I spent 3 days with 8 successful SaaS founders last week. Each founder presented their vision of what they are trying to create with their company.

These discussions were very different from the thousands of investor pitch presentations or corporate business unit presentations I had seen or made.

Some founders didn’t have slides. They weren’t selling anything or even bragging. And the group wasn’t there to judge or problem-solve.

We just wanted to hear what’s their current version of what they are trying to create in the world–with their customers, products, teams, revenues, exits, and even themselves.

Even more important was WHY creating and growing this business was personally so important to them.

Why have they sacrificed and invested so much and spent a major part of their life doing this very hard thing?

Each founder had a different personal story, a different Why, and a different end vision for their business.

For some, it was about building something that changed their part of the world. Others wanted to make a great environment for their teams.

Some had their “number” for when might sell their company. Others could run it for a long time with their profitable companies.

This was part of our annual offsite meeting in Park City, Utah for one of my Practical Founder Peer Groups. Almost every founder made it and the others Zoomed in for their talks.

Each founder has a growing SaaS business between $2-$12 million ARR. They are all growing steadily with growing teams and happy customers. Some are profitable and others are investing for growth. Some bootstrapped, some with friendly and practical outside funding.

When you aren’t pitching to investors or trying to impress people you don’t know, you can just share your own situation and your own vision.

When you are talking to people you know very well and you’re not trying to impress them, you can talk about what’s really important to you.

That’s what the group wanted to know from their peers: What’s your current version of your big Vision and Why is that important to you?

Understanding before problem-solving. Context before content.

When a founder brings up a challenge at our next monthly meeting, we’ll have 10X more context to help them work on it.

There are many ways to solve any problem. It depends on many things.

There is no template. And you can change your mind as you go.

Now we know each founder’s deeper context to help them build what they are trying to create.

It Depends.

#practicalfounders