DXO Consultants

As a consultant specializing in digital experience optimization (DXO) and conversion rate optimization (CRO), I help businesses enhance their online presence and drive measurable growth. With a proven track record in e-commerce and digital marketing, I provide strategic insights and actionable solutions to boost customer engagement and increase conversions.

Chief Executive Officer

Ideal Living

In this capacity, I directed the strategic and day-to-day execution of all E- Commerce aspects, including sales, budgets, promotions, customer experience, and digital marketing programs (SEO, SEM, CMS, PPC, Email, retargeting, mobile, affiliates, social media, and marketplaces). I oversaw digital acquisition for a portfolio of 10-15 unique brands, managing distinct CPA goals and critical KPIs. I maximized website usability, performance, ROI, P&L, and online marketplaces including Amazon US, Amazon International, and Walmart.

Key Achievements:
• Increased online revenue by 83% in 2020 and over 100% from 2021 to 2023 through innovative marketing techniques and platform optimization.

• Directed and managed a diverse portfolio of 10-15 unique brands, leading digital acquisition and customer retention strategies, consistently achieving and surpassing critical KPI goals.

• Elevated Amazon sales from 7 figures to 8 figures from 2019 to 2023, achieving a 223% revenue growth.

Vice President, Digital

Hi-Health Corporation

While serving in this role, I directed the strategic and day-to-day execution of all E-Commerce activities, including sales, budgets, promotions, customer experience, and digital marketing programs (SEO, SEM, CMS, PPC, Email, Retargeting, Mobile, Affiliates, and social media). I developed marketing strategies to drive customer growth and manage online customer interaction.

Key Achievements:
• Enhanced site usability and reduced load times by 50%, leading to a 109% increase in the e-commerce conversion rate, improving overall customer experience and sales.

• Created and launched targeted marketing campaigns that increased online revenue by 30%, showcasing my ability to develop effective strategies driving substantial financial growth.

• Targeted the best and most profitable brands, resulting in an 11% increase in online AOV.

• Reduced paid search CPA by 59%, cut PPC costs by 22%, and increased revenue by 71% through optimized advertising strategies, demonstrating my ability to enhance advertising efficiency and ROI.

• Elevated email marketing revenue by 28% and increased the conversion rate by 38% by improving the quality of campaigns and creative pieces.

Vice President, Ecommerce

ZAGG, Inc.

During this time, I was recruited to design, build, and manage the company's technical infrastructure and lead e-commerce operations. I oversaw strategic planning and execution of e-commerce activities, achieving double-digit growth in online sales consistently for 10 years. I led the digital strategy and operations, contributing to double-digit growth in online sales annually, demonstrating sustained success in driving revenue growth.

Key Achievements:
• Achieved a return on investment exceeding 600% through innovative customer acquisition strategies via social media.

• Produced formalized budgets and strategic plans for the executive team, aligning with profitable business strategies and ensuring healthy profit and loss.

• Recruited and led a team of skilled web developers to architect and build an enterprise-class e-commerce platform supporting $36 million in annual sales.

• Directed and managed re-platforming on three occasions, including the transition to the Magento Enterprise Edition e-commerce platform.

• Utilized YouTube to drive sales and acquire customers, resulting in 15 million video views, and was invited by Google to participate in the YouTube Marketing Ambassadors program.

Director of E-Commerce/Global Web Operations

Are you struggling to turn website visitors into loyal customers? You're not alone!

Many online businesses face the challenge of:

→ Low Conversion Rates: Visitors come to your site, but few take action, leaving potential revenue on the table.
→ Poor Digital Experience: A frustrating user experience can drive your audience away before they even explore your offerings.
→ Lack of Insights: Without the right analytics, you may be guessing at what’s working and what’s not.

But fear not! I specialize in conversion rate and digital experience optimization services that can:

Transform your website into a conversion powerhouse, turning visitors into customers.
Create an engaging and seamless user experience that keeps potential clients interested.
Provide actionable insights based on data analytics to fine-tune your strategy for maximum results.
Ready to elevate your online business? Let's connect and start optimizing your conversions today!

