Alexander Theuma

Founder and Editor-in-chief

Helping SaaS Founders grow their businesses to $10M+ ARR

I started SaaStock in 2015 with a simple idea: give SaaS founders a real space to connect, learn, and scale faster–together.

Fast forward to today: SaaStock has become the global home for SaaS founders who are serious about growth.

We've hosted thousands of founders, VCs, and execs from Dublin to Austin, from seed stage to unicorn. We’ve built a community that doesn’t just celebrate scale, it shares the hard truths, the breakthroughs, and the lessons you only get by being in the room where it happens.

Before SaaStock, I spent 11 years in sales, getting my hands dirty, chasing targets, closing deals, and learning what real GTM pressure feels like. That experience taught me: there’s no shortcut to growth. You need the right people around you, the right mindset, and a willingness to evolve — especially now, in an AI First world.

Today, I'm focused on three things:

Growing SaaStock across Europe and the US as the leading platform for SaaS founders.

Building a new generation of founder-driven, AI-enabled companies.

Using the SaaS Revolution Show Podcast to tell the real stories — the wins and the war stories — from the frontlines of SaaS.

SaaS is changing fast.

I'm here for the builders who want to change with it and win.

If you're scaling a SaaS company, or investing in one, let's chat.

Founder

Our purpose is to make a real difference to the lives and companies of the SaaS community

Most SaaS companies fail within the first three years due to lack of runway, lack of product market fit and lack of founder experience in managing a business.
SaaStock helps B2B SaaS Founders on the journey to $10mill ARR supercharge their growth by connecting founders with VCs to help extend runway, learn from industry experts and build pipeline.
We do this through or Physical and virtual conferences, our founder membership program, SaaStock local community gatherings and media.
We are the only media and events business that focuses on SaaS founders scaling to $10mill ARR. This focus enables us to provide the highest quality events, content and connections
For founders in this stage of their journey.


December was our strongest month for sponsorship revenue in 2025 🚀

Not an easy feat in a month shortened by holidays — but a clear signal of where SaaStock is headed.

In December alone, we:

 • Welcomed 12 new sponsors
 • Closed 4 global partnerships spanning both events
 • Signed partners onto SaaStock USA & SaaStock Europe 2026
 • Closed the majority of deals before Dec 24, with two more signed between Christmas and New Year

New partners joining the SaaStock ecosystem include:

Accoil, Aleph, Atlassian, Consero Global, Deel, Empleyo, FullEnrich, GoCardless, IDA Ireland, NetSuite, Pylon and Trundl, Inc.

A major driver?

Our new meetings product, which was taken up by the majority of sponsors and continues to prove its value in delivering real, high-intent connections — not just logo placement.

We enter 2026 with:
 ✔️ A stronger pipeline than this time last year
 ✔️ A market that’s accelerating
 ✔️ A team and product built to scale
 ✔️ Clear momentum across AI & B2B software partnerships

We’re looking ahead to a banner year — and to further cementing SaaStock as the largest meeting-led event in AI & B2B Software.

If you’re planning your 2026 GTM strategy and want partnerships that actually drive outcomes, now’s the time to talk.

Running the largest 1:1 Meetings event in B2B Software

We help high-growth DTC and SaaS brands scale profitably through precision performance marketing.

With over $40M in ad spend managed and 18+ years in digital strategy, I lead a team of specialists across Paid Media, SEO, Web Development, Email Marketing, and Data Analytics all aligned around one goal: measurable growth.

As a Google Premier Partner and Meta-certified agency, we’ve supported brands like Browns Shoes, Linen Chest, Sleep Country, and CCL Industries with full-funnel strategies that drive ROI, not just impressions.

We integrate data, creative, and technology to design performance systems that don’t just look good they convert.

Whether you're a founder, CMO, or agency partner, I’m always open to strategic conversations.

Let’s talk if you’re scaling and need a trusted performance partner.

Abdo Mazloum

Are you watching loyal buyers get cold feet at checkout? 

Well, that hesitation says more about your offer than your price tag. 

Right now, 1 in 3 consumers is trading down not just to save, but because your value story isn’t convincing them to stay. 

I’ve worked with brands that doubled down on discounts, thinking price would win trust. 

Instead, they saw margin erosion and fading repeat rates.

The real shift happens when brands stop trying to out-discount the competition and start reworking their value loop.

That means clarifying what truly sets your offer apart, bundling for perceived value instead of just slashing prices, and focusing on building buyer confidence from the first touchpoint. 

If your growth depends on constant promos, it’s time to fix the root cause, which is your value proposition, not your price.

Loyalty and margin follow when your value is clear, so make your offer the reason buyers return, not just your latest discount.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdowns

Helping 7 to 9-figure eCommerce brands achieve 3-7X ROAS with a Data-First Growth Architecture | Founder & CEO @ WebTmize | $40M+ Ad Spend Managed

“The tracking’s fixed” is probably one of the most dangerous sentences I hear.

