We Cut Our Team from 50 to 7 and Grew Faster — Scaling a SaaS Marketplace in 2025

Search Eye went from 50 employees to 7 — and grew faster. Here's how. Featuring Chris Porteous, Founder of Search Eye, a marketplace connecting brands with publishers for digital PR and backlinks. Chris breaks down how his team scaled a B2B SaaS marketplace to Fortune 100 clients like Nasdaq and AT&T, then hit a wall when manual fulfillment collapsed at 1,200 orders per month. He shares the hard lessons on achieving product market fit for both sides of a marketplace, why he wishes he'd collected deposits before writing a single line of code, and how AI and automation let a team of 7 outperform a team of 50. 🎯 No PMF until both sides of your marketplace demand it 💰 Collect deposits before you build — ignore everyone else 🛠️ Manual fulfillment will collapse at scale, plan for it early 📈 Google search is up 10% YoY despite "SEO is dead" claims 🚀 Distribution beats product — but only if you can fulfill ⏱️ Timestamps: 00:00 Chris's accidental path from banking to SEO 01:00 Building an internal tool that became a product 02:00 How AI is actually affecting SEO and search traffic 04:00 Search Eye's top-of-funnel strategy and visitor-level data 05:15 Why they decided to raise a pre-seed round 06:45 Biggest mistakes scaling a two-sided marketplace 08:00 The manual fulfillment collapse at 1,200 orders 10:00 Going from 50 people to 7 with AI and automation 11:00 Advice for founders stuck in manual fulfillment 13:00 Distribution vs. product — what matters more in 2025 14:45 Parting advice for marketplace founders 🔥 Want to build qualified pipeline with SaaS decision-makers? 👉 https://www.rapidproductgrowth.com 🔗 Website: https://www.rapidproductgrowth.com 🔗 Jean-Michel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanmichelthink/ #SaaS #B2BMarketing #SEO #MarketplaceStartup #RapidProductGrowth