I agree with most Start-Up Truisms.  One of the best ones is Don’t Chase the Shiny Penny.  Double Down on What Works.

For sure this is true in SaaS.  If you’ve got a good thing in a certain vertical, double down there.  If you have mid-market customers but not many in the enterprise or low-end, focus there even more this year.  Etc., etc.

And yet …

What tends to happen for most SaaS businesses even as early as $2m ARR or so, is that they get a core engine that’s working.  At least at 20,000 feet.  It’s hard, yes.  But assuming you execute, and the leads continue to come in, etc. … you should grow, say, 100% over the next 12 months.  Based just on the velocity rate from the past X months.

I completely agree you should spend 90%+ of your time just doing what’s working, only better, if you are at $2m ARR or higher and growing 80% or more YoY.

But here’s the thing.  SaaS Compounds (more on that here).  Imagine if you just added one extra layer, one extra segment, one new way to sell, one product extension … that just might add another 10% growth this year.

Now, that won’t mean much this year, and it may be distracting at first.  But look what happens as SaaS compounds:

The difference is epic down the road, as you march toward the Big M&A offer or IPO.  Epic.  Just from one little new initiative. 😉  Imagine if you do this every year, and half of these initiatives work …

So the last thing I am suggesting for Your SaaS New Year’s Resolution is to get distracted, or take your eye off the ball.

But I am suggesting, as founders and execs, you think about doing (x) one new thing that (y) builds on your core, doesn’t fundamentally change what you’re doing but (z) could inflect the curve 10% and not be terribly distracting.

Let me suggest some ideas … to add this quarter:

• Add an Outbound Sales Team if You Don’t Have One.  Yes, Even In The Age of AI.  Crappy outbound may be “dead”.  But great outbound still works as well as ever.  Especially if your ACV is high enough, outbound will almost work, done right.  We’ll do a post on this soon.  Have you tried it?  It doesn’t have to make the company.  A small team just has to generate enough new business to add 10% to the top line.  More here and a great example of how Rippling still crushes outbound here:

• Add A Second Core Product.  You probably aren’t ready before $10m-$20m ARR to do this, but by then it’s worth thinking on.  We’ve learned that the key to success in later stages is being multi-product for almost all SaaS leaders.  The question is just when.  It’s probably by 1,000-10,000 customers (a wide range, I know).  What we do know is that it’s earlier these days.
• Add Professional Services, for Real.  Yuck, you say?  Professional services?  Well, enterprise customers are happy to pay for them.  You can pack another 20-30% of revenue onto any enterprise deal if you do it right here.  Yes, I know it’s not recurring.  But you’ll get it in new deals every year.  Hire a Head of Professional Services and charge for Pro Services.  It will work in any six-figure deal, and many five-figure deals.  More here.
• Do Your First Customer Conference.  And Invite All Your Top Prospects, Too.  It doesn’t have to start off fancy.  Rent a ballroom or even a large conference room in a nice hotel. And invite all your customers and top prospects together for a half-day to start.  Magic happens when you get them together.
• Add a More Enterprise Edition.  Add a few more features, more security, more whatever, so you can make your product More Enterprise.  And charge for it.  It will probably work.  A bit more here.
• Add a Real VP Business Dev.  I know you have partners.  But are you taking them seriously enough?  Do you have someone whose full time job it is to make your partners successful?  It will probably pay off.  I see way too many founders winging partnerships themselves for way too long.  Once you have even 1-2 serious partners, they deserve someone full-time helping them succeed.  And you maximizing the revenue from them 🙂
• Start Visiting 3-4 Customers a Month in Person, and Doing Roadmap Presentations.  This always works.  Go to your top customers and just share what’s coming on the roadmap and ask them for feedback.  You’ll find they also churn less and buy more when you do.  More here.
• Add A VP Customer Success Earlier.  Your churn may be low.  But what if it were 10% lower?  It’s not that hard.  Hire a seasoned VP of Customer Success.  Your churn will go down, and your upsells will go up.  A bit more here.
• Add Someone to Own Upsells.  Even if the Customer Success thing is working, do you have someone, or a team, dedicated to maximizing land-and-expand and/or upsells?  No?  You can easily inflect the curve another 10% here.
• Add Proactive Customer Success / Retention for Your Smallest Customers.  You probably shower your largest customers with love.  But do you do such a great job with the smallest ones?  Probably not, even if you have a Customer Success team.  Add someone to just focus on the very smallest of your customers.  Show them respect, and some love.  Churn will go way, way down here too.  This doesn’t mean not use AI.  But what it means is hire someone whose only job is to make your smallest customers happier. And increase NRR there.
• Start Doing Customer Marketing for Real.  Yes, you’re doing a lot to market to new prospects and potential customers.  But how about to your existing base?  Over time, they’ll be the source of most of your new leads, and your growth.  More on that here.
• Go Global If You Can; 50% of So Many Cloud Leaders Revenue is Outside U.S.  Lean in here.  Yes, it’s even more work.  But it’s 99% the same product.

None of these initiatives requires any sort of tilt, or in most cases, any really dramatic change.  And I bet at least a few of them might work at your company.  Pick 1-2 to implement — this quarter.

The key to all these potential initiatives is to just try to get $1 back for every $1 you spend.  It’s an investment.  Your core engine does need to have positive unit economics.  Your extra efforts at the incremental customer really should just cover costs (more on the incremental customer here).  Expecting profits here is being way too conservative.

I know you barely have time to service the leads and customers you already have.  I know you have a 3+ year feature backlog already.  I know.

But take a pause now at the start of a new year.  Find a way to add a relatively low-stress, low-dilution layer to what you are doing now.  It won’t materially change your MRR at first.  But it will have a magical effect by year-end.