No matter... even a 20% RoI handsomely beats the market. This is a pump-and-dump scheme, but easier because you can directly manipulate market value of the product. No need for market-manipulating pump. SaaS gross margins are enormous, and lock-in is real, which makes this tactic possible.

Also, in such cases, the very biggest customers will probably be the last to exit. Little people will run away as soon as they can. Big ones will cut deals.

The tighter a product is bound to an organization's day-to-day, the harder it is to throw out wholesale. For agencies where hourly billing is bread-and-butter, time-tracking software is used by every single person at least once an hour (if not six minute increments). And that in turn feeds all of finops, which in turn impacts billings and collections, and therefore monthly cash flow. You can't just pluck out Harvest if it is the input to all of that.

So, a savvy PE player like bending spoons can privately bend the rules (pump prices instead of markets) and push commercial relationships to the limit where they are the necessary evil (dump all customers except those that are fully dependent).