Interview with a CEO
Salonkee CEO
Tom Michels
1. In one sentence, what does Salonkee offer, and who do you target? Salonkee offers an all-in-one salon management solution for hairdressers, beauty salons as well as massage and wellness studios, to help them manage and grow their business.
2. How did you make your way into the world of SaaS and start your company? Going into SaaS was never an active plan in and of itself. We got dragged into it over time by trying to solve a concrete problem: being unable to book an appointment at our barbershop online. It’s only over time that the idea of Salonkee evolved from a simple online booking platform to a full-fledged salon management SaaS solution.
3. What makes Salonkee unique? Salonkee is unique in two ways:
1. We offer the broadest and most integrated solution on the market, covering all management needs of a salon owner in a single solution (Bookings, CRM, Point-of-Sale, Payments, Marketing, Online Sales, Stock Management, etc.)
2. We have developed an efficient, scalable and highly predictable on-field sales model, allowing us to open and scale into any country we aim for.
4. Salonkee has become market leader in Luxembourg and Belgium, and is quickly expanding to Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. What is your strategy on international expansion? Our international expansion is strongly focused around market leadership. We are on a mission to become the market leader for salon software across Europe. Any country we enter, we expect to attain at least 30% market share after a couple years.
5. A big part of Salonkee’s success is related to its agile go-to-market strategy. What is your advice to fellow founders on setting up a go-to-market strategy?
Moving from founder-led sales to an efficient and scalable sales machine is quite a challenge. However, although both are very different from each other, I think that the lessons learned (in terms of market needs, sales arguments, product, sales process etc.) during the founder-led sales activities will be indispensable for building up a strong and scalable sales machine later on.
My advice would be to not try and skip, outsource or delegate early founder-led sales activities. The lessons learned at that time will positively influence your go-to-market for the years to come. How would you know why a sales person, a region or a market isn’t working if you have never sold your own product yourself? Over time your sales and go-to-market activities become a mathematical process. However, before it becomes mathematical, it’s all about finding the right strategy and understanding what works, what doesn’t and why. It’s the job of a founder to understand those dynamics. You can’t expect your first salesperson to figure this out.
6. There is no easy path to success. What was the biggest challenge you went through and what was your biggest achievement? Covid lockdowns have certainly be a challenging period for Salonkee as our customers were forced to close during multiple months and lost all their revenue sources from one day to another. Supporting our customers during those months while keeping our growth going was quite a challenge. I can’t single out a single situation as our biggest achievement. In any case, the biggest achievements are yet to come.
7. What is your advice for other founders in terms of fundraising at an early stage? There are some obvious things that always help when raising funds at an early stage, such as having some paying customers and a clear path towards future growth. However, what I see more often missing in early stage startups (especially for first time founders), are big ambitions and an inherent trust in being able to build an extraordinarily large business over time. I guess it’s quite normal initially, as there is so much to be figured out in the early stages. Yet, I think by having an open mind and drive to be super quick learners, early stage founders should be more ambitious. It will likely serve them well when raising funds.
8. Hiring talent is an important part of a CEO's job. In the case of Salonkee, setting up a fast and efficient recruitment machine has been crucial. What lessons have you learned in this respect?
Over time, my role as a CEO in the hiring process has changed quite a lot. In the early days, I was very involved in our recruitment efforts by sourcing and interviewing candidates myself. The bigger we got and the faster we needed to hire new talent, the more important it became to build up an internal recruitment machine that fuels the growth of the whole company. As a CEO, today, my impact on recruitment is much more strategic and less operational. Laying out a clear vision for the company that gets potential new-joiners excited, building up a strong company culture and employer brand and finding the right people to fill key management roles at the company are my current areas of focus on the recruitment side.
9. What advice would you give other founders in the B2B SaaS industry?
Stay lean while figuring stuff out and double down on the things that work well.