SaaS Business Growth

The shift from seats to agents pressures SaaS margins. At the same time, the longstanding practice of getting enterprise customers to pre-commit and also prepay for functionality they may never deploy will get harder as CIOs look to free budget for their own LLM costs. To weather the storm, some SaaS companies have increased prices. This boosts revenue and margins in the short-term but can't be done repeatedly and creates even greater scrutiny over shelfware as procurement teams right-size and shift contracts to "pay as you go." To achieve sustainable growth, SaaS companies need to become hyperefficient at sales and marketing. Here are common ways to do so and who's doing it well: 1. PLG. Shopify and Atlassian exemplify efficient go-to-market based on product-led growth with free trials, low-friction upgrades and upsells. Their sales teams only need to get involved in the biggest opportunities at the largest accounts; every other step in acquisition, commercial transaction, activation, onboarding, and growth is self-service and automated. 2. Vertical SaaS. Guidewire Software and Veeva Systems are laser-focused on insurance and life sciences, respectively. Rather than casting a wide net, they spear-fish with deep domain knowledge and purpose-built solutions for that industry's specific workflows and regulatory requirements. Guidewire doesn't need to buy Super Bowl ads– their annual customer conference is the Super Bowl for property & casualty insurance executives. Nearly zero GTM effort is wasted– unsurprisingly they're the two most efficient on the list. We modeled Hearsay Systems after both these companies, and this focus allowed us to win incredible market share among Fortune 500 banks & insurers despite only raising $60M in totality. 3. Relocate operations to lower-cost regions and AI. This is private equity's favorite playbook to take costs out of companies they buy. Field sales continues to shift more to Zoom, which means you can hire AEs anywhere. Inside sales contributes a greater % of revenue as PLG motions are established. AI handles top-of-funnel leads qualification and generating marketing content and campaigns. 4. Focus on gross revenue retention. Because of high customer acquisition costs in #SaaS, leaky buckets are margin killers. Use LLMs to help customer success teams analyze product usage, segment cohorts, and identify opportunities to increase value realization. Put in guardrails to prevent sales reps from overselling an account, as doing so only creates churn in the next renewal cycle. 5. Introduce another product line. This only works if your new product has the same buyer as your existing products. Many SaaS acquisition pro formas fail to actualize for this reason, as it's not actually feasible to have the same AE sell both old and new products. Every SaaS company right now needs to double down on one or more of these levers in the AI era.

Every founder has a slide that says, “We’ll acquire customers through content marketing, paid social or partnerships.” And in 2025, nearly every investor has learned to ignore it 😿 The old go-to-market playbooks are not working anymore. The channels are saturated, the costs are high and the returns are diminishing. From where I sit as an early stage investor, a generic GTM plan is no longer a sign of preparation - it’s a red flag. It shows a founder is ready to execute someone else’s old strategy, not discover a new unique one tailored to their own business. Founders who are successful finding their first customers and raising capital are demonstrating something else entirely - not a polished plan, but a series of insightful discoveries. Here’s what I see actually working to prove you can access a market: ✔️ A Portfolio of Scrappy Experiments. Before you can find a scalable channel, you need to prove you can find ANY channel. The most impressive founders show up with stories of things that don't scale. They acquired their first 50 users by building a free tool that solved a tiny problem for their target user or by personally engaging in a specific Subreddit or Slack community. This proves you have the creativity and grit to find customers where others aren’t even looking. ✔️ A Founder Who Is the Distribution Channel. Early on, your most powerful GTM advantage can’t be bought because it’s actually YOU. Investors are looking for a founder with a unique ability to reach the market. Are you an expert with a following in your industry? Have you built a deep, trusted network that represents your initial customer base? Show how your personal brand and unique insights give you an unfair advantage that no amount of ad spend or marketing can replicate. ✔️ Mastery of a "Micro-Funnel." Instead of a broad, leaky funnel, demonstrate that you can dominate a tiny, efficient one. Prove that you can convert a very specific persona from a very specific source with incredible efficiency. For example: "We can turn a clinical research coordinator from a specific LinkedIn group into a qualified lead for $15." This level of precision is far more impressive than a vague, top-down plan to capture a massive market. It shows you have a data-driven foundation from which to grow. The goal of an early-stage GTM isn't to prove you can scale, it's to prove you can learn. Your first GTM strategy shouldn't be a playbook - it should be a lab notebook full of weird and (hopefully) winning experiments. 🙌🏼 Shout out to Alex Iskold from 2048 Ventures for teaching me a lot about funnels over the years and what he calls 'magic moments' 🙏🏼

