Ryan Staley

You can avoid the biggest mistake I see over and over.

Wrong strategy for the contract value.

These strategies will transform your SaaS business.

10. Customer-Centric Approach

- Ideal target contract value: Any range
- Founder background: Customer success, product management, UX research
- Example: Intercom - Product suite built around solving customer communication challenges

9. Product Referral Programs

- Ideal target contract value: $100-$1,000 per month
- Founder background: Growth hacking, customer success, data analysis
- Example: Dropbox - Successful referral program offering free storage space

8. Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

- Ideal target contract value: $10,000+ per month
- Founder background: Enterprise sales, B2B marketing, industry expertise
- Example: Demandbase - Targeted high-value accounts with its own ABM platform

7. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

- Ideal target contract value: $50-$500 per month
- Founder background: Digital marketing, content creation, technical SEO
- Example: Canva - Optimized website for design-related searches, driving organic user acquisition

6. Influencer Marketing
- Ideal target contract value: $500-$5,000 per month
- Founder background: Marketing, PR, industry connections
- Example: Monday.com - Leveraged influencers and YouTubers to showcase capabilities

5. Community Building

- Ideal target contract value: $100-$1,000 per month
- Founder background: Community management, social media, customer success
- Example: Atlassian - Strong user community through forums, events, and user groups

4. Strategic Partnerships

- Ideal target contract value: $5,000-$50,000 per month
- Founder background: Business development, sales, networking
- Example: DocuSign - Partnered with Salesforce to expand reach in the CRM ecosystem

3. Content Marketing and Thought Leadership

- Ideal target contract value: $500-$5,000 per month
- Founder background: Marketing, journalism, industry expertise
- Example: HubSpot - Massive content library establishing thought leadership in digital marketing

2. Product-Led Growth

- Ideal target contract value: $50-$500 per month
- Founder background: Software engineering, product management, data analysis
- Example: Zoom - Intuitive, high-quality product driving its own adoption

1. Freemium Model

- Ideal target contract value: $10-$100 per month
- Founder background: Product management, UX design, growth hacking
- Example: Slack - Free version with limited features driving rapid adoption and upselling

It took me 3 years to truly understand SAAS GTM, but you can learn it in 3 minutes.

From, early stage to pre IPO these are the patterns I ‘ve observed.

Your competitors are already using AI. Don't get left behind.

Weekly AI strategies used by PE Backed and Publicly Traded Companies→ link in bio

The curious paradox? Learning basic AI skills requires far less time than learning to code, yet potentially delivers greater career security. The window for this advantage won't stay open forever.

This isn't about preventing AI from taking your job—it's about becoming the person who wields AI to do the work of five people.

- The gap between AI-literate professionals and everyone else will widen rapidly, creating an unprecedented opportunity for those who position themselves now

- AI literacy is fundamentally more accessible than coding mastery—requiring pattern recognition and prompt engineering rather than years of technical study

- Most companies don't need more coders—they need employees who can identify automation opportunities and implement AI solutions across existing workflows

While McKinsey reports AI could automate 50% of current work by 2030, they're missing the counterpoint: employees who can leverage AI effectively deliver 5-10x the output of their peers.

The future belongs not to those competing against AI but to those who become skilled AI conductors:

The real competitive advantage isn't in writing code that AI can increasingly generate—it's in becoming AI-literate enough to orchestrate these tools strategically.

AI Literacy Is The New Job Security—Not Coding

Everyone's scrambling to learn coding while AI rapidly transforms what's valuable in the job market.

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While competitors get lost in complexity, the highest performers ruthlessly eliminate distractions to focus on the single lever that creates maximum impact.

My eyes are wide open and I can’t wait to see what happens as I grow by elimination over addition.

A special thanks to Brandon Taylor for showing me around. Awesome work!!!!

Most valuable takeaway?

The "One Thing" framework that's now reshaping my approach.

3. Audience Obsession:

Every piece designed with laser-focused intention to attract precisely the right buyers.

The East Austin setting provided the perfect environment to absorb these insights—removed from daily operations, surrounded by strategic thinkers who challenged conventional wisdom.

The depth was so impressive that even the previous Leader of Alex Hormozi and Gary Vee's content team’s highlighted it as exceptional.

2. Relentless Refinement:

What appears effortless actually involves 20+ edits as a starting point—beginning where most content creators consider themselves finished on step 3.

Meanwhile, Matt Gray shared his remarkably systematic content creation framework:

1. Data-Driven Foundation:

He built an entire year's worth of content from customer survey data—going extraordinarily deep where most creators merely scratch the surface.

The single most profound revelation? There is no perfect way to grow a company.

Each of the 54 founders carved entirely unique paths:

-Some scaled through aggressive acquisition
-Others leveraged product-led growth methodologies
-Many created hybrid approaches that evolved with market conditions

What 54 Founders & LinkedIn's Top Creator Taught Me in Austin

I had a mind-expanding experience at the Austin Mastermind with 54 founders and Matt Gray (arguably LinkedIn's top creator) that completely shifted my perspective on business growth.

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A special thanks to Christopher Gannon Alina Vandenberghe 🌶️ Brian C Reed Christen George-McFerrin Peter Mullen for the 7:00 AM meetup (hence the bags under my eyes 🙂!)
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