As a results-driven E-commerce Leader and Digital Marketing expert, I have a proven track record of driving substantial revenue growth and enhancing conversion rates through innovative strategies and careful platform enhancements. My expertise lies in orchestrating all facets of E-Commerce operations, including sales, budgets, promotions, customer experience, and comprehensive digital marketing programs (SEO, SEM, CMS, PPC, Email, retargeting, mobile, affiliates, social media, and marketplaces).

I have directed the strategic and day-to-day execution of all E-commerce activities. My leadership not only achieved an 83% increase in online revenue in 2020 but also spurred over 100% growth from 2021 to 2023, demonstrating a consistent ability to drive financial growth through creative marketing techniques and intelligent digital optimizations.

I have significantly improved e-commerce conversion rates by 109% by enhancing site usability and reducing load times by 50%. My targeted marketing campaigns have increased online revenue by 30%, while my optimized advertising strategies have effectively reduced CPA and increased ROI. Furthermore, I've led large-scale social media campaigns, achieving a return on investment exceeding 600% and substantially boosting brand presence and customer engagement.

I am passionate about leveraging data-driven insights to refine business decisions and marketing strategies, continuously improving performance metrics and business outcomes.

John Hesch

Liberate Labs

In my role as CEO at Liberate Labs, I lead a team of expert product engineers to use a Product-Led Growth (PLG) strategy at Liberate Labs, addressing the unique challenges and opportunities of startups. 

We prioritize metrics that reflect the real health and future trajectory of these businesses. Our approach aims to reduce Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) and enhance engagement and retention.

By tracking natural growth rate, activated sign-ups, and the balance between new ARR and cash burned, we offer startups a clear, data-driven view of their product's market impact and reach.

Our commitment goes beyond just delivering software; we aim to produce quantifiable results for startups through top-tier product development and strategy.

Specialties: Strategic and Tactical Leadership, Stakeholder Management and Communications, Program Management, Customer UX Design, SCRUM, Agile, SDLC, DevOps, System Design, Data Analysis.

Superessence

Fractional Chief Technology and Product Officer

StudyBuds

Acreage

Bullseye for Schools

As the fractional Chief Technology and Product Officer at Bullseye Education Solutions, I'm a key contributor to the evolution of our instructional support system that's currently transforming teacher coaching and student outcomes in over 500 schools, engaging more than 2,000 daily active users.

Our collective endeavors have led to a significant upswing in student standardized test scores by up to 51%.

My role is highly collaborative, working across business, engineering, and design teams to rapidly iterate on our product development. My focus is on delivering a world-class user experience that is both intuitive and effective.

Currently, I'm steering the platform towards its next generation. This includes leveraging AI capabilities and reshaping the platform for a product-led growth strategy. These initiatives aim to solidify Bullseye's standing in the ed-tech industry.

Amazon

•	Coordinated rollout of 100+ software deliverables across 500 stores driving improvements in food safety and compliance across multiple departments, teams, and business functions

•	Managed 5+ cross-functional teams to improve recipe data consistency across multiple data catalogs by 30%

•	Spearheaded green-field Traceability program to enable WFM supply chain tracking to achieve newly formed U.S. FSMA 204 compliance standards: justified headcount, defined program charter, and established high-level technical vision

•	Lead deprecation of legacy systems costing 10M+/year and hundreds of labor hours in inefficiencies across 5 WFM domains and 10+ engineering and business teams

Senior Technical Program Manager

•	Investigated and coordinated optimization exercise to reduce scan orchestration duration by 48%

•	Automated vulnerability remediation to reduce time-to-remediate critical OS vulnerabilities by 42% 

•	Managed platform stabilization project which reduced database load by 70%

•	Launching service redesign planned to increase automated vulnerability remediation throughput by 350%

•	Launching tool to extend vulnerability scan coverage for 20 subsidiaries containing >100K hosts

•	Launching Amazon-wide platform to standardize and increase accuracy of remediation priority across the company

