Profitability Beats Cash‑Burning Growth in Startup Survival
If you're profitable, you can literally outlast big VC-backed competitors that are burning more cash than they make. Even if you're super small. These fast-growth startups crash more often than not.
AI SDR Secures $100K Deal on New Year's Eve
Our AI SDR booked a $100k+ deal on New Year's Eve It's truly becoming a different world And it's only just begun in GTM
Scaling Infra Software Is Harder Than It Looks
Feels like this applies to just about every piece of infra software: "everyone thinks it's easy but then when you need to scale..."
AI Agents Swap, Not Eliminate, Management Workload
Here's something almost nobody tells you when you deploy your first AI agent: you're not eliminating management overhead. You're trading one type of work for another. It's different work. But it requires about as much time for oversight, review, and...
Intentional Momentum Over Hustle Drives Sustainable Impact
As I reflect on this past year, one theme keeps coming up in my work, my conversations, and my personal life: Momentum with intention Not hustle for the sake of motion. But intentional with a specific outcome in mind. At...
Uncover SaaS Blind Spots with Free Churn & Founder Tools
Your SaaS has blind spots. I built free tools to help you find them: → Revenue Ceiling Calculator: See if your churn is quietly capping your growth → Founder Archetype Quiz: Discover the fatal flaw holding you back 5 minutes. Zero fluff. https://t.co/jxT71w5LNN
Cash at Close Beats Inflated Valuation Every Time
You get an LOI with a $10M valuation. Your heart jumps. You’re already thinking about the "I made it" moment. Then you read the fine print: > $2M is Cash at Close > $3M is an "Earn-out" based on crazy growth targets >...
Holiday Hustle: Building Now, Launching After Break
The Bad News: I didn't go on vacation this holiday season (had some personal things that kept my family in town). The Good News: I've been in beast mode when it comes to building. Having so much fun. Lots of...
AI-Native B2B Firms Command Premium, Others Face Discount
Navan IPO’d in October and hit $800m ARR growing 29%. And it still is trading at 5x ARR. If you aren’t truly AI Native, the world doesn’t love you today in B2B. Even with those numbers....
AI Shifts From Experimentation to Proven ROI Pressure
Top 10 2026 Predictions: From “Proof of Concept” to “Proof of ROI” AI is leaving the experimentation phase to the "show me the money" phase... 1. The Decline of "Vibe-Based" AI Experimental Budgeting In 24-25, AI spend was often "FOMO-funded."...
Profitability Beats VC Hype: Small Wins Outlast Billion Dreams
In 2017, a CEO friend told me I was "wasting my life" on my tiny startup. He had raised $30M in VC. His co-founders' families had put in $2M. They were supposed to be on their way to $1B. He tried to...
Solve Customer Problems First; Worry About Inference Later
I agree, and I give this advice to my team regularly: Focus first on solving the customer problem and creating value *first* (don't fret the inference cost -- yet). By the time you have something deployed at scale where inference starts to...
2025 SaaS M&A: Fundamentals Trump Hype for Premium Deals
SaaS M&A in 2025 with Jim Williams (GLC Advisors) 🎙️ Selective buyers, fundamentals > hype, and real paths to premium outcomes. Watch the End-of-Year Special 👇 https://t.co/qRnBVxuCM5 https://t.co/SaoVpLEL7c
Meta Pays $2B for $100M ARR Startup
Meta is acquiring Manus for $2 billion. Manus disclosed $100 million in ARR achieved in eight months, 147 trillion tokens processed since launch. Can we use those figures to explain the acquisition price?
AI Takes Over Coding as Elite Engineers Step Back
This feels like a watershed moment. When the best engineers in the world are no longer writing a single line of code, and barely even looking at the code that's being generated. This would have sounded insane just a year ago. Hard...
Simple AI Apps Deliver Massive Revenue and Growth
Simple app ideas are crushing it! Look at this AI text humanizer on @acquiredotcom: > $550K TTM revenue > $392K TTM profit > 269% YoY growth Check full listing: https://t.co/J9L0LHJ8o1 https://t.co/dssv07wJMb
Market Demand Is Fixed; Build Fit Before Marketing
"Every software product you build, fate has already decided the outcome. The market is either going latch onto your product and run with it, or it's not. Do not ship a product, find a lack of success, and then try to...
