Jake Madoff

Beware❗ — do NOT make this all too common goal-setting mistake... Brand founders of scaling DTC brands often feel tempted to pivot their goals when they don't seem to be working out. But here's the kicker: they're going about it all wrong. Let me clarify: well-crafted, clearly defined goals are sacred and should not be changed frequently. But do you know what SHOULD be changed frequently? The strategies you implement to achieve those goals! If you find yourself struggling to gain traction on some of your growing brand's goals, don't make any changes to them right away... Instead, get your team together for a brainstorming session on new and creative strategies you can implement to move your goals closer to the finish line. -- Did you find this post helpful? If so, consider resharing it and giving me Jon Blair a follow. #dtcbrands #scaleyourbusiness #founders

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Good marketing? Just lie. • Huge lead volume growth • Recurring revenue growth • Hiring like mad These all make for compelling stories on social. With the likes, comments & reach to boot. Let's look at Forbes 30 under 30. For every $1 a member of Forbes 30 Under 30 raised from VCs, they committed around $2 worth of scams and frauds. Just because there's reach or noteireity doesn't mean a business isn't dodge. Be mindful that you don't know what's happening behind the scenes in a business. From founders embezzling to promises on tech that doesn't exist. I've seen a lot of 'creative' storytelling. Marketing messages founded on half-truths don't make for a sustainable business. It can be tempting as a CEO to want to do this. Especially if you're seeing a competitor grow who has similar features and you just can't wrap your head around how and why they've managed to get that level of traction. It's practically impossible to tell from a company's marketing engine if the innards are credible. Some companies are incredible, but you haven't heard of them. Some of the ones doing great marketing have a sub-par offer in the market. Focus on building something of value, don't give in for short term hacks. It's rarely worth it. Marketing amplifies value - it rarely creates it.

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This SaaS company has 10x’d its revenue YoY and boasts over 30,000 customers from companies like Intercom, Notion and Ramp. Clay has been the Hot Person In School over the last 12-18 months, creating a tribe of die-hard fans, all feeding into a self-perpetuating Growth Loop that’s facilitated by User Generated Content (UGC). If you haven’t noticed already, everyone and their dog has been talking about Clay on social media... But what makes Clay so special and how has this contributed to their growth? It’s because of User Generated Content (UGC) — a growth channel that’s commonly used by direct-to-consumer brands and now being seen in the world B2B. UGC creates a growth loop that looks something like this: 1. User signs up for a product 2. User realises value of product 3. User creates positive content about product 4. Audience sees content and signs up for product Two things that have poured fuel on this growth loop for Clay: 1. [Motivation] Content is mostly being posted by freelancers & agencies with the aim of increasing their authority to generate new clients 2. [Shareability] Clay’s product is visual and has mechanisms that make this growth loop easier (e.g. they recently launched shareable templates) They’ve doubled down on this by launching their Creator program which rewards content creators a % of affiliate revenue, as well as pushing Ad spend behind their content to amplify it further which means creators get more exposure on their content and helps them attract new clients. Everyone's incentivised to win. An important takeaway here is to focus on finding product-channel fit -- certain products work better on certain channels. In Clay's case having low friction, built-in shareability and leveraging service providers for distribution has resulted in them taking the market by storm. Nice work Clay. I'll be doing an in-depth breakdown of Clay's success in the coming days, too many things to say and not enough space here on LinkedIn. If that sounds interesting, you can subscribe to my newsletter by clicking the link underneath my name. It'll be shared there. #saas #coldoutbound #demandgeneration #gtm #leadgeneration #startup #paidsocial #tech

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Writing more about this in my newsletter today, scheduled for 11:07am GMT You can access it via the link underneath my name.

