Denis Shatalin

SaaS Camp

• Over 100 startups have successfully completed the program
• Over 90 percent of startups participate in all sessions after 4 months in the program

SaaS Camp is a Performance-based Accelerator specializing in sales and marketing for B2B SaaS startups.

https://saascamp.co/

Highlights from founders inside the program:

✅ 16 demos and 4 deals in 21 days for Powerleads IO
✅ 8X increase in profit after restructuring positioning for Feedbucket
✅ 23 demos in the first week for Ethos
✅ Cold B2B sale 6 days after launching campaigns for MiloTree Cart
✅ 83 demos in 4 months with a 25% average close rate for Perci

Want to be our next success story? Visit saascamp.co.

Founder

In my third year of coaching startups, Univercity College London invited me to be their guest lecturer and startup mentor. Helping young entrepreneurs get to their startup goals faster.

Startup Mentor

Founder Coach

Razum

MentalTech Platform for Startup Founders.

SaaS for Exam Preparation

Coaching startups on sales, marketing strategy, positioning, idea validation, and user acquisition.

Founder & CEO

Sobachii Kaif

Co-Founder & CEO

Peer - to - peer accountability network for startup founders

Okinawa Techwear

Global Markets Research Analyst

Textura jewelry

Founder and CEO at Private Accelerator SaaS Camp | Coach | Angel Investor | Help SaaS Startups Dominate the Market Growing By 15% Every Month

How I added millions in revenue for SaaS startups without scaling a single one myself:

I was working at a Big 4 consulting firm, but understood that corporate life wasn't for me...

I left to launch ecom businesses. Have grown a jewelry store, dropshipped backpacks, and even sold dog toys on marketplaces.

The e-com businesses were working, but I wanted a new challenge and started building startups with no-code tools.

I spent years making every startup mistake you can imagine, spent tens of thousands of dollars, and earned a ton of expensive scars.

After one of the products got traction, other founders approached me to ask for sales and marketing tips.

I enjoyed helping them, and one day, I decided to pause other ventures to go into coaching full-time.



Since then:

● I have built Go-To-Market strategies for over 100 startups, in nearly every niche you can imagine, that have generated millions in new revenue.

● I built an outbound campaign for an AI Property startup Realiste, that helped them close a $52M deal with the #1 investment fund in Dubai.

● My coaching practice has grown into a Performance-Based Accelerator, where more than 80% of founders still attend every session after being in the program for 6 months.

● I made an Angel Investment in a B2B SaaS startup that helps football teams manage their finances and see how much they've made on each transfer. Within 7 months they’ve gone up from £400k to £950k in annual revenue (by closing a few US and Italian teams) which has grown their valuation from mid 7 to 8 figures. 



How I did this:

1) Tested a hell lot with every startup I worked with (I'm talking tens of thousands of messages, multiple personas and channels)

2) Noted every strategy that worked, acknowledged it when one didn't, and saved why this happened

3) Continuously analyzed common patterns between startups that add revenue and those who don't

4) Focused on doing one thing for years

5) Have always been testing my approaches on my own business. Customer acquisition, sales, operations. Whatever I coach on, I tried in the past or currently doing for myself.

Niching down to B2B SaaS who are selling through product demos made my business & life a ton easier:

I get 30-50 calls a month through LinkedIn, cold email and SEO, closing 20%-30% of them. My "simple" business is coaching B2B SaaS founders on how to get 30-50 sales calls a month through LinkedIn, cold email and SEO, and close 20%-30% of them.

Over the years I learned who I can and can't help, which allowed me to get into a performance-based model with a refund guarantee.

• Over 60 startups have successfully completed the program
• Over 1.1M new revenue generated for early-stage B2B SaaS in 2022 with 0 ad spend
• Over 90 percent of startups participate in all sessions after 3 months in the program

SaaS Camp is a Private Accelerator specializing in sales and marketing for B2B SaaS startups.

Highlights from founders inside the program:

✅ 8X increase in profit after restructuring positioning for Feedbucket
✅ 23 demos in the first week for Ethos
✅ Cold B2B sale 6 days after launching campaigns for MiloTree Cart
✅ 83 demos in 4 months with a 25% average close rate for Perci

Want to be our next success story? Visit saascamp.co.

Chris Nawrocki

Ecommerce Consultant | Director | CMO | CCO & Founder @ Heur

Co-founder of Heur - an award-winning DTC (direct-to-consumer) as a service ecommerce agency. We run your full DTC strategy, ecommerce store, digital marketing and retention. We become your expert ecommerce team on demand. Running some of the world's best B2Bs ecommerce stores for them.

A passionate and self-motivated hands-on, pure-play Ecommerce and digital marketing expert with 17+ years of advanced end-to-end working knowledge of international luxury and FMCG retail sectors. In-depth working relationships with brands, agencies and investors.