•	Conducted architecture reviews into technical systems, proposed solutions, and managed/launched optimizations 

•	Managed stakeholder communications via monthly reporting, quarterly reports, and weekly syncs up to VP of InfoSec

•	Streamlined feature delivery pipeline to meetings by 66% while increasing burndown of tasks by ~30%

Technical Program Manager II

•	Collaborated to implement internal Amazon vulnerability ticketing script to notify 12K+ teams of critical vulnerabilities

•	Implemented feature to auto-assign appropriate ticket severity for emergent third-party vulnerabilities

•	Root-caused platform issues and proposed solutions to address throttling, database deadlocks, and platform instability

Software Engineer II

•	Designed and implemented feature to auto-classify 300k+ customer accounts improving automated process accuracy by 3%

•	Conducted customer research to implement work distribution tool enhancement reducing manual work by 455 hours/month

•	Expanded service alarms and metrics collection to improve diagnosis, resolution, and prioritization of service issues

•	Mentored and coached multiple interns to successfully receive return offers and new hires through knowledge transfers

•	Led strategic initiatives to improve team code quality standards, testing, and culture through documentation and event planning

Software Engineer

Georgia-Pacific LLC

•	Created new help page using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS for GP Packing Order Account Management Website

•	Worked closely with customers and product owners to plan and deliver solution to reduce frequency of support tickets from corrugated plants

Software Development Engineer

•	Planned and implemented 12-week project to improve the efficiency of internal Amazon business process

•	Creating API for Remote Procedure Call framework to pull data from relational database 

•	Utilizing React and worked with internal users to create front-end component to be utilized by internal agents

Graph House LLC.

•	Founded creative agency to deliver affordable marketing solutions to startups in the Atlanta area

•	Negotiated multiple partnerships between Georgia Tech Academic departments and organizations, and assisted with the acquisition of clients

•	Acquired and coordinated all business communications with all clients to deliver quality and efficient services

Co-Founder, CEO

Acuity Brands

•	Writing scripts in SQL to update Acuity Brands product information within the Product Data Management portal

•	Developing webpage using Kendo UI framework to update and view Acuity Brands product log

Product Management

Fractional CTO for B2B SaaS | 2× Feature Velocity in 90 Days—Guaranteed | Ex-Amazon | CEO, Liberate Labs

Most SaaS founders hit a wall between $1M-$5M ARR. 
Growth stalls. Churn climbs. The next funding round feels impossible.

I've been there. As a former Amazon engineer, 
I've seen what separates companies that scale from those that struggle.

Here's what I've learned: 
It's not about hiring more people. 
It's about building better systems.

Today, I serve as Fractional CTO for 12+ SaaS companies and run Liberate Labs, 
where we've helped founders achieve:

→ 25-50% revenue growth in 6 months
→ 30% churn reduction through funnel optimization
→ $2M+ in unlocked expansion revenue
→ 3x revenue growth in 24 months (Series A client)

My approach is different: 
I don't just give advice, I build and implement the systems myself. 

1. Customer Journey Funnels. 
2. Product roadmaps. 
3. Engineering execution. 
4. Marketing automation. 

All designed to turn your growth plateau into predictable, scalable revenue.

What makes this work:
✓ Engineering-led methodology (not marketing fluff)
✓ Focus on measurable outcomes, not vanity metrics
✓ 60-day implementation sprints (no endless consulting)
✓ Money-back guarantee if you don't see results

I've packaged everything that works into proven systems. If you're a B2B SaaS founder ready to break through your growth ceiling without burning cash on expensive hires, let's talk.

Dm me on LinkedIn (I stay super active) or email me at: jihad@liberate-labs.com

Jihad Iqbal

If you're a founder letting sales drive your product decisions...
I get it. I've been there.

You need revenue. Sales just closed a huge deal. 
They need "just one feature" to close three more.

How do you say no?

Here's my story:

Year 2 of our SaaS: $1.8M ARR, scrappy team, desperate for growth.

