Andrew Capland

Coach for heads of growth | PLG advisor | former growth @ Postscript, Wistia, HubSpot

I help heads of growth have more influence and impact with 1:1 coaching -  and I help early-stage SaaS teams scale as a product-led growth advisor.

After coaching more than 50 clients, it's become clear... Most Growth Teams face the same struggles:

You’re not always sure which lever to pull to drive meaningful impact.

You don’t have a repeatable operating system, so there's no structured process for prioritizing experiments, aligning across teams, or scaling execution

You're spending too much time convincing instead of executing. You're constantly selling ideas internally, securing resources, and fighting for buy-in.

Your role feels misunderstood because your boss has never done your job, and leadership sees the numbers but doesn’t always recognize the full impact of growth.

You’re ready for the next level but don’t have a clear roadmap to get there.

I'm Andrew

I’m the former growth lead at two high-volume PLG businesses: Director of Growth at Wistia, and Head of Growth at Postscript.

I’ve been where you are.

I’ve built and scaled growth teams from scratch, run hundreds of experiments, and made every mistake in the book. I know what "good" looks like, and I know how overwhelming it can feel without mentorship from someone who's done your job.

Now, I take everything I've learned to help other growth leaders increase their impact and influence.

☎️ Book a call to work with me ☎️
https://deliveringvalue.co/get-started

Founder

Delivering Value offers coaching & advising for product-led growth teams.

Because scaling a product-led business is hard. It's a really effective go-to market model, when done right. But, it’s still relatively new and most companies don’t have someone with extensive PLG experience. 

That means you spend a lot of time and money making mistakes trying to figure it out. Or, you feel overwhelmed by all the content out there, trying to teach yourself.

That’s were the idea of Delivering Value was born. To help early-stage tech companies save time by avoiding common mistakes, learn proven frameworks & methods instead of trying to figure it out themselves, & ultimately grow faster.

Services include:
* 1:1 coaching for heads of growth
* PLG advising for SaaS teams
* Digital products for the growth community

I specialize in helping clients who work at small to mid-sized SaaS companies (usually starting around $8-$10 million in ARR), not tech unicorns. If that sounds like you, send me a message!

My friend took a new job and said, "i'm sure it'll be a sh*t show there too - I just don't know why yet." He figured he'd give it one year, then reevaluate the fit.

That was the smartest career advice I've ever heard.

He'd just spent eight years at the same company, and left frustrated. Things had changed so much over the last two. So, instead of pressure-testing every new gig against some unrealistic criteria, he set a different goal.

"I'll give it one year, then see how it feels."

That framing changed how I think about my own career. And it's changed how I coach every client who's nervous about saying yes to another difficult founder, another early-stage company that might not work out, another opportunity that doesn't check all the boxes.

I've started calling it, “the one year deal.”

Because things are changing so fast.

The "hot" companies of 2026 weren't on anyone's radar two years ago. And companies that felt "safe" two years ago, have struggled to maintain PMF. 

Nobody predicted this.

The most successful VPs and leaders know this better than anyone. They move around. They find perfect moment-fit, not forever-fit. 

And when the moment changes, they go find a new company where the fit is right again.

Go in with eyes open. Give it everything you've got. Then sit down with yourself after a year and ask: does this still fit? Is this still the right place for me?

If yes, great. If not, you're not a failure. You did exactly what you were supposed to do.

The guilt you're feeling about taking a job that doesn't check every box is the wrong story.

The right story is: I made a smart decision for where I am right now, and I'm going to own it with intention.

Coach for heads of growth | PLG advisor | Former 2x growth lead (Wistia, Postscript) | Co-Founder Camp Solo | Host Growing Forward Pod 🎙️

As of this month, I've been running my business 4.5 years, which is longer than I held any of my previous w2 jobs. But there was a moment about two and a half years in where I wasn't sure I was going to make it.

I didn't leave my last startup job because things were going great. 

After thirteen years in SaaS, five startups, and two layoffs - I was burnt out, anxious, and desperately needed a reset. 

Starting my own thing felt like the way out.

But early 2024, I found myself right back in the same place.

We moved.
We had another baby. 
And then, I lost a few clients

All in the same window. 

My head was stressed about work and our finances. I was exhausted from a newborn. And every day I had this feeling that I was failing at both.

Not doing work right. Not being a present dad.

And underneath all of it was this weird guilt - because I had left the startup world to specifically avoid feeling this way. 

Here I was, feeling it again. Except now it was my fault.

I started quietly debating whether to go back in-house.

I didn't. 

But it was closer than I've ever admitted publicly.

