What Transfers When You Scale in SaaS? Sophie Krishnan on the Playbook That Always Works

What transfers when you scale in SaaS? Sophie Krishnan on the growth playbook that always works.

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> What if scaling a SaaS business didn’t require starting from scratch every time?

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> What if the same growth playbook could carry you across fintech, marketplaces, travel, and B2B with equal impact?

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> And what if the lessons from a CEO who’s scaled multiple industries could help you avoid years of painful trial-and-error?

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These are the kinds of questions we get you the answers to inside Think & Grow’s Scaling SaaS Webinar Series. From leading growth at Trainline and Expedia to scaling fintech, marketplace, B2B and B2C companies, Sophie Krishnan – now CEO of AI-powered localisation platform Lokalise and an experienced NED – is the kind of scar tissue every SaaS founder benefits from hearing.

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In this interview, Sophie shares how AI is reshaping globalization efforts, the universal growth tactics that travel across industries, and her advice for the crucial first 90 days when entering a new market.

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Raj: “How are globalization efforts changing with AI, and how are companies benefiting from it?” 

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Sophie: “The localization landscape has changed drastically with AI. A few years ago, workflows were slow and there was a lot of heavy manual work - translators, reviews, approvals, and all the back-and-forth. A lot of that can now be automated at a high level with AI-powered translations. 

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Which by the way, is a lot harder than people think. The right context and quality are crucial, so you can’t just drop it into ChatGPT and expect production-ready output.  

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For example, with Lokalise, you can launch a new product feature in 13+ languages in just 5 hours. This level of speed means that organizations in Europe are expanding internationally much earlier in their growth journey. It’s a smaller market, easier, cheaper and faster to do so.” 

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Raj: “You’ve scaled across B2B SaaS, fintech, marketplace businesses and more. What are the growth strategies that travelled with you?”

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Sophie: “The growth playbook actually travels surprisingly well. A lot of it applies across industries like B2B and B2C. Scaling isn’t glamorous - it involves a lot of solving a series of problems like staying ahead of competition and keeping up with your customers’ changing needs. Having experience in multiple categories has broadened my toolkit and made it easier to approach problems more creatively.

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And for the areas outside your own expertise, like regulatory depth in fintech, you absolutely must bring in people with that specialism.” 

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Raj: “What do you do in the first 90 days of scaling? Is the first diagnosis to unblock and find pathways to growth or is it to focus on just executing whatever strategy is in place?”

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Sophie: “Beware the quick wins! I have definitely been too tempted to seize the quick wins in the past, but ultimately, they will drag you down into the weeds and you’ll regret not spending your first 90 days simply listening. You’ve only got a short window to truly understand the landscape - listen to your customers, competitors, prospects, and your team.

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Another important consideration: people often assume strategy must always come first. But sometimes, as was the case at Lokalise, the strategy and business model are already sound. In that scenario, what you really need is operational rhythm - systems, processes, and cadence. Rehashing strategy for the sake of it wastes time. The key is understanding what the business needs now and executing on that.” 

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Raj: “Can you share some experiences or challenges you’ve come across when you’ve had to make strategic changes to help you win over a market or competition?”

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Sophie: “Yes, when I worked at a fintech enabling migrants to transfer money back home, typically to Nigeria, Kenya, the Philippines or Mexico. It was one of the first companies with a true digital value proposition.

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When I joined, they’d built a fantastic platform and even their own tech stack. But within a year, fintech-as-a-service platforms emerged, offering plug-and-play solutions for compliance, ID verification, KYC. Suddenly, what we’d built was no longer disruptive.

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We had a great customer base, but the model itself wasn’t giving us an advantage anymore. And in those moments, you need the courage to admit that what you’ve built won’t win the next phase of competition. You have to be willing to let go and create the thing your competitors can’t leapfrog.”

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Thank you to Sophie Krishnan for being a guest on Think & Grow’s Scaling SaaS Webinar Series. Catch the entire 20-mins interview by clicking here.