Tom Hunt

$3.6m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Jan 2014.

I'm walking home from a depressing New Year's trip to Oslo with an ex. girlfriend.

It's raining in East London.

I made a decision:

I would replace my management consulting salary (£42,000) by the end of the year.

I had no idea from where, but that was the goal...

I just about hit it and left the corporate world.

And I haven't been back since.

Fast forward a decade and I've:

- Tried and failed with 17 businesses
- Invested in 11
- Learnt a LOT

The one that is finally working is called Fame:

- We have a weird culture (in a good way)
- We start and grow podcasts for B2B businesses
- We are fully remote and have 75 full-time team members

I live for our awesome team at Fame, building businesses and great marketing.

I post about them here 🤗

Founder & CEO

We start and grow the world's most profitable B2B podcasts.

Clients include:

👉 IDEO
👉 Workday
👉 HighRadius
👉 People.ai
👉 Zendesk
👉 Bevy
👉 Circle
👉 Suzy
👉 Mazars
👉 LeanData
👉 CXL
👉 Ramp
👉 Alibaba
👉 Signify
👉 eToro

We don't review CVs.

We don't use an ATS.

We don't ask for cover letters.

And we barely spend money on job ads.


Here's our hiring process:

1. Candidates come inbound
2. We review their LinkedIn profile
3. They do a short test task
4. First interview: competency-based
5. Final interview: values-based

That's it.


No six-round marathons
No "upload your resume then retype it"
No AI scanning for keywords


Just people looking at real work and having conversations.

HR SaaS businesses told everyone that hiring needs to be complex.

It doesn't.


You don't need expensive software to find good people.

Agree?

$4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

No alternative text description for this image

I cancelled a 1-1 with someone on my team.


Why?

- They were thriving
- Their OKRs were progressing well
- I had nothing meaningful to contribute

So why have the meeting?

Why waste their time because I'm insecure about doing my job?


It's called macro-management.

HINT: the opposite of micro-management.


Here’s how it works:

- They work where they want
- You provide the insight, tools and resources
- You remove barriers, blockers and distractions
- They decide the "how"
- You trust them

Put simply:

You enable.
You assist.

Then you stay in your lane...

Not theirs.

Agree?

We hired a project manager for $7 per hour in 2022.

Now he's earning $40K a year.

That's higher than 98% of earners in the Philippines.


We made him a deal:

"Where you are right now limits what we can pay you because you don't generate enough value. But the more problems you can solve for us, the more we can pay you."

E.g. we hired him for what he could become, not what he was.


He got a payrise in year 2, then in year 3, he takes on another role.

Now he's:

- Project manager
- Video editor

Maybe more in the future.


The best hires have the right attitude toward growth.

Skill gaps close with time and effort.

Character gaps rarely close.

No one is clapping when you get the second resignation email of the day.

No one is clapping at 6:37am on a Saturday as you’re combing through the P&L.

No one is clapping when it’s your 17th decision of the day.

No one is clapping when you're the only person around to reply to the angry customer.

No one is clapping when payroll looms and the bank balance isn’t where it should be.

No one is clapping when you can’t think of anything else on a Sunday afternoon.



There’s a lot of hype around starting a business these days…

I’m not sure it’s for everyone.

Most people chase salaries and titles.
Smart people choose who they work with.

Specifically: their manager.

Here's why:

A bad manager...
- Drains your energy
- Protects their position
- Watches your every move

A great manager...
- Explains why things work
- Protects you from politics
- Supports your development


The truth?

You may spend more time with your manager than your spouse.

Choose wisely.

Fame bootstrapped to $4.5M ARR by charging LESS.

Plus we:

- Spend less than 2% of revenue on ads
- Have a 1 person sales team
- Raised $0

How?

By focusing on the one metric everyone ignores...

Retention.


1️⃣ Strong inbound engine

Outbound and ads cost more, both to book a sales call, but also in the skill (and therefore cost) of the person who needs to run the call.

Instead:

- SEO
- Personal brand
- Bottom of the funnel Google Ads


2️⃣ Charge less

E.g. the Amazon model.