- Sales landed a $200K enterprise deal. 
- Needed custom billing logic + 2 integration features. 
- 60-day timeline.

I said yes.

What happened:

- 4 months to build (not 2)
- $47K in customer support costs from bugs
- Churn jumped from 4% to 9% that quarter
- Lost 2 mid-market clients because we ignored their needs

The lesson wasn't "ignore sales."

It was about WHO owns the final decision.

The Framework I Use Now:

1. Sales brings market intelligence (what customers are asking for)
2. Product evaluates strategic fit (does this scale?)
3. Finance checks the math (what's the true cost?)
4. Product makes the final call

When custom work DOES make sense:

→ It's a design partner (they'll help you iterate)
→ 10+ customers would use it within 12 months
→ It doesn't break your core architecture

For my fellow founders at $1M-$3M ARR:

You're probably fighting this battle right now. Your sales team isn't wrong for asking. But your product team needs to own the "no."

Build for scale, not just for the next deal.

How do you handle this at your company? 
Drop your framework.

You are not “bad at marketing”.
You’re running a Level 3 GTM on a Level 1 product.

Two SaaS founders at 1M ARR.

Both feel stuck.
Both think “We need to get serious about GTM.”

Founder A hires SDRs, buys tools, spins up 5 channels.
Founder B does something far less glamorous.

Guess which one hits 5M ARR first?

Here’s the difference.

Level 1 – Validation GTM (0–1M ARR)

Founder B stays here until the basics are boring.

They:

	•	Sell directly to one segment
	•	Talk to 50–100 ideal customers
	•	Refine one clear problem narrative
	•	Pull from one or two high intent channels

Revenue is still lumpy. But the pattern is real.
If you can’t predict who closes and why, you’re not done with this level.

Level 2 – Repeatable GTM (1–3M ARR)

Now the goal shifts from “does this work?” to “can others do it?”

They:

	•	Turn discovery + demo into a simple script
	•	Standardize follow up and handoffs
	•	Add basic product analytics and simple PLG hooks
	•	Run a few paid experiments and actually track payback

If a new rep can ramp and hit quota without your magic touch, 
you graduate from this level.

Level 3 – Scale GTM (3–10M ARR)

Only then do they stack on volume.

They:

	•	Layer targeted account-based plays on top of what already works
	•	Add partner channels and marketplaces to reach bigger accounts
	•	Build expansion motions so existing customers grow every quarter
	•	Use automation to remove manual busywork, not to hide broken basics

Founder A tried to start here.
Same tools. Same spend. No foundation.

If your GTM feels “busy but not working”, 
don’t start with a new campaign.

Start with this:

👉 Which level am I honestly in today?
👉 What would it look like to over-finish that level before moving up?

After working with 12+ SaaS teams, 
I learned a painful truth your roadmap won’t want to hear. 

Simpler products always win.

Most founders think slow growth means “build more features.”
It’s usually the opposite.

They react to every request
copy every competitor
add every shiny idea.

Then their product becomes a cluttered maze 
that scares off new users and burns out their team.

I saw this at Liberate Labs.

A SaaS founder spent eight months building AI chat, a mobile app, and multiple dashboards. Their activation rate fell below 30 percent.

We stripped the product back
cut half the features
focused on one core workflow.

Six weeks later, trial to paid conversion doubled.

Not from adding.
From deleting.

Simple wins.
Focused wins.
Fast wins.

If growth is slowing, don’t ask “what should we build next.”
Ask “what should we remove.”

If your product feels bloated and growth is slowing, DM me. 
I’ll help you find the simplest path to faster revenue.

If I had to grow a SaaS from $0 to $5M and I could track only one website metric…

I’d pick activation rate.

Because activation is the doorway to everything else:

- Better retention
- Higher expansion
- Stronger referrals
- Lower acquisition cost

Here’s how I’d use it as the main compass:

1. Define the activation moment

“One user from the account completes X, Y, and Z.”
Keep it concrete. Keep it tied to real value.

