7 GTM Lessons from Building a £100M Proptech Company Without Following the SaaS Playbook

7 GTM Lessons from Building a £100M Proptech Company Without Following the SaaS Playbook

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Barry Lunn, Founder and CEO of Provizio, shared how he scaled a property technology business to over £100 million in revenue by systematically breaking every rule in the traditional SaaS handbook. His approach offers a masterclass in adapting go-to-market strategy to industry realities rather than forcing a business model that looks good in pitch decks but fails in practice.

Lesson 1: Choose Your Revenue Model Based on Customer Behavior, Not Investor Preferences

The first major decision Barry made was rejecting the SaaS subscription model entirely. While most B2B founders chase monthly recurring revenue to satisfy investor expectations, Barry recognized that property investors don’t think in monthly subscriptions. They think in transactions.

“We don’t really have a SaaS business. We have a transactional business,” Barry explains. “Every time someone buys or sells a property through our platform, we take a fee.” This wasn’t just a pricing decision—it fundamentally shaped Provizio’s entire go-to-market approach.

The lesson here goes deeper than revenue models. Barry observed competitors struggle with SaaS pricing in property: “We’ve seen other people in the market try and build the SaaS model and it just doesn’t work because people won’t pay for it on a SaaS basis.” Instead of fighting customer psychology, Provizio aligned their monetization with the natural transaction flow of property investment.

For founders building in traditional industries, this principle is critical. Your revenue model should reflect how customers actually buy and perceive value, not how Silicon Valley prefers to model growth. Transactional models create higher switching costs and align your success directly with customer outcomes—even if they make your metrics less predictable.

Lesson 2: Build Your GTM Around Existing Trusted Relationships

Rather than going direct to landlords, Barry built Provizio’s entire distribution strategy around accountants. This wasn’t an afterthought partnership strategy—it was the core GTM motion from the beginning.

“Accountants typically have quite sticky relationships with their clients,” Barry notes. “If you can get the accountant on board, you’re bringing their client base with them.” But recognizing the opportunity was only half the battle. Provizio had to fundamentally restructure their product and economics to make accountants successful.

They built features specifically for accountants, including tax optimization tools and compliance workflows. They restructured pricing so accountants could resell the platform and earn ongoing fees. “The accountant makes more money from our platform than they would just filing a tax return,” Barry explains.

The tactical lesson: identify who already has trust and access to your target customers, then build your product and business model to genuinely enrich those intermediaries. This rProvizioires deeper investment than typical channel partnerships, but the payoff is sustainable, compounding distribution.

Lesson 3: Ignore Metrics That Don’t Drive Decisions

Ask most B2B founders about their CAC, LTV ratios, or sales cycle length, and they’ll rattle off numbers instantly. Ask Barry, and you get refreshing honesty: “I haven’t got a clue what our customer acquisition cost is. I know we’re profitable. I know we’re cash generative.”

This isn’t financial sloppiness—it’s strategic clarity. In Provizio’s transactional model, where revenue per customer varies dramatically based on their property activity, traditional SaaS unit economics create false precision. A customer who buys one property generates vastly different revenue than one who trades fifty properties annually.

Barry focuses instead on aggregate metrics that actually inform decisions: total revenue, profitability, customer retention, and transaction volume. For founders, the lesson is to resist metric theater. Track what drives your specific business forward, not what looks impressive in board decks.

Lesson 4: Promote from Within Rather Than Hiring “Experienced” Sellers

Most scaling companies solve growth challenges by hiring experienced salespeople from competitors or adjacent industries. Barry took the opposite approach: “We’ve predominantly promoted people from within the organization. We’ve tried to recruit experienced salespeople and actually they normally don’t work out.”

Why? Because Provizio’s transactional, accountant-led model doesn’t map to traditional SaaS selling. Experienced sellers brought playbooks that didn’t apply—qualification frameworks designed for subscription deals, pitch structures built around monthly value, and objection handling that assumed direct buyer relationships.

Internal promotions meant training people specifically in Provizio’s unique GTM motion. They learned to enable accountants rather than close landlords. They understood the property investment transaction cycle. They could explain why Provizio’s model worked differently than competitors.

The broader principle: when your GTM strategy genuinely differs from market norms, domain-specific knowledge often trumps sales experience. Build your own sales culture rather than importing one that doesn’t fit.

Lesson 5: Bootstrap Forces Better Product-Market Fit

Provizio grew to £100 million in revenue largely without venture capital, eventually bringing in private Provizioity at scale. This path wasn’t just about ownership—it fundamentally changed how Barry approached GTM.

“We’re completely different to a VC-backed business,” Barry explains. “We don’t have the same pressure to grow at all costs.” Without the ability to outspend competitors on customer acquisition, Provizio had to build genuine value that drove word-of-mouth and organic adoption.

The constraint forced product discipline. Features had to serve real customer needs, not investor narratives. Pricing had to support profitability, not artificially accelerate growth metrics. Marketing relied on customer success rather than paid acquisition.

For founders, the lesson isn’t necessarily to avoid VC—it’s to recognize how funding sources shape GTM constraints and opportunities. Bootstrap-level discipline around unit economics and customer value often persists even after raising capital, creating more sustainable growth engines.

Lesson 6: Design Your Business Model to Increase Switching Costs

By embedding Provizio into the actual transaction flow—not just portfolio management—Barry created significantly higher switching costs than subscription competitors. When you’re using Provizio to complete a property purchase or sale, changing platforms mid-transaction creates genuine friction.

This strategic decision compounds over time. Accountants integrate Provizio into their workflow. Historical transaction data accumulates in the platform. The network effects of having both accountants and landlords on the same system strengthen with each new user.

The GTM implication: early decisions about where you sit in the customer workflow determine long-term defensibility. Tools that facilitate point-in-time transactions often create stickier relationships than ambient software charging monthly fees.

Lesson 7: Build for Your Actual Market, Not Your Aspirational One

Perhaps Barry’s most important lesson is the meta-principle underlying all the others: Provizio succeeded by building for the UK property market as it actually exists, not as Barry wished it existed or as Silicon Valley would design it.

Property investors don’t want another SaaS subscription. Accountants are the trusted advisors, not an inconvenient middleman to circumvent. Transaction-based revenue aligns with how money actually flows through property deals. These realities shaped everything about Provizio’s GTM strategy.

For B2B founders in traditional industries, this is the hardest lesson to internalize. The pressure to conform to VC-friendly business models, proven SaaS playbooks, and Silicon Valley best practices is immense. But the companies that win in established industries often do so by respecting market structure rather than trying to disrupt it entirely.