Hey Reader, A client came to me frustrated. They had the right targeting. The right demographics. E-commerce decision-makers, correct job titles, correct company sizes. Their LinkedIn ad campaign looked perfect on paper – and it was producing almost nothing. I wasn't surprised. Here's the thing nobody in your marketing agency will say out loud: LinkedIn's ad algorithm is years behind Facebook. It lacks the deep behavioral and intent data that makes paid social actually work. When you run a...
20 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, A founder asked me last week how to respond to someone pitching a Shopify quiz app – 10x more expensive than existing competitors, no unique technology, no obvious edge. He expected me to help him dismantle the idea. Instead, I told him: I don't care about the idea. Here's the truth most early-stage founders don't want to hear: your product quality is almost never your real competitive advantage. You can have a worse product at a higher price and still win – if you have...
27 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, A founder I spoke with last week put it bluntly: "Traditional marketing agencies are in complete denial." They're charging monthly retainers to press buttons in tools their clients already pay for, while the client does the actual thinking. And somehow, the clients keep paying. Here's what the agencies haven't figured out yet – and what most SaaS founders are also missing. The biggest AI opportunity right now is not a better dashboard, a smarter workflow tool, or another...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, A founder with a PhD in machine learning told me his document parsing tool was obviously better than OCR. He said it like I was supposed to nod along. I didn't nod. I asked him what OCR stood for. The problem wasn't his product. It was his assumption. He had spent so long inside the problem that he forgot other people don't live there. To most buyers, OCR is a magic black box that reads text. Fine. Done. They have no idea it completely misses data inside pie charts, misreads...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, A founder I spoke with last week thought he had social selling dialed in. "I can ask a friend who knows an e-commerce manager to make an introduction," he said. I had to stop him right there. That's a warm referral. A perfectly valid tactic – but not social selling. Calling it social selling is like calling a taxi a road trip. Same road, completely different commitment. Here's what social selling actually looks like: Step 1: Find your exact ICPs on LinkedIn. Not broadly....
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, A founder I work with was freezing up on every cold call. Not because he didn't know his product. Because every call felt like a performance review – him auditioning, the prospect judging. The pressure was killing his ability to actually listen. So we tried something that felt almost too simple. He started paying prospects $100 for a one-hour research interview. Not a demo. Not a pitch. A conversation where he asked questions, took notes, and genuinely tried to understand their...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, A founder I work with spent weeks validating his SaaS with Account Executives. The data was damning: AEs lose roughly 53% of their deals because they're prioritizing the wrong opportunities. But when he brought this up in conversations, prospects shut down. Not because they disagreed. Because they couldn't admit it. The problem wasn't the product. It was the pitch. He was, without realizing it, opening every conversation with: "You are bad at your job, and I have a fix." Nobody...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, During a mentoring session last week, a B2B SaaS team walked me through their go-to-market logic. They were targeting retailers in the CPG space. The reason? Retailers could mandate that vendors use the platform. Force the supply chain from the top. It sounded smart. It was a trap. I stopped them and asked one question: Who bleeds the most money when this problem goes unsolved?Silence. Then they realized it wasn't the retailer at all. It was a specific subset of mid-tier suppliers...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, A founder told me recently he likes to be 90% happy with something before he ships it. I told him that's the fastest way to waste two months on something the market doesn't want. I aim for 70%. Here's the math most people refuse to do: Expect roughly 70% of what you launch to fail or require a hard pivot. Not because you're bad at this – because that's the baseline reality of building something new. Competition, timing, messaging, market fit – too many variables outside your...
3 months ago • 1 min read