Turn Customer Conversations Into Decisions in 4 Weeks
My cat has a more rigorous research process than most B2B companies (it's probly the glasses) Meanwhile, companies are treating customer research like throwing spaghetti at a wall and asking AI to help them figure out what noodles stick. Here's my actual repeatable methodology for turning customer/prospect conversations into impactful biz decisions, and it takes 3-4 weeks (not months): 1. Define the business question We don't start with research. We start with the decision the business needs to make. 2. Design the interview system I intentionally talk to different kinds of customers, not more of the same kind. That's how we tell what truly matters versus what's just situational. 3. Run deep buyer interviews - 2 to 3 weeks, not months I focus on real decisions and tradeoffs (not opinions). Behavior is more predictive than preference. During interviews, I do a lot of "Take me back to when..." many times your buyers never even thought about why they did the things they did and it's interesting to them too 4. Synthesize patterns (and outliers) into customer truth An insight only counts if it explains past behavior AND predicts future decisions. 5. Translate insight into strategic leverage Clear tradeoffs: I help figure out what to double down on, what to deprioritize, and why. 6. Align the org around one customer truth Insight only matters if the organization actually uses it to make impactful biz decisions. My cat puts those glasses on and investigates, one computer screen at a time, with complete, repeatable focus. Your customer research should work the same way. (Be like my cat. Have a repeatable system.) p.s. what did I miss? what's hard for you these days?
SaaS Valuations Dropped as Standards Rose, Not Quality
Public SaaS valuation multiples didn’t fall because the businesses got worse... ...they have fallen because the bar is higher 👇 Looking across public SaaS over the last 12 months, here’s what’s actually happened: 📉 Median EV / Revenue has fallen...
Auto-Close Tickets only when AI Reply Succeeds
Any @Zendesk experts out there? We have a gen AI reply out there for @haveibeenpwned which attempts to answer a support question, but has a fallback for if it can’t. How can we automatically close the ticket if a reply...
Join 250k+ B2B Leaders at SaaStr AI 2026
250,000+ B2B founders and operators in the SaaStr community. For 3 days in May, we're all going to be in the same place. SaaStr AI 2026. May 12-14. SF Bay Area. If you've ever gotten value from SaaStr—this is the...
HubSpot Alumni Land Top Roles at Rising Companies
I'm happy to see some of the HubSpot alumni joining some very high potential companies, particularly: 1. Dannie Herzberg leaving Sequoia to be President of Baseten 2. Ryan Meadows leaving Klaviyo to be CRO at Lovable 3. Katie Burke getting...
AI Accelerates Partners Turning Into Competitors by 2026
One thing that has really really accelerated the past 12 months is your partners competing with you. Expect the trend … to continue even more, and much faster, in 2026. The pace of the AI Age is leading to partners becoming competitors...
Agents Free Software Success From User Skill Limitations
One big problem with traditional software is it depends on the customer being great at their job. By definition most customers aren't above average in their work. A positive side effect of agents is they decouple software success from client...
Claude Cowork Needs Clearer Marketing and Standout Features
OK, I've got Claude Cowork feedback. TLDR - there are many things that I love about it, but even as a non-engineer, I will be sticking to Claude Code for now. I suspect Anthropic is doubling down hard on this...
Top Sales Reps Earn $300K on Pure Commission
Me: You don't pay sales reps a base salary. How many make good money? CEO: "more than half make $300k/yr" 🤯 First time I've heard of top sales reps takingn 100% commission work. Its working for this founder. LMK if...
SaaS Becomes Water: Brand, Not Product, Wins
The 2026 SaaS market will be like the market for selling water. But what’s the difference between Dasani, Evian, and the tap in your kitchen? Brand. Nothing else. “Having a product” is no longer the most challenging part of selling software. Everything...
Master AI Search: Strategies to Outrank Google Results
In 15 minutes, Michael King is joining SparkToro Office Hours to present what to do *DIFFERENTLY* to appear in AI tools vs. classic Google results. You should probably be there. I threw in a few samples from his deck as...
Launch Now, Iterate Later: Perfection Isn’t Required
Stop waiting for your startup’s product to be perfect because it never will be and that's okay so launch, get feedback, improve.
AI Must Boost Revenue or It Doesn’t Count
If your AI feature, your AI product, your AI team, your AI copilot didn’t materially boost revenue … 👎 It doesn’t count Try again
More Data, More Noise: Focus on Strategic Insights
The AI insight problem that nobody's talking about 😳 We added AI to our customer research process. Suddenly, everything is labeled an "insight" 🤯 🫣 🫠 Customer mentioned pricing twice? Insight. Someone used the word "integration" in feedback? Insight. Pattern...
