Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,

Venture stories use to go: scaling up, turning profitable. While scaling is hard, profitability is even harder. It is all the more impressive when a SaaS company proves to be profitable before it taps into externally financed growth.

Today, we speak to Lena Hackelöer, founder of payments provider Brite. Lena began her career at Klarna, where she built the company's B2B marketing from the ground up, before founding her own company – Brite Payments – in 2019. By now, Brite has expanded to 27 markets, achieved profitability, and raised a $60 million Series A. Most recently, Lena was honored with the ‘Inspiration Award’ at the Women in Payments EMEA Awards. Exclusively for our newsletter subscribers, Lena has shared additional insights below.

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How to scale a payments business sustainably

What you will get out of this episode

In our conversation, Lena shares:

• How to penetrate new markets without having local sales teams in place

• How to decide when to bring in senior hires and how to avoid common pitfalls for internal promotions

• Why keeping things lean and efficient is critical for long-term success

• Why self-doubt are normal

• And much more!

Our main take away’s

1. Leverage success stories to open new doors: Brite’s approach of using existing customer success stories to pitch new clients is a practical way to build trust when entering new markets or verticals, even without a local presence.

2. Adapt your hiring strategy as you grow: Early on, Lena hired junior, hungry talent. As they scaled, they realized they needed to bring in more experienced leaders, but carefully. Waiting for the right scale before making senior hires helped ensure cultural fit and long-term success.

3. Don’t rush into C-level promotions: Instead of immediately hiring at the top level, Lena suggests bringing in senior leaders at a “head of” level and promoting them once they’ve proven their fit. This avoids the risk of hiring someone who may not work out and leaves no room for a graceful transition.

4. Stay frugal to avoid tough cutbacks later: Keeping operations lean helps prevent the need for restructurings later. It’s easier to scale up carefully than to scale back once you’ve overspent.

5. Slow down to speed up: Onboarding new people, especially in engineering, can initially slow down teams. However, taking the time to onboard properly ensures long-term efficiency.

Additional material on the topic

• Mentioned by Lena: Peter Principle

How to reach out to Lena

• LinkedIn

• Brite Payments

Exclusive from Lena

What’s one leadership mistake you’ve made that others can learn from, and how did you course-correct?

We’re an ambitious team and tend to be very focused on what we can do better, rather than stopping to celebrate our achievements along the way. However, it’s really important for the motivation of our people that we do take time to reflect and to acknowledge when we do well. So, our New Year’s resolution is to celebrate more, even if things to do not go according to plan 100% of the time – which they don’t in any startup or scaleup!

What’s your advice for founders raising capital in a challenging market? How do you decide when to raise, and how do you approach choosing the right investors for your cap table?

Stating the obvious, but a clear path to profitability seems to be key at the moment. That doesn’t mean you have to have achieved it, or that it necessarily needs to happen in the near term, but that it can be achieved if needed. At Brite, I raised when we didn’t actually need cash, and chose investors that truly understood our space, were aligned with our mission and overall are just good people. A big funding round is almost like marriage – you want to choose wisely to who you commit!

You’ve mentioned churn as the most important metric for your business. For other founders, what metrics should they focus on in the early stages versus later stages of scaling?

This will of course vary depending on the business model, but I would say organisational health is key. Without our people we have no business, and I can’t stress enough how important getting the right team in place will be for the future of any business. Attitude is everything, especially in the early days.

You’ve faced aggressive competition early on, including losing customers to competitors. How do you stay resilient in moments like that, and what advice do you have for founders dealing with similar challenges?

This is a matter of perspective. We knew it wouldn’t be easy to disrupt a market dominated by much larger players. But when we lost one of our early customers because an incumbent had dumped their price, we also knew that we were on the right track and had become a threat to them. We also knew that competing on price alone is rarely a viable strategy. Product wins, so that is our clear focus.

How do you approach building relationships with enterprise customers or strategic partners as a young startup? Any negotiation tactics you’ve found particularly effective?

It’s often hard to compete as a young business that has limited resources, but what you can always bring to the table is dedication. Oftentimes, larger players lose focus of the value they can bring to each individual customer, therefore going the extra mile for every account and showing genuine interest in their challenges can be a fresh breath of air. We’ve all experienced this ourselves as customers. It’s really not rocket science, but it can go a long way. I also believe in straightforward negotiations and telling it as it is – I find it builds trust.