Only 43% of SaaS Startups Sustain Growth—Reset GTM
New data: Growth endurance in software is down to only 43%. This is a wake-up call for SaaS 👀 - Fewer than 1-in-5 startups maintained or improved their growth rate from 2024 to 2025. - A startup growing between 25-49% in 2024 had a 1-in-25 chance of accelerating to 100%+ growth in 2025. This data comes from SaaS metrics & growth platform ChartMogul , where I'm an Analyst-in-Residence. We used a dataset of 700+ private software companies that had at least $10k in MRR, had data going back to 2023 or earlier, and that grew at least 20% YoY in 2024. The 2025 growth endurance numbers are a wake-up call, and these numbers were notably worse than in 2024. But, against all odds, some startups seem to be aging in reverse. Sara Archer and I reached out to some of the the exceptional startups that inflected their growth. They did 3 things differently from everyone else: 1. Reset GTM velocity and increased the pace 2. Shifted from one-off marketing tactics to recurring campaigns 3. Took a big pricing and packaging swing I unpacked growth endurance & my favorite examples of anti-aging startups in today's Growth Unhinged newsletter. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/ergdidsQ --- THANK YOU to the startups who shared their growth stories: Alessandro Colombo ( influencers.club ), Adam Crandall ( Benji Pays ), Eric Dunn ( Aesthetix CRM ), Brandon Gell ( Every Inc. ), James Hinkson ( AskElephant ), Stacy Schmitz ( Liveblocks ) & Tanmay Ratnaparkhe ( Predis.ai ).
Figma Monetizes AI Credits, Boosting Stock Surge
Figma is a rare bright spot amidst the SaaSpocalypse. The driver: a new AI monetization strategy that sent the stock price surging. Let's get into it. 1. Figma introduced an AI credit model last December, but they didn't actually enforce...
Create an AI‑Powered CRM in Just 20 Minutes
How to vibecode your own AI CRM in only 20 minutes with Claude ⤵️ We all need a personal CRM, whether we're managing sales, vendors, candidates, customers, investors, or partners. Yet most of us don't want to deal with the...
Revamp Seat Pricing: AI, Roles, Tiers, Credits
You don't need to stop pricing per seat in the age of AI. But you (probably) need to make seat-based pricing work harder. Seven routes to consider: 1. Seats can be used by people OR AI agents. If AI agents...
Craft Over AI: Mangomint’s High‑Touch Growth Model
Lately I’ve been thinking about how craft is the antidote to ubiquitous AI slop. Quality still matters, and it might even matter more than before when it’s easy to make something mid and hard to make something special. I’ve found...
Freemium Conversion Benchmarks: 3‑8% Good, 10‑25% Great
What's good free-to-paid conversion 👇 Back in 2023 I looked at data from 1,000+ products in what (I think) was the most in-depth product benchmarking survey to date. What I found: Freemium (self-serve) -- think: Canva 😊 Good = 3-5%...
Retention Drives Sustainable Growth; Low NRR Threatens Expansion
AI-native companies have been shattering growth records. The elephant in the room: what Cassie Young calls an impending "gross retention apocalypse". It becomes nearly impossible to sustain hypergrowth when you have a larger and larger install base that walks out...
Flexibility Over Credits: Salesforce Shifts to Employee‑Based AI Pricing
Many are predicting that 2026 will be the year of credit-based pricing. I think it'll also be the year of a backlash *against* credits. Salesforce makes a great case in point. They initially charged on a usage-based, per-conversation pricing model....
Intercom's AI Pivot Delivers 393% Growth, 30K Customers
The AI growth re-acceleration at Intercom is wild: 1. Fin went $1 to $12 million in a year -- more than a year ago. 2. On track to cross 30k paying customers by end of year. 3. Annualized growth is...
The Best Growth Tactics of 2025
The episode distills the top growth experiments of 2025, revealing that outbound/ABM, partner ecosystems, and events/community dominate despite AI hype, while tactics span content, PLG, launches, and paid ads. Readers shared 50+ real‑world tactics—from LinkedIn engagement outreach and intent‑based ABM...
Four AI Agent Pricing Models, One Dominates Adoption
Everyone seems to be talking about AI agents. The biggest problem not enough people are talking about: how to monetize & capture the value of them. Earlier this year Manny Medina (founder of Outreach & Paid ) analyzed patterns from...
PostHog Disrupts AI Pricing with Simple Cost‑Plus Model
What's new in AI pricing: giving up on the idea of value-based pricing? PostHog just announced new AI pricing that's disruptive in a way that might upset pricing experts. They're not trying to tie pricing to outcomes. They're not charging...
CEO Pushes AI, GTM Results Remain Disappointing
Everyone in B2B tech uses AI, relatively few see real GTM impact. Maja and I recently surveyed 195 B2B GTM leaders. Three-in-four said they feel top-down pressure from the CEO & Board to adopt AI. But the impact is a...
Cold Calling Drives $100M SaaS Growth Despite Low Price
You might not have heard of Housecall Pro, but it's a vSaaS juggernaut doing hundreds of millions in ARR. A surprising way they got there: Cold calling, even when the product started at only $4/mo 🤯. The math on that...
An Outbound Playbook for 2025
In this episode, Kyle talks with Fivos Aresti, co‑founder of Workflows.io, about the four‑pillar outbound playbook that drove their growth to $2M ARR in 2025. They stress a hybrid approach that blends manual cold outreach for Tier 1 accounts with AI‑enhanced,...
