CXL - Capture vs create demand

I have 5 updates for you this week.

1. On my mind

I've been studying high-growth companies, profiling them on How to Win podcast. There are many ways to grow fast, but almost all of these companies share one thing…

They tap into a pre-existing demand (people already wanna do this) or solve a previously unsolved big problem (which is also demand).

Some anecdotes from my personal network:

A buddy of mine started a new SaaS company 18 months ago as a side hustle, doing $400k MRR today. How? Because they made something people already wanna do much easier. You don't get to $5M in revenue in 18 months without strong pre-existing demand.

A guy here in Austin sold his bootstrapped email marketing SaaS company for ~$30M (a nice outcome for the founder). It was probably something like the 44th biggest email marketing SaaS tool (small, lesser-known player). But because *everyone* is doing email marketing, even also-rans can make a decent buck if the market is big enough.

Tapping into pre-existing demand is a way easier life. More competition - yes - but still easier than the opposite (taking years to create demand from scratch).

Follow Peep on LinkedIn for more thoughts on strategy, messaging and optimization.

2. CXL Playbooks

Be more efficient with your time and tame your daily work whirlwind. We’ve built CXL Playbooks where best marketers share their processes through 10 step checklists. 

You can even integrate them with your project management tool and use them as a base for your SOPs.

Get access to the ultimate database of marketing playbooks. 

3. Latest episode on "How to Win"

Andrew Chen is the person you want to hear talking when it comes to strategies for kick-starting network-led growth in SaaS.

He's a partner at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a board member of AppSumo and Clubhouse, former head of Rider Growth teams at Uber, and author of The Cold Start Problem: Using Network Effects to Scale Your Product.

He can tell you all about the ways in which companies are using network effects to rapidly accelerate their growth.

Listen to him spill his beans on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or your favorite podcast platform. 

4. CXL Job Board

Here are some great job offers we added to CXL’s Job Board this week. There’s more here.

If you want top brands to reach out to you, sign up for CXL Talent Pool. It's free. 

And if you're a company looking to directly access the best marketing talent and skip all the spammy applicants, apply here.

5. Testing Insights Show with AT&T

Ben Labay interviews Experimentation Leader, Brianna Warthan from AT&T to find out how they set up their Centre of Excellence and where they draw the line between autonomy and governance. They discuss how Brianna views different experimentation methods for testing and what guardrails are in place for deciding to test (or not).

Watch the episode.

Peep Laja
Founder at CXL

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