Not because it’s wrong, but because no one stops to ask what was actually fixed.

Server-side setups look cleaner, but without control over ingestion, they quietly overstate performance by 15–30%.

I’ve seen duplicated events, delayed conversions, and Frankenstein session logic create dashboards that look solid, but tell the wrong story at scale.

What makes this worse?

The cleaner the setup looks, the less likely anyone is to question it.

So when the numbers start lying, they lie confidently, and decisions keep getting made.

Founders end up scaling bad SKUs, trusting broken payback models, and pushing media spend based on inflated assisted revenue.

And decision integrity doesn’t come from more tracking.

It comes from knowing exactly what’s being counted, when, and how it maps to margin.

Because the truth is:

Most tracking setups serve platforms, not your economics.

If your paid strategy looks solid on paper but the margin keeps saying otherwise, you’ve probably got a measurement issue hiding in plain sight.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdown.

Swipe through the carousel to learn more

I don’t scale ecommerce brands until I’ve run this 30-minute test.

It shows me exactly what breaks when spending doubles.

If you’re unsure whether to scale, pause, or fix, this will bring clarity fast.

This isn’t about creative audits or media efficiency.

It’s a diagnostic I run before any scale push to expose the real constraint.

Sometimes it’s a margin.

Sometimes retention.

Sometimes the ops team just can’t hold the weight of the scale.

And when that’s the case, more spending just accelerates failure.

It’s called the Growth Pressure-Test.

When I applied it across 7–8 figure brands, we stopped seeing scale as a traffic problem and started seeing it for what it really is:

A structural readiness problem.

So I packaged the test into a cheat sheet with the exact checkpoints, benchmarks, and questions to ask with your team.

It takes 30 minutes.

And it has saved teams months of wasted spend.

Why now?

Because Q1 growth hides cracks and Q2 scale exposes them.

Save it. Use it. Run it before your next growth sprint.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdown.

Ever feel like every incremental dollar spent suddenly delivers less?

I call this the “ghost tax”.

You don’t see the leak, but your bank account does.

The dashboard still says “up and to the right", but under the surface, it gets messier.

Suddenly, CAC gets jumpy, discounts become a crutch, and operations are always catching up.

Your teams keep optimizing, but it never feels like enough.
 
And this is where most brands get stuck:

- Margins quietly erode while sales look fine
- “Winning” channels now only win with promos
- Marketing, ops, and finance drift apart, each chasing its own win

If any of that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

The systems that carried you to $3M can quietly break at $10M+, and the fixes aren’t always obvious.

Check the framework below to see how top operators turn scale pressure into real control.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdown.

Every January, the same DMs hit my inbox: “Did the algorithm break?”

And my response is: “No. The algorithm is fine. Your buyers just changed.”

From my experience, what most teams see as a performance drop is actually just a demand reset.

Look, December was full of promo-fueled buyers. 

Urgency was manufactured, intent was artificially high, and CPAs looked better than they really were.

But January?

→ Traffic’s colder 
→ Retargeting pools are thin or dead
→ Promo buyers don’t convert twice
→ AOV drops if you keep discounting

After 17 years in e-commerce, here’s what I’ve learned:

When CAC spikes, most teams treat it like a performance problem.

But it’s actually a context problem.

You’re not just dealing with colder traffic; you’re dealing with a completely different intent profile.

So what do we do instead?

- We pause.
- We let the data settle, rebuild intent, and pressure-test our offers without relying on promo noise.
- We model AOV without discounts, focus on margin, and avoid chasing false signals.

January is just honest. Respect the reset, and your Q1 performance will thank you.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdown.

January’s here, and so is the cold reality.

The Q4 playbook that worked for volume won’t work for scale.

CAC is rising. Retention is soft. Forecasts feel off.

And if you’re planning 2026 based on December revenue, you're building on distortion, not demand.

Because here’s the thing:

30–40% of Q4 revenue wasn’t created; it was pulled forward.

Urgency, discounts, retargeting- these didn’t build intent. 

They just compressed it into a promo window.

Now January is stuck absorbing the aftershock: higher CAC, weaker cohorts, inflated projections.

But you’re early. You still have leverage.

This is the moment to save yourself :
 → Normalize Q4 cohorts
 → Strip out incentive-driven spikes
 → Rebuild forecasts with clean baselines
 → Stop letting margin subsidize acquisition
If you treat seasonal revenue as repeatable, January will always feel broken.

What you scaled was urgency, not loyalty.

Now, you need to start building from first principles.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdown.

Q1 exposes cracks that Q4’s numbers hid.

Are you ready for the first real test of your model?