2. Design the homepage for that moment

Every section answers one thing:
“Does this help the right person reach that moment faster?”

3. Remove anything that doesn’t serve it

Features, sections, videos, social proof.
If it doesn’t pull people toward activation, it goes.

4. Watch NRR as the second layer

Activation gets you paying customers.
High NRR tells you you’re attracting the right ones.

High traffic with weak activation is vanity.
Strong activation and NRR is the business.

If you want, reply with your current activation rate (or your best guess).
I’ll send a few ideas to raise it. 

Follow Jihad Iqbal for more SaaS Growth tips.

Non-technical founder? Your first MVP is not an app.
It's proof one buyer cares enough to use it.

Autohub is the project that showed me this.

The founder came to us and said:

"I want an MVP for auto shops. Customer app, shop dashboard, reports, full Shopmonkey link. It should feel like a finished tool from day one."

On the slide, it sounded fine.

In real life, it was 18 months of work hiding inside a 3-month plan.

So we did the thing that made everyone a bit tense.

We started cutting.

We:

- Dropped most of the "must have" features
- Pushed reports to "later"
- Scoped Shopmonkey to what one real shop needed
- Picked one test shop instead of "the whole market"

The founder was not technical.

So I asked him one simple question:

"If this fails, what do you want to have learned in 90 days?"

He did not say, "that our tech scales."

He said, "that shop owners want this enough to use it every week."

That became the MVP.

Not "all the things Autohub could be."

Just enough for one real shop to run its day inside the product:

- Customer books
- Shop updates the job
- Invoice and history in one place
- Owner sees enough numbers to feel the difference

We built that in a few hundred hours.

Got it running in one shop.

Then we watched what they did, not what we hoped they would do.

Here is what we saw:

- Some "must have" features never came up again
- A few "nice ideas" from the mechanics became key parts of the product plan
- The founder finally saw a real day in his product, not only in Figma

Now when I talk to non-technical SaaS founders,
I see the same traps again and again:

- Treating "MVP" as a cheap version of the final product
- Designing for "all future customers" instead of one real user with a name
- Starting with dashboards and admin pages "because we'll need them anyway"
- Talking about tools and tech before asking, "What do we need to learn in 90 days?"

The founders who get it right flip that.

They:

- Pick one narrow user and one clear use case
- Write down the one scary question they want answered
- Build only the steps needed to answer that question in real life
- Let the next version be shaped by real use, not imagination

Autohub's first version was not "everything we dreamed."

It was a small but very real slice of the future product, 
used every week by one shop that cared.

From there, the brand, the dashboards, 
and the advanced reports all made sense.

Because they were tied to real behavior and money coming in, not a deck.

If you are a non-technical founder working on your MVP, 
start with the same question we used with Autohub:

"If this fails in 90 days, what do I want to have learned?"

Build only what you need to get that answer.

Everything else can wait.

Every week I meet another founder who quietly burned $50K building the wrong thing. Don’t be the next one.

They all tell me the same story.
The idea felt exciting.
They hired devs. Built for months. Shipped.

Silence.

No line of customers.
No angry mob.
Just… nothing.

I did the same at my first startup.
We spent 8 months crafting a project management tool with 47 features.
Clean UI, smooth UX, all the buzzwords.

Month one after launch?
3 paying customers.

Not because we were lazy.
Because we never spoke to a single potential customer while building it.

Here’s the real problem:
Founders fall in love with the idea.
Customers only care about their pain.

That’s the shift we made at Liberate Labs.

Now, when a founder comes to us with a SaaS idea, 
we run a very different play:

Week 1 → Talk to 20 people who should be your customers

Week 2 → Pull out their top 3–5 painful problems in their own words

Week 3 → Sketch the smallest thing that actually fixes one of those problems

Then, and only then, do we write code

One founder came in with a 6-month feature roadmap and a big dev budget.

We stripped it down to what customers actually cared about, 
cut ~ $80K of waste, and they hit their first $100K ARR in half the time.

