. There are several ways AI could be applied in Shopperations today, but our clients are not demanding it… yet. I am also waiting for the technology to mature and become more affordable, to learn from other B2B software products’ experience and reapply best practices. When it comes to AI, we will be a fast follower, not an early adopter.