How do you build a company that's purpose-led and performance-driven at the same time? How do you grow fast without losing focus? And what does it actually take to rethink hiring in this market?

On a recent episode of the SaaS Stories podcast, I spoke with Tom Larter, CEO of WithYouWithMe, who has a refreshingly grounded view on scaling a mission-led tech company globally — and on why the future of work belongs to companies that optimise for potential rather than pedigree.

Listen to the full episode of SaaS Stories with Tom Larter

Here's what we took from the conversation.

1. Scale starts with why, not what

When you're building something new, clarity beats complexity. Tom's emphasis is on starting every transformation — a product shift, a team restructure, a go-to-market pivot — with a simple explanation of why the change is needed.

Without a shared why, execution stalls, people get lost in tactics, and momentum quietly disappears — usually without anyone being able to say when.

At WithYouWithMe the strategy fits on one page, and everyone from leadership through to new hires is expected to understand and own it. That constraint does more work than it appears to. A one-page plan cannot hide a vague idea behind supporting detail, so the act of compressing it is what forces the clarity. Strategy isn't what you wrote down. It's what your team can repeat without opening a deck.

2. Leadership is alignment, not direction

The standout leadership point was this: being a great leader doesn't mean having the answers. It means creating the conditions for other people to perform.

For Tom that means listening properly, trusting domain experts, and staying accountable when a decision doesn't land. It's a style shaped by a military background, where young officers lead more experienced teams under real pressure. The SaaS translation is simple — your job isn't to prescribe solutions, it's to hold the vision, clear roadblocks, and keep your team equipped and aligned.

3. Hire for potential, not just experience

This is the cornerstone of the WithYouWithMe model, and the biggest idea in the conversation. Traditional hiring leans on resumes, degrees and behavioural interviews, which are all proxies for what someone has already done. When skills change this fast, what matters more is how quickly someone learns.

Using cognitive and personality assessments, the company matches people to roles they're likely to excel in, often well outside their previous industry — and particularly people from groups a conventional screen filters out, including veterans, neurodivergent candidates and refugees.

That shift doesn't only widen access, though that alone would justify it. It builds more adaptive teams, because people hired on aptitude arrive expecting to learn rather than expecting to apply what they already know. In a market where the required skills change every couple of years, that disposition is worth more than a matching CV.

4. Scaling too fast teaches you fast

Like many SaaS companies post-Series B, WithYouWithMe hit hypergrowth. In twelve months they went from a 20-person Australian startup to a 250-person global team across the UK, US and Canada.

Growth alone wasn't the win. That phase exposed gaps in product-market fit, operational maturity and sales predictability, and it led to a hard but necessary shrink-to-grow pivot focused on efficiency, tighter execution and founder succession.

If you're in a similar phase, the lesson is uncomfortable and useful: don't scale on potential revenue. Scale on repeatability.

The distinction is whether you can explain why you won the last ten deals. If you can, hiring more salespeople multiplies something real. If you can't, you are hiring people into an experiment and calling it growth — and the cost of unwinding that lands on the people you hired.

5. Local markets, local mindsets

The most tactical part of the conversation was about go-to-market. The same product lands very differently depending on how mature the local market is.

In Australia, prospects often needed educating on the problem itself. In the UK, HR buyers already understood the problem but wanted proof of value and clear differentiation. In the US, talent is abundant but distributed, which creates its own access and alignment challenges.

Translation isn't about language. It's about context — and your messaging, positioning and sales motion may all need to shift market by market.

6. Rethinking the hiring infrastructure

Beyond the assessments, the technology creates something closer to new hiring infrastructure for large organisations. It captures cognitive aptitude and learning potential through a proprietary algorithm, maps individuals to future-ready roles in cybersecurity, software engineering and data analytics, then tracks internal mobility and surfaces upskilling opportunities.

For companies wrestling with retention, skills gaps or diversity, the path is the same one: stop hiring for what people have done, and start building for what they can do.

7. AI as a tool for inclusion

Another theme worth sitting with. WithYouWithMe uses AI not only to streamline assessment but to infer skills from life experience outside conventional work — identifying core competencies from hospitality, caregiving or volunteering and mapping them to in-demand skills in tech, operations and customer service.

That does two things at once. It expands the talent pool by recognising capability a resume screen would discard — someone who has coordinated a busy kitchen has done real operational work, whatever the job title said. And it reduces onboarding friction by showing people where they're naturally suited to start, which shortens the anxious period at the beginning of a career change.

More efficient, and more human. Those are not usually the same direction, which is why this one is worth paying attention to.

8. Going global means adding focus, not markets

Tom's reflections on international expansion were candid. Going global doesn't mean going everywhere.

Canada and the UK worked because those markets were receptive and aligned to the value proposition. The initial US play proved more complex despite being the largest opportunity. Start with one market, win real customers, gather data, adjust, then scale. And choose that market because it fits, not because it's biggest.

Final thoughts

This wasn't a story about how a SaaS company grew. It was closer to a playbook for scaling with integrity — leadership that builds trust, hiring that discards old assumptions, and expansion that respects context.

In a market where conditions are uncertain and skills are evolving faster than job titles, the SaaS businesses that win will lead with clarity, hire for potential, and keep customers at the centre of product growth.

You don't have to start from scratch. You have to start thinking differently, and the one-page strategy is the cheapest place to begin.