When I was the first and only marketer at a SaaS company, I created a document that enabled our growth from five figures ARR to $1.5M ARR in 9 months (and helped us secure Series A funding) This doc informed our: - positioning - messaging - what our team wrote about on LinkedIn - what our sales team talked about with prospects - what we created all our content about I referred to this document as our "Realm of Relevancy" It covered every bit of critical info that was relevant to the world around our product: - what existing process(es) is our tool impacting or optimizing? - why is that existing process no longer the best or most efficient way to accomplish something? - if the current status quo is no longer the best method or approach, what is? - how do we go about implementing this new method? What all does it entail? - what changes, transformation, or outcomes can we expect if we successfully implement this new method? - how did we even get here? - how will this continue to evolve in the next 5-10 years? I gathered all this info from a 4-5 hour call with my 3 co-founders in the form of dozens of bullet points (bullet points vs. a slide deck are easier to operationalize and turn into endless topics) I then bucketed all the bullet points into a 3-part story: 1. The first part covered everything around why the current way to do things was no longer the most efficient way 2. The second part of the story covered everything around how we could do that thing now 3. And the last part of the story covered everything around what outcomes you could expect if you adapted to this new way I focused on communicating everything that was in my RoR to our audience through different forms of (educational, tactical, and entertaining) content I had our internal team (from our CTO to our CS rep) and influencers do the same We spent 9 months educating our TAM and changing the way people think about a semi-controversial topic such as attribution, driving over $10M in pipeline in the process I also used this experience to create RoR's for companies like Meta and Cognism If you want to see the exact doc I described in this post: 1. Comment below with the word "doc" and I'll send it to you 2. Send me a request with a note saying you want the doc and ill send it to you ultimately, great marketing teams are already communicating all of this through their content, it's just not all collected into one cohesive story that helps them make sense of it themselves and guides them Your CEO is already telling this story to other execs at dinners, she just hasn't been armed with something that explains how this complicated story should be unraveled so no important piece of info is missed and everything makes sense to the listener you need to build this story for them Comment below to see how P.S. I'm also working on a high-ticket service where I'll create a RoR for you, so drop me a message if that's of any interest—I'm only going to take on two at a time

A bootstrapped SaaS just sold for $200M. No VC funding. No fancy marketing. No Silicon Valley office. Just pure product-led growth that turned into a $50M ARR business. Here's the untold story of Wingify's incredible journey: For the last 15 years, SaaS companies followed the same playbook: • Raise massive VC rounds • Burn cash for growth • Focus on expansion over profits But Wingify chose a different path. Here's what they did instead: It started in 2010 with a simple idea: Help businesses make better decisions with A/B testing. The twist? Instead of copying existing tools, they built the world's first visual editor for A/B testing. No code required. Just point and click. The results were immediate: • 1,000 beta users • 10 paid customers on day one • First enterprise deal within months • $1M revenue by 2011 All without a single dollar of outside funding. But they were just getting started: While competitors chased funding rounds, Wingify focused on innovation: • First to launch heatmaps (2010) • Pioneered visual editing (2011) • Integrated with Google Analytics (2012) • Built Bayesian statistics engine (2015) Each innovation drove organic growth. Think about what this means: When you're bootstrapped, you can't rely on fancy marketing. You can't outspend competitors. You can't hire hundreds of salespeople. You have to build something people actually want. The numbers tell the story: 2011: $1M ARR 2021: $25M ARR 2022: $30M ARR 2024: $50M ARR All while staying profitable. But there's an even bigger lesson here: You don't need: • Billions in funding • Hundreds of engineers • A Silicon Valley office Just: • A great product • Happy customers • Sustainable growth The playbook is about to change: Every SaaS founder studying Wingify will realize: • Product > Marketing • Profits > Growth • Sustainability > Scale The era of endless fundraising is ending. Here's what happens next: 1. More founders choose bootstrapping 2. Focus shifts to unit economics 3. Products win over marketing 4. Customers matter more than VCs But there's something even bigger happening: The acquisition shows that you can: • Build in India • Sell globally • Stay profitable • Exit big Without playing the VC game. The lesson? Sometimes having less means building more. Wingify proves you don't need: • Massive funding rounds • Fancy offices • Complex strategies Just a great product and the patience to grow sustainably.

