The new year doesn’t wait for January to start. By the time the calendar flips, Q1 outcomes are already in motion. What you choose to tighten or ignore in these last weeks is what you end up managing in March. As you close out 2025, here are the questions worth sitting with: 1️⃣ 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗤𝟭 𝗶𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘄? Unfixed leaks carry over. They don’t magically resolve themselves when the new year comes. 2️⃣ 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 [𝗱𝗼𝘂𝗯𝘁] 𝗶𝗻 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁𝘀? If you don’t have clean attribution now, you enter January blind and spend the first quarter relearning the same lessons. 3️⃣ 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗻 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿’𝘀 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸? Not everything that performed deserves to scale. Not everything that underperformed deserves to stay. 4️⃣ 𝗜𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘀𝗲𝘁 𝘂𝗽 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿? You don’t rise to your 2026 target. You default to the strength of the system you’ve built by December. The calendar reset doesn’t fix anything by itself. The work you honor now is what compounds: Execution. Focus. Decision quality. What choice do you make today that future "you" won't have to fix in March?

Startups: We've partnered with our friends at @stripe, @elevenlabsio, @attio @linear @meetgranola @asana @Lovable and 25 other great companies to build a monster bundle of all every product a startup needs for FREE. ...
Japan has been one of the earliest countries to truly embrace automation, and one of the first places UiPath expanded to as a company. Every time I return, I’m reminded how open and forward-thinking this market is. Spending the past...
Your customers don't know what they want. Every time a founder tells me "we're just building what customers asked for" I know they're in trouble. When a customer asks for a feature, they're describing a trunk. They feel their pain...
This post explains why we've seen massive migration from Airflow to Lakeflow in Databricks over the last 3 years. We started 3 years ago to focus on these workloads because reliability is the most important thing when you're running data...
Any definition of open source that doesn't include this flow is broken. I've used many a SaaS that I wish was this open source, so I could just fix my own annoyances on the spot and submit a PR!
Why did we make a CEO change at Exit Five? What does that mean about my role in the company? Why am I wearing sunglasses? Do I think I am cool? Am I on drugs? I sat down in my...
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...
A few years ago, I was telling my buddy Noah about the hard time I was having recruiting for a role. He challenged me: how much effort have I put in? Did I hop on airplanes and take potential candidates...
5 timeless marketing lessons + recapping last month at Exit Five, naming a CEO, plans for 2026 and more - good to be back podcasting https://t.co/fvEdzYz62p
Building a startup is realizing: Great marketing → great-fit customers OK marketing → bad-fit customers Bad marketing → no customers
A few years ago, I was telling my buddy Noah about the hard time I was having recruiting for a role. He challenged me: how much effort have I put in? Did I hop on airplanes and take potential candidates...
Great convo with John Glasgow of Campfire—AI-native ERP, real pain point solving, efficient growth. Must-watch 👇 https://t.co/TSr37V0Z82 #SaaS #AI https://t.co/5q2R5kdnMJ
How to Write a B2B Cold Email Sequence If you want cold email to actually work...not feel spammy or desperate...this guide walks you through how to craft a sequence that people want to open. We’ll talk tone, timing, value drops,...
One of the biggest decisions for a B2B startup is picking the right early clients. There is path dependency from those customers as you build your company for them. Selling to anyone who wants to buy can be dangerous.
The phrase captures something teams feel long before they can describe it. Early stage work depends on a level of shared pressure that only forms when people experience the same uncertainty at the same time. The speed of communication inside...
By the way, Sidekick knows about all the 200 new features. So if you go to admin and do /editions it will tell you which of the features are most relevant to your store
Rob's gifts keep coming. Move from Asana to Fizzy with the flip of a script. Aiming to get these migrations into Fizzy proper with UI and all, but for now, at least you can explore on your own.
Here's the criteria I use to evaluate founder-CEOs: First principles Lovable Obsessive Chip on shoulder Knowledgable I do each of these on a scale of 1 to 10 after every pitch. Founders who rank high have money, talent, and customers "FLOCK" to them.
Two weeks into my journey at Parloa, and it has already been eventful. From my first board meeting, to connecting with the team, the experience has been filled with excitement and exponential growth. What truly resonates with me is the...
So I’m starting to get emails from sales reps I’ve interacted with over the past months trying to get a deal done by year end. The problem? They added zero value. There’s really no reason to sign a contract for...
The ROSE Metric is coming to public companies in FY27! Have you heard of DISE? Public companies must disclose Employee Expenses and Selling Expenses starting in FY27. This will be really interesting to compare the org efficiency of the large...
"We should do what [competitor] is doing" But your competitor has: - Different funding - Different team - Different stage - Different customers Copying their strategy without their context = wasted runway. The best founders don't copy, they translate. https://t.co/7bDC7My53I https://t.co/CywuwdIQAZ
The biggest gains don't always come from new channels or big swings. They come from tightening the basics: • Clearer paths to book a demo • Targeting that filters out the wrong buyers • Offers that match where prospects are...
In a recent episode of #TheScienceOfScaling , I interview Ron Gabrisko , the Founding #CRO of Databricks . He has scaled Databricks over a nine-year period (so far) from essentially $0 to $2.5 billion in ARR. Here are a few...
We deployed 20+ AI agents & replaced our entire SDR team. 60K hyper-personalized emails. 70% open rates on ghosted leads. 15% of London ticket revenue from AI alone. The 5 things that actually work: 1⃣AI crushes the work humans refuse to do...
You can learn more about what to build by studying how customers explain their own problems than by running another sprint.
Version 1 is about making the most aerodynamic object you can. Eliminating all the little things that create drag. If your software was physical, how would it look in a wind tunnel? What would obviously be sticking out, ruining the...
SaaS companies serving the SMB space are often overlooked as potential investment opportunities because, when compared to enterprise SaaS providers, these companies tend to have higher churn and less well-known (or even unknown) customers. Despite these relative weaknesses, if positioned...
Friendly reminder that if you build a great product with zero marketing customers will not just randomly find your startup.
This is absolutely one of the craziest things that we have ever shipped. You can use rollouts to A/B test your new idea and wait some weeks for results… or just use SimGym to simulate your customer and get results...
Microservices is the software industry’s most successful confidence scam. It convinces small teams that they are “thinking big” while systematically destroying their ability to move at all. It flatters ambition by weaponizing insecurity: if you’re not running a constellation of...
Most consultants hide their shortcomings. Here’s mine: I ask too many questions. Like way too many. If you’ve ever worked with me, you know: “Why?” “Why now?” “What did the customer actually say?” “What were they feeling?” “What happened right...
We’ve raised our fourth fund for @tinyseedfund. To date we’ve back 210+ SaaS companies, and now have nearly $60M of assets under management. https://t.co/h7MW61ZUmF
Shopify: The RenAIssance Edition Sidekick updates, Agentic Storefronts for merchants, new tools for devs building commerce agents, AI simulations, and more 🧵 https://t.co/uPfOH6Cuaq
Most marketers are pressured to "do more with less". But 99% of them struggle with: - Unrealistic 10x growth expectations - Lack of trust from overpromising & underdelivering - Focusing on deliverables, not business impact Teams get stuck chasing big...
We just helped a founder get acquired for $1,650,000 on @acquiredotcom. Business was a bootstrapped SaaS. Multiple 4.8x profit. Took about 85 days from listing to close. 100% cash at closing. This was a life changing outcome for an amazing entrepreneur. https://t.co/zI8Ght5LNS
We turned off email confirmation. Now users can sign up and get started straight away. Why? Here's what the email confirmation step really adds: - Friction when users are hot. - Extra support requests. - A bad first experience. And the thing is... ❌ It's completely unnecessary. Instead: - Just...
How to Do AI Outbound the Right Way in 2025 Outbound didn't die. Bad outbound did. AI hasn't made cold email easier. It's made standards higher. The teams winning today aren't blasting more emails… they're crafting more human ones. Here's the right way to...
Many of the biggest opportunities in AI right now are going after categories where there was never software to accomplish the problem before, or the categories were too small to matter. AI agents represent the first time ever where we can...
I had CEOs at 2 @saastrfund portfolio companies turn down M&A offers this year that would have made them nine figures. I would have been equally proud of them either way. In fact, I told both to seriously consider the deals....
A few days into Fizzy and it's nice to see so many accounts with 100+ cards already. These are the top 10 (not including our internal accounts which have a few thousand). https://t.co/jBbD518FjB

