Keep doing the things that "don't scale"

When you start a business, you need to do a lot of things that don't scale... 

And since I was the only employee at Herodesk during its first 16 months, everything depended on me, because obviously, what I didn't do didn't get done.

My days were split between building the product, talking to customers, trying to market it to attract new customers and all the admin/backend stuff needed to run a business.

It was fun, but also stressful because things didn't move fast enough.

Around September 2024, I got too busy and hired Sara to help with customer support and onboarding. 

Then again, in March 2025, I hired Ferhat to help me build the product.

And just now, at the beginning of 2026, four new colleagues joined the team. One more customer success manager, one more senior developer and two sales executives. 

So now we are eight people (we also have a part-time marketing manager) plus some agencies and specialists we've outsourced work to (like bookkeeping).

You can argue that things have started to scale and that Herodesk is looking more and more like a "real business" (whatever that means...)

And while I've already implemented a lot of systems and processes to ensure things run smoothly and we're automating all the "busy work" we can, we'll continue to do a lot of things that (on the surface) don't scale.

Free support and onboarding

We offer all our customers free and unlimited onboarding and support as part of their Herodesk subscription. Regardless of whether you have 1 or 20 paid seats, we gladly jump on one (or more) video meetings to ensure everything is set up and running the way you want. And if you need help along the way, we're there, too!

It requires man-power, but it's good business.

It helps ensure new customers get a great start with us (=reduces churn) and ensures that, if (lol, let's be real, when) there are issues, they are quickly resolved (=happier customers referring new customers to us).

And it's something most of our competitors don't offer.

Localised systems and integrations

Everything would be so much easier if we could just have our website in English and integrate with Shopify.

But the reality is that while many of our customers use Shopify, many also use other e-commerce platforms. And they all use a handful of other tools for warehouse management, returns and lots of other stuff that we need to support in Herodesk, too.

And some are not comfortable doing business in English. So we need to be local, too, both on our website, our product and when speaking/writing with our customers.

All of this also requires manpower to build and maintain, but it opens our market to thousands of customers we'd otherwise be unable to help.

Invoicing in local currency

This is actually pretty new. Until a few weeks ago, we invoiced everyone in EUR.

I quickly learned that's bad for business for two reasons:

First, our customers didn't like it and weren't always comfortable paying in a foreign currency. So for starters, we updated our pricing pages to reflect it in Danish Kroner, and now, we've updated our systems so customers can pay with DKK, too.

Second, the currency exchange fees are insane! I did the math, and by accepting DKK we're gonna save something like €10k on exchange fees in 2026 alone.

It would be much easier if all customers self-onboarded, if we only integrated with the top 10 partners, and invoiced everything in EUR or USD.

We could probably also run a learner business that way.

But then we'd be like everyone else. And competing directly with everyone else.

We want to help small and mid-sized web shops provide great customer service and meet them where their needs are.

And while we have a product that fully competes with the very best international alternatives, there's a huge segment of underserved customers who appreciate support in their own language, who need integrations with their local software providers, and who simply feel more comfortable speaking their own language and receiving an invoice in their own currency instead of EUR or USD.

So we'll keep doing that and a lot of other things that seemingly don't scale, even though it'll probably be less profitable than a super-optimised business.

But that's okay! Because that's how we'll differentiate ourselves and ensure we keep serving our customers, and on top of that build a great and profitable business.