Scaling a SaaS to €35M ARR: 3 Mistakes I'd Never Repeat

Synopsis

Tim Vandecasteele, co-founder of Silverfin (B2B SaaS for accountants, €35M ARR, sold 2023), shares three expensive mistakes he made over ten years: running the company as a benevolent dictator (fix: empower people early with written guardrails), assuming culture is what you practice rather than what you write (fix: a one-page culture doc), and giving external hires more benefit of the doubt than loyal internal staff (the outsider's glow). He also covers taking secondary at ~€14M ARR to resolve mismatched co-founder liquidity.