What's your start-up worth? And what are the odds you'll get funded? Find out in seconds with SaaStr AI Valuation Calculator -> https://t.co/jvgsU2zIKA https://t.co/jUHBqpNXte
How long are we going to grieve that building massively unprofitable single purpose apps with rudimentary personalization is not the future?

Is Harvey cheap or expensive at $8B? If it triples again in 2026, may be "cheap" We'll see https://t.co/Hx5bmcTbeU
More sales calls don’t always mean more revenue. You’re putting in every hour on Zoom you can. Following the scripts. But still hitting the same ceiling. The problem? You're selling like it's 2020. I was there too, until I cancelled all my...

Bootstrapping my first startup to a 7-figure ARR almost broke me. But looking back, here's what it was a blessing in disguise👇
One of the worst pieces of advice in startups is telling people that the best product always wins. There is a graveyard of companies that followed that advice. "Great products" are necessary but not sufficient.

In my publication titled The Experience Mindset, I uncover a vital insight: Significant improvements in customer experience are unattainable without first focusing on and enriching the employee experience. Research indicates that 69% of employees would be inclined to exert greater effort...

A new study from OpenAI shows AI saves the average white-collar worker 54 minutes per day. Where does all that value go? BLS data shows median weekly earnings for full-time workers hit $1,165 in Q3 2024, or $60,580 annually. Across 2,080...