The more you charge, the more likely you will be cut when the CFO and CEO review the monthly P&L.


3️⃣ Objective performance metrics

We used to track client happiness, now we track client objectives.

Happy clients churn, successful clients don't.


4️⃣ Build a retention culture

The team laugh everytime I say "retention is the foundation of growth" because I say it so much.

Hire, fire and promote based on retention.



The formula:

1️⃣ Strong inbound engine
2️⃣ Charge less
3️⃣ Track objective performance metrics
4️⃣ Build a culture of retention

And please, say it after me:

Retention is the foundation of growth.

As soon as I met Cristian and Alexandru in person, I knew I had to go.

They are the first reason I'm hosting a panel at Tekpon AI Summit 2025 in Bucharest.


The second reason is that I've spent the last 5 years working in my bedroom (pretty much).

$4.5m ARR from behind a screen.

It's working.

But now it's time to crawl out of the cave, and into real life.


So if you're in Bucharest on November 25th, come say hi.

Let's talk AI.
Let's talk marketing.
Let's talk LinkedIn.

Just let's actually talk.

Be like Taylor Swift...


At least that's what I told the awesome people at the Turing x SYSTM Growth Summit yesterday.


Why?

She nailed The Fame Formula:

1. Make really good content in a specific niche
2. Be seen around other famous people in the niche

First she did it with country, and now she does it with pop music.


It's also what we need to do in B2B.

B2B buyers are only in the market 3% of the time. We need to get them to know, like and trust us during the other 97% of the time.

How?

Two steps:

1. Content Format
2. Content Positioning


1. Content Format

You've got three options:

Social: Easiest to grow, lowest influence. Great for reach, but people scroll past quickly.

Email/Written: Middle ground. More intimate than social, easier to produce than podcasts.

Podcast: Hardest to grow, highest influence, best for repurposing. One episode can become 20 pieces of content.

If I was to start again, I would pick the social platform that I liked best, and start there.


2. Content Positioning

Two parts:

- The Niche

Be as narrow as possible.

If you sell email marketing software, don't start a marketing podcast, don't event start a email marketing podcast, start the open-rate podcast.

- The Edge

The thing a customer would tell their friends. What makes you different? What's your unique opinion?


That's The Fame Formula:

Pick your format.
Nail your positioning...

And be like Taylor.

If you can’t share an agenda for the meeting, we shouldn’t be meeting.

When Taplio was acquired by lemlist, they got:

- $2m upfront
- Another $6m for hitting growth targets


I asked him if it was time for beach and cocktails...

"Absolutely not."

Tibo starting sourcing young, hungry founders to build more products.

He now runs 5 products, each with difference technical founders, whilst he focuses on their growth and building his personal brand.

Now $6m ARR.


The next exit will be much bigger.

Find out how in this episode of Confessions of a B2B Entrepreneur below 👇

One of our team members' machines was compromised.

And a client found out about it.

Somehow their Slack log in was posted in a data dump, which was flagged to a client's security team.

We immediately took the compromised machine offline for deep cleaning and changed a load of other passwords.

In the end, no breach occurred, but it was a scare.

This would likely not have happened if we were using Keeper Security, Inc. 

It’s the highest-rated password manager in the world for a reason. 

It solves both the security and the productivity problem:

- Zero-Trust Security: Keeper built its entire platform on a zero-trust, zero-knowledge architecture so your business data is encrypted on your device before it ever reaches their servers

- Instant Access: The KeeperFill feature automatically enters usernames and complex passwords for you

Keeper is built to scale with your business (securely) from day one.

Check out their Cyber Week offer linked in the first comment 👇

#ad #keepersecurity #cyberweek

Brand partnership • $4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

Gaurav Patel

Roarr  Consulting Group (RCG)

Generating $1M revenue for Tech startups by revamping their revenue process and execution.

Ideal for founders stuck between $500k and $3M revenue.

Product Positioning.
ICP Segmentation and Prioritization.
TAM Analysis.
Message Market Fit.
Brand Visibility & Authority Building.
High-conversion Funnels.
Consistent Sales Pipeline.