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Contrarian thinking from Gokul to win big. In my talks to VCs, many still comparing to SaaS era. Why they do so? Let’s compare another contrarian path in Enterprise AI too. Which Vaayu - AI for Finance & Sales is following. Eg Compare trajectories of Enterprise AI based on outcomes vs SaaS. End Target to reach $100m ARR. 1. Annual Contract Value Enterprise AI - $200k per client SaaS - $20 x 12 - $240 2. Upsell possibility Enterprise AI - $1M per annum SaaS - $240 per annum 3. Defensibility Enterprise AI - Strong as u integerate at multiple touchpoints by being expansive SaaS - Many new players will enter Why VCs still endorse SaaS? I dont contradict them - afterall they have to get their investors & LPs onboard . It’s easier for most VCs to sell SaaS to their investors cz 1. Risk Enterprise AI - More upfront technical risk, more capital required initially. SaaS - Less capital in beginning, gives impression of Product Market fit early. 2. Sales Cycle Enterprise AI - 12-18 months SaaS - 1-10 days 3 Past Validation Enterprise AI - Completely new. Very few things to compare with SaaS - VCs say $1m has been inflexion point in past. So they want to invest at this sweet spot. Take away- For low cost SaaS - real test will be after spending $10-$20m. It may give impression of product fit early. Path to $100m ARR will be extremely tough. Flown waters never come back. Referring past is risky when AI is changing everything. For enterprise AI, it’s contrarian, new. It’s steeper in beginning, path to $100m is clear very soon with $3m spend after initial steep is covered. Great returns are always on contrarian paths. Not what everyone follows. Achal Mehra #enterprise #ai #stsrtups

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100% ROI on a $10 investment is a great return. But a terrible waste of my time. Most agencies make this mistake when pitching for business. Brands not only require an ROI on $$ invested. But a minimum return on the founder's and team's TIME.

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I’ve built a DTC brand to $50M. If I had to restart my entire journey from square 1 and hire a dream team to scale a brand to 8-figures... This is exactly how I’d do it: If your revenue is under $1M, As the founder, you are responsible for driving the business to success, but you need a team that supports you. I’d start by hiring a strategic paid social expert on a fractional basis to coach you on finding success in the channel. This will set up a foundation for your business since you’d be learning the skills needed to grow in your primary marketing channel instead of hiring it out. Then, with that knowledge, run the business yourself - you’ll be acting as the head of growth until you reach $1M. You need a system to support you in this role, so you should hire on: - A paid search marketer to run Google ads (under $1k/mo) - A CRM marketer to execute email strategies on a fractional basis for about $2k or less per month - A graphic designer for landing pages, emails, and ads, plus an offshore designer to iterate on those designs and save on operating expenses - A video editor for UGC ads that convert well for paid social Once you hit seven figures and start aiming for that $10M mark, You’ll have a bunch of new responsibilities that’ll eat up a lot of your time, like - finance, - supply chain, - and operations At that point, you can’t be the head of growth if you want to scale up. You won’t have the bandwidth. Instead, you’ll need to bring on a fractional head of growth who can manage things the way you used to—leading the marketing strategy and having freelancers report directly to them. You don’t need to make a ton of new hires to move from $1M to $10M. You might just need to adjust hours for your freelancers up to account for the size of the business. This is where SO MANY founders get stuck because they think, “I’m growing, so I need to expand and hire full-time staff.” But moving from $1M to $10M simply follows the same strategies you used to go from $0 to $1M. Only when you’re looking to scale from $10M to $50M+ should you start exploring new marketing channels. You might want to invest in affiliate marketing or SEO. You’ll also have enough work to potentially convert these roles to full time: - Head of growth, - Paid social media buyer, - and your CRM marketer Stop trying to over-complicate the hiring process when you go to scale. The few fractional workers who prove their value and competency from the beginning can be converted to full time at a later date (if they're open to it), and that should be only AFTER your business exceeds $10M. Anything before that, focus on the few roles that’ll drive results to grow you to that mark.

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can i taste the chocolate? that's PLG in action companies like Zoom, Slack and Dropbox are often considered pioneers of product led growth i think OG's in this are Ice cream shops notice how ice cream sampling drives sales?  the conversion rate is almost a 100% the breakdown: #TryBeforeYouBuy: Just like sampling different flavors, let users experience your product's core features for free. Offer a free trial or a freemium model. #InstantGratification: Sampling gives immediate delight. Ensure your product offers quick wins. Users should see value right away. #CustomerFeedback: feedback loop is immediate. Use customer feedback to refine and enhance your product. #WordofMouth: People rave about their favorite ice cream. Create a product experience so good that users can't help but share it. #EaseofAccess: Sampling is effortless. Make onboarding seamless. Reduce friction and make it easy for users to start.

