Focus matters more when building SaaS than when running a consulting businesS
We turned Mintra from a consulting-led business into a global SaaS company. This is what we learned.
Focus matters more when building SaaS than when running a consulting business.
Consulting rewards breadth. SaaS punishes it.
In consulting, saying yes often makes sense. New clients, new use cases, new adaptations — all generate revenue. Custom work is a feature, not a bug.
In SaaS, the same behavior is toxic.
- Every exception becomes code.
- Every special case becomes complexity.
- Every “small tweak for a big customer” slows everyone else down.
SaaS only scales when focus is ruthless:
- A narrow ICP
- A clear, repeatable problem
- One product, one core value proposition
- One go-to-market motion
What feels like flexibility in consulting becomes technical debt in SaaS.
What feels like customer centricity becomes product fragmentation.
That’s why focus is not a nice-to-have in SaaS.It’s the business model.
The companies that win are not the ones that say yes the most —but the ones that say no early, often, and consistently.