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DEEP DIVE
Let’s talk about the board meeting you’re dreading.
Your CAC is creeping up.
Your LTV is flat.
Your Head of Marketing is showing you "brand awareness" metrics and "social engagement," but your pipeline feels like a desert.
You feel like "nobody knows about us," so you're throwing more money at LinkedIn ads and cold calling agencies. You can insert any tactic you’re trying here.
I’m going to be blunt as usual: your marketing is fine. It’s your positioning that is too weak.
When I was at Bitpanda (Austria's first unicorn) we hit this exact wall at 2M users.
We had the budget.
We had the talent.
But.. we were failing because we were still talking to our first 100 "crypto-bros".
We were using a 1.0 pitch in a 2.0 market.
If you’re between $3M and $15M ARR, you are likely suffering from as I like to call it "Early adopter hangover."
Let me explain..
You’re still wearing your startup pajamas - using the same "innovative feature" pitch that won over your first visionary customers.
But to get to $50M, you have to sell to the early majority. And the Majority doesn't want "disruption." They want infrastructure.
The "Category" hijack: Why you’re being ignored
Most founders think they have a marketing volume problem.
But from my experience working with scaleups at this stage - you actually have a Category price ceiling problem.
If you position yourself as a "tool," you are fighting for a slice of a tiny, “we don’t care about this” budget.
If you position as "infrastructure," you are the foundation - the “we can’t live without this”.
Look at how Notion and Monday hijacked their way into bigger budgets:
Notion - from "Notes" to the "Enterprise brain"
You’ll agree that "Note-taking" has a mental price cap of about $10/user. Nobody pays $50/user for a notebook.
By pivoting to the "Connected Workspace," Notion didn't just change their copy; they changed their ACV (Average Contract Value).
They moved from the "Individual productivity" budget to the "Corporate knowledge" budget. From freelancers cute tool to enterprise.Monday.com: The operations budget hijack
They used to be a "team tracker." But tracking tasks is a micro-manager’s job - it’s the first thing cut in a recession.
So they repositioned as a "Work OS."
Why? Because Operations budgets are 10x larger than Productivity budgets.
They stopped selling "organized lists" and started selling "Business Agility."
Both of these examples have 1 thing in common. They became essential.
P.S. I have a deeper analysis later in my swipe file.
The Strategist's audit: Vitamin 💊 vs. Plumbing 👨🔧
If your marketing feels "messy" and your outbound is the only thing keeping you alive, it’s because you are selling a Vitamin (it makes things better) to people who only have budget for Plumbing (if we don’t fix it now, we’re done).
Check your own H1 right now:
The "Pajama" Pitch: "The fastest way to automate your reporting." (A tool for a person).
The "Infrastructure" Pitch: "The Source of Truth for your marketing ROI." (An asset for the business).
The first is a choice your customer makes when they have free time.
The second is a requirement they need to show the board why they should keep their job.
I’ve made GPT that helps you see if you’re a vitamin or a plumber.
Inside the "Scale-Stage" Swipe File
I’ve spent the last 2 weeks doing a deep-dive analysis on 5 SaaS companies who hit this exact $10M wall and successfully repositioned to hit $100M+.
I didn't just look at their landing pages. I looked at their P&L impact.
I’ve put together a Scale-Stage Positioning Swipe File where I breakdown the exact "Before" and "After" shifts for Notion, Monday.com, HubSpot, Loom, and Intercom.
I show you the exact psychological shift they made to stop being a "tool" and start being "infrastructure."
To get access to the full breakdown:
Stop throwing tactics at the wall. Shed the pajamas.
See you next week,
P.S. Know a founder who would find this useful? Feel free to share!
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That’s a wrap✨
If you liked this newsletter, let me know. Reading all my emails. 💌
If we’re not connected on Linkedin already - let’s do it right now.
If you wanna see me talking about this, I have instagram too.
Or if you want me to audit your brand quickly, here’s how to book a 15 minutes call.
P.S. If someone sent you this newsletter - I would love to know who!