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Struggling to scale your mid-market business? Scaling isn't just about getting bigger – it's about getting smarter. In this week's The Wise Exit newsletter, we're diving deep into scaling strategies for mid-market firms. You'll learn: - The difference between growth and scaling (most get this wrong). - 5 key strategies to scale your business without losing your shirt. - Common mistakes to avoid (we see these all the time). - Case Study: How Zapier scaled without traditional VC funding. Whether you're planning to scale, sell, or just curious about what's next, this issue is packed with insights you can't afford to miss. Read the full newsletter here: https://bit.ly/3LHo7Ra Don’t miss out. P.S.: Follow me for more content like this.

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Most DTC founders second-guess their decisions because they don’t know how those decisions will impact their cash position. “If I double down on this campaign, will I be able to buy inventory next month?” “Can I afford to hire someone to help me with website design?” Very reasonable questions, but the answers are hard to find when you rely on spreadsheets and have 100 other things to do. Using Viable, founders can easily forecast cash flow and understand what investments they can make without risking the business. #cashflow #dtc #ecommerce

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Hiring a Chief of Staff at the seed stage is something people LOVE dunking on on X But I regularly come across Chief of Staff openings at seed startups, so either founders are dumb (unlikely) or they’re realizing what kind of leverage they could get sooner…so they’re getting aggressive with fast-tracking a CoS hire and not waiting until their Series A They’re also getting aggressive with comp🔥like top of market salary bands (up to $200k) and very generous equity (~1%, which is unheard of) Exciting to see the changes happening on the frontlines of recruiting for this role. (PS see below for some CoS humor 😂) #chiefofstaff #recruiting

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Just got an email from Notion – they're hiking prices by 20%. Ouch. This isn't just Notion - it’s a trend. SaaS companies are jacking up prices by 10-30% overnight, expecting you to just deal with it. Sure, if they’re delivering that much extra value, it’s a no-brainer. But let’s be real – many aren’t, and it makes you want to jump ship. Two trends happening with SaaS and how to take advantage: Trend #1: The rise of the low-cost SaaS. I call it the wholesalification of SaaS (think Costco) They'll offer the same (if not better) services at lower prices. SaaS is hitting its own Costco phase. Thanks to AI, copying a software product is almost becoming free. It won't be perfect. But it'll be pretty darn good. 90% of the same features. So, why stick to Slack when there's a more wallet-friendly option out there? Take Zoho, for example. They've mastered the art of taking hit SaaS products and selling them for less. $1B ARR with 50 products, 15,000 employees, 100M+ users, is probably worth $50B based in India (far from Silicon Valley) and never raised $1 from anyone. Goals. How to do it: 1. Make a list of vertical software companies 2. Prioritize by need and lifetime value of customer 3. Clone yet create beautiful brand, copy, design, community (or just localize it to certain geographies) 4. Offer product at 50%+ less Trend #2: Pay Per Task or Lifetime Deals Nobody wants another subscription right now. We’re all in subscription hell. Sure, if it’s dirt cheap, we might bite. But for most SaaS products, it’s worth considering lifetime or yearly deals (ditch the monthly plans). Lots of companies are trying lifetime deals, and they might lose money by year 3. You don’t want that. But if you can make it work, people will flock to you. Then there's pay-per-usage (or pay-per-task). As AI agents become more popular, pay-per-task will outshine usage-based pricing. Here’s my playbook if I were competing in SaaS: 1. Find a popular niche SaaS app. Incubate or acquire. 2. Compete on business model (lifetime deal or pay-per-task). You'd be surprised at the buzz these models generate. People love talking about them because they’re sick of being buried in monthly subscriptions. If you made it this far, I put together a database of 30+ free startup ideas I love (including SaaS) for the taking. https://lnkd.in/eEQwvrCu So, i'll end with this: It's one of my biggest learnings in my 20s. When trends push people away, that's your signal to pull them in. Create for the overlooked, and watch the magic happen. You might not create the next Notion, but you might create the next Zoho. Enjoy.

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This is a tough one for founders to hear. But they must. Nobody cares about your product. The trouble is, while most founders focus on selling their product… The prospect cares about solving their problem. Inevitably, the sales process and buying process don’t align. I’ve been saying this for years so it was great to hear Ben Miller from Miller Growth Advisory say the same thing! A lot of time prospects don’t know they have a problem... They are used to doing things a certain way. So when you focus on the product it doesn't resonate with them. Sometimes there is also no market yet. You have to help people see there is a problem. It’s only when you start probing and doing effective discovery to uncover the problem that they realise there could be a better way of doing things. And only then they will start to see the value in your technology.