All of this using -

1. Buyer Insights and Deep Analysis.
2. Competitive Analysis (not at the surface).
3. Message that Converts.
4. Social Media + Blogging for Inbound Leads.
5. Dynamic Lead Magnets.
6. Landing Page Copy and Creation.
7. Content and Copy Writing.
8. Cold Email Infrastructure.
9. Cold Outreach Messaging.
10. Paid Ads.

Right from analysis (product, competition, buyers), process, team building, and automation to getting results.

All with the alignment with the sales team.

Head of Marketing - Strategy & Implementation

PipeBagger

Driving a team of B2B Tech Marketers, SDRs and Salespeople to help Global Mid-markets and Enterprises Research, Evaluate and Choose the right tech for their critical business objectives, while reducing their operational headaches and costs.

Helped 80+ companies from US, Canada, UK, Singapore, Germany, Israel, Dubai, India etc across HR-Tech, Fintech, MarTech, SalesTech etc by 

1. Building Audience (using content)

2. Building Sales Pipeline

3. Improving sales conversions

Using hard tested frameworks for Positioning, ICP Segmentation, Convertible Messaging, Accounts Intel, Buyer journeys, and Conversion optimization.

Primary KPIs that we track:

1. Brand Visibility (to relevant audience)
2. Ideal Accounts Engaged
3. Qualified Meetings Attended (semi-SQLs)

What you'd not find at any other place, apart from Pipebagger?

Product Positioning, Full-Funnel Messaging that Converts, and Clarity to make to $10M or $50M ARR, and how.

In short, you build and manage your product.

And leave the revenue part to us.

Yes, we will support you in every area of your revenue cycle, in either done-for-you or done-with-you models.

Helped B2B Tech companies acquire large accounts (Fortune 1000) and even startups.

Across the globe.

Across the functions.

Private. Government. Profitable. Not-for-profits.

All you need is - real hunger to grow.

Our most loved framework: 'Add $1-3M in the next 9-12 months, without burning in Ads'.

DM me if you have any questions about it.

Founder and B2B Marketing Success Head

Helping B2B tech companies solve sales and prospecting challenges - process, hiring, automation, pipeline generation, conversion ratio, team management.

Heading a unit of LinkedIn prospecting, Targeted Emailing, Targeted Calling team who generate great sales pipeline.

Leading the team of sales problem solvers who help B2B tech sales heads by re-creating processes, identifying and implementing the right technologies, increasing sales productivity, improving sales collaterals and communication dialogues on email, phone and social, integrating marketing and sales, reporting structure etc.

Always happy to solve a sales challenge for your sales. Just leave a short message and I will be happy to help.

Inside sales powered by targeted cold calling 2.0, targeted cold email prospecting and organic linkedIn marketing is what we primarily do for B2b saas and software product companies.

Founder & Growth Strategist

Having loved LinkedIn for branding, leads generation, sales, audience building, audience engagement, and recruitment branding, I have explored and experimented in many ways to boost growth and visibility.

Created an effectively proven framework to enhance the conversion ratios for  - 
1. Connections Acceptance (up to 77%)
2. Content Engagement to leads
3. Increased Profile Views

What do you get from these skills and strategies on LinkedIn?
1. Boost in your connections (only powerful and meaningful connections added)
2. Quality leads
3. Enhance your personal or business brand
4. Increase Company Followers
5. Attract top talent
6. Position yourself as an industry leader and authority 
7. Competitive advantage

These strategies and skills are most effective if you are Sales head, VP sales, VP Marketing, CEO, Founder, Product Head, Recruitment Head, for using LinkedIn to support your growth plans.

Type of companies where these strategies and skills helped boost the results: 
1. B2b Saas, 
2. IT Solutions Firm targeting CFOs and US Government Agencies, 
3. High Innovation Research Firm partnering with Fortune 100 companies in Europe, 

and 26 more.

LinkedIn Marketing Branding and Lead Generation Head

Sonora & Associates, LLC

Sonora is a business transformation technology focused company based in the Washington DC, helping the CFO and team with the digital transformation expertise using Oracle Hyperion, Amazon Web Services and other platforms.

