From Double Revenue to Predictable, Sustainable Growth
We grew over 100% in 2025. But honestly, It was the hardest year we've ever had. On paper, the numbers were great. Our revenue doubled year-over-year, and our new implementation program exploded. We validated that we are solving a massive, painful problem for founders who need to scale. But growth often masks chaos. Behind the scenes, we were dealing with the messy reality of premature scaling. We labeled 2025 as a "bad" year internally not because of the results, but because of the instability it created for the team. We relied too heavily on short-term bursts of demand instead of building a predictable engine that our implementers could count on. It was a year of extreme highs and exhausting lows. We won on the scorecard, but we paid for it in stress. That’s why our entire focus for 2026 is about moving from volatility to predictability. You can sprint your way to a revenue milestone, but you have to build systems if you want to stay there without burning out your best people. 2025 was the sprint. 2026 is the engine.
ListKit's AI Score Filter Finds Every AI‑focused Company
Yes. The AI Score filter in @ListKitio helps you find companies doing AI work. From AI-native startups, to those that just mention it. It's pretty sick.
Avoid the Junior Marketer Trap to Unlock SaaS Growth
I was on a call with a SaaS Founder the other day. His growth was stuck. So we got to diagnose the issue. The culprit? He fell into the trap of the Junior Marketer. Here's how it happened and what the...
Don’t Let a Junior Marketer Stall Your Growth
I was on a call with a Founder the other day. His growth was stuck. So we got to diagnose the issue. The culprit? He fell into the trap of the Junior Marketer. Here's how it happened and what the...
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%...
Invite the Right Stakeholder Early to Solve Problems
Most work problems are easy to solve once they reach the right person. The trouble starts when they don’t get there directly. I was on a call yesterday where a small, solvable issue had already picked up unnecessary weight. I’ve...
AI Agents Enable Cheap, Limitless Experimentation and Rapid Iteration
A deeply under-appreciated economic benefit of AI agents is the ability to experiment and throw away things at near 0 cost. Most projects traditionally get stuck on a one way train based on initial decisions that get made early on....
Make Your B2B AI Agent Truly Conversational by 2026
Can your customers truly talk to your B2B app -- for real? As well or better than ChatGPT or Claude? Can your customers just tell your app what they want it to do -- and it goes off and does...
AI Wealth Strategist Offers Elite Strategies Free
The founders of Paperspace (YC W15) just announced Autonomous (@a____t____g), an AI-native wealth strategist that brings elite strategies used by the ultra-wealthy, now available to everyone at 0% advisory fees. Millions of people already ask AI what to do with money....
Predictable Growth Requires Continuous Engagement, Not Linear Pipelines
This shows up often in deal reviews: A lead gets marked as lost after a few quiet weeks, so the team moves on. Then the same account comes back. A different contact. A different question. The same underlying problem. Nothing...
Your AI Agent's Success Depends on Your Training
"The best AI startups do the AI training and onboarding for you. In a sense, that's not new. What is new is your AI agent will fail if no one properly trains it. It's on you to make it awesome. ...
Weekly MRR Growth Is All You Need Until $5M
The only metrics that matter at each stage of SaaS: $0-500K ARR: Weekly MRR growth rate $1-5M ARR: Weekly MRR growth rate $5-10M ARR: Churn + Top of funnel growth Yes, it’s the same metric twice, but weekly MRR growth rate is the ONLY...
Automation Isn't AI: Clarify Value Before Overhyping
Lately, I’ve noticed many founders and operators confusing process automation with AI. And honestly, I get why. Boards are pushing executive teams to “integrate AI” into their products and operations. The hunt for efficiency begins. Some of those opportunities lead...
HEY Calendar Year View Aligns Weekends for Clearer Layout
Updated the HEY Calendar Year view so weekends line up. A bit clearer, more recognizable structure revealed. We also pushed a number of other fixes plus a better layout for wider/larger screens. Before and after attached below. https://t.co/Kta1nvyfKe
Speed Replaces Moats: Gaps Define Today's Leaders
There are no moats anymore. Yesterday's product moats are today's Claude prompts. There are only current gaps, headstarts, and leaders and laggers. And there is speed. No one can rest on their laurels. Act accordingly.
Five Years of Growth Leads to Strategic Exit
After Sarah Rowell and Scott Mackenzie spent five years increasing Kantola Training Solutions' revenue, client retention, and learner engagement, they saw the market starting to consolidate and decided to make a strategic move to maximize value; either through acquisition or...
