How to grow a SaaS startup: The real answer

CASH IS KING ↳ Most founders only track ARR, CARR, and TCV, which is good. But miss the real signal. Chasing big numbers and ignoring the one metric that matters most in the early days: Cash generation. I've watched startups with impressive ARR and a long list of signed contracts. The founders celebrated every new deal. Investors cheered. But every month, the cash balance shrank. The team kept hiring. The office got bigger. The burn rate crept up. On paper, the company looked healthy. In reality, it was running out of oxygen. Cash is the pulse of a startup. It tells you if the business is alive or dying. It shows you if your customers are paying, if your costs are under control, and if your growth is real or just a story. Here are some learnings: → ARR is a promise. Cash is a fact. → TCV is a forecast. Cash is a reality. → CARR is a hope. Cash is a warning. When cash starts to fall, it’s the first sign of trouble ahead. It’s the early warning that something is off—maybe sales are slow, maybe customers are churning, maybe costs are out of hand. Here’s my simple framework for founders: 1) Track cash in and cash out, every week. 2) Celebrate cash collected, not just deals signed. 3) Watch for sudden drops or slow leaks. 4) Ask what’s driving changes—good or bad. 5) Use cash trends to guide every big decision. → Startups that watch cash survive the storms. → Startups that ignore it get blindsided.

3/10 – Paul Graham condenses decades of startup survival into just 13 sentences... The most important? #5: Obsess over the few who love you. ❶ Pick great cofounders. You can change everything but your cofounders - choose wisely. ❷ Launch fast. You won’t know what to build until users start reacting. ❸ Let your idea evolve. Most of the insight comes after you ship. ❹ Understand your users. The biggest lever is how much you improve their lives. ❺ Obsess over the few who love you. It’s better to deeply satisfy a few than mildly please many. ❻ Offer ridiculously good support. Go above and beyond - it’s how you learn what users actually need. ❼ Measure what matters. Just tracking a number will start to improve it - choose carefully. ❽ Stay lean. Spending less buys you time, and time buys iterations. ❾ Get ramen profitable. Cover your basic costs and you shift the power dynamic with investors. ❿ Avoid shiny distractions. Nothing kills momentum like chasing side gigs or too much fundraising. ⓫ Protect morale. Most startups die from demoralization, not bad ideas. ⓬ Don’t give up. Sheer persistence wins - if you keep evolving. ⓭ Don’t count on deals. Assume every deal will fall through- until it doesn’t. The real metric: Would anyone be sad if you shut down tomorrow? Because users who love you… Forgive bugs. Bring friends. Keep you going when everything else falls apart. This is 3/10 — Paul Graham’s 10 Most Important Startup Essays: Make Something People Love. https://lnkd.in/gCA-PWJf What’s one thing your customer would be disappointed about if you deleted it? 👇🏾 Follow for 4/10: "Founder Mode" - The focus Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox had early on - where every action drives growth.

Silicon Valley made me chase 🦄 I just wanted a horse that pays rent. For years, I thought “success” meant: 👉 $10M → $100M ARR 👉 $1B valuation with no profit in sight 👉 Raise round after round And yeah… I felt small. Because my businesses weren’t flashy. No TechCrunch hype. No VC dad. Just: - Profitable. - Bootstrapped. - Quiet. Today our portfolio of 4 businesses does: $6.5M+/year. Sustainably. With net profit. Without the circus. Here’s the kicker: ❗ Only 9% of U.S. businesses ever hit $1M+ revenue ❗ Only 1–2% of Shopify stores cross $1M ARR We’re already there. And we did it with integrity. . . . Growth doesn’t always look mythical like a unicorn. Sometimes it’s just a workhorse… Reliable. Durable. Pays rent on time. That’s the kind of growth I hope more founders brag about. . . . 💭 What do you think: would you rather chase a unicorn… or own a horse that pays rent? 🔥 Is bootstrapping underrated… or overrated? 👀 Be honest — as a founder, do you still measure yourself against your company’s paper valuation over profits? ___ PS: Animated chracters and voices in the Fable Showrunner #ExitValley skit below used with permissions from 🚀 Nik Mellett Adam Millman 🙏 #ProfitFirst #FounderLife #OperatorLedGrowth

Every big company was once a small startup. Stripe wasn’t always the backbone of online payments. Slack wasn’t always the go-to for team communication. Shopify didn’t start as the ecommerce giant it is today. They all began small, with an idea, a few people and a vision. No hype. No massive teams. No guarantees. What got them here? Consistency, persistence and a relentless focus on solving real problems. It’s easy to look at today’s SaaS giants and forget that just a few years ago, they were figuring things out step by step, just like many of us are now. #SaaS #StartupMindset #BusinessGrowth #Entrepreneurship #Founders #Innovation

A client came to me with: A consulting firm, a retail shop, and a growing SaaS startup. All housed under one LLC. If they had kept it that way? One slip-and-fall at the retail store could’ve dragged the entire empire down. We restructured fast: → Separate LLCs for each venture → A holding LLC to centralize ownership → Personal assets kept far away from operational risk A few months later, the lawsuit hit the retail side, but this new structure meant only the retail LLC was exposed. The SaaS startup? Safe. The consulting firm? Untouched. Their personal assets? Out of reach. Real asset protection looks like separating the risk so one lightning strike doesn’t burn everything you’ve worked for down.