The winners aren’t the ones with the fanciest product.
They’re the ones obsessed with a specific problem, 
for a specific person, and they keep solving it better.

If you haven’t talked to at least 20 potential customers yet, 
don’t open your code editor. Open your calendar.

And if you’re sitting on a SaaS idea and want help running this process before you burn that first $50K, comment “PROCESS” or DM me.

Your first engineering hire can quietly kill your startup.
Not with bad code but with perfect code.

Here’s how the story usually goes:

- You finally raise a little money
- You hunt for a “10+ years experience” senior dev
- They want equity, ownership, and time to “do it right”

Three months later you’ve got:
A beautiful codebase.
A flawless architecture.
And no paying customers.

I’ve watched founders burn their entire pre-seed on that one hire.
Masterpiece product.
Zero usage.

At Liberate Labs, our first build was the opposite.

Our MVP was shipped by a junior dev.
Hungry. Scrappy. Zero ego.

We agreed on one rule:
Ship fast and ugly or don’t ship at all.

We launched in 3 weeks, not 3 months.
That speed is what gave us signal.
Signal is what justified bringing in senior engineers later.

Senior engineers are amazing.
Today, I work with some of the best.

But they shine once you have:

- Paying customers
- Clear pain points
- Real constraints

Your first dev?
You don’t need prestige.

You need someone who thinks like a founder:

- Talks to customers
- Cuts features without crying
- Cares more about validation than elegance

Startups don’t die because the architecture was messy.
They die because nobody wanted what they built.

Hire hungry first.
Hire fancy later.

If you want to kill your SaaS in 2026,
just keep doing these 5 things.

Most startups don’t die because of “market conditions.”
They die because the founder accidentally steers it into the ground.

Here’s the playbook:

1. Treat sales like a dirty word.

Keep telling yourself the product will “sell itself.”
Delay building any kind of sales motion.
Then underprice it because you’re scared no one will pay.

Now you’re stuck:
Too expensive for the bottom, too half-baked for the top.

2. Run your startup on vibes.

No co-founder agreement. 
No vesting. Just handshakes.

Until things get hard and they will and suddenly
you’re arguing over who owns what… and who’s in charge.

3. Make yourself the bottleneck.

You touch every decision. 
Every screen. Every line of copy.

Your team can’t move unless you say “go.”
And eventually, they stop asking.

4. Write code for your resume.

Pick tech stacks that look cool on Hacker News.
Refactor features no one uses.
Ignore your CAC payback until it hits 12+ months.

But hey, at least it’s “technically elegant.”

5. Pivot the moment you get bored.

Call it “experimentation.”
Truth is, you just can’t stand the part where things get repetitive.

You don’t need a new strategy.
You need to sit with the one that’s already working.

None of this feels urgent. 
Until you’re 3 years in, stuck at $80k MRR, and too tired to care.

That’s the real danger.

Which of these 5 do you see the most in founders? 👇

I watched a $4.2M SaaS founder burn $180k in 6 months.
Every feature shipped on time. Revenue stayed flat.

His engineering team was fast.
His decision-making process was chaos.

When I left Amazon to become a Fractional CTO, 
I thought speed meant shipping features faster.

I was wrong.

Real story: Mike (CEO, $4.2M ARR) showed me his Q2 results:

→ 47 features shipped
→ Engineering velocity up 23%
→ Revenue growth: 2% (should have been 30%+)

The brutal truth hit during our first audit:
His team optimized for output, not outcome.

Here's what we changed in 60 days:

❌ BEFORE: "Can we build this feature?"
✅ AFTER: "Will this feature add $50k MRR in 90 days?"

❌ BEFORE: Celebrating 47 shipped features
✅ AFTER: Killing 41 features, shipping 6 that moved revenue

❌ BEFORE: 12-week development cycles
✅ AFTER: 2-week validation sprints with real customer data

The result:
→ $380k MRR added in 5 months
→ 34% reduction in wasted engineering time
→ Engineering team finally focused on work that matters

For non-tech SaaS founders stuck at $3-6M ARR:
Your bottleneck isn't your engineering team's speed.
It's your ability to decide what NOT to build.

