In the HR tech world, assessments are nothing new. Companies have been using them for decades to evaluate talent. The challenge? For years, assessments were expensive, consulting-heavy, and inaccessible to small and mid-sized businesses.
Josh Millet, founder and CEO of Criteria, saw an opening — not to invent a category, but to reposition it for a broader market. By combining SaaS delivery with a buyer-first approach, Criteria grew from a bootstrapped four-person startup into a 150-employee global company serving both SMBs and enterprise.
Their journey is a masterclass in how deep buyer insight, targeted positioning, and sales enablement alignment can turn a mature category into a growth story.
Lesson 1: Start with the Buyer’s Pain — Not the Industry’s Process
When Josh was thrown into hiring at a previous company, he experienced the same pain every HR leader knows:
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Wasted time on interviews that were clearly not a fit within the first five minutes.
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Hiring decisions based on resumes and gut feel, not predictive data.
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A lack of tools that were easy to buy, implement, and use — especially for smaller companies.
Instead of building yet another “test,” Criteria’s early positioning focused on accessibility and ease of adoption:
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SaaS delivery with no consulting requirement.
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Simple, candidate-friendly UX.
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Subscription pricing instead of per-test fees.
Positioning takeaway: In mature categories, winning isn’t about inventing new problems — it’s about reframing existing solutions to solve buyer frustrations better.
Lesson 2: Let Market Signals Shape Your Move Upmarket
Criteria’s first seven years were spent serving sub-500-employee companies. Then enterprise buyers started knocking — not because of a deliberate pivot, but because the SMB-friendly product resonated with large orgs looking for speed and simplicity.
Rather than forcing a top-down enterprise strategy, Criteria:
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Captured these inbound opportunities.
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Adjusted the roadmap to meet enterprise needs (without losing SMB agility).
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Used feedback from large accounts to strengthen sales enablement content.
Sales strategy takeaway: When moving upmarket, let demand pull you there — and use early enterprise wins to guide messaging and product requirements.
Lesson 3: Invest in Pricing as a Growth Lever
Josh admits that underpricing was their single biggest early mistake. In the drive for accessibility, Criteria left revenue on the table — and later found it harder to adjust for existing customers due to anchoring bias.
Today, they treat pricing as a strategic function:
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A dedicated role focuses on pricing and packaging.
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Industry-specific value mapping identifies where higher pricing is justified.
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Pricing reviews happen annually, with data-driven adjustments.
Buyer intelligence takeaway: Different industries perceive — and receive — different levels of value. Pricing should match those perceptions, not just cost-plus math.
Lesson 4: Use Marketing to Lower Sales Friction
As a bootstrapped company, Criteria couldn’t afford heavy outbound sales early on. Instead, they built demand through:
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Google search marketing — initially paid, later supported by a content strategy that drove 3–4x more organic traffic than paid.
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Educational content that positioned assessments as a modern, data-driven HR practice.
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User experience as a marketing tool — making the trial and onboarding experience so seamless that sales cycles shortened naturally.
Marketing takeaway: In SaaS, demand generation isn’t just ads — it’s about making it easy for buyers to find, understand, and try your product without friction.
Lesson 5: Align Product, Sales, and Culture Around Buyer-Centric Value
From their own hiring to customer success, Criteria operates on the principle of hiring for potential over pedigree — the same value proposition they sell to customers. This alignment shows up in:
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Sales messaging that challenges legacy hiring methods.
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Product roadmaps that expand use cases beyond pre-hire to full employee lifecycle analytics.
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A culture that retains top talent by modeling work-life balance and growth opportunities.
Retention takeaway: When your product promise matches your internal culture, you create a brand buyers trust — and employees advocate for.
The SaaS Growth Playbook from Criteria
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Reposition mature categories around modern buyer frustrations.
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Let demand pull you upmarket and use those wins to refine enterprise positioning.
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Treat pricing as a strategic discipline, not an afterthought.
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Build demand with search + content before heavy outbound investment.
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Align culture, sales, and product around a shared buyer-centric value story.
Why this matters for SaaS & tech founders: Criteria’s growth wasn’t about creating an entirely new category — it was about finding the gaps between existing industry solutions and buyer expectations, then aligning marketing, pricing, and sales enablement to close them.