Four and a half years later, my roster has been full for the last twelve months straight. 

But I wish I could go back in time, and whisper to myself that everything was going to be okay.

Still glad I didn't fold.

One day, my CEO walked over to my desk, sat down next to me, and said, "stop, that's not your job."

I still remember that moment vividly.

We hadn't worked much together at that point. So it was a heart-racing moment at the time.

Before I started and scaled my first growth team - I was a growth marketer focused on user acquisition. 

And our CEO would occasionally Slack me ideas he'd heard from his startup founder network - tests they'd run, channels they were scaling, copy that converted, and other random stuff they'd tried.

And every single time, I said "yes, great call. Adding it to the next sprint."

I thought I was being helpful. 

But he saw the situation differently.

He said: "My job is to bring growth ideas to the right person - that's you. Your job is to evaluate if the ideas are any good for us. Not to automatically say yes because I'm the CEO. I have bad ideas all the time."

That conversation changed how I think about prioritization entirely.

Because until that point, I'd been rewarded for saying yes. For being helpful. For taking things on. That instinct got me promotions and raises before.

But that instinct was also quietly costing me.

Every yes meant something more important got delayed. Every yes meant my actual priorities got diluted. And every yes sent a signal that I didn’t have a clear point of view on what actually mattered.

And after coaching more than 90+ growth leaders since then, I've learned the ones who build the most influence and impact say no way more than they say yes.

(and when they do say no, they explain the trade-off clearly: "If we take this on, here's what we're delaying.")

That's how you build trust.

I made a video breaking down the 5 prioritization skills that separate growth leaders who have real impact from the ones who just stay busy.

Take a peek on youtube if you want my deep dive here https://lnkd.in/eXXGYfsJ

When used appropriately, saying no can be a career superpower.

I just spent 5 days snowboarding with my dad in Utah (and slept on a couch the entire time). 10/10 would do it again.

Last Tuesday, I headed to Powder Mountain. A place I've been with my dad and my uncle a few times before. While my my wife, my two kids, and my mother-in-law held it down at home. 

And for the first two days, I was super distracted. 

Thinking about my family. Feeling selfish for taking a personal trip and being gone for so long. Second-guessing the timing. Objectively, it wasn't a great week to disappear.

Then something happened on the chairlift.

It was snowing hard (which was an absolute gift if you've been following the snow situation out west). And I finally settled in.

Being in the mountains tends to do that to me.

I wasn't stressing about my next linkedin post. How behind I feel about the AI tech stack. Or thinking about my group program launch. 

Just sitting next to my Dad on a chairlift in the mountains, feeling genuinely grateful for the time.

Younger me would have taken that moment for granted.

But I just turned 40 (and my Dad is 70) and with two little kiddos at home these moments don't happen as often as they used to.

Here's the part I find a little embarrassing: 

I tell growth leaders this all the time. When things get busiest, when the pressure is highest - when you're feeling the most burnout - that's exactly when you need to step back and refill the cup. 

But I had a million reasons why I couldn't do this myself.

The couch wasn't comfortable - and my back and quads are still tight. But this trip was exactly what I needed to get my creative juices flowing again.

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My guest pulled up his worst performance review and read it out loud:

"I've yet to see Dan make teams greater than the sum of their parts."

He'd been a senior leader at Reforge. Built teams at HubSpot. Sold a company to HubSpot before that.

And the thing that made him exceptional as an individual contributor was quietly killing his team's ability to function without him.

I didn't say anything in that moment. 
Because I've lived a version of this myself.

I can remember reading my own review the night before my performance convo.

There was a line (that's permanently seared into my brain) about how my exec team hoped I'd have more impact in my role.

The company had prioritized hiring more devs vs staffing my team. So I'd been scoping projects to the resources I had available vs advocating for what I really needed. I thought I was being a team player. Adjusting without complaining.

But the next day, sitting across from my manager, he said something that caught me off-guard:

"Your job is to pound the table for what you need. If you're not getting it, break down 99 doors until you get through the 100th. That's your job. Not to let up."

My honest first reaction? I don't want to pound the table. I just want to quietly do good work and let it speak for itself.

But I didn't push back. Because underneath that reaction, I knew he was right.

In the process I learned one of the hardest parts of growing as a leader: doing the right thing might not always feel good for you.

And the skill that earned me the role (being a great team player and adapting to changing resource constraints) was the exact skill now holding me back in it.

Daniel Wolchonok's version of this story is more brutal than mine. He read the actual review out loud on the podcast. 

I can't do his story justice. So I hope you catch the full thing yourself:

YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eMQrniSt
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eD47Yh5n

We can't be the only ones. What's your version of this?