Chat UI Isn’t Dead; Task Agents Need New Interfaces
"The UI is dead. Everything will be chat." This is the most dangerous myth in AI right now. I was talking about this with Lucas Puente , Slack 's VP of Research – and what we landed on changes how...
Build a Minimum Evolvable Product, Not Just MVP
When you're starting out, you don't just need a minimum viable product. You need a minimum evolvable product. In this episode of Main Function, @agupta offers an update to the classic MVP playbook. He’ll outline strategies for getting your first customers,...
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...
Attribution Pressure Triggers Budget Cuts, Spiking CAC
The "Attribution Death Spiral" is claiming victims. We used Wynter to survey 50 B2B mid-market marketing leaders. 58% are under extreme or high pressure to show pipeline results. Most can't prove what's working. Actual quotes: "Bad attribution data makes it...
Begin with a Single, High‑impact, Easy‑to‑deploy AI Agent
"My CEO says we need to do AI, but my CFO won't give my budget. What do you we do?" with @kylecnorton "The answer: start with one AI Agent that solves a high ranking problem ... that is easy to deploy."...
Opening the Crib Broke Her Sense of Safety
What seemed like an INNOCENT change of opening our daughter’s crib turned out to be our WORST decision of the last 6 months… When we got back from our summer trip, we thought it would be fun to open up our...
All 320 Podcast Transcripts Open for AI Exploration
Here are the full transcripts from all 320 of my podcast episodes. It's been super fun for me to play with AI to extract insights from this data. Now you can to. My only ask is that if you do something cool...
Measuring AI Investment ROI Becomes Essential for All Companies
Fired up* to work w/ @rfradin @jlarrison @aktwits @arampell @a16z on the Board of @Larridin. We used Larridin at Gainsight to measure the ROI of our AI investments & this is a problem every company will need to tackle. *Russ promised to...
Soft‑skill Platforms Can Generate Six‑figure Profits
People underestimate how profitable “soft skills” businesses can be. Live on @acquiredotcom: A 15-year social skills training platform built on live, coach-led practice. > $561K TTM revenue > $275K TTM profit > 4,400 active members Full listing: https://t.co/woKnEzxZXN https://t.co/Ejax6k1Lqx
Testing Daily Signals to Boost Operator Decision Speed
For 11 years, I’ve sent a weekly newsletter. Five hundred seventy-two issues built around links people consistently tell me they actually read. That cadence works. I’m keeping it. But frequency isn’t the same thing as usefulness. A lot of operator...
ARR Numbers Mislead when Definitions Are Vague
Most ARR disclosures are technically correct — and still wildly misleading. After reviewing hundreds of public tech company ARR definitions and calculations, one thing became clear: 👉 The problem isn’t the ARR number 👉 It’s how companies define, calculate, and...
Profit Focus and Strong Team Fuel Founder Happiness
I’ve talked to over 20 founders the past 4 weeks and every one of them is miserable. They want me to be miserable too … but I’m NOT. 11 years in, I’m more excited than ever. Here’s the top 5...
AI Destroys Per-Seat CRM Pricing, Shifts to Outcomes
The "per seat" business model is officially dead for CRMs. For the last 20 years, the logic of SaaS pricing was simple. You build a database, and you charge companies for every human who logs in to update it. The...
Three Hours Coaching Boosts Sales Attainment Above 100%
The data is clear: teams receiving 3+ hours of coaching per rep per month consistently outperform (thanks Gartner for the analysis). But most teams never get out of reactive mode. “I wish I had more time to coach my reps....
Deep Product Knowledge Outweighs CEO Polish
For a long while, you probably aren't a great CEO But you know the customers The software The feature gaps The roadmap The competition How to sell it How to market it How to build it So maybe as flawed as you are You are still the best CEO
Focus on Product-Market Fit, Buyers Come Naturally
“Businesses get bought, not sold.” - A random private equity fund bossman. I sold Robly in 2021, and I didn't go looking for a buyer. Robly was a grind. Only got to $3M ARR. Tiny company in a super-saturated space (didn't have...
Your Day Job Can Teach 11 Entrepreneurial Lessons
Some of the best founder training happens in your 9 to 5 if you’re curious enough to notice. In episode 815, I share 11 unexpected lessons a day job can teach you about entrepreneurship. Listen here 👉 https://lnkd.in/gfJNG6qV
Customer Research Sells; Product Research Builds
I'm noticing confusion in b2b around customer research - we think we're doing customer research ( ✅ ) but in reality it's usually just product research 🙈 (to improve the product) Product research asks: "How do we improve our features?"...
