We plan to bring eChai across 100 cities in India. The next eChai Startup Demo Day is on 29 August in Bengaluru and Pune. The next after that is on 26 September, all in person. 11 cities confirmed, 330 founders registered. Any city that reaches 20 interested founders is on too. See your city
Leading a GTM team

How do I fund and staff a category play without starving pipeline?

Run it as a slice of marketing, not as a replacement for demand generation, because a category with no revenue behind it is a very expensive opinion. Median B2B SaaS marketing spend sits around 8 percent of ARR, so decide what share of that is future demand work and protect it by quarter rather than raiding it when a month looks thin. Staff it thin and senior: one product marketer with real authority, plus your founder's calendar, beats a content team with no point of view. Judge it on leading signals like branded search and category language showing up in inbound, and keep the demand engine on its own scoreboard.

Go deeper

4 resources, 2 India-specific, 4 link-checked.

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Median marketing spend around 8 percent of ARR and sales around 15 percent, split by funded versus bootstrapped, from a survey of over 1,000 private B2B SaaS companies. Numbers to anchor a brand versus demand budget argument.

2026 Spending Benchmarks for Private B2B SaaS Companies

From SaaS Capital by Nick Perry 15 min read

  • Median total spend is 96 percent of ARR for bootstrapped companies and 101 percent for equity backed ones.
  • 83 percent of bootstrapped companies are at or near breakeven versus only 52 percent of equity backed.
  • Median selling cost is 15 percent of revenue, up from 13 percent the year before, and R&D holds at 22 percent.
  • Equity backed companies spend roughly 70 percent more on sales and about double on marketing and customer success.
Open saas-capital.com
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The source of the 95-5 rule: at any moment only about 5 percent of your buyers are in market, so most brand spend is aimed at future demand. It is the evidence base for arguing brand budget with a CFO.

How B2B Brands Grow

From LinkedIn B2B Institute by LinkedIn B2B Institute with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Report hub

  • Double jeopardy law: loyalty follows penetration, so growth comes from acquiring new buyers, not loving existing ones harder.
  • The 95-5 rule: almost all of your market is out of market right now, which is why brand beats pure performance spend.
  • For B2B brands, lack of awareness is a far bigger problem than active rejection.
  • The job is mental and physical availability: be easy to bring to mind and easy to find in a buying situation.
Open business.linkedin.com

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The same ground, at another level

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