Lead by “Calling Up” To Unlock Team Potential
There's a difference between calling someone out and calling someone up. I think about this constantly as a leader. Calling out says "you're wrong." Calling up says "you're better than that." When someone on my team misses a step or...
AI Overviews Slash Organic Clicks by 60%
Nobody’s clicking anymore. And it's not because they're bouncing. They’re finishing their journey before they ever reach you. Pew analyzed browsing behavior from March 2025 and found: when an AI Overview appears, people click a traditional search result 8% of...
AI Platforms to Grow 10× by 2030, Inference Leads
AI Platforms market will surge more than 10x by 2030, driven by the enterprise adoption of model training, inference, and AI agents. It highlights the power shift from hyperscalers to emerging independents and the rise of inference as the dominant...
Top Reps Handle the Heavy Lifting; Is Your Team?
A great sales rep does most of the work for the prospect: Does the scheduling Does the demos Solves the problem Helps sell other stakeholders Follows up Simplifies deployment AI can do some of this now. But how much of it does your team really do?
Growth Starts With Human Insights, Not GTM Plans
Most companies build upside down... They start with: - product ideas - GTM plans - launch calendars …and hope the market catches up. But strong growth doesn’t start at the top. It starts here 👇 Human insights. Why? Bc value...
B2B Buyers Are Non‑Linear—Adopt a Customer‑Centric Flywheel
B2B buyers don't move in a straight line. But your funnel assumes they do. That's the problem. The traditional marketing funnel says buyers move through: Awareness → Consideration → Decision → Purchase Clean. Linear. Predictable. Except that's not how anyone...
Integration Tops Martech Vendors' Evaluation Criteria
My annual reminder to #martech vendors that integration is a top criterion when marketing ops professionals evaluate your product. 😀 Data from the latest State of the Marketing Operations Professional report, published in November 2025, produced by Mike Rizzo and...
37signals Treats Open Source Like a Teaching Hospital
37signals operates as a teaching hospital when it comes to open source. We're not just trying to cure our own problems, but to raise the bar for practitioners everywhere. https://t.co/gh3jJtozFJ
Consistent Compounding Beats Launches for Record ARR
December 2025 was our biggest new ARR month ever at Univid. No launch. No viral moment. Just compounding finally showing up. What actually moved the needle in 2025 wasn't exciting.. https://t.co/42K555TIMr
Stop the Mistakes Killing Your SaaS Growth
💀 This is why your SaaS isn't growing... → You think you know better than your users → You're wasting time on meetings → You're not experimenting → You're not building automation → You're too feature-focused → You're not customer-focused → You don't spend time on marketing →...
Consistent Execution, Not Hype, Drives SaaS Growth
December 2025 was our biggest new ARR month ever at Univid. No launch. No viral moment. Just compounding finally showing up. What actually moved the needle in 2025 wasn't exciting: - Obsessively improve onboarding (<60s to first AHA) - Usage...
I Grade My Own Predictions—Read & Challenge Me
Unlike every other prognosticator in your feed, I don't just make industry predictions, I **grade myself** on them. Otherwise, how the @#$% would you know if you could trust me?! Anywhoodle, I made 5 predictions (related to each of the...
Build Trust with Prospects to Boost Acquisition Odds
Getting to know potential acquirers in your space does increase the odds they acquire you — if you do it for the right way. Why? Because it builds trust. And a big part of M&A is trust. Will the team we just...
HEY Calendar Launches New Year View Today
Loved this idea so much we brought it to the HEY Calendar overnight. Live now in the new Year view (top left toggle in your HEY Calendar account). https://t.co/xUOZd3RqzZ
Define Product-Market Fit with Real‑Time Metrics
Is product market fit… a feeling? I’d argue the opposite. PMF shouldn’t be based on intuition. It should be easily defined, and it’s something you can outline early in your sales process. In The Science of Scaling, I share a...
SaaStr Scales GTM Dramatically with Minimal Staff
"SaaStr went from 10 humans in GTM to 1.2. And it does just as well. But we'd still love to hire 2 more humans." with @lennysan https://t.co/TKyWoJ0aau
Roofle Acquired by SalesRabbit: A New Growth Chapter
Congrats to Travis Harvego , Joe Hoffman , and the ROOFLE team for their recent acquisition by SalesRabbit . Best of luck as you kick off the next stage in your journey. Glad we could help. Check out the press...