B2B SaaS revenue growth rates have slowed by over 50% in the past 2 years. And CAC Payback periods have skyrocketed by nearly 100% in the same period. These two effects combined put massive pressure on core financial metrics, business profitability, and enterprise value. The root cause of this is Go-To-Market Bloat (GTM Bloat) where B2B companies invest significant money in Sales & Marketing and do not get the appropriate return on investment. Sales & Marketing is by far the largest expense on a B2B company P&L - on average 40%-60% of total revenue; and 2-3X more than they spend on Product Development, Engineering, and R&D combined. GTM Bloat occurs across the entire go-to-market, including People, Programs, Process, and Technology. (1) People - Too many headcount on each GTM team, caused by outdated financial planning models, in addition to the overspecialization of roles on GTM teams (SDR, MDR, Solutions Consultant, AE, Onboarding Manager, CSM, AM, etc.). Or 90-person Marketing team that should be 35 people. Average sales quota attainment of ~40% is another clear indicator of headcount bloat. (2) Programs - This mostly happens in the Marketing budget. B2B companies dramatically overspend on large scale events and digital performance marketing - up to 15% of total revenue - and do not get anywhere close to an appropriate measurable ROI on these significant expenses. (3) Processes - Teams, meetings, reporting cadences to support programs that don’t work. SDRs to follow up with “leads” and get a meeting less than 1% of the time. Inefficient processes create significant bloat especially when operated at scale. (4) Technology - Buying an ABM tool for $200k per year and barely using it. So much bloated headcount increases license & seat costs for all SaaS subscriptions by 2-3X. Too many $100k+/year point solutions used by 1 department or team and not integrated or essential to the full GTM. __ Solving GTM Bloat is the #1 opportunity in a B2B company today to increase enterprise value. This is now a CEO, CFO, and Board Level issue. Eliminating GTM expenses that do not provide appropriate ROI could increase EBITDA by 20% or more. Restructuring the existing investments in GTM to deliver the appropriate effectiveness could increase growth rates by up to 2X (e.g. from 18% to 36% YoY). Or more than likely, the solution is a mix of both of these - eliminating low ROI expenses to improve EBITDA and doubling down on strategies that are already working to create breakthroughs in growth rate. #gtm #gotomarket #finance #b2b #sales *Benchmarks on public SaaS growth rates and CAC payback periods ℅ David Spitz and BenchSights. Shoutout to David for some of the best work in the industry connecting GTM with Business Financial metrics based on actual data (not surveys or inaccurate aggregated data). **At Passetto, we see similar, yet more amplified trends in our standardized analyses of CRM & Financial Metrics of private middle-market B2B companies

Customer success has a problem. According to Bain’s Customer Success Practitioner Survey 2024, 60% of B2B SaaS companies have a customer success team within their organizations. And yet, net revenue retention is dropping like a led balloon. According to the survey, two thirds of customers believe their needs are only *moderately* being met, or worse. And to make matters worse, there’s a disconnect between what vendors think customers want and what they say they need. Just look at the graphic below. Customers’ TOP priority is technical assistance implementing the product. When asked, companies prioritize the same need LAST. How can this be? How can companies be so disconnected from the voice of their customers? Here are the fundamentals you need for customer success: 1/ Specialized implementation and onboarding  Dedicate people to every customer or build onboarding into the product. 2/ Fantastic support This is the "dial tone" of customer success. Always on, always reliable, always fast and helpful for customers. Yes, we need to engage with customers proactively but don't underestimate the power of a quick, high-quality response when a customer has an acute need. 3/ Intuitive products The Bain article address it, but software products—especially enterprise software—needs to be better. Better fit to purpose. Better usability. Easier to implement and configure. And not only the physical product, the documentation, self-serve resources, support, and services around it. The *whole* product. Product development must pursue customer success goals, not just blindly ship feature after feature. 4/ Account management Implement proactive account management with a bent toward customer success. Teach these folks how to do value creation plans and business reviews, but also give them commercial responsibility for growing accounts. The best account management teams have always done these things. In 2024 these expectations aren’t too high. I’ve seen so many companies build huge customer success teams to fill the gaps in the product and give a high-touch experience to top customers. It doesn’t work because human knowledge doesn’t scale unless it’s written down, or better yet, built into the product. If you’ve followed me for any time, you know I’m an advocate of customer success—the OUTCOME. But many customer success *teams* need a major makeover. Generic, high-level, jack-of-alll-trades CSMs just won’t cut it anymore, and it's a drag on your P&L. The data in the Bain report tells the story. How are you addressing this in your company? — 📨 Jeff and I publish a weekly newsletter (free) for Chief Customer Officers and those who aspire to the role. We address issues like this which threaten to limit the success of SaaS companies. Details ⬇️ #customersuccess #saas #sales #product Jay Nathan GrowthCurve

