Achieving more with less

After the market correction that followed a boom in 2021, numerous businesses laid off staff in 2023.

As we come into 2024, investors are pulling back spending and reserving funds for companies that can operate sustainably. Today, businesses large and small, early stage and public, are under pressure to operate profitably and, when possible, lean. 

Nicole Tiefensee, co-founder and head of customer experience at resource management software startup Runn.io, says she hears the words ‘operational efficiency’ from customers a lot.

“Especially in this time, you need to achieve more with less,” Tiefensee tells Caffeine. “An application like ours is extremely useful when you’re growing your business, but it’s also extremely useful when you’re going the other way and have to let people go and be more efficient.”

Runn.io’s product helps businesses – from small agencies to large global corporations – visualise resource and capacity management, giving companies real-time data to make strategic, high-level decisions. Resource management is different from project management. The former focuses on optimising resources, like staff, equipment and financial assets. The latter focuses on planning, monitoring and controlling projects, tasks, timelines and deliverables. 

“Making sure you've got the right people with the right skills at the right location, with the right availability to match those initiatives that you've got going on,” says Tiefensee. 

Since its founding in 2018 by Tiefensee and Tim Copeland, Runn.io has raised around $11 million across multiple seed rounds led by GD1 and Singapore’s Wavemaker. The startup is gearing up for a Series A round in the next 12 to 18 months to help it expand further and add new capabilities, like incorporating an employee’s passions into capacity management.

“We want to be the tool that revolutionises the resource management space and gets that human aspect into the decision-making,” says Tiefensee. 

Runn.io has already become a global company despite its early stage. The startup has 380 customers in over 35 countries, including Australia, the UK, the US and Romania.

Caffeine sat down with Tiefensee to learn about how Runn.io has managed to scale lean by getting early community feedback, focusing on content creation and hiring fractional executives. 

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Community feedback

While Runn.io was still in R&D phase, the startup tapped community sites to get feedback and validate the product early on with the kinds of companies that it was targeting. At the time, that looked like Slack channels for digital project managers at small agencies. 

“Some of our early customers came from that, as well, who found us through those community channels,” says Tiefensee. “You can get those early adopter types who are really interested in new, innovative technology that way.”

Runn.io looked to Meetup groups to gain feedback and adoption. Tiefensee says the startup even paid around $1,000 per year to sponsor a local Meetup group in Vancouver, Canada – a market the company was trying to penetrate – to learn about the customer problem, make connections, spread ideas and get feedback.

“We were also not shy to show an early version,” she says. “Looking back on it now, I’m like, ‘Oh, no, we really showed this?’”

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Produce content early

One of Runn.io’s first big investments outside the founding team was on content marketing, which Tiefensee says is a low-cost way to get inbound interest.

“We hired a head of content marketing and freelancers early on to write about the topic of resource management and get those search engine rankings up,” she says.

The content strategy is still evolving, but it’s been a mix of creating blogs and content for the site, such as case studies, getting Runn.io mentioned on high traffic listicles displaying the “Top 10 resource management tools,” and doing social media collaborations. 

“I had an intern working with me one or two days a week, and I just had her scout the internet for everything that’s relevant,” says Tiefensee. “Like what are the podcasts and listicles where we can get some cooperation where if we write something about them, they’ll post something about us?”

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Fractional executives

Many startups today are tapping fractional executives, or part-time executives, to access a specific skill set without having to commit to a full-time hire. 

Tiefensee says Runn.io used this increasingly popular model to bring on a temporary head of marketing, “just to get us to that next level, help us build capability and figure out what that next hire needs to be.” 

“It’s a shorter-term investment and you can move back from it depending on how the business is going, rather than hiring that high level executive straightaway,” she says.

Tiefensee also noted that fractional executives can also help you find a full-time employee for the role when it’s time, particularly if you as the founder don’t have expertise in the area for which you’re hiring. 

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