Stop Parenting Your Startup; Treat It as an Organization
Your business is not your baby, child, or another human you are in a relationship with. It is an organization. That distinction matters more than founders want to admit. Organizations exist to convert decisions into outcomes at scale. They rely on clear...
Close the Gaps: Ownership and Hand‑offs Drive Predictable Revenue
This comes up in a lot of funnel reviews. Leads are flowing. Pipeline exists. Revenue still lags. When teams look closer, the pattern is familiar: • MQL to SQL sits in the 5–15% range • Follow-up slips past a day...
Social Platforms Are Essential for Sustainable Marketing
The degree to which social platforms dominate discovery and top of funnel can't be overstated. I'd argue that, in many fields, it's unrealistic to think you can build a sustainable marketing practice without social.
Customers Care About Their Goals, Not Your Journey Map
Customers don’t get excited about where they are in your “customer journey map” - they have their own goals. https://t.co/lO6NQFqsHY
Effective Strategy Demands Painful Trade‑offs and Clear Ownership
strategy should hurt. if you aren't making painful trade-offs, you haven't prioritized. • one goal, one owner • shared ownership = no ownership molly graham on @lennysan: https://t.co/RW7eAWk6kI
AI Tools Reignite Builder Passion and Personal Innovation
"I have this superpower now that has blown my mind" Just caught up with a former Gainster who is in a mid level role at a big company. He likes his job but has gotten vibe coding-pilled. He uses @Lovable non-stop and...
Top 25 Must‑Read Lenny Newsletter Essays of 2026
Best of Lenny’s Newsletter 2026 My 25 best and most popular essays from the past year, plus a few all-time classics. *Best on AI* 1. An AI glossary—The most common AI terms explained, simply https://lnkd.in/gpv6CsV6 2. Everyone should be using...
Predictable Revenue Drives Higher SaaS Valuations
Valuations of software companies are highly dependent on the predictability of revenue. In other words, different classes of revenue are valued differently depending on their predictability. The more predictable, the better. To help founders distinguish between the different classes of...
COVID Revealed Subscription Models' Resilience over Transactional Revenue
COVID left lasting scars on how buyers view revenue. Transactional revenue that looked predictable vanished overnight in travel tech—while subscription models proved more resilient. That lens still drives today’s diligence. ▶️ https://t.co/qRnBVxuCM5 https://t.co/0odnxtGKr2
Over‑hiring Sales Reps Stalls Growth, Warns Founders
A CEO friend raised $40M at a $400M valuation. Two years later, ARR is flat. The biggest mistake was how he scaled his sales team. Another founder buddy just did a PE round. His investors were pushing him to grow from 5 to...
Bootstrapped Teams Outperform Funded Rivals in Niche Markets
Some markets aren’t meant for venture funding. And that’s exactly why they’re perfect for bootstrappers. I had Laura Roeder of Paperbell on the pod to talk about what most founders miss: • How big funding rounds create false signals •...
2026 B2B GTM Shifts: AI, Agents, and Composable Stacks
I rarely publish guest posts on chiefmartec. This epic essay by @jonmiller — Predictions for B2B Go-To-Market in 2026 — was so good I made an exception. Jon certainly has the cred: the co-founder and original CMO of Marketo, a leading...
Prepare Your Startup for Exit, Not Luck
Not every startup is ready to sell the first time it hits the market. In 2022, a founder listed a promising startup on @acquiredotcom that went nowhere. No real buyer interest. No momentum. The issue wasn’t demand. It was structure. So they...
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...
Lexxy Gracefully Supports Tables, Unlike Trix, in Basecamp
Tables proved to be the death of Trix. The architecture just wasn't built for it. But Lexxy handles them with delightful grace. Very excited for this, and for markdown pasting, to come to Basecamp 🤘
Engage Multiple Buyers to Maximize Synergies and Outcomes
Different buyers value companies differently. Only by talking to a broad spectrum of buyers will you ensure that you: * Uncover all potential synergies * Make the process hyper-competitive * Unlock the best outcome #founders #pathtoexit
YouTube Beats LinkedIn for SaaS Lead Generation
Most B2B founders feel trapped on LinkedIn. This won't be popular to say, but Josh Aharonoff, CPA just proved YouTube outperforms LinkedIn for SaaS lead gen... and he's got 475K LinkedIn followers. And I'm starting to see something similar with...
