How Quavo is scaling past $50M in revenue—and landed $300M in growth capital—validating the Launchpad model
In a market where building software products has often meant raising millions to fund bloated engineering teams, Quavo stands out as a powerful counterexample. Founded by a team of former Bank of America fraud and disputes technologists, Quavo grew from a bootstrapped startup to a leading SaaS company with over $50M in ARR—culminating in a $300M investment from Spectrum Equity this year [1].
Their secret? A capital-efficient, outcomes-focused approach built on Pega Infinity—a platform which shares its core DNA with Launchpad.
We didn’t concern ourselves with full stack engineering from the beginning...We brought in Pega and AWS early, so our small team could focus on outcomes, not infrastructure.
-Joseph McLean, Co-founder & CEO, Quavo
From services to SaaS to Services-as-Software
Quavo’s journey began like many in the enterprise world—with services. But instead of remaining a consultancy, the team used each project to build reusable IP on top of Pega, gradually transitioning to licensing and then to a pure SaaS model.
“Those first three years were tough—we had to eat, so we took on consulting work. But we knew we wanted to own and maintain what we built so we could turn it into product,” said McLean. “It took us five years to fully pivot to SaaS, but we never had to raise big outside capital early on.”
That lean start enabled them to avoid dilution and build a true product company. Today, Quavo offers not just software, but a fully integrated “services-as-software” solution that can even take over a bank’s entire fraud and disputes operation.
The software is now just table stakes. What matters is the outcome...We help our clients shrink teams, increase compliance, improve outcomes—and we own those KPIs.
-Joseph McLean, Co-founder & CEO, Quavo
A platform built for speed—and scale
One of the keys to Quavo’s rapid rise has been their use of Pega’s core building blocks: case management, workflow automation, domain-specific logic, and cloud scale.
“We had our first customer up and running in five or six months with just 3 or 4 engineers,” said McLean. “That kind of velocity is unheard of with traditional SaaS development.”
Even today, with a $50M+ revenue base and an expanding number of clients, Quavo operates with just 20 engineers. That’s the power of building on a modern low-code platform that abstracts away infrastructure and accelerates innovation.
“We’ve only grown our engineering team 5x from founding to $50M in revenue,” McLean noted. “That speaks volumes about the efficiency of this model.”
Above: Quavo’s QFD™ dispute management software
The Ego Trap—and why you should avoid it
Don’t let your ego get in the way of progress. You don’t get points for writing more code. Use technology that’s already proven so you can focus on delivering outcomes your customers care about.
-Joseph McLean, Co-founder & CEO, Quavo
That mindset allowed Quavo to shift focus from code to customer impact—and it shows. Their outcome-based pricing now aligns value with customer success, charging per resolved dispute and scaling seamlessly across small credit unions and large banks alike.
Why Launchpad was built for stories like Quavo's
While Quavo began building five years ago (before Launchpad was available), their success story directly validates the model Launchpad was purpose-built to support. Launchpad includes all the core capabilities of the Pega Infinity platform (used by Quavo) for low-code development, including case management, workflow, UI, integrations, and automation—plus multi-tenancy, subscriber management, and a fully managed, auto-scaling runtime designed specifically for software companies.
With Launchpad, startups and product teams don’t need to reinvent the tech stack. They get a modern, usage-based platform to launch faster, operate leaner, and scale efficiently.
Launchpad solved for all the hard stuff—multi-tenancy, provisioning, integrations—so others don’t have to go learn the same lessons we did the hard way...There’s no good reason to build this stuff from scratch anymore.
-Joseph McLean, Co-founder & CEO, Quavo
Final word: The future Is outcome-driven
Quavo’s story is proof that B2B software companies can scale faster, operate leaner, and deliver better customer results—if they start from the right foundation. With the accelerated growth of AI, agentic automation, and customer expectations; outcomes—not tech stacks—are what matter.
At the end of the day, no one buys software because of your code. They buy it because you deliver results. That’s what we focus on—and that’s what Launchpad enables.
-Joseph McLean, Co-founder & CEO, Quavo
Looking to drive outcomes by building, enhancing, or replatforming your software? Try out Launchpad Explore for free and start exploring what’s possible.