My dad: "Hey buddy, how's it going?"

Me: "I feel really anxious, but I can't figure out why."

Also me: "Have you ever felt like that?"

My dad, after a pause: "Uh, no. I don't think so."

Then we both laughed. But I wasn't really laughing.

That was me at peak imposter syndrome + burnout. I woke up tired and anxious almost every morning during that time. 

Always focused on what I hadn't done.
Ways I was falling short. 
Goals I hadn't hit.

I didn't even realize how much my focus was impacting my confidence until my coach asked me a question during one of our sessions:

"What was a win you had this week?"

I gave her one. 

She said: "What else?"

And I came up with another. 

She kept pushing. By the time I had three, I realized - I actually had been doing okay. I was just ignoring my wins. And instead focusing on what I hadn't done well.

She gave me an assignment: 

Write down 3 wins every day.

Didn't have to be big. Praise from a teammate. An experiment that moved the needle. A hard conversation I didn't avoid. A KPI headed in the right direction.

And after a few weeks of this exercise I realized that my brain started scanning for wins during the day instead of scanning for everything I hadn't done yet. 

Like a muscle. The more I trained it, the stronger it got.

I've given this same assignment to almost every client I've coached. It's not a cure for imposter syndrome. But it's one of the most underrated tools I know for rebuilding your confidence over time.

If you're a growth leader who's been silently carrying that "general state of uneasiness" - you're not alone. 

Most people just don't have the courage to say this stuff out loud.

And if nobody's asked you how you're actually doing lately, I'm asking.

"We're just too busy. There are more things we could be doing. We don't have time to do them."

I've heard some version of this from almost every new Director trying to make a case for more headcount.

And I get it. You ARE too busy.

But so is every other team lead asking for another hire right now.

And "we're drowning" is not a compelling hiring argument. That's just how it usually feels working at a startup.

On a call last week, I pushed back on a client who came in with exactly this framing. I asked them one question:

"Are you hiring to get rid of work that feels annoying - or are you hiring into an opportunity that would move the needle in a major way for the business?"

They paused. Nobody had ever framed it that way for them.

Here's what I've seen from the growth leaders who are most effective at getting headcount approved:

They lead with what's being left on the table. Not how busy they are. 

They walk into that conversation and say:

"If we had someone who could execute on X, here's what we'd be able to achieve. Here's what it would mean for our main goals. And here's what it's costing us every month we don't."

That's a more compelling case.

The modeling/math can go in the appendix (of however you make this argument). But the story, the opportunity, and the cost of inaction - that's what you lead with.

(The one exception: if YOU are the specific bottleneck on something that would unlock outsized impact for the business, then yes - hiring to free you up is absolutely the right move. But that's a different argument, and it still needs to be framed as opportunity, not overwhelm.)

I’ve found this approach works much better.

I spent years pushing for a promotion - and felt completely lost after I got it.

I was leading a cross-functional growth team at a cool tech startup. The title I'd been chasing. Director of Growth. 

I'd told myself everything would be way easier once I got that title. People would finally trust my decisions. I wouldn't have to fight so hard for budget, justify extra headcount, or sell my strategy up down and sideways.

But within a few weeks I realized I was having the same debates - with a new title. It was frustrating.

I just wanted to quietly do good work. 

I didn't want to complain. Because who complains after a promotion? 

But on the inside I was really frustrated because I had pushed so hard for something I wasn't enjoying.

My team could hear about it - that would impact their motivation. My execs definitely couldn't know - they'd question if I was the right person for that job. And talking about it at dinner with my wife felt crazy.

It wasn't until I started working with a coach that I learned this is actually a documented thing. High performers who've spent years working toward a goal often fall into a low-grade depression after they achieve it.

The person chasing the goal was their identity. When the goal is gone, so is the motivation and sense of self.

That conversation didn't fix everything. 

But it was the first time I'd said it out loud to someone who didn't need anything from me. Someone I could think out loud with without it costing me anything.

It took me months to figure out a new title wasn't the finish line.

I spent the last decade building organizations around new products and construct systems to unlock growth for existing products that have touched 10M+ people.

Started a successful boutique consulting firm in 2017, walked away in 2021 to focus on advising ambitious leaders and building products for progress.

User Engagement | Habit Fostering | Venture Architecture | Business Model Development

Add personal message, let's start a conversation!

Quick Background:
Founded & grew a consulting firm for digital products/business models for 5 years. Specific focus on the interaction between analog user and digital product (https://kadacon.com/).