Dear VC's and founders. I can’t stress this enough. Company A is the fastest path to technical debt, poor product–market fit, and low net revenue retention.

I was thinking, 80% of strategy is saying no. When I scaled my first startup, focus beat hustle. I was busy all day, but the needle didn't budge. Busy is easy; progress is hard. So I killed a flashy partnership pilot and three side projects. We won back two weeks, saved cash, and shipped what mattered. No one outside noticed the cuts. Inside, the team breathed, and our one number finally moved. - Define one metric that matters this quarter. - Cut initiatives that don't move that metric. - Schedule 'no' time: weekly review to stop or start. - Park ideas in a later list, not your calendar. - Say no to one meeting and one feature this week.

Why scaling stalls at £10m ARR The hidden barriers and how to break them I’ve seen the same pattern repeat in scale-ups over and over. A company races to £10m ARR. Growth looks unstoppable. I nvestors are happy. The team is buzzing. And then… it stalls. Not because the product suddenly got worse. Not because the market disappeared. But because the things that fuelled growth to £10m are the same things that block it after. Here are the usual culprits: Founder bottlenecks. The CEO is still the hub of every big decision. The company moves at the speed of one person. Leadership gaps. Managers are promoted too quickly, but not trained. Execution slips. Alignment fades. Process chaos. What worked with 30 people collapses with 130. Decisions get lost. Priorities blur. Everyone is busy, but progress stalls. Sales model strain. Early customer wins don’t repeat at scale. What looked like a system was really founder hustle. Culture drift. The mission that felt tight-knit now feels diluted. A-players leave. Energy dips. The fix isn’t more hustle. It’s building the systems, teams, and clarity that allow the company to run without the founder holding everything up. That usually means: Professionalising the exec team with people who’ve done it before. Installing operating rhythms that drive focus and accountability. Tightening ICP and go-to-market strategy, so growth becomes repeatable. Shaping culture intentionally, not nostalgically. Freeing the CEO from running the company so they can grow it. £10m ARR is where companies stop being scrappy startups. It’s where they have to become real businesses. Get it right, and you unlock the next 10x. Get it wrong, and you’ll burn years chasing growth that never returns.

N200,000,000!! That was the exit amount for the founders of Paystack in 2020 when they were acquired by Stripe. Successful and profitable exits are not random, they are the result of meticulously planing and strategy. A clear exit strategy is necessary for a successful exit. An Exit Strategy is simply a pre-determined plan for how the founders and investors will convert their equity into cash. It’s the roadmap for selling your company, and it answers the biggest question an investor will ever ask you: "How do I get my money back?" If you ever intend to exit your startup, then you need to build with a clear strategy from the start. Here’s why 1. It Defines Your Business Decisions: Your exit strategy informs everything you do. • Goal: Acquisition by a strategic competitor? Then you need to focus on building a product that solves a specific pain point for that major company’s user base, and you need to get strong IP protection. • Goal: IPO? Then you need to focus on building a massive market share, huge revenue growth, and building robust internal governance and accounting systems (which is extremely expensive and complex). You can't sell a hammer to someone who wants a screwdriver. Your plan dictates your product, your hiring, and your culture. 2. It’s Required for Funding: If you plan to raise venture capital (VC) money, the first question an investor will ask is about your exit. VCs make money by buying shares in your company cheaply and selling them at a huge multiple later. They are not buying a permanent business; they are buying an exit. If you don't have a credible plan for an exit that delivers them a 10x or 20x return, they won't invest. 3. It Protects Your Founders’ Relationship: The Founders' Agreement (which you should have) should already include an exit clause. This forces you and your co-founders to agree upfront on when you would sell (e.g., "We all agree to sell if the price is $100 million or more") and how the proceeds would be distributed. This prevents a huge conflict later if one founder wants to sell and the other wants to keep going. You don't need a 50-page exit document on day one. You just need clarity. That clarity will guide you so you have a credible answer to: "What does the big payday look like in 5-7 years?" You also need to ensure your co-founders and early investors (if you have them) are aligned on that vision. It will sharpen your decision-making and ensure that every action you take today is building value toward the moment you can turn your equity into wealth. As you launch, ask yourself; Do you desire a lifestyle business or a legacy business? That decision will guide how you build your startup and define what success becomes for you.