E23: How Iris Grew From $500 a Month to $3,000,000 ARR with Drew Fallon

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On this episode of The SAAS Operators, Drew Fallon, founder of Iris, joins Rishabh and me to talk moving from brand to SaaS, working capital, pricing, and the GTM grind. Quick recap below.

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I used to think moving from brand to software would feel like switching sports. Turns out it is more like changing the rules of gravity.

From trucks and tariffs to tickets and teams

In ecom, random chaos is the job. Trucks flip. Amazon yanks a listing for eight weeks. Tariffs appear overnight. You get punched in the mouth and half of it is outside your control.

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In SaaS, the chaos is different. More of the work lives inside your decisions. Build, debug, ship, align. It is still hard. But it is more straightforward. You know what to do. Executing it well is the brick wall.

People are the product

Software becomes a people business fast. Drew put it well. One day you are a guy in a computer. The next you are answering questions for a dozen teammates and your calendar is the product you manage.

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At scale, the physics shift. Cost is human capital. You add headcount to move any heavier object. Then you wake up and ask yourself why your job feels like HR.

Simple and impossible

Rishabh framed it right. Software is simple and impossible. Simple to describe. Impossible to do at a high level. You can see the mountain from the parking lot. The trail still breaks you.

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I refresh Stripe for fun. Growth on the SaaS side scratches a very specific itch. Predictable revenue is a hell of a drug.

Go to market is where the drama lives

Engineering scales best through networks. GTM scales through people you do not know yet. That is messier. Opinions are louder. Happy hours are longer. Drama spikes.

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We are all hiring on that front. Drew posted his first growth role. I have made most of my hires in GTM too. Fresh grads can be hungry. Killers are rare. When you land one, they bend your curve.

ACV as a filter

Drew raised prices. From 500 a month at launch to a floor at 2-4k a month now. That move matters. Around 2k the churn math changes for a 30 million dollar brand. Finance reviews start paying attention. Cheap tools get ignored on renewal sheets. Expensive tools get defended.

Who buys Iris

The ICP is clear. Senior finance. VP or head level. Sometimes the founder. Brands around 30 to 40 million in revenue. They care about working capital and inventory. Forecasting wrong compounds on the balance sheet. Over and under both cost you.

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Iris is broader than CPG. Anyone who holds inventory fits the problem. But practically, today, most customers are CPG. The vision extends to any B2B that lives in spreadsheets and stock.

Channel beats channel conflict

A spicy idea from Rishabh. Open a 1500 a month self serve lane for B2C and let willing buyers on board alone. Then point real sales effort at B2B. Do it through partners. Think BigCommerce, Faire, anyone who wins when merchants get financially literate. Align the incentives and distribution appears where your buyers already hang out.

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The constraint is onboarding. Iris needs a real implementation. Order level history. ELT. Amazon rate limits. Self serve wants a weekend. Your data wants three weeks. Bridge that gap and the lane opens.

Packaging is the lever

Every tool has the same trap. Too many buttons, not enough outcomes. Sell the journey, not the atlas.

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Start the customer on one mission. Lock the rest of the map. Make progress obvious. Then attach the next motion.

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For Iris, the natural sequence is showing up. Analytics, then forecasting, then inventory planning. Finance pulls in ops. Ops pulls in data. The loop closes. The value compounds.

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Paywalls are less important than paths. What matters is the story the product tells and the milestones the user hits.

Inbound, outbound, and the firms that own the room

Drew grew to 100 plus customers on content alone. Tweets. LinkedIn. Podcasts. Clips. That can double again. Then you need engines. Outbound. Partnerships. Channel.

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There is a quiet cheat code here. Big consulting shops with 300 clients and an incentive to look smart. Land one pilot. Roll across the roster. Product market fit gets an escort.

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Enterprise wants the same outcomes with different nouns. Apply AI to S&OP and budgeting. Scenario in, answer out. Reduce analyst hours answering questions like what happens when Amazon freezes a channel for a month. Give leadership a lever they can pull without another headcount line.

The roll up window

A wave is coming. Companies born in 2020 and 2021 with little revenue and less runway. Founders want to say they were acquired. Buyers are scarce.

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If you are a finance founder with conviction and a real integration thesis, you can manufacture enterprise value with paper. Acquire revenue, customers, and select teams at entry prices that do not require heroics on exit. It is PE logic applied to seed era software. If you know what not to integrate, it works.

Why not a Shopify app

Short answer. Distribution there is not what it used to be. Iris is not a point tool. It needs implementation. The app store rewards quick wins, not deep systems. There are directional profit trackers in that ecosystem. They are not substitutes for proper finance infrastructure.

What stops three to ten

Not product. Go to market. Sales cycles lengthen as ACV rises. Hiring true enterprise sellers is hard. The answer is not to fish inside ecom SaaS. You want sellers trained to sell value, not usage priced tools. Discovery, attachment, multi quarter motion. Different sport.

Our takeaways

1. Raise price to match problem importance. It changes renewal math and buyer behavior.
2. Package the journey. One mission at a time. Attach in sequence.
3. Partner where your buyer already pays attention. Incentives beat impressions.
4. Hire outside your bubble. Bring in sellers who know high value sales.
5. Keep the product honest. Excitement should come from truth. Real outcomes create stickiness.
6. Watch the roll up window. There are assets on the curb.

Why I am bullish

Iris hits a pain you cannot ignore. Working capital is oxygen. Forecasting is the lungs. When you help a finance leader see forward and act faster, you do not get ripped out. You get a seat at the weekly. That is where durable software lives.

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And selfishly, I like this game. Fewer trucks. More choices. Same competitive fire.