When you’re an engineer, the temptation is always the same: build more features before launch, make it “perfect,” and then maybe let users see it.
But in today’s SaaS market — especially in fast-moving spaces like workplace collaboration — that approach is often fatal. Competitors move faster, user needs change mid-development, and “perfect” ends up being irrelevant.
Dave Schatz, co-founder of Circles for Zoom, took the opposite route. He built the simplest possible version to solve his own problem, put it into the wild, and let customer feedback pull the product forward.
His approach offers a playbook for SaaS founders looking to ship faster, learn earlier, and scale with less waste.
Lesson 1: Build for Yourself, But Don’t Stop There
The first version of Circles for Zoom was a hack for Schatz and his co-founder:
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Problem: Zoom monopolized their entire desktop during working sessions.
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Solution: A lightweight overlay that turned meeting participants into movable circles, freeing up screen space.
They didn’t try to guess every use case — they built something that worked for them. Then they put it in friends’ hands, saw demand grow, and quickly set up a landing page to test interest.
SaaS takeaway: Start with a real pain you feel — but test outside your bubble as fast as possible.
Lesson 2: MVPs Are Easier to Improve (and Easier to Use)
The early product had minimal features. That wasn’t a weakness — it made onboarding simpler and feedback sharper.
Every feature request went through a tight feedback loop:
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Talk directly with users via email, Zoom, or a dedicated Facebook group.
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Ask why they wanted something, not just what.
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Ship small improvements quickly to show responsiveness.
Consulting insight: Simple products surface clear signals. Overbuilt products create noise — and confuse users.
Lesson 3: Retention Before Growth
Schatz and his co-founder oscillated deliberately between growth efforts and retention improvements:
“If you’re not building a great product experience, you’re just building something designed to churn.”
They prioritized fixing bugs and improving stability over rushing new growth campaigns — crucial for meeting-critical software where crashes break trust instantly.
SaaS parallel: In categories where your tool is mission-critical, reliability is part of your marketing.
Lesson 4: Ship Fast, But Test What Matters
Both founders came from big tech — Facebook and Amazon — where speed is encouraged but stability is sacred for core experiences.
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Adopt “done is better than perfect” for non-critical features.
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Apply “move fast” principles only where failure is tolerable.
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Heavily QA anything that touches the live meeting experience.
For founders: Not all parts of your product deserve the same release velocity.
Lesson 5: Let Users Show You New Use Cases
One unexpected behavior: Teams were leaving Circles “always on” throughout the day, muted but visible — recreating the feeling of working together in the office and enabling quick, unscheduled chats.
That insight came from observing and talking to customers, not from the original roadmap.
Consulting insight: Your most defensible features often come from watching how customers use your product, not from building what you imagined.
Lesson 6: Compete With Awareness of Timing & Market Dynamics
Circles operates in a crowded collaboration space with rapid change:
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The pandemic forced millions into remote work overnight.
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Competitors are raising large funding rounds.
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Popular meeting platforms shift (Zoom, Google Meet, MS Teams).
Schatz’s approach:
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Stay lean until growth is repeatable.
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Consider funding only when product-market fit is clear and money will directly fuel defensible growth.
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Avoid over-hiring until timing and positioning are right.
Lesson 7: Community as a Growth Lever
Rather than just a support channel, Circles’ Facebook group became a peer-to-peer help hub and product feedback engine.
Growth tactics:
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Link the group in every product update email.
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Surface it in-app.
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Publicly thank users who contribute feedback.
SaaS takeaway: Owned communities can reduce support burden and deepen user loyalty — but they grow best when integrated into every customer touchpoint.
Consulting Takeaway for SaaS & Tech Leaders
Circles for Zoom’s journey reinforces seven critical growth principles:
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Ship fast, learn faster — perfection is the enemy of progress.
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Stay close to your users — their workflows are your roadmap.
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Retention is the foundation of growth — especially for mission-critical tools.
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Segment your speed — some features can move fast, others must be bulletproof.
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Mine unexpected behaviors — new value often hides in edge cases.
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Time your funding — raise when it will accelerate, not distract.
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Invest in community — it compounds learning and loyalty.
In volatile, competitive markets, the companies that win aren’t the ones that build the most — they’re the ones that learn the fastest, listen the hardest, and grow on top of a product people refuse to give up.