Churn Wins Over Ecosystem Hype: Deliver Real Results
Last week a founder friend was in town and I had him over for coffee. He's been stuck at $2.5-$3m ARR for 9 months, is burning $400k/mo, closing a TON of new business, but can’t get ahead of churn. He...
Skip Category Creation; Hire a Target‑audience Evangelist
Ppl often ask me for advice about "category creation" from my time at Gainsight. My first instinct is "don't!" It's expensive and Sisyphean 🤦🏽♂️. But after my warnings, I share that the biggest needle-mover for us was having an evangelist that came...
Lakeflow’s External Orchestration Now Powers Multi‑Cloud Workflows
Yes, since we added "External Orchestration" to Lakeflow more and more ppl use it to orchestrate all their estate, not just Databricks jobs/Spark etc, but also EC2 machines, other platforms (e.g. Snowflake), scripts, etc.
ARR Multiples Often Irrelevant in Acquirer’s Strategy
M&A pricing can be a weird thing Meta buys Manus for $2B+ at $125m ARR Then likely … abandons all that revenue. It is a distraction, and in the end, immaterial to Meta’s revenues. Whatever Meta does with it, it...
100K Downloads: Quick SaaS & AI Finance Insights
Just 2-5 minute episodes to stay current in SaaS & AI finance 👈 SaaS Metrics School has passed 100K downloads. These episodes are quick hits on what I'm seeing on the frontlines of tech finance. No theory. What I see...
Better Prompts Save Founders Ten Hours Weekly
Most founders are one great prompt away from 10 hours back per week. Learn to ask better questions.
2026 SaaS Forecast: 9 Predictions, SEO Risk Highlighted
In Episode 813, I revisit last year's predictions and share 9 new SaaS predictions for 2026, including why overreliance on SEO could be your biggest risk. Check out the whole list 👉 https://lnkd.in/g2-GFkKj
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....
From Bottleneck to Irrelevance: Building Self‑Sustaining Teams
My biggest achievement in 2025 was making myself irrelevant. At the start of the year, I was the biggest bottleneck of the company. I was simultaneously acting as the Head of Implementation, Head of Growth, and Head of Ops -...
Detach Ego, Embrace Feedback to Close Your Exit
When a buyer calls your codebase "messy" during due diligence. Selling your startup is emotional. No way around it. You’ve spent years bleeding for the business with late nights, zero salary, the works. Then a buyer comes in and looks at your "baby"...
Treat Your Roadmap as a Hypothesis, Ship to Validate
A product roadmap is a hypothesis about user behavior. Shipping is how you interrogate it.
Founder-Led Sales Succeed when Commitment Outlasts Quick Fixes
Founder-led sales works when the founder sounds like someone who will still be there when the easy answers stop working.
Leadership Requires Intensity, High Standards, and Lean Teams
My top takeaways from Matt MacInnis , COO/CPO at Rippling : 1. Extraordinary results demand extraordinary efforts. “If you ever find yourself in the comfort zone at work, you’ve definitely made a mistake.” 2. Your job as a leader is...
Messaging Debt Escalates Faster than Technical Debt
Messaging debt compounds faster than technical debt.
Replit's 24/7
By late 2025, Replit got really, really good: - Context windows can be unlimited - Sub agents solving tough issues - Design mode + Fast mode It finally got great. Now … imagine by late 2026 if it could run 24x7 It just keeps building,...
Beyond ARR: Track Revenue Uplift, Usage, Velocity
At Year 2, ARR isn’t enough. 📊 Moonshot AI tracks customer revenue uplift, usage, and testing velocity—alongside ARR—to guide real progress. 🎧 SaaS CFO Podcast Ep. 224 ▶️ https://t.co/4EAZEOUVMC #SaaS #Podcast #AI https://t.co/uIKnDdTkA9
Bootstrapped Founders Must Build, Not Buy, Growth
Don’t have money? Good. Neither do the Cubans and they find creative solutions for everything. That should be you. When you’re bootstrapped, you are forced to make a better product because it has to be so good that it distributes...
Predictable Growth Model Turns Trickle Into Pipeline Machine
When ThreatX first came, they were generating on avg 1 inbound demo request per month. Their challenges were clear: - Scaling inbound leads from paid media - Generating reliable opportunities - Gaining full-funnel visibility to prove ROI We applied our...
