Case 05 — Reinventing the Business Model
Reinventing the Business Model
How changing how we charged — not what we built — unlocked a new growth curve at Alqua
Alqua was a MarTech SaaS platform — Big Data and Social Media intelligence for marketing and digital teams. After a prolonged period managing the departure of founding partners, we emerged with a clearer focus: media companies. The problem was that media companies, particularly in Spain, were not flush with budget.
Getting a media company to commit to a monthly SaaS subscription required a procurement process, multiple approval layers, competitive tenders, and months of sales effort. We were spending enormous energy on deals that either didn't close or closed too slowly to sustain our growth.
The product hadn't changed. The market hadn't changed. But the way we were trying to enter it was fundamentally wrong for the customer's reality.
The insight
The insight came from understanding how media companies actually made money — and what they were willing to spend on versus what they weren't. A media outlet struggling to justify a SaaS subscription would think differently about a banner placement on their own website. Advertising inventory was a familiar concept. It had a direct revenue link.
We studied Seedtag — a contextual advertising platform that had built a sophisticated publisher offering. They had solved a version of the same problem: how do you build a relationship with a publisher that starts with value and grows into dependency?
We designed a model that took that logic and adapted it to our context. Instead of asking media companies to pay for a subscription upfront, we would offer to place a banner on their site, monetise it through our partner network, and share the revenue. Platform access came with the banner. The monthly fee was variable, tied to banner placement and type.
Building and validating the model
Before changing anything in the product, we spent time understanding how Seedtag and similar publishers had structured their offerings. We weren't copying — we were learning the logic of a model that worked and adapting it to a different context.
One key design decision: make the entry point as frictionless as possible. The banner setup process was engineered to be fast and mechanical — something completed quickly without heavy involvement from the client's technical team. Speed of setup was a competitive advantage: if we could go from signature to live placement faster than anyone else, we reduced the risk of deals dying between contract and activation.
Testing across markets
The hybrid model — banner-based entry with optional monthly plans — worked well in the Spanish market, where media budgets were tightest and SaaS resistance was highest. We validated the model there before considering other markets.
In Latin America, where media companies had different budget dynamics and less resistance to direct SaaS pricing, we continued selling monthly plans. The same product, two different commercial models, calibrated to market reality.
One of the most effective sales tools was a personalised demo showing exactly how the banners would look on the client's own website before they signed anything. We would mock up the Sticky Ad and In-Image Ad formats in the client's actual site environment. Seeing it rendered on their own pages removed the fear of damaging editorial credibility more effectively than any explanation could.
The upsell path
The entry banner was never the destination — it was the door. Once a media company was live on the platform and seeing value, we introduced the plan structure as an upsell: more features, more data, more capabilities, at a higher fixed monthly fee.
The goal over time was to shift the revenue mix toward higher fixed income per client, reducing our dependence on advertising performance while increasing the client's switching cost.
Weekly
Deal cadence
vs monthly before the model change
80%
Customer retention
Across the Alqua client base during this period
2
Commercial models
Spain (hybrid) and Latin America (SaaS) — calibrated to market
This is the case I think about most when someone talks about product innovation. The instinct in most product teams is to solve growth problems by building more — more features, more integrations. Here, the growth problem was solved entirely by changing the commercial terms. The product didn't change. The market didn't change. The contract changed.
The lesson I carry is that pricing is a product decision, not a sales decision. How you charge shapes what customers value, how they engage, and what growth path is available to you. Moving from pure subscription to hybrid revenue-share didn't just change our conversion rate — it changed our relationship with clients. They came in as partners in the revenue, not as buyers of a service.
“The fastest way to grow was not to improve the product — it was to remove the reason people weren't buying it. Sometimes the barrier isn't what you build. It's what you ask for in return.”