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#41 bite-sized case studies to grow your saas

[+79 retention technique list]

hey, It's mariano

wishing you a lovely saturday from saas-hq.com

welcome to my newsletter. every other week, I send:

1 to 3 bite-sized case studies to grow your saas

1 to 3 curated resources from top-notch experts

let’s dive in!

[bite-sized case studies]

GROWTH

1) growth teams and their focus

The first growth team and scaled teams are not the same.

If growth teams were superheroes, the first team would be Batman, constantly improvising in the heat of battle, while scaled teams are more like Iron Man—still adaptable but with way more tech and resources at their disposal.

The first growth team is purely an experimentation team—nothing more.

- They don't own any surface areas.
- They focus on underperforming areas to drive business performance.
- They can change metrics mid-week.
- Their process is exclusively anchored in experimentation.
- They operate by seeking forgiveness, not permission.

This ‘Growth team as firefighters’ approach often makes them one of the highest-leverage groups in the organization. This team typically includes a PM, one or two engineers, and a data person.

In contrast, a scaled team:

- Has pods centered around growth metrics: acquisition, activation, monetization, and retention.
- Owns specific surfaces.
- Experiments but stays bound to their pod’s metric.
- Succeeds through integration and influence within the organization.
- Owns self-serve experiences and revenue.

These growth pods usually consist of a PM with a 1:7 engineer ratio, along with design and data resources, plus dedicated marketing resources where applicable.

Growth tactic by Elena Verna

GROWTH

2) growth as engineering

hey saas folks! 👋

we're cooking up something new here:

→ we see growth as an engineering problem (because, well, it is)
→ we've got a team of software engineers, data science, and biz savvy people
→ we're hungry (for success, but also literally - we work through lunch)

we're itching to chat with:

1) saas scale-ups with all the fancy analytics, events, and metrics in place, but struggling to turn those numbers into cold, hard cash

2) saas up-and-comers who know they need all that data stuff but haven't quite figured out how to set it up yet

no sales pitch, just pure problem-solving fun.

curious? shoot me a message and let's talk.

reply to this email or connect with me on linkedin

FOUNDERS

3) founder mode

Last week, paul graham released a new piece about founders mode vs managers mode.

worth reading.

worth reflecting on it.

ACQUISITION

4) Which bootstrapped SaaS companies are best at SEO?

Tim Soulo and Ryan Law had to trawl through many thousands of SaaS companies and pull data from multiple sources to answer this question.

...which resulted in a pretty interesting chart you can see below.

Why "bootstrapped" though?

Well, because bootstraped companies don't have millions of dollars and hundreds of employees to throw at the problem of growing their search traffic.

So each company on this list is a great target to study and learn from!

Growth tactic by Tim Soulo

79+ SaaS retention techniques

Todays resource is bring to you by Optiblack

📬 SUGGESTION BOX

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thanks for reading!

have a great one.

best
— mariano martene