50+ projects in corporate innovation environment: from incubation to MVP to internationalization of apps & services (B2C & B2B). Biggest complexity: Mercedes me

10+ advisories to start-ups from early stage to traction & growth on user engagement & retention.

Developed framework to construct user engagement in products, which positively impacted metrics of over 10 million users in a wide variety of products. (https://pitch.com/v/the-user-engagement-framework-bsx3qn)

Currently consultant & sparring partner for product-led start-ups primarily on the path to product-market fit and user-centric evolution. (https://www.projectfuze.com/sparringspartner-de)

️David Füßer

Everyone I talk to has AI tools now - some in use excessively. Engineers use Cursor. PMs draft specs with Claude. Designers prototype in half the time. Everyone's individually faster.

Yet, I keep hearing the same thing: "We ship more stuff and somehow it still takes the same amount of time."
The work inside each function got faster. The work between functions didn't change at all. Same meetings. Same "wait, what did we decide last week?" Same context re-explained for the 4th time.

The interesting question right now is whether anything changed about how work moves from one person to the next.

For most teams, honestly, it hasn't.

⚡️David Füßer

Product Leader/ Sr PM | Boosted user adoption & retention across 30+ products (B2C & B2B) | Building RadicalDots | 1 exit

Every growing team has one. The person everyone asks before anything moves.

It's usually a founder or a senior lead. They're not hoarding control (well, sometimes they are). Mostly they just have context that nobody else has. They've been in every room, heard every conversation, know why the last three attempts failed.

So they become the routing layer. Every decision passes through them. Every question gets escalated to them. They're in every Slack thread, every doc review, every "quick sync."

They're exhausted. And they're the reason the team can't move faster.

I've seen this pattern at 15-person startups and 150-person scale-ups. The details change but the shape is identical. One person holds too much undocumented context, and the whole org moves at their processing speed.

The only fix is getting the context out of their head and into something the organization can access without them.

That sounds obvious. But it means actually writing down decision rationale, not just decisions. It means making intent explicit enough that someone who wasn't in the room can act on it. It means the founder has to believe that clarity is worth the 20 minutes it takes to write it down properly.

Most don't. So they stay the bottleneck. And wonder why nothing scales.

I'm kinda obsessed with what it actually means for an org to be AI-native.

/ai-readiness - I put what I'm learning into a Claude skill. It asks how your org works for 15 minutes. Then gets you a report on your org's AI readiness across 6 dimensions.

The pattern I'm seeing so far: most orgs adopted AI tools and people are hyped about how much they can do now (or how much faster).
But as a team, we're not actually faster. 

Workflows didn't change. Decisions live in meetings. Handoffs lose signal. Agents could do the work but humans won't let go

I see 6 stages toward the AI-native org. Chat-assisted is step 2 of 6.

On what stage is yours? 

Comment "AI Readiness" and I'll send you the skill.

Preview of the AI-Readiness self-assessment Claude Skill. 

Quick Intro and the first question: Give me the 30-second version - what does your company do, how big is the team, and what stage are you at?  

In the last 2 years, almost every team I've worked with upgraded their tools. Better code editors, AI assistants, design tools, project management software.

In the same 2 years, almost none of them changed how work flows between functions. Same handoffs. Same meetings. Same approval chains. Same "let me check with [person]" bottleneck.

The individual got faster. The system stayed the same speed.

It's like upgrading every musician's instrument in an orchestra but never rehearsing together. Each player sounds better individually. The performance doesn't improve.

I think this is the most interesting gap in organizations right now. Not the tool gap (everyone has tools). The workflow gap. How work actually travels from intent to execution, across people and teams.

That gap is quiet. It doesn't show up in any dashboard. But it determines how fast you can actually ship, regardless of how fast any individual contributor works.

The most expensive sentence in any organization: "Wait, what did we decide?"

It gets said in standups, in Slack threads, in 1:1s, in sprint planning. Someone made a decision. Maybe in a meeting, maybe in a DM, maybe in a Google Doc comment that nobody checked.

A week later, nobody can find it. Or worse, two people have different memories of what was decided.

So the decision gets made again. Or a meeting gets scheduled to re-make it. Or someone just goes ahead with their version and the conflict surfaces three weeks later during QA.

Every decision that lives in someone's memory instead of in the system is a decision that will need to be made twice.

I used to think this was a discipline problem. Just write things down. But it's actually a structural problem. There's no natural place where decisions land and stay findable. Docs get stale. Slack scrolls away. Meeting notes get filed and forgotten.

The organizations that move fastest aren't the ones that make better decisions. They're the ones that make a decision once and it stays made.

Is "show me your Claude.md" the # 1  screening question right now when hiring?

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