The best CTOs I know aren't the fastest coders.

They're the best editors who are ruthless with priorities, 
and obsessed with revenue impact.

Want the same growth for your SaaS?
Dm me Jihad Iqbal

I burned $47k learning why your dev team is lying to you.
Not on purpose. But they are.

2021. My SaaS was stuck at $1.8M ARR. 

I hired 3 contractors to "speed things up."

Then 2 more when we fell behind. Then a PM to "coordinate better."

The result? 

Our velocity dropped 40%. 
Features took 6 weeks instead of 3.

Here's what I learned at 2am reviewing Jira tickets:

The problem wasn't my team's skill.
It was that nobody owned the outcome.

- Developer A built what the strategy doc said. 
- Developer B built what the PM interpreted. 

The PM built what they thought I meant.

Meanwhile, my churn climbed to 7.3%,
Because the feature we shipped didn't fix the actual user pain point.

Cost breakdown of my mistake: 

→ $47k in contractor fees 
→ $23k in lost MRR (6 weeks of delayed fixes) 
→ $8k in my time managing chaos

Total damage: $78k

At Amazon, we avoided this with "single-threaded owners" - 
one team owns strategy + build + measurement.

Now at Liberate Labs, we do the same for SaaS founders:

✓ One team owns your growth outcome (not 3 vendors) 
✓ Strategy, development, and analytics in sync 
✓ 60-day sprints with guaranteed MRR impact

Result for clients: 

→ Launch features 2.3x faster 
→ Revenue impact is predictable (not guesswork) 
→ Zero cost of vendor handoffs

If you're stuck at $2-5M ARR with a dev team, 
that ships but doesn't move metrics, you're not alone.

Comment "VELOCITY" - 

I'll DM you the exact framework I use to diagnose where your execution is breaking down (takes 10 minutes, saved one founder $94k last quarter).

Your Dev team is Lying to You

The most successful founders I know are emotionally unstable (and that's why they win). 

After scaling dozens of SaaS and coaching SaaS founders, I've learned this truth: the "well-balanced" founder rarely builds anything remarkable.

- They pick a personality and stick with it.
- Visionary OR executor.
- Empathetic OR ruthless.
- Open-minded OR convicted.

The founders who actually win? 

They're walking contradictions. 
They believe they can solve every problem on earth.

Then spend 18 months perfecting one workflow. 
They absorb feedback like a sponge.
Then ignore 95% of what they hear.

They'll spend 4 hours understanding why one user churned.

Then cut their biggest feature without hesitation.
Last week, I watched a client do this perfectly. 

She literally cried during a customer call about their onboarding struggles. 

Three hours later, she killed the entire onboarding flow because the data showed people who skipped it converted 37% better.

Same founder. Same day. 
Both decisions were perfect.

Most people can't handle this tension. It breaks their brain. 
They need everything to be logical and linear.

But the biggest opportunities live in the paradoxes. 
The moments when two opposite things are both true.

Your job isn't to be consistent.
It's to hold contradictions without snapping.

The market doesn't pay for predictable decisions. 
It pays for making the right ones.

Which contradiction do you struggle with most as a founder? 

Let me know in the comments,
I'll share my framework for navigating these tensions with you. 🙌

You didn’t hire 3 vendors to feel like a project manager. You hired them to grow your revenue. Here’s what no vendor will tell you: 
 
Every handoff between teams costs you 27% of potential growth.
 
I learned this the hard way watching clients bleed revenue:
 
The hidden tax breakdown:
 
- $47,000 in "vendor handoff fees" (the cost of translating strategy to execution)

- $63,000 in "translation tax" (engineers building the wrong thing because strategy wasn’t technical enough)

- $51,000 in "interpretation surcharge" (trying to make sense of analytics that don’t connect to revenue)

- $26,000 in "leakage penalty" (revenue lost while you play traffic cop)
 
Real client story:
 
One client's SaaS was at $3.8M ARR. 
Paid $150k to 3 vendors over 8 months. 