Previously worked for brands such as H&M, Lyle & Scott, Vivobarefoot, Drake's, Resident Home, Derek Rose, Jaded, The Ragged Priest, Duke & Dexter and Tangle Teezer. 

Actively working with clients as a CMO, COO, Director of Growth and Ned. Helping businesses rebuild from the ground up, bolster themselves for onward growth or prepare for an M&A. 

Covering all aspects of ecommerce, from marketplaces and brand development to ownership of the online presence, including full P&L ownership, advanced working knowledge of multichannel digital marketing, and full business growth dynamics. A strong understanding of all aspects of the operational fulfilment of an ecommerce business, from procurement through to design and final delivery. 

With specialist knowledge of driving growth strategies to deliver best-in-class profitable growth. Well-versed in ensuring communication flows seamlessly from stakeholder to owner/founder/board level. With a keen eye for tech and data-driven solutions, I thrive on the fast pace and continual production of new challenges, applying an unparalleled focus to meeting deadlines and driving projects to completion.

Director Of Ecommerce Strategy

End-to-end Ecommerce and marketing growth agency. Delivering managed Ecommerce and fractional growth support for growing brands.

Working with clients such as H&M, Union Coffee, Drakes and Jaded London.

If your ecommerce manager is project managing, they’re not growing your business... is this why you are standing still?

I see some of the best ecommerce managers spend their days chasing tickets, coordinating agencies, updating timelines and unblocking everyone else. They’re busy. Always responsive. Always in meetings.

And growth quietly plateaus.

That’s rarely a talent problem. It’s a structural problem.

When your ecommerce lead becomes the default project manager, strategic thinking is the first thing to go. There’s no time to step back and work on margin, customer behaviour, channel mix or the big bets that actually move the needle.

What tends to happen next:

- Lots of activity, little impact
- Reactive trading instead of planned growth
- Incremental optimisation dressed up as progress
- Accountability without real authority

Ecommerce managers shouldn’t be policing delivery. They should be owning outcomes.

The better setups protect thinking time, separate ops from commercial ownership, and reduce the amount of work that needs managing in the first place. 

This is why we started Heur - to put a battle-hardened structure in that allows for growth.

DTC As A Service | Ecommerce Consultant | Founder @ Heur

Leadership isn’t about filling gaps. It’s about unlocking strengths.

A lot of ecommerce leaders try to fix everything. They jump in, smooth over weaknesses, and quietly become the glue holding the team together.

NB: This was/is me - I'm always drag netting to find problems to take on...

It feels helpful. It usually becomes the constraint.

When leaders compensate for every gap, strong people stop owning their strengths... decisions bottleneck... progress slows. Everyone waits for the same person to step in.

Good ecommerce leadership is orchestration, not heroics. Leads are the conductors. 

The teams that scale well don’t chase balance in every role. They lean into what people are actually good at and design roles around outcomes, not tasks. 

Specialists go deep. Ownership is clear. Leaders step back.

(At this point, I feel very lucky to have one of the best senior management teams in ecommerce: Rob McKenzie, Harpreet C., Esme Seddon, Ben Phillips, Ben St. George and Chris Raven)

What I’d do to fix this? 

Map the strengths already in your team, remove the friction in their way, and stop fixing problems that aren’t yours to solve. And remember - Its a journey!

Reforecasting isn’t failure.

Clinging to a plan that no longer reflects reality is...

I see ecommerce teams treat the original forecast like a promise. Miss it, and the tone changes. Updates slow down. Language softens. Everyone quietly hopes next month will fix the gap.

Spoiler: It rarely does.

Demand shifts. CAC jumps. Stock lands late. Conversion moves for reasons no one predicted. When leaders pretend the numbers still hold, teams feel it immediately. Confidence drops. Decisions get cautious. Trust starts to thin.

Reforecasting, done properly, is a strength. It’s a reset based on facts, not hope.

In practice, good reforecasting means:

- Resetting revenue and spend based on real demand signals
- Protecting margin and cash, not just top-line optics
- Giving teams targets they can actually rally behind
- Explaining why the numbers changed, not just that they did

The worst thing you can give a team is a target you no longer believe in. People stop pushing because they know it’s fiction.

The strongest ecommerce teams reforecast calmly. Transparently. Without blame.

If the inputs are wrong, the KPIs don’t matter.

I see a lot of ecommerce teams hiding behind dashboards. Great charts. Clean reports. Weekly KPI reviews that feel productive.
And the numbers still don’t improve.

That’s because reporting doesn’t fix bad decisions. It just makes them easier to track. (Harpreet C. talked about this this week to the team - platforms condition us to look and value certain KPIs as it helps the platforms hit their goals, not our performance!)