In 27 months, I grew my SaaS startup from $1M-$10M ARR in with only 1 salesperson doing 100% OUTBOUND SALES. Here’s my 7-step playbook for building a lean, high-velocity cold email machine: Step 1) Make sure you have product-market fit - My thesis for 2023 and beyond is without word-of-mouth, nothing will work - But if you have strong word-of-mouth (from PMF), many things can help speed you up, including high-volume, low conversion outbound - which we ran Step 2) Identify your target audience - We used BuiltWith to ID domains who used complimentary tech - We then ran the site traffic with SimilarWeb - For us the winning combination was Shopify + Klaviyo above 10k/mo uniques Step 3) Get creative about getting email addresses - The *lazy* thing to do is pull directly from the data vendors - We find the contacts on Linkedin, then use Skrapp and Hunter to find emails - We would include up to 5 potentially relevant people and copy them all - We sell to the high end of SMB (so we always include CEO as well) Step 4) Create short email sequences - We have used a very similar 3-part sequences for the last 3.5 years - Email 1: Present the main idea. For us, “We can get you email addresses of your anonymous web traffic, even if they don’t fill out a form” - Email 2: Social proof from brands they truly admire (hard in the beginning) - Email 3: A super-simple use case email explaining the actual workflow Step 5) Write clear and simple copy. - Each email should be no longer than a few sentences - Make each sentence its own paragraph - Have no more than one idea per email - Keep it conversational - CTA is a Calendly link in both the body and signature of the email Step 6) Manually send the emails, rather than using automation tools. - We have a team of VA’s in the Philippines manually sending from Gmail - Any response gets routed back to a BDR/AE in the USA - The team in the Philippines also does the lead gen, very manually - Cold email gurus will say this is stupid and sucks, but … scoreboard! Step 7) A/B test the sh*t out of it. - Change something, pick a winner - Try to hone in on things to optimize - You’re building a machine that improves itself It may not work for everybody, but it worked for us. Happy to answer questions in the comments! 👇 TL;DR Step 1) Have Product-Market Fit Step 2) Identify Target Audience Step 3) Get Email Addresses Step 4) Create Short Sequences Step 5) Write Clear/Simple Copy Step 6) Send Manually Step 7) A/B Test

These truly are the Days of Change in SaaS. In 2021, it seemed like everyone is raising 3 big VC rounds a year, effortlessly. But for most of you, for most of us, it wasn’t any easier to raise VC capital. And now, it’s even harder. But you can bend the odds. You can make it easier on the VCs to fund you. A nice deck and a thoughtful demo are a good start. But you can do more. How? Have the full package, ready to go, on Day 1: 1/ A Truly Great Cold Email. Nail It Make the cold email so good, folks will want to invest just reading it. Resist the urge to ask for a coffee meeting. You probably won’t get it. 2/ Share the Deck Upfront The more detailed, the better. The goal should be a VC should want to fund you just reading the deck. 3/ A Partly Complete Team – Relative to Your Stage Just because you and your cofounder are great, that’s often not enough. At least break out who is handling all key functions, and how and when you are hiring to fill them: Sales, Marketing, Product , Eng. 4/ A Clear Path to $100m+ ARR. Maybe even $1B ARR Using comps in particular. Explain how there’s a clear path to a $100m+ business. Not saying it’s easy, or that you have it all figured out. But a clear path. With comps. 5/ Crystal Clear Context within a Big Space Explain clearly, immediately, crisply, how what you are doing is Big, in a Big Space. The real reason it’s a $100m+ ARR opportunity is because you are playing in a $10B+ space. Are you the next Datadog? The next Zoom? The next Workday? Not the same, but the next one? Great. At least that’s clear. 6/ A Fully Baked Financial Model — Including Crystal-Clear MRR and Operating Metrics A baked financial model, that includes sales and marketing costs, scaling over time, headcount, and comparison to comps, and when you’ll need next round(s). It doesn’t matter that’s it’s 100% correct. It matters you’ve thought it through. 7/ Strong Case Studies If you’re raising venture capital, you probably have at least 10 customers. Present the best case studies so it’s clear what you are saying is true in practice. 8/ Deep and Thoughtful Understanding of the Competitive Landscape A clear appreciation and respect of what has come before, and a true understanding of how to succeed in spite of competition, will show your intelligence in the space.  Don’t make investors do competitive research. 9/ Customer References Ready to Go If you get investor interest, and even have 10 customers, the very first pre-success … make sure it’s super easy to go write a check. Have 5+ customer references ready to go, on a sheet, on a list. 10/ Know and Share Your Churn and NRR Every public SaaS company now shares its NRR. You need to do the same. Hiring churn doesn’t help. I know you’re doing this with your product (at least I hope so) — Easy to Try, Easy to Use. And I know you’ll do the same with your customers — Easy to Buy. Do it for your prospective investors, and I guarantee you, it will go 10x better.