Make Yourself Irrelevant to Boost Exit Valuation
If your business can’t survive without you, it isn’t an asset. It’s a job. I talk to founders every day who are proud of being "in the weeds." They close every lead, ship the critical code, and manage every fire. In...
Pick a Marketing Channel You Love for Explosive Growth
Founder-Marketing-Fit is a thing. But few upcoming founders consider this. It's simple: Pick a marketing channel that you enjoy. → If you're a developer: Use Engineering as Marketing. → If you love doing video: Do YouTube/TikTok or run video ads. → If you're great at public speaking: Do...
Motive's S‑1 Shows Growth Outpacing Samsara's IPO
Motive, the AI-powered fleet management company formerly known as KeepTruckin, filed their S-1 this week. The company has grown tremendously & in this post, we compare it to Samsara at IPO :
13 Years of Daily Posts Built AI Knowledge Engine
👉August 22, 2012 to December 28, 2025 = 4,877 days 📖 I’ve written a SaaStr post every single day since August 22, 2012 That’s ~3.5 million words — more than 2x the entire Harry Potter series. Roughly 30+ full books. More than...
From Too Early to Category Leader: GTM Clarity Wins
Every category leader had to survive a phase when they were "Too Early" Meet Wasim Khaled. He’s the CEO of https://t.co/KQvyyhgHk7. We started working together inside the Unstoppable GTM Program when he only had ONE customer. The US Department of Defense. They had...
From Too Early to Category Leader: GTM Clarity Wins
Every category leader had to survive a phase when they were "Too Early" Meet Wasim K. . He’s the CEO of BLACKBIRD.AI . We started working together inside the Unstoppable GTM Program when he only had ONE customer. The US...
Great Results Require Extreme Effort and Deliberate Constraints
“Extraordinary results demand extraordinary effort” A powerful conversation with Matt MacInnis (@stanine), long-time COO and newly minted CPO at @Rippling We discuss: 🔸 Matt’s transition from COO to CPO and what surprised him about leading product 🔸 The “high alpha, low beta” framework for...
Capital, MVP, and Partners Drive Early AI Success
Bootstrapping or fundraising? ⛽🚀 Moonshot AI knew early: to build something big, they needed capital—plus an MVP and real design partners to prove early PMF. 🎧 SaaS CFO Podcast Ep. 224 ▶️ https://t.co/4EAZEOUVMC #SaaS #AI https://t.co/oKz7cYA1gR
Even VPs Discover CEO Role Is Tougher than Expected
"I actually didn't know being CEO was this hard" -- every top VP that starts their own startup
GLM 4.7 Auto‑fixes Rails Test, Saves Time
Good example of GLM 4.7 just one-shotting a fix for Rails PR to wrap it up while I was doing something else. All I fed it was the failing test from CI. Nothing groundbreaking, just time saved. https://t.co/E3ueHDW8AL https://t.co/7gje1UloFq
Scaling Secrets in AI Era Revealed by 10,000 Experts
https://t.co/5gjWmKLRrD is back. MAY 12-14 2026. The Secrets to Scaling in the Age of AI 10,000 of the best sharing how it's done https://t.co/f9I8gHsF4U
Feedback Turns Years of Trial Into Five Conversations
Feedback can compress 5 years of trial and error into 5 conversations. Not asking for it is just ego.
Niche Real‑Time News SaaS Delivers $800K Revenue, 70% Growth
Niche SaaS plays like this are game changers. Real-time news API for global coverage live on @acquiredotcom > $800K TTM revenue > $600K TTM profit > 70% YoY growth Full listing: https://t.co/qAPFWjNXCv https://t.co/3T3Kq6mdfG
Performance Before Payment Secures Deals
Yesterday, I got 2 emails from vendors trying to close deals by 12/31 with me. The first was a vendor that started off a bit rough, but then really delivered. They upgraded the team on the account, and they stepped...
AI Agents Halve B2B Sales Teams by 2026
Ok I'm not any sort of savant. But I chatted (using AI) with every SaaStr AI speaker from 2025 — from OpenAI to Anthropic to Zapier and beyond — reviewed 100+ past conversations, and synthesized what the best operators are actually...