Areas: Business Intelligence, Data Analytics, Business Re-engineering, CFO services (technology), Financial Solutions, Data Warehousing, etc.

I'm responsible to create a niche market and dive deep into the industry (specifically the finance areas) to identify the key challenges, existing technology landscape, focus areas and work on the solutions to solve the immediate and the forthcoming problems using technology.

Sales plans, strategies, new channel identification, team management, automation, account management, research and planning.

Business Development - Financial Solutions

Buzzhoney

Strategies, Planning, Execution, Measurement of the B2B/ B2C digital campaigns on LinkedIn, Email and other channels.

1. Assessment of the existing marketing channels and their behavior
2. Understanding the product and its differentiation
3. Target audience assessment and Buyer persona profiling
4. Digital marketing strategies
5. Transformation and campaign planning
6. Content team collaboration and coordination
7. Integrated approach based digital campaign structuring
8. Team allocation
9. Campaign execution and measurement
10. KPI mapping and performance measurement
11. Performance reporting to the principal and client 
12. Marketing automation - Hubspot, Infusionsoft, Hootsuite, Google analytics, CRM.

Key highlights:
1. Hubspot certified + experience on Infusionsoft and other tools 
2. Sales-mind (always looking at the pipeline effectiveness)
3. Internal customer to the team

Director of Digital Campaigns

Smart Source USA

Areas of responsibility: IT Consulting | Enterprise Applications across BI vertical 

Overview of Role:
1. Redefined the strategies of revenue generation
2. Introduced the marketing pipeline generation - LinkedIn Marketing, Email Marketing, Cold Calling 2.0
3. Implemented lead nurturing process
4. Sales hierarchy and reporting structure
5. Marketing and Sales automation and reporting
6. B2B Digital marketing strategies and campaign execution
7. Digital Branding advice
8. Website strategies to make it more customer-friendly and marketing friendly

Achievements:
• Q-on-Q growth of over 30% 
• New channels of pipeline generation
• Team growth and productivity 
• Continuous flow of leads for the sales team

Consultant - Sales & Digital Marketing

Lotus Media Systems Pvt. Ltd

My contributions:
• Transformed Sales Process, Team -> 7X Leads, 4X Revenue
• Built a new sales team from zero to six (SDRs + AEs)
• B2b Business Development, Client Relationship and Sales
• Account management
• Ensuring results
• Project and team management
• Strategy and planning
• Team culture
• Projections and forecasting

Head of Accounts & New Customer Acquisition

Salesify

Was responsible for:
• Client acquisition
• Revenue generation
• Account profiling
• Lead generation
• Contact discovery

Business Development Manager

Ecotech IT Solutions Pvt Ltd

• Was responsible for Indian Business Unit's client acquisition and account management for 5 of the major clients (Enterprise) of the company and providing solutions for portals & collaboration, migration, custom application development, support contracts and consulting in technologies like SharePoint, Dot Net, Lotus notes.

• Prepared various documents, presentations and proposals for the projects in the pre-sales and further stages of the sales cycle.

• Ensured better services and quality in the competitive environments, while maintaining client relations and ensuring stronger business in future.

• Conducted project and business analysis with involvement in entire Project cycle.

Enterprise Business Development

Verve Communications Pvt. Ltd

• Promoted and generated sales for the company's Enterprise Mailing Software Solution 'NetDruid Communication Server'- Mailing, Proxy, FTP, Firewall and SMS Gateway, besides managing client relations at a technical level.
• Was responsible for,
- Client acquisition. 
- Territory management.
- Consultative sales.
- Client servicing

Channel Partner

Primark Stores Ltd

• Dealt with the customers by giving them a personal touch and ensuring their satisfaction.
• Worked as a team to ensure that every task is being done up to the mark.
• Created new records by exceeding the sales targets every month. 
• Was a part of the Best Rated Sales team responsible for the surprisingly over-achievement of the targets during extremely recession-prone period of November-December-January 2008/ 2009.