Let me walk you through the math that should make every CFO question their resource allocation. Using the latest 2025 industry benchmarks from SaaS Capital, here's the stark reality for a typical $200M ARR company: Revenue Responsibility: • Sales team: Manages $40M in new ARR (20% of total revenue) • CS team: Manages $160M in existing/expansion ARR (80% of total revenue) Budget Allocation Reality: • Sales: 13% of ARR ($26M) - up from 10.5% in previous years • Customer Success: 8% of ARR ($16M) - down from 8.5% in previous years Enablement Investment (based on industry benchmarks): • Sales enablement: ~$780K annually (3% of sales budget) • CS enablement: ~$160K annually (64% of CS teams spend <$200K on all programs, tools, and training combined) Investment per revenue dollar managed: • Sales: $780K ÷ $40M = $19.50 per $1M managed • CS: $160K ÷ $160M = $1.00 per $1M managed They're spending 19.5X more per revenue dollar on the team managing 20% versus the team managing 80%. In what other business context would this allocation be considered rational? Imagine if manufacturing allocated 19.5X more maintenance budget to machines producing 20% of output versus those producing 80%. Or if airlines invested 19.5X more in routes generating 20% of revenue versus those generating 80%. The CFO would be fired. Yet this exact irrational allocation persists in SaaS because of tradition, not logic. The Efficiency Data only makes this more baffling: • CS Efficiency: 1 CSM manages $2-5M in ARR • Sales Efficiency: 1 rep manages $600K-$1M in quota • CS is 2-5X more capital efficient, yet receives proportionally less investment The Revenue Economics defy conventional business wisdom: • According to BCG, "Over 25X more value is generated over a customer's lifetime than in the year when the customer is acquired" • TSIA data shows companies with dedicated CS teams achieve 17% base revenue growth vs. just 5% with a sales-only approach • Forrester Research found dedicated CS teams deliver 107% ROI within 3 years Remember the 120-day challenge from my earlier post? For this company, achieving a 1% churn reduction and 3% expansion increase would be worth millions, yet they're investing $1 per $1M in revenue for the team responsible for making that happen. The reality: McKinsey explicitly states that "slower-growing SaaS companies underinvest in customer success." This investment imbalance explains why many companies struggle to achieve the critical 3-5% improvements that transform business fundamentals. Next week, I'll explain why training is the most obvious investment decision in CS and why it's the most overlooked. What's the enablement investment ratio in your organization? Does it match your revenue responsibility ratio? Calculations based on industry benchmarks from SaaS Capital's 2025 Private SaaS Company Spending Benchmarks #CustomerSuccess #Enablement #Investment #ARR #ROI Previous Post: https://lnkd.in/g_bpYGzr Next Post: https://lnkd.in/g76FYFMf

Nobody likes being sold to. Yet, the best businesses generate leads daily, without pushing for sales.   How? They provide value first.  Here’s how you can attract leads on LinkedIn while building trust and credibility:  1. Educate, don’t sell   Instead of pitching your product, share insights, trends, and strategies that genuinely help your audience. If you teach them something useful, they’ll remember you when they need a solution. 2. Tell stories that resonate   People connect with real experiences, not product features. Share challenges you’ve faced, lessons you’ve learned, and behind-the-scenes moments. This builds trust and makes your brand relatable.  3. Engage and start conversations   Great content isn’t just about posting; it’s about interaction. Ask questions, reply to comments, and spark meaningful discussions. The more engagement your posts get, the more visibility you gain.  4. Showcase your expertise   Position yourself as a thought leader by sharing case studies, success stories, and actionable tips. When people see you as an authority, they’ll reach out when they need your expertise.  5. Make your profile a lead magnet   Your LinkedIn profile should work for you. Optimize your headline, about section, and featured content to clearly explain who you help and how.  6. Give more than you ask   The key to organic lead generation is consistency. Provide value consistently, and leads will naturally flow your way without the need for aggressive selling. Sales don’t happen from hard selling; they happen from trust and credibility.  Start creating value-driven content, and watch how the right people start coming to you.  What’s your go-to LinkedIn content strategy? Drop it in the comments!