2026: AI Agents Transform Knowledge Work Through Scaffolding
The capability overhang right now in AI is pretty massive. Most of the world still thinks of AI as chatbots that will answer a question on demand but not yet do real work for them. Beyond coding, almost no knowledge work...
Most B2B AI Features Fail; Winners Do Differently
Hot take: 90% of "AI features" shipping in B2B right now are terrible. The companies winning are doing something completely different. Come to SaaStr AI 2026 May 12-14 and learn what actually works from founders with the receipts. https://t.co/Ff7DKVt1H2
Great Product Needs Relentless, Years‑long Promotion
Built a great product? Awesome. Now go tell everyone on the internet every day for the next 5 years. You got this.
Six Key Steps to Close an M&A Deal
What are the basic milestones of a process (M&A or capital raise)? 1. Pre-marketing Complete the marketing materials (information packet and buyer list) and get your house in order. 2. Marketing Reach out to buyers, execute NDAs, and share marketing...
Capture Customer Stories Early to Accelerate Deal Closure
I’ve sat in a lot of deal reviews where someone asks, “Do we have a customer story for this?” The answer is usually yes. But the pause that follows tells the real story. Someone remembers a win from months ago....
No Excitement, Wrong Product—Learned After $1M Loss
If you don’t see the excitement in people’s eyes, you’re building the wrong product… (spent $1M, wasted 1 year, been there, done that (NEVER AGAIN)) https://t.co/aL0rguGFxJ
Balancing Agency and Control Drives Enterprise AI Success
My biggest takeaways from Aishwarya Naresh Reganti and Kiriti Badam on building successful enterprise AI products: 1. AI products differ from traditional software in two fundamental ways: they’re non-deterministic, and you need to constantly trade off agency vs. control. Traditional...
Board Pressure Fuels Unsustainable Product Overreach
The Second Act Stumble Steve had a way of making growth sound inevitable. He’d done it once already—tripled revenue from $7 million to $21 million in 12 short months—and the board wanted another lap around the track. Another 3×. Another...
Post‑crisis “Diligence” Masks Underlying Process Gaps
I keep seeing the same thing after teams realize something important too late. The impact shows up in how work gets done. Extra checks get added before meetings. People start keeping private notes. Someone is asked to manually watch competitors....
Refresh Your Messaging Annually to Match Rapid Market Shifts
It's natural to stay in the mindset that things are today like they were last year or 2 years ago. But of course, they're not. The world changes very fast. The amount of new well-funded startups entering a space every...
Scalability, Not Ambition, Is Marketing’s New Bottleneck
The results are in from the Adapt or Die: 2026 Resilient Marketer Survey that I collaborated on with the team at MoEngage . One pattern is already clear: the challenge for most B2C marketing teams is no longer experimentation or...
Turn Testimonials Into a Real‑Time Sales Flywheel
Most SaaS companies waste their best testimonials. - They collect a few quotes - They bury them on a landing page - They forget about them and call it a day And then, as a result: Proof that never gets...
Variable Pricing Requires Cohort‑Based, Smoothed NRR Metrics
Does NRR exist and/or matter where traditional ARR no longer exists? Usage-based and outcome-based pricing didn’t make NRR irrelevant - but they make "NRR Slop" hard to defend... The old SaaS world was simple: Annual contracts → clean ARR →...
Secure AI Governance Enables Enterprise Trust and Innovation
Enterprises want the speed and intelligence of AI agents and automation, but never at the expense of security or control. Auditability remains essential in making that possible. Organizations need to verify what happened, when it happened, and why, and this...
Strong Docs Drive Success: Updating Omarchy Manual
The early success of Rails was assisted heavily by having solid documentation out of the gate. So I'm trying my best to do the same for Omarchy. Constantly improving and updating the manual. https://t.co/9tL5fdZ0T9
Your AI Strategy Deadline: SaaStr AI
If you're a VP of Sales, CRO, CMO, or Head of Product at a B2B company and you haven't figured out your AI strategy yet... May 12-14 is your deadline. SaaStr AI 2026. SF Bay. Come with questions. Leave with...
Squarespace Design Plugin Generates $340K Revenue, 39% Growth
Plugins + SaaS print money. Live on @acquiredotcom: All-in-one website design plugin for Squarespace freelancers and agencies. Faster builds, no custom code, sticky subscriptions. > $340K TTM revenue > $223K TTM profit > 39% YoY growth Full listing: https://t.co/Y8gnOYsd82 https://t.co/kiUkoUUPCu
Incumbents Shift From Open APIs to Closed Walls
Salesforce, Datadog & Epic are building walls. After two decades of flourishing through open APIs & data portability, the software industry's largest incumbents are locking down. https://t.co/7n6Tio3aJK