Recent Posts
Video•Dec 3, 2025
C-Level Marketing Module 5: Demand Generation
The session reframes demand generation for SaaS leaders as a strategic, enterprise-value exercise rather than just top-of-funnel lead capture. The presenter argues most teams misallocate budget and effort to discovery and early funnel stages, and uses a case study of a $17m SaaS firm with 70% net revenue retention to show companies should prioritize retention and expansion. He provides a six-stage buyer-journey framework and urges working backwards—from retention to discovery—because retaining and expanding existing customers has far lower incremental acquisition cost and higher immediate value. The course series aims to equip marketing leaders to think strategically and influence boards and CEOs rather than focus solely on tactical campaigns.
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Dec 3, 2025
C-Level Marketing Module 11: Team & Budget
The session links marketing team structure and budgeting to board-level communication and enterprise value, arguing that resource allocation should follow strategy and measurement work completed earlier in the program. The instructor warns that marketers often lose credibility in boardrooms by...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Dec 3, 2025
C-Level Marketing Module 3: TAM & Segmentation
The session reframes TAM/SAM analysis by emphasizing customer value and winnability rather than raw market size, arguing companies should target the intersection of valuable and winnable customers. The presenter urges deep segmentation and cohort analysis—by vertical, account size and conversion...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Dec 3, 2025
C-Level Marketing Module 6: Content
The session framed content as a core C-level marketing pillar tightly linked to product marketing and demand generation, arguing that great messaging and assets drive a repeatable growth flywheel. The instructor emphasized that content appears across all customer touchpoints—not just...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Dec 3, 2025
C-Level Marketing Module 4: Product Marketing
The instructor frames the C-level marketing course as strategic, not tactical, and pivots into product marketing as the critical growth lever that precedes demand generation. He argues product marketing—rooted in customer analysis, positioning, and messaging—sets the table for the whole...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Dec 3, 2025
C-Level Marketing Module 8: Strategic Growth
The session reframes marketing as a subset of strategic growth, urging senior marketers to adopt a bird’s-eye view and contribute to company-level decisions beyond tactical execution. The speaker defines growth as maximizing total customer value through three core levers—acquire more...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Dec 3, 2025
C-Level Marketing Module 10: M&A
The session frames mergers-and-acquisitions as a primary inorganic growth lever—alongside pricing—used by private equity to rapidly scale companies, often outpacing organic demand-generation efforts. In practice investors build a platform investment and pursue add-on acquisitions to expand capabilities or geographies; industry...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Dec 3, 2025
C-Level Marketing Module 7: Sales Alignment
Week seven’s C-Level marketing session focused on Sales Alignment, arguing that senior marketers must deeply understand sales to truly be accountable for revenue. The presenter urged a cultural shift from a handoff model to joint ownership of the buyer journey,...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Dec 3, 2025
C-Level Marketing Module 2: Uncovering CEO & Board Expectations
The session explains why marketing leaders must proactively uncover CEO and board expectations to align priorities and drive enterprise value. It highlights a common mismatch where CMOs focus on tactics while CEOs and boards are preoccupied with cash flow, fundraising,...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Nov 29, 2025
How AI Really Impacts Portfolio Companies and Product Strategy
The video tackles the pervasive buzz around artificial intelligence in private equity, emphasizing how fund managers must evaluate AI both as an operational lever and a product differentiator for their portfolio companies. The speaker notes that AI has become a...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Nov 28, 2025
Investors Are Done Funding Inefficient Growth
The video addresses a growing shift among investors who are no longer willing to fund companies that prioritize rapid, capital‑intensive growth over profitability. The speaker emphasizes that businesses raising more capital than they generate in revenue are deemed “capital inefficient,”...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Nov 27, 2025
The 30 to 50 Criteria Behind GTM Evaluation
The video outlines a comprehensive go‑to‑market (GTM) assessment framework that can involve anywhere from 30 to 50 distinct criteria. It emphasizes that firms must systematically score each area to gauge the health and scalability of their GTM model, ranging...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Nov 27, 2025
Ep. 101: Vik Thapar, Cypress Growth Capital | Non-Dilutive Funding with Royalty-Based Capital
The episode centers on Cypress Growth Capital’s royalty‑based, non‑dilutive financing model, explained by managing director Vic Thapar. Cypress targets founder‑owned B2B SaaS firms that have moved beyond the early‑stage bootstrap phase—typically generating $3‑6 million in annual revenue—and are looking for growth...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Oct 30, 2025
Ep. 97: Rita Ferrandino, Arc Capital Development | The Downturn Playbook
Rita Ferrandino, co-founder of Arc Capital Development, outlines a practical “downturn playbook” for private-equity-backed companies, arguing firms must do disciplined operational work rather than treating AI as a quick fix. Drawing on two decades advising education and workforce-training businesses, she...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Oct 17, 2025
Your Best Growth Channel Might Be Your Existing Customers
The speaker argues that companies often overlook expansion within their existing customer base in favor of chasing new logos, and that tapping current clients can be a prime growth channel. They describe a consulting approach that maps customer ‘white space’...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Oct 16, 2025
Ep. 95: Ed Bryne, Scaleworks | Scaling SaaS with Sustainable Growth Through Venture Equity
Ed Byrne, partner at Scaleworks, outlines the firm’s “venture equity” approach to scaling SaaS: buy or invest in revenue-generating software companies, emphasize profitability and cash flow over rapid fundraising, and grow them via an in-house operating team based in San...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Oct 14, 2025
The 120-Day Foundation Plan
The speaker outlines a standardized playbook used to create value in lower middle-market acquisitions, centered on a five-part framework. The initial phase, dubbed "Fortify the Foundation," is a 120-day plan that follows a 10-day "hot list" of immediate post-closing tasks...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Oct 14, 2025
The CEO's Clock: Balancing Daily Ops and Long-Term
A leadership coach urges CEOs to treat time as their most important technology, warning that defaulting to constant firefighting leaves them trapped in daily operations. He recommends consciously allocating hours across three perspectives: the microscope for day-to-day execution, the binoculars...
By Shiv Narayanan
Video•Oct 8, 2025
SaaS Marketing That Scales: How to Drive Growth, Pipeline & Valuation
The presenter, a former SaaS CM who sold his company to private equity, argues that many B2B firms underinvest in marketing despite strong operational metrics, leaving pipeline generation and enterprise value on the table. He maps company maturity on marketing...
By Shiv Narayanan