Scaling a $100M+ Disruptive Innovation
Could one company reshape the legal services industry and prove the hide-bound profession is capable of change?
I successfully launched the Boston presence of this startup by dating and building on the playbook that had been used to expand the firm to Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, DC
Venture Lifecycle Stage. Build and Scale.
Approach. A major economic recession wasn’t an auspicious time to expand a business. Moreover, Axiom had already tried and failed to open a Boston presence once before. To succeed this time, I decided we needed to return to the basics. We would not take for granted that what had worked in other cities would work in Beantown.
We started by getting to know our prospective clients and their problems, confirming problem-solution fit. We identified different Jobs to be Done, or patterns that described different struggling situations paired with outcomes desired by customer groups. Then, we zeroed in on the prospects with a “bleeding neck problem,” applying an empathetic and consultative sales approach. In parallel, we hired a team of attorney consultants, who provided our service, with the skills and experience to help our targeted customers make the progress they desired.
Results. Defining product market fit is hard, but you’ll know it when it happens. This was the case at Axiom. We identified the right target market and delivered the right message (“product language fit”) through the right channels. The service providers we hired delivered on our promises. Once the fly-wheel began to turn, word-of-mouth accelerated, and our customers helped us grow.
The office opened with one customer engagement, and we quickly grew the customer base and MRR by over 10x while expanding from 1 to more than 20 employees.
This was a general management role with full-stack responsibility for starting and running Axiom’s Boston office. As a company-wide executive leadership team member and drawing on my big-company experience from IBM, I also contributed to the dialog and initiatives to maintain Axiom’s culture and build practices and processes to scale the business.
Recruiting and Hiring Deep Dive
Axiom’s service offering was a textbook low-end disruptive innovation in the legal industry. There was a lot on the line because Axiom wanted to demonstrate to investors that it could reliably scale its service model, one city after another. It was Boston’s turn.
In parallel with our sales effort, and critically, we had to position ourselves as an employer of choice for the region’s top attorneys. The quality of this services team would be essential to closing sales and ensuring we could deliver on our customer promises. We also had to continuously modulate our hiring rhythm to ensure we had enough capacity to meet demand without outpacing it and jeopardizing profitability.
To build the sales and service delivery team, we:
Designed an end-to-end “employee journey” from sourcing and interviewing to onboarding and beyond, shaping the experience to reflect the Axiom brand.
Recruited across levels, continuously adjusting the hiring tempo to sync with and not overshoot demand.
Anchored hires in both business needs and cultural fit.
Supported team members’ ongoing development to ensure they grew with the business and contributed to the desired culture.