From late-night Slack alerts to last-minute budget cuts, I’ve seen what happens when Q1 surprises go unchecked.

So, before your P&L surprises you in March, let’s stress-test your assumptions with the questions most founders skip.

Here’s what I usually see on the ground:

◼️ Margins look fine, until marginal spend or returns silently flip them negative.

◼️ Q4 incentives and blended dashboards hide what’s really driving performance and what will break first.

◼️ The brands that thrive in Q1 are the ones that track weekly contribution, not just blended outcomes, and move fast when cash or ops show early warning signs.

It’s easy to think the hard work is behind you after the Q4 rush, but January and February have a way of exposing what got papered over.

If you’ve ever felt blindsided by a sudden margin dip or an unexpected cash crunch, you know exactly what I mean.

Staying ahead in Q1 isn’t about being perfect; it’s about being prepared, knowing what signals to watch, and reacting before the market forces your hand.

You can’t afford to guess your way through Q1. 

Asking sharper questions now keeps you out of costly fixes later.

All 24 questions are in the cheatsheet below.

Save it, share it with your team, and make sure you don't miss what really matters in Q1.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdown.

“I don’t know how to do retention in 2026.”

Someone said this to me last week, a founder of a brand doing 8 figures.

And honestly, I get it.

The repeat rate looked solid. Returning customers made up a good chunk of revenue.

But when we got into the numbers, something didn’t add up.

The contribution margin was slipping. 

Payback was dragging.

And cash wasn’t moving the way it should.

That’s when we dug into what retention actually meant for the business.

Most brands still define retention by how often people come back.

But they’re not looking at how they come back and what it actually costs.

So we sat down and started over and looked at:

➝  Who’s actually worth retaining?
➝  What behavior improves margin?
➝  What’s dragging down payback even though it feels like a win?

We redesigned the entire retention lens using the RARE framework.

If you’ve run into something similar where the numbers check out but the margin tells a different story, I’d be curious to hear how you’ve approached it.

Let’s compare notes in the comments.

Does scaling mean more discounts, more channels, more tools?

Nope. That’s the trap.

It’s precisely how most ecom brands lose margin, burn out teams, and stall growth before they ever hit real scale.

Not every “yes” means progress.

Most “growth” is just teams reacting to pressure. Pressure from investors. 

Pressure from competitors. Pressure from the team itself.

So they say yes to urgency, not strategy, but here’s the thing most people overlook:

Every yes has a cost.

It adds complexity, eats margin, and distracts from what’s actually working.

And when you’re scaling, distraction is expensive.

Here’s what the best operators do mostly:

→ Build systems that stay calm under pressure
→ Scale what’s proven, not what’s trending
→ Ignore the noise until the signal is undeniable

Because scale isn’t built by saying yes to everything; it’s built by saying no to what doesn’t serve the bigger picture.

If you’re scaling and unsure what to say no to (and when), this cheat sheet breaks it down.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdown.

You’re probably doing personalization wrong (and don’t even realize it).

Not because your tools are bad or because AI didn’t work.

But because most funnels are still built on behavior, not intent. 

I see this all the time:

– Urgency banners triggered by pageviews, not by real readiness
– Social proof shown without lifecycle or use case context
– High-confidence messaging served to cold, first-touch users
– CTAs built for funnel stages instead of actual decision depth
– Authority logos used to patch over the wrong objections

The result? Inflated CAC, confused messaging, and lost trust.

Here’s how we fix that:

→ Anchor logic to intent signals + buyer economics
→ Trigger urgency only when velocity matches readiness
→ Use proof segmented by use case, order size, or lifecycle stage
→ Time emotional tone to the decision stage, not the traffic source
→ Architect CTAs by intent depth, not funnel stage

Personalization isn’t about doing more. It’s about showing up with the right logic, at the right time.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdown.

Congrats on scaling.

Now returns, fraud, and shipping are scaling, too.

It’s a pattern I’ve seen over and over: the higher the topline, the more silent costs creep in beneath the surface.

That’s why it’s crucial to ask: who’s actually auditing your operational risks, and are you seeing the real picture, or just what your dashboards want you to see?

When DTC brands cross that $6–8M line, the rules change.

Metrics that once guided your growth, such as ROAS and retention, are now misleading.

Dashboards still look positive. Spend is up. Everything seems on track.

But quietly, returns begin to climb.

Shipping costs edge higher, and fraud slips through the cracks more often.

Cash starts to tighten, but on the surface, growth still feels strong.

Then one small spike in returns or a minor drop in conversion, and suddenly, those “winning” weeks aren’t so profitable after all.

And by the time most teams notice, the margin is already disappearing.

Scaling multiplies more than revenue. It multiplies risk, complexity, and the cost of what you’re not seeing.

Follow Abdo Mazloum for more eCom ad strategy breakdown.

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The Battle

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