Sales Consultant

High Performance SaaS Sales to reach $10 mil ARR Faster | Generated 1400+ B2B SaaS Appointments in 1 year

There are only 2 ways to get consistent meetings:

1. Do more outreach (calling, emails, DMs) and ads at scale.
2. Add more Authority, and Urgency to your leadgen (and revenue) process.

The biggest failures are in the first category.

Even if you are getting some MQLs, you are actually not making real sale.

Best case scenario - "you get clients but inconsistently".

On top of that you are struggling with the cost of acquisition, and retention.

“When will I become a preferred option for ideal clients?”
“When will I hire more and more top talent in my team?”
“What am I missing in my leadgen and sales process?”

Now imagine you got a revenue engine that builds you audience and sales pipeline with authority and trust.

Imagine -

# You start seeing consistent traction, and acquisition cost coming down.
# You feel bolder, and $10M journey looks clearer, and confident. 
# Your audience don't ignore your product anymore.

“How the hell am I going to do that?” 

I can hear those voices.

Here’s how:

By following a scientifically optimized 5-step framework, taking you from "any other product" to "this is what I want" in 3-5 months..

Weeks 1-2, we'll nail your unique Value Proposition, and set-up the systems.

Weeks 2-5, we'll align your Proposition, so your right buyers know why you matter to them, making competitors less relevant.

Weeks 5 onwards, you’ll realise your pipeline is now stronger, so your AEs can start closing more, and happier.

Weeks 15 onwards, we'll scale content for authority and inbound opportunities, and high-converting paid ads (while empowering every channel and strategy of your's with ‘rejection-proof’ messaging).

Working with me, you get:

1. A growth partner, so you only have to assist the journey & sell more.

2. Transformation of your entire revenue process, and team.

3. Build “Authority”, leaving salesy desperation behind.

4. The proven method that further scales to $50M or $100M.

5. Permanent solution to ‘which buyers to reach, when, and how’. So you never have to wake-up mid-night thinking GTM, PMF, or whatever.

My results speak for themselves:

“I went from $550 retainer to $6k - $30k, with 7.5X revenue growth”. 

“A B2B IoT Founder opened TWO new and BIG markets, both coming inbound to them, helping them grow multifold within 13 months”

“A Cybersecurity firm went from ‘nothing on Linkedin and Emails’ to Linkedin and Emails being their top contributors”.

Back to you.

Are you tired of burning $ and opportunity-cost without growing revenue and profits? Are you ready to get to $10M growth, faster?

Then DM me here.

Founder and SaaS Marketing Success Head

Helping SaaS Leaders and Sales teams create strong awareness and build trust and relationships to grow revenue with least objections and increased conversions.

We generate leads for B2B SaaS companies using our Unstoppable SaaS Growth Framework

It helps a SaaS company build lasting relationships with ICP, Top talent and Investors.

How we do it?

Using Linkedin Marketing, Account based Marketing and Targeted Email Marketing for SaaS.

Why are we focussed with SaaS only?

We love technology that solves business challenges in day to day life (we have faced them too and solved using technology).

A lot of promising SaaS products are dying because of struggling market share and organic awareness would have helped them grow.

We want to help reduce this phenomenon and help promising SaaS companies cross the US$ 100 million mark and reach Unicorn status.

We want to support the SaaS SDRs and AEs to generate more quality leads and convert them with least objections.

I'm building a team of skilled SaaS Sales, Customer Success and SaaS Content writers. DM if interested to know what in it for you.

My competitor just handed me a deal.

Not intentionally. But let me explain.

A prospect ghosted us a couple years ago. Chose a competitor. (Cheaper, obviously.)

Fast forward to October. Same prospect in my DMs.

"Let's talk."

Signs up within days.

Here's what actually happened:

Their cheap choice fell apart. Painful. Messy.

But while they were suffering through it, they kept seeing my posts. Week after week. Building trust. Getting clarity.

By the time they reached out, they knew exactly what they needed—and who to trust.

Our price is now 3x what it was.

They didn't even haggle.

Because they learned the hard way: cheap experiments are expensive lessons.

The competitor didn't hand over the client to me.

Their failure did.

And my consistency did.

Be the person prospects think about when their current solution fails them.

That's how you win.