This usually shows up when teams obsess over metrics but ignore the foundations behind them:

- Optimising ROAS while over-ordering stock
- Chasing conversion without fixing product clarity or pricing
- Celebrating AOV while returns quietly erode margin
- Tweaking channels when the strategy itself is misaligned

Dashboards create the illusion of control. They don’t create leverage.

The strongest ecommerce teams start with decisions, not metrics. They get clear on the commercial goal, fix stock, pricing and proposition first, then use KPIs to check whether those calls were right.

What would I do next? I'd fix the inputs before I optimise the numbers. Strategy beats scorekeeping every time!

Scaling ecommerce doesn’t typically fail loudly. It drifts.

In the early days, things are simple. The team is small, context is shared, and most decisions happen quickly because everyone broadly understands what matters and why. You don’t need to explain the trade-offs. They’re obvious.

Then the business grows. Paid becomes a team. CRM becomes a team. Trading, UX and ops all start pulling in slightly different directions. Everyone’s working hard, everyone’s competent, but when you ask what’s really driving growth, the answers aren’t as aligned as they used to be.

That’s usually where culture starts to slip. Not because people care less, but because clarity hasn’t scaled with the organisation.

I often see it showing up as:

- KPIs are being hit while margin, retention or stock health quietly deteriorate
- Channels optimising their own numbers rather than the overall outcome
- Ownership spread so thin that no one truly owns the result
- Decisions are slowing down as shared context disappears

Nothing looks broken on the surface. But the business feels noisier, heavier, and harder to steer than it should.

The teams that scale well don’t fix this by adding layers, processes or more meetings. They simplify. They align everyone around the same commercial truths, design KPIs that force collaboration, and make end-to-end ownership clear, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Where would I start? Fix the clarity first. Everything else gets easier after that.

Ecommerce involution is when you spend more to earn the same.

A deeper marketing strategy is how you break the loop.

A lot of ecommerce teams are stuck here. CAC creeps up, margins tighten, targets stay fixed. So budgets increase, campaigns multiply, and everyone optimises harder just to stand still.

That’s involution. More effort. Less leverage.

The usual response is incrementalism. Tweaking bids. Refreshing ads. Adding promotions. Useful in isolation, but collectively, it turns growth into a treadmill.
What actually changes the equation isn’t more spending. It’s clarity.

Brands that escape this loop tend to:

- Invest in brand and positioning so acquisition works harder
- Sharpen product stories so conversion and AOV improve
- Build loyalty deliberately to reduce paid dependency (Don't do a points program!)
- Stop asking the media to fix structural problems

This isn’t anti-performance marketing. It’s anti-magical thinking. If your growth only works when spending keeps rising, it’s fragile.

What would I do next?

When you’re spending more to earn the same, don’t default to optimising harder. Step back and deepen the strategy. That’s where leverage lives.

Control is comforting. Agility is more valuable.

Typically, when ecommerce growth slows, the default move is often to hire... Another role... Another layer... It can feel like progress...

Often, it’s just overhead.

Headcount is expensive. Salaries are the obvious part, but onboarding time, management load, and slower decision-making add up quickly. And once those costs are baked in, they’re hard to reverse.

The strongest commercial teams I see are more deliberate. They hire for long-term ownership, and they use external specialists when speed, depth, or flexibility matter more than control.

That usually means:

- Keeping the core team lean and commercially accountable
- Plugging in specialists for paid media, CRM, CRO or data
- Scaling capability up or down without rewriting the org chart
- Avoiding “just in case” hires that lock in fixed costs
- This isn’t anti-hiring. It’s pro-leverage.

What I’d do next: before opening a new role, ask what you really need. If it’s expertise, resource appropriately.

If you’re not willing to support a market, don’t enter it.

I see a lot of ecommerce brands talk about “testing” new markets. A translated site. A bit of paid spend. Then surprise when it doesn’t convert.

That’s not a test. It’s underinvestment.

International expansion isn’t a switch you flick. It’s closer to launching a new business. When brands cut corners, the symptoms are predictable. Low conversion. High returns. Messy CX. Paid media that looks inefficient.

The conclusion is usually “the market didn’t work.” More often, it was never properly supported.

The brands that do this well are honest before they launch:

- Can we deliver quickly, clearly, and handle returns locally?
- Do we understand local pricing, competitors and demand?
- Is CX ready for language, time zones and expectations?
- Do we have stock confidence, not hope?

Customers don’t know you’re experimenting. They just know whether the experience was good.

My thoughts? Pick one market, commit to supporting it end-to-end, and judge it like a real business. If you’re not ready to do that yet, wait.

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Denis Shatalin

Chris Nawrocki

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