Every SaaS company dreams of scale. Few survive it.
At 1 to 5 million ARR, teams thrive on chaos and instinct.
At 10 to 20 million, process creeps in, founders pull in different directions, and speed gives way to confusion.
Beyond 20 million, the challenge shifts again. You stop building products and start building systems and people.
Youssef Hounat has lived every phase of that curve. He helped DataSnipper grow from 1 to 50 million ARR, building the product function from scratch before joining ComplianceWise to lead product and engineering in the next generation of compliance tech.
At SaaSiest Amsterdam, he shared a rare, honest view of what that journey really looks like. His framework is not about templates or maturity models, but about how to keep vision, alignment, and builder spirit alive as the company scales.
The foundation: Build a Vision Stack, not a feature list
Scaling breaks when people don’t share a mental model of where the company is going.
Youssef’s solution is what he calls a Vision Stack.
- Vision – Define what the world looks like when you succeed.
- Strategy – List the five or six problems you must solve next to get there.
- Roadmap – Turn those problems into a six-month rolling “Now-Next-Later” plan. Each item should describe a problem to solve, not a feature to build.
This simple stack keeps everyone aligned. Sales can tell a coherent story. Engineering knows what matters. Founders can see progress without micromanaging.
Youssef visualizes this through his Stepping Stones Canvas:
Start with your vision statement, then describe the themes and starting position. Map out the stepping stones that bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Each stone becomes a tangible strategy point your entire company can remember.
When you share it repeatedly — in all-hands, roadmaps, newsletters — people begin to think and act from the same place. It is the difference between a roadmap that informs and one that inspires.
1 to 5 million ARR: Survive and stay loose
In the earliest stage, product market fit is everything.
The goal is not to look polished but to move fast enough to learn. “Survive by being messy,” Youssef said. “Solve an embarrassingly small problem for an embarrassingly small group of people.”
Bring engineers into customer conversations. Review usage data together every day. Kill features quickly. At this stage, you are not an orchestra — you are a jazz band, improvising around the customer.
The worst mistake founders make here is building process before proof. Keep experimentation sacred. Have daily rituals that tie feedback to decisions, but avoid rigid sprints or arbitrary release cycles. Speed and proximity to the customer matter more than ceremony.
5 to 10 million ARR: Create structure without slowing down
This is when your scrappy startup becomes a real product team.
Youssef’s first move was to hire a designer — not to beautify, but to bring discipline to discovery. Together, they set up a lightweight research lab and ran weekly customer sessions. Every meeting began with a quick creative ritual to keep energy high.
As the team grew, expectations changed. Founders started asking for “the real roadmap” — meaning a list of features. Youssef had to educate them that a roadmap should describe problems, not deliverables. Each initiative was reframed from “Build bank statement extraction” to “Enable auditors to extract statements 10x faster.”
That shift in language built trust. It also protected the team from the process trap — when “agile” becomes bureaucracy dressed up as speed. Instead of scaling rituals, Youssef scaled clarity. The team documented decisions in one page, not ten. They used a public Notion board for transparency, and a monthly strategy sync to re-align with founders on the next stepping stones.
The result: repeatability without rigidity.
10 to 20 million ARR: Organize, align, and learn to say no
As headcount grows, so does noise. This is where most product teams stall.
Youssef split his group into three lanes: a core team improving the main product, an experimental team exploring AI and new ideas, and a platform team building the API and scalability layer. Each squad formed a “product trio” — PM, designer, and engineer — working in continuous discovery loops.
The bigger risk now is hiring fast without context. “Every person you bring in needs to raise the bar,” he said. “If they’re not better at product than you are, you’re holding the company back.”
With hundreds or thousands of customers, Data Snipper had to move from building everything to saying no most of the time. Custom work was no longer survival; it was a distraction. To keep focus, Youssef published a monthly internal newsletter tying every roadmap decision back to the strategy. Requests that didn’t map to a stepping stone simply didn’t make the cut.
Founder relationships also evolved.
He discovered what he calls the U-shaped involvement curve.
At the start of a cycle, bring founders deeply into vision and roadmap alignment. Then, step back and let teams execute. Finally, re-engage them near launch for bug bashes, customer pilots, and big announcements.
When that rhythm works, founders stay confident, teams stay autonomous, and product keeps its speed.
20 to 50 million ARR: Design, align, and let others shine
By this stage, the company is growing fast, and Youssef’s role shifted from builder to multiplier.
He introduced a hierarchy of group PMs, added a design lead, and built a small product ops team to maintain consistency across squads. A data analyst joined to layer quantitative insights on top of qualitative research.
On paper, everything looked great. In reality, motivation dipped. “People saw the company winning but felt less control,” he admitted. “I was micromanaging without noticing.”
The fix was uncomfortable but simple: start every meeting with questions, not answers.
Instead of telling people what was wrong, Youssef coached them to find it. Empowering PMs to own their part of the business reignited energy.
He also kept rituals that made the team feel like builders — quarterly hackathons, bug bash weeks, and internal demo days. These created moments of shared pride and reminded people why they joined in the first place.
Leadership at this scale means protecting creativity, not replacing it with process.
Beyond 50 million ARR: Build systems that outlive you
Eventually Youssef stepped up as VP of Product. His focus shifted again — from managing projects to architecting culture. “You’re no longer building products, you’re building systems that build products.”
That meant working closely with the board, earning trust through clarity, and communicating progress in ways that scale.
Every month, he sent a short, structured product letter: what changed, what stayed the same, and how decisions connected to the vision. It replaced endless meetings and gave the board visibility without politics.
Internally, he kept the team human. “We kept it fun. Hackathons, bug bashes, team challenges — things that remind you we’re still creators.”
And he stayed open about the emotional side of scaling. The higher the title, the stronger the imposter syndrome. “If you don’t feel it, you’re probably not growing,” he said. “When you’re neck-deep in problems, don’t look down. Look forward.”
The core lesson: vision is oxygen.
Your job is to keep it flowing through the company long after you’re gone.
The path in one view
- 1–5M ARR: Survive. Stay messy. Treat your team like a jazz band.
- 5–10M ARR: Create repeatability. Educate founders on problems, not features.
- 10–20M ARR: Organize around product trios. Manage founder involvement and say no often.
- 20–50M ARR: Add structure, empower others, and protect the builder spirit.
- 50M+ ARR: Scale culture, communicate clearly, and keep it fun.
Scaling product is less about frameworks and more about rhythm. When the rhythm works, vision, people, and progress stay in tune.
Final takeaway
The secret to scaling a product isn’t more process. It’s a stronger story.
Define where you’re going, teach your company to think in problems not features, and design systems that let great people do the best work of their lives.
As Youssef put it: “When you’re swimming neck-deep in shit, don’t look down. Keep your eyes up, keep looking forward, and keep your vision alive.”
Watch the full session from SaaSiest Amsterdam 2025 here: https://saasiest.com/what-got-you-here-wont-get-you-there-product-evolution-in-unicorn-building/