Result? 

Her churn climbed from 4.2% to 6.8% while revenue flatlined.
 
The fix wasn’t more vendors,
it was ONE partner who owns the entire growth chain:
 
- Strategy that engineers can execute
- Development that moves revenue metrics
- Analytics that show exactly where money comes from
 
→ One client added $31k MRR in 6 weeks after ditching the siloed model.
 
Non-tech founders: 

Your job is to build a business and not to manage vendor relationships.
 
Comment “TAX FREE”  

I’ll DM you the exact questions to ask vendors to avoid this hidden tax.
 
Tag a founder who’s tired of paying for work that doesn’t move revenue.
 
#SaaS #GrowthHacking #StartupFounder #SaaSMarketing

I care more about losing a $200/mo customer than closing a $60K deal. My therapist says this is a problem.

If you're not experiencing churn, 
you're not growing fast enough.

But if you ARE experiencing churn 
and DON'T have enterprise deals...
You're about to learn a very expensive lesson.

Let me explain:

- I lost a $500/mo customer this morning.
- Closed a $50K enterprise deal yesterday.

Guess which one I thought about more?

The $500 loss.

Because that's how founder brains work.

We obsess over what left.
We forget to celebrate what arrived.

But here's what 15+ years building SaaS taught me:

Churn is inevitable.
Even the best companies lose 5-7% monthly.

The question isn't IF you'll have churn.
It's WHAT you're doing to offset it.

Most founders in the $1M-$3M valley make the same mistake:
They build their entire revenue on a foundation of $300-$1K customers.

→ 100 customers at $500/mo = $50K MRR
→ Lose 5 to churn = -$2,500 MRR
→ Need 5 new customers just to stay flat

Now imagine this:

→ 10 customers at $5K/mo = $50K MRR
→ Lose 1 to churn = -$5K MRR
→ Close 1 enterprise deal at $50K = +$4,166/mo

See the difference?
The math changes everything.

But here's where founders screw up:

They chase enterprise too early.
Before they have:

- A repeatable sales process
- Implementation support
- The ability to handle custom requests
- Patience for 6-month sales cycles

My framework?

Stage 1: Get to $1M ARR with $500-$2K customers
Stage 2: Layer in $5K-$10K mid-market deals
Stage 3: Add enterprise once you hit $2M+

That way when churn hits (and it will)...
You're wiping tears with money.

Not scrambling to replace every lost customer.

The reality?

Churn is a tax on growth.
Enterprise is your tax shelter.

Build the base first.
Then stack enterprise on top.

What's your current MRR breakdown? 
And are you ready for enterprise, or still building your foundation?

DM me Jihad Iqbal

The question is not “Should I start an agency or a SaaS”. The real question is “What’s the cheapest way to buy the data my future SaaS will run on”.

People overcomplicate this.

They draw Venn diagrams.
They binge YouTube gurus.
They wait for some grand moment of clarity.

Meanwhile, the answer is sitting in front of them.

Start a productized service.

Because a productized service isn’t a “business model”.
It’s a data engine.

You get to watch the mess in real time.

- You see the weird edge cases.
- You hear the raw objections people won’t type into a form.
- You notice what clients try before you step in.
- You notice what they try after your workflow ends.
- You feel where the process collapses because you’re the one fixing it.

That’s market intelligence you can’t scrape.

And it’s exactly how you figure out what your SaaS should automate first.

This is the same lens we use inside Liberate Labs.

Before we build anything, we treat service work like reconnaissance. 
Every call, every request, every broken workflow that needs work.

That’s how our clients uncovered the need for specialized AI agents, Growth Engine, real feature priorities instead of chasing shiny ideas.

None of that comes from guesswork.
It comes from paid exposure to the truth.

So don’t ask, “Agency or SaaS?” Ask, “What’s the fastest way to see the real problems my future product has to solve?”

Start there.
Build smarter.
Spend less.

And when you’re ready to turn that data into a Product Growth Engine — 
