Newsletter · 20 min read

Scaling your B2B growth engine

Lenny Rachitsky · Lenny's Newsletter Freemium Intermediate

Names the six channels B2B companies actually grow on and shows how top companies weight them, which is the frame you need when one channel stalls. Also the useful reminder that organic inbound dominating usually means product-market fit, not clever marketing.

  • Top B2B startups take about 2 years from founding to $1M ARR, and roughly 1.5 years from their first customer.
  • Six channels ranked by prevalence: organic self-serve, organic sales-assist, outbound, content and SEO, paid, then partnerships.
  • Databricks' Ali Ghodsi on trying zero-touch PLG in 2015: revenue flatlined, and for practical purposes PLG did not work in enterprise.
  • Loom took 4 years to reach $1M ARR by design, choosing ubiquity inside organizations over early monetization.
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It answers 2 questions

  1. How much of my pipeline should come from inbound versus outbound, and when do I add the second channel?
  2. Inbound has dried up. Leads are down two quarters running and nobody knows why. What do I do?

Read with it

  1. Podcast · 90 min listen 2X SaaS Founder: How To Sell Global Tech Products From India Siddhartha Ahluwalia with Sharath Keshava Narayana
  2. Podcast · 1 hr 9 min listen Building a Multi-Million Dollar SaaS Company: Whatfix Founders Siddhartha Ahluwalia with Khadim Batti and Vara Kumar Namburu
  3. A first-hand account of moving from product-led growth to enterprise sales and the pricing changes that made the revenue work,... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · podcast episode Why Private Equity Paid $8.4 BILLION for Smartsheet Prime Venture Partners with Praerit Garg
  4. Freshworks' early marketing approach documented properly: what they measured, what they spent on, and the argument that below... SeedToScale by Accel Article · long read SaaS Playbook: Marketing Rachit Parekh
  5. The index page for Accel India's five-part masterclass series with operators from Freshworks, Chargebee and CleverTap. Start... SeedToScale by Accel Article · short read SaaS Playbook: Learning from the Practitioners and Building a Community Rachit Parekh
  6. Podcast · Full episode 7 Myths About Selling B2B SaaS In India ft Unicommerce Founder Kapil Makhija Siddhartha Ahluwalia with Kapil Makhija
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