Incredible! What did you find was the best way to access the decision makers in your niche? Sounds like you contacted them directly and met with them, but what type of marketing/promo did you do? Seems like your SaaS hit a tipping point somewhere between year 1 and 2 and really caught fire?
For revenue specifically - we built it to sell from the outset (A book called "Built to sell" where the author speaks on Mixergy is a good primer). Specifically, we priced high (base package was $150/mo), recurring revenue (SaaS), focused on a few pains until we found the biggest one, only contacted clients that had large bases (eg: 1 decision maker could purchase it for 30 franchises), and marketed and spoke directly with the decision makers. (Getting in front of them in their offices and at conferences,and doing "gratis" learning sessions at one of their locations.) For meeting the decision makers - we found one influential person at a well known industry client, and give it to them for 80% off for few months and worked out the bugs. Then we leveraged them as social proof to go to the larger clients. Then the smaller guys will see the larger players using it, and follow suit.