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BFCM preparation has already started for 80% of brands. Most brands have their discounting "strategy" laid out, but haven't thought about how they can condition their customers away from discounted offers. If I'm running a $10M+ eCommerce brand going into BFCM with an average discount over 20% here's what I'm doing. Launching multiple giveaways... Gas Monkey Garage, LLC has skyrocketed their revenue with NO discounting... EVER! Instead, they use giveaways to excite their customers. Instead of 10-20-30% discounts, they provide 2-3-4x entries for dollars spent on Gas Monkey products. Adding multiples for entries has the same impact to a giveaway conditioned audience that discounts do for a normal audience. FYI - You can find the % of customers in your brand that love giveaways and MILK 🥛 revenue out of them. Send a post purchase survey asking if a giveaway offer would entice them to purchase again. Five months later you now have an audience of customers that respond to giveaways instead of discounting. This is one of many solutions to avoiding high CAC and low LTV from the BFCM cohort.

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Options pools? So many questions - like how big, how much dilution, when to start them, should there be a maximum size, how much loyalty do they really generate? Great set of comments giving different people's perspectives. Some great info here Peter Walker, thanks. What do you think is the most common way to vest an option pool and over what time period? #AngelThink

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Two weeks ago we had our first MASSIVE f*ck up at RB2B. It caused 50% of active users to churn and caused lots of brand-damaging blowback. Here’s what happened (and how we fixed it): To set the stage:  - We launched RB2B (our Person-Level Identity tool) on March 1 - My plan was to give away the leads and push to Slack for free - Then get people to pay $495 for integrations - But people could parse the Slack block with Zapier - And do whatever they want w/ the leads without paying - There was too much value in the free plan, not enough in paid - Nobody was converting So a month ago we realized that despite having INCREDIBLE top-of-funnel and mostly positive feedback, with our current pricing, we didn’t have a business. 1. People could easily “steal” the paid plan 2. $495 was too high for small biz, pricing was broken 3. Mid-market needed a filter and Hubspot or SF integration to pay 4. Pricing was fundamentally broken My original plan was instead of pulling value back from the free plan - which has had viral expansion - we would add value to paid, and eventually get people to give us $495. Also I really liked the idea of giving the leads away and charging for a workflow, because selling leads and intent data as a SaaS is a high-churn category. The more people we spoke to the more we realized that wasn’t the best plan. Peoples’ willingness to pay was HIGH *before* they got a taste of the free plan. Once they saw the insane value of free, willingness went to zero. (We have an added internal issue where we are still creating our fixed-price data asset and at the moment we’re paying a high per-unit cost for data for the free users… Many of whom we believe may not be looking at the data regularly) How did we solve these problems? 1. In mid-may, we created a “free trial” for pro, which would run out mid-June 2. People could continue with the free plan, but had to log in and click “free” 3. The free plan did not include killer features like the HubSpot integration, Hot Pages, ICP filter This broke our internet and ruined Robb Clarke’s weekend. Here are some stats: 1. Support requests for the week shot up from 1,571 to 2,319 2. “Script Churn” went from 7.6% to 52.4% 3. We were hurled hundreds insults over chat, email, and in LinkedIn comments BUT… We did manage to stop buying records for users that signed up, installed the script, and WEREN’T actively looking at them. If you really cared about our data, you either figured out how to get it back on, or you talked to us. And many people decided they actually wanted the paid features when the trial ran out. TAKEAWAY Startups are hard. Epic fails are unavoidable, especially this early in the journey. I hate the brand damage that comes from making a sudden change like this. But the reality is that we don’t really have the time to roll things out properly. And I’ve found that if your product is great, when you’re a young startup, most are forgiving. Thank you for your patience! 🙏

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Today, on You're Doing Growth Wrong: Katie Deloso 🍭 talking about common UX and product development pitfalls for early-stage and scaling startups: - turning a discovery call into a sales call - not reflecting value-driven marketing messaging in product onboarding - building Frankenapps without having necessary support in place - relying on mental shortcuts instead of keeping prospects' needs in mind (not every extra form field results in lower conversions) Give it a listen or read the transcript: https://lnkd.in/eSKvyveE Thank you so much for joining me, Katie! #UX #research #startups #b2bsaas

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Helping a hair/scalp wellness brand run influencer outbound to get affiliates to sign up for IG and TTS..... that reply rate is crazy! I outlined the whole entire process, including tools, tech, and strategy in the comments. You probably want to see this if you're a DTC brand owner.

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