How We Scaled to 500+ Enterprise Clients

Four years ago, Public/Algo was three engineers in a WeWork, building trading infrastructure we wished existed. Today, we serve over 500 enterprise clients across 40 countries, processing billions of dollars in daily trading volume. This is the story of that journey—the decisions that worked, the mistakes we made, and the lessons we learned along the way.

I'm sharing this not to brag about growth metrics, but because I wish someone had shared these insights with us when we were starting. Maybe this will save another founder a few expensive lessons.

The Journey

Lesson 1: Solve Your Own Problem (Deeply)

The biggest advantage we had was that we were our own target customers. We'd spent years at trading firms dealing with the exact problems we set out to solve. We knew the pain intimately—not from customer interviews, but from living it.

This founder-market fit gave us several advantages:

• Instant credibility: We could speak the language of our customers because it was our language
• Better product intuition: We knew which features actually mattered vs. what sounded good in demos
• Network effects: Our former colleagues became our first customers and evangelists
• Hiring edge: Top engineers wanted to work on problems they cared about with people who understood them

Lesson 2: Enterprise Sales Requires Enterprise Infrastructure

Our first enterprise deal almost didn't happen. We had the technical capabilities, but when the CISO asked for our SOC 2 report, we didn't have one. When procurement asked about our disaster recovery plan, we had to improvise.

We spent the next six months getting enterprise-ready:

• SOC 2 Type II certification: Non-negotiable for enterprise deals
• Security documentation: Policies, procedures, and incident response plans
• Legal infrastructure: Standard contracts, DPAs, and compliance frameworks
• Support organization: 24/7 coverage and defined SLAs

This investment felt premature at the time—we were only 15 people. But it unlocked a market segment 10x larger than SMB. Worth every penny and every hour.

Lesson 3: Pricing Strategy is Product Strategy

Our initial pricing was based on what competitors charged. This was a mistake. We were significantly more efficient than legacy vendors but priced ourselves at only a slight discount.

The breakthrough came when we asked: "What if our pricing was so aggressive that it made the decision obvious?" This led to our 50% price guarantee—we'll beat any comparable vendor by 50%.

The results surprised us:

• Faster sales cycles: Price objections disappeared. Deals closed in weeks, not months.
• Higher win rates: We went from winning 30% of competitive deals to 70%.
• More inbound: The guarantee became a marketing message that spread organically.
• Better unit economics: Lower prices but much higher volume. LTV actually increased.

"We thought we were leaving money on the table. Instead, we were removing friction from the buying process. The velocity increase more than compensated for the lower prices."

Lesson 4: Culture Scales Harder Than Technology

Our hardest year was 2023. We grew from 50 to 120 people, and things started breaking. Not the technology—the culture.

What went wrong:

• New hires didn't understand why we did things certain ways
• Communication that worked with 20 people failed at 100
• Some early hires who were perfect for startup mode struggled with scale
• Values that were implicit became unclear as the team grew

How we fixed it:

• Documented everything: Culture, values, decision-making principles
• Hired experienced operators: People who'd scaled companies before
• Invested in manager training: First-time managers need support
• Created rituals: All-hands, town halls, off-sites to maintain connection

Lesson 5: Customer Success is a Revenue Center, Not a Cost Center

Early on, we viewed support as a necessary evil—a cost to minimize. This was backwards. When we started investing seriously in customer success, everything improved:

• NPS jumped from 35 to 72: Happy customers became advocates
• Churn dropped 60%: Problems caught before they became cancellations
• Expansion revenue doubled: Successful customers bought more
• Product improved faster: Direct feedback loop from implementation to product

Now, Customer Success is our largest team after Engineering. Every enterprise customer has a dedicated CSM who owns their outcomes.

Lesson 6: The Unglamorous Work Compounds

The decisions that had the biggest impact weren't the exciting ones. They were boring, operational improvements that compounded over time:

• Documentation: Every process documented. Saves thousands of hours annually.
• Automated testing: 95%+ code coverage. Ship faster with confidence.
• Data infrastructure: Every metric tracked. Decisions based on evidence.
• Interview process: Structured interviews with scorecards. Better hiring outcomes.

None of these made headlines. All of them made us better every single day.

What's Next

500 customers is a milestone, not a destination. We're still in the early innings of what we're building. The financial infrastructure market is massive, and we're just scratching the surface.

Our focus for the next phase:

• Geographic expansion: Deeper presence in APAC and LATAM
• Product expansion: New asset classes and use cases
• Platform ecosystem: Third-party integrations and marketplace
• AI capabilities: Making sophisticated strategies accessible to everyone

"The best time to build financial infrastructure was 10 years ago. The second best time is now. We're just getting started."

To Founders Building B2B Fintech

If you're building in this space, here's my unsolicited advice:

1. Be patient. Enterprise sales cycles are long. Product-market fit takes longer than consumer.
2. Be paranoid about security. One breach can end your company in fintech.
3. Hire people who've done it before. Learning on the job is expensive at scale.
4. Talk to customers constantly. Not just when things are broken.
5. Build for 10x, not 10%. Incremental improvements don't win enterprise deals.

The journey from 0 to 500 has been the most challenging and rewarding experience of my professional life. Grateful to everyone who believed in us early, and excited for what's ahead.

— Michael