#Sales #Marketing #SaaS #GTM #ContentMarketing #SocialSelling #Pricing #Copywriting

Gaurav R Patel

I reverse-engineer why B2B deals die (hint: buyer uncertainty, not price) | Building self-service revenue systems that buyers actually prefer

As a B2B founder, some of the industry noise I totally refuse to buy anymore:

Industry Noise I Totally Refuse to Buy Anymore

❌  “Just double your outreach and you’ll hit pipeline targets.”
The so-called LinkedIn and Email “growth experts” make it sound like more cold DMs = more deals. If that were true, every founder would be at $5-10M ARR by now.
But every month, I see hundreds of smart founders quietly burning budget, chasing reply rates in the low single digits, then blaming themselves when deals stall or go silent.

❌  “You need flashier content to cut through.”
No, you don’t. You need content that’s written from the buyer’s perspective. Not viral LinkedIn hacks, but messages that speak to your buyers’ biggest anxieties.

That’s how trust is built. By being the one person who finally speaks to what nobody will say out loud.

I learned this after spending weeks posting different content and learn what brings readers to my DMs.

❌  “Keep automating. If you’re not scaling, you’re not trying hard enough.”
We all get seduced by automation. I did too. Until a “scaled” outbound campaign nearly nuked our sender reputation and buried pipeline for months.

It wasn’t automation that fixed it. It was slowing down, mapping the actual buyer journey, and engineering outbound with message craft after we earned visibility and credibility in the community.

❌  “Your case studies, your offer, your grit are enough.”
Absolute lie. The founders breaking out now aren’t working harder;
They’re getting seen by the right buyers (organically),
deepening authority, building buyer certainty before the first DM.

In this journey, we stopped tracking MQLs and only believe in 3 KPIs -

1️⃣ Qualified Meetings Booked
2️⃣ Ideal Accounts Engaged 
3️⃣ Brand Visibility

Revenue went up. Stress went down.

I’ll never go back.

B2B tech isn’t a lottery.

In real it’s about obsessing over what your real buyers truly want.

If you want inbound calls from buyers ready to trust and buy, fix the invisible stuff that’s keeping you out of their line of sight.

Stop playing by the propaganda,

Start building on truth.


#DM #GTM #RevenueEngine #Buyercertainty

b2b founder industry noise to completely avoid

A founder sold his company and immediately knew he'd made a mistake.

His competitor? Went on to hit a $4.5B valuation.

That regret became the foundation for the largest B2B SaaS community on Earth.

Here's the story nobody talks about 👇

Jason M. Lemkin built EchoSign from zero in the 2000s.

By 2011, the company was:
→ $12M in ARR
→ Growing 120% year over year
→ Cash-flow positive

When Adobe came calling with a nine-figure exit offer, he sold.

Made sense at the time, right?

Wrong.

The SaaS market was just warming up.

DocuSign, his then closest competitor kept building.

7 years later, Docusign IPO'd at a $4.4 billion valuation.

Jason's reaction?
"No one in their right mind today would sell a business like that."

But here's where it gets interesting.

Instead of hiding that regret, Jason turned it into his entire playbook.

He founded SaaStr.ai in 2012 with one mission:

Help the next generation of founders avoid his mistakes.

SaaStr became:
→ The world's largest B2B SaaS community
→ 12,000+ people at the annual conference
→ Weekly workshops, AMAs, and real talk
→ A $150M fund backing companies he wished he'd kept building

The genius move?

Jason didn't bury his failure.

He weaponized it.

He shared the mistake openly. Repeatedly. In every format.

Thousands of founders heard it. Learned from it. Trusted him because of it.

Compare that to most founder stories:

Most talk only about wins.

Jason talks about regrets.

Most sell you future success.

Jason sells you past failures.

Most chase the next shiny thing.

Jason compounds on learnings.

The result?

A movement. A community. A multi-billion-dollar impact on an entire industry.

All because Jason was willing to be wrong publicly and share what he learned—transparently.

The lesson for B2B founders:

Your biggest competitive advantage isn't ONLY your product.

It's your willingness to share what you've learned... especially your mistakes.

When you do that authentically, buyers don't just see you as a vendor.

They see you as a guide who's already walked the path.

That's buyer certainty.

That's what compounds.

#B2BTech #FounderStory #BuyerCertainty #ShareYourMistakes #SaaS

I spent about 2 hours on a sales call yesterday.

This tech founder was amazing.

The product was amazing.

But their buyer kept saying - "Honestly... this feels like your competitor."

They chose based on price.

This is what broken positioning looks like.

This founder had 12 different value props:
💪 Faster
💪 Easier
💪 Better customer support
💪 Integrates with X
💪 Powered by AI
💪 Lower cost

Guess what the buyer heard?

"We're like everyone else, but... maybe cheaper?"

And what kills me worse: his competitor could have said THE SAME THING.

Now it's a race to the bottom on price.

I'm currently working with a portfolio of 3 more founders on repositioning. 

We're spending weeks on this. Even though it feels slow.

My first founder resisted: "GP, we don't have time for positioning. We need to close deals."

I said: "You're closing 7-10% of deals. Tighten positioning, you'll close 30%."

She locked positioning to: "40% time savings for finance teams (without training)."

Next quarter? Win rate: under 25%. ACV: up by 20%. Not bad.

She's now spending less time closing + making more per deal.

That's what real positioning does.

Why This Matters?

Generic positioning = commodity = price wars = low margins.

Clear positioning = differentiation = faster sales = better margins.

But founders resist because it feels like "limiting upside."

No. It's actually unlocking upside.

If you're a CMO/Head of Marketing, this is haunting you. Sales reps all pitch differently. Buyers are confused. Win rate sucks.

If you're a founder, you feel it too. Sales cycles are long. 

Buyer confusion = indecision.

Simple Breakdown (What Winners Do):
1️⃣ Define ONE buyer persona (not 3)
2️⃣ Identify the specific problem you solve for that persona
3️⃣ Test messaging with 20 prospects (surveys + calls)
4️⃣ Lock positioning across website, sales deck, email, everything
5️⃣ Train entire team on positioning language (reps, customer success, everyone)

3 founders did this. Revenue grew 2-4x. Not because product got better. 

Because messaging got clearer.

Is your current positioning crystal clear, or are you saying "we're the faster, easier, cheaper version"?

Guaranteed Growth Hack

If buyers want household-name brands, it’s called “trust.”
But if a founder pushes for credibility, it’s “ego.”


If clients chase legacy solutions, it’s seen as “due diligence.”
But when founders bet on new tech, it’s “risky.”


If investors ask for hockey-stick growth, it’s called “ambition.”
But if founders push back for realistic milestones, it’s seen as “playing small.”


If companies negotiate hard on price, it’s “business.”
But if founders hold their pricing line, it’s “inflexible.”


Funny how the rules shift depending on who’s asking, right?

The $0 to $20M ARR LinkedIn Experiment (That Almost Didn’t Start)

What if I told you that building a $20M ARR company began with just 10 posts in 2 weeks?

Amanda Zhu didn’t start with a blueprint. She started with a simple question:
"Can LinkedIn content alone beat traditional sales?"

The answer wasn’t obvious.

Her first posts? Totally ad hoc. A list of AI startups here, a quick thought there.

No algorithm hacks. No sales pitch.

Just real, value-packed insights shared consistently.

One or two posts hit 100K+ impressions before she even had 3,000 followers.

Did she get lucky? Sure.

But she didn’t stop there.

She reverse engineered those wins.

Built a rock-solid system:
💪 6 posts per week.
💪 A dedicated content teammate.
💪 A Notion database of ideas.
💪 Weekly co-writing marathons.

Engagement slots carved into her day.

Millions of impressions later, $20M+ ARR, and a $38M Series B raise, the content isn’t side hustle. It became her main pipeline.

What founders usually miss:
1️⃣ Viral content is not magic. It’s craft + math + process.
2️⃣ Your network grows when you give first, not pitch first.
3️⃣ Showing your real journey builds trust that translates to sales.
4️⃣ The long game wins... commit months before expecting fireworks.

Amanda's experiment wasn’t about quick growth hacks.

It was about consistent value with purpose.

Now, the question is - "Are you ready to treat your personal brand like the company asset it truly is?"

Because LinkedIn isn’t just a platform anymore.

It’s your strongest competitive moat.


For more such real b2b growth insights, follow Gaurav R Patel


#MOAT #Unicorn #ContentMarketing

Why do startups obsess over "automate for scale"?

As if their life is dependant on it.

Because in reality, this obsession makes them stuck at $100k, $500k and never give them sight of their next $1M.

The reason beneath the iceberg is:

1️⃣ / Using automation for shortcut, not as a quality enhancer.
From outside it’s tempting to plug in a tool, and hope for pipeline.
But they never realize that automating broken processes never scale.

2️⃣ / Automating before you validate your ICP and acquisition.
Most teams skip the hard part which needs —> validated ICP, clear messaging, and disciplined (manual) outbound. And other ways to build scalable pipeline. And automating without this is like installing industrial robots in factories that doesn't manufacture at basic pace and quality, yet.

3️⃣ / Taking sales for granted (or bailing too soon).
If you quit after a few cold emails or jump from tactic to tactic… congrats, you’re in the “always searching, rarely closing” club.
Every founder who scales profitably?

They reverse the logic:
👍  Build + stress-test a manual process.
👍  Audit every assumption about ICP, messaging, and engagement.
👍  Only then once the signal is real they automate just enough to amplify what’s working.

Never everything, never too soon.

These founders barely do:
🤜 Rush to “save time,” but actually compound what drives real pipeline.
🤜 Settle for pipeline luck, they engineer consistency.
🤜 Blame channels, they refine their systems until acquisition clarity is a feature. And not a fluke.

Brand, Trust building, Buyer alignment... all in place before the bots get a nod.

And they always, always leave room for experimentation.. stealing wisely from winners, while inventing a much needed edges of their own.

Most (struggling) startups keep spinning their wheels because they want the wins without the grind of figuring out and building an engine that works for their growth, and end up writing codes of excuses.

The ones who rise?

They build the system.

Simple, but not easy.


#SalesStrategy #SaaSsales

We analyzed 20+ B2B founders who plateaued at $500k-3M ARR.

They all had the same problem.

They were chasing growth.
They were hiring.
They were shipping features.

But they weren't building systems.

Most founder stuck at $3M had ONE thing in common.

Their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) was a mess.

Not intentionally. They just never locked it in.

I'll be honest. I missed this with one founder I work with. 

Last year he was "selling to anyone in SaaS." Tech startup? Sure. Enterprise? Sure. Bootstrapped? Also sure.

His CAC was high. His LTV wasn't that great. He was barely making money.

We spent 1-2 weeks thoroughly analyzing and defining tight ICP: SME SaaS, 50-500 employees, specific pain in procurement.

Next two quarters? CAC dropped significantly. LTV jumped too.

Same product. Same market. Specific ICP.

He's now confidently aiming for $5M ARR (getting rid of plateau).

This Matters because Your sales team learns to sell to anyone → they become generalists → you scale chaos.

Tight ICP → your sales team becomes a specialist → they close faster → everything else works.

Most founders think "we're too early to be picky."

No. You're too EARLY not to be.

The habits your sales team builds now (selling to bad fits) will haunt you at $5M.

If you're a founder stuck between $500k-5M, this is you. You're busy. You don't feel like you can be selective. But that's exactly why you're stuck.

Simple Breakdown:
1️⃣ Audit your last 20 customers: who's most successful + profitable?
2️⃣ Define tight ICP (company size, revenue, specific pain)
3️⃣ Tie sales compensation to landing in ICP only
4️⃣ Retrain sales team to disqualify bad fits (not qualify everyone)

Founders who did this, went from "stuck" to 2-4x growth within 12-24 months.

Curious if you're stuck in the same trap? 

Drop a comment -> what's your current ICP? 

I'll tell you if it's too broad.

taplio

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taplio

The Battle

Tom Hunt

Gaurav Patel

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Tom Hunt's LinkedIn Performance

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