What do the companies with genuinely great inbound do differently?

Sorts content strategy into five distinct models (who makes it, what it optimises for) so you can choose one deliberately instead of drifting. Includes how HubSpot, Ahrefs, Intercom and Webflow staffed and funded theirs.

Content-driven growth

From Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky long read

• Expect at least five dedicated people for a real content engine, more if you are doing video.
• Slidebean spent about 125K dollars on YouTube production in 2020 after finding paid search covered only 5 percent of its keyword demand.
• Blog posts drove 30 percent or more of HubSpot's customers in its early days.
• Ahrefs got to 1.5M visits a month on 300+ posts; Intercom runs 870 posts and 262 podcast episodes.

A rare account of the specific moments a GTM changed shape, from narrowing to cold email agencies, to reversing the demo, to layering enterprise on top of self-serve. Best-in-class practice described as decisions rather than principles.

The GTM Inflection Points That Powered Clay to a $1B+ Valuation

From First Round Review by Varun Anand ~25 min read

• Clay started with about 20 customers paying 30 to 200 dollars a month before the pivot that worked.
• Founders ran 8 plus reverse demos a day, watching users work rather than presenting.
• The waitlist stayed on for 15 months after public launch, through millions in ARR.
• Pricing is credits tied to columns times rows, and they took three swings before enterprise pricing landed.

Krish is blunt that inbound marketing was the whole strategy, chosen because Chennai gave them no access to a Silicon Valley network, and that half their early revenue came from North America anyway. The strongest proof that content-led GTM travels from India.

How Krish Subramanian built global SaaS unicorn Chargebee out of India

From Insight Partners by Insight Partners long read

• Half of Chargebee's revenue came from North America from the very beginning, despite being built in India.
• The founders paid themselves 600 dollars a month and had burned nearly all their capital by month 18.
• Their plan started with saving 20 to 30 percent of their salary each month before quitting.
• The bet was on the subscription economy, which has grown 3.7x faster than the S&P 500 over the past decade.

The best Indian example of building demand before a product exists: a community launched nine months ahead, a podcast for the same buyers, 100 plus customer conversations, then a launch timed with the funding news. Concrete on the demand gen channels that followed too.

SaaS, Chennai, Acquisition By Freshworks and Building Rocketlane with Founder, Srikrishnan Ganesan

On The Neon Show by Siddhartha Ahluwalia with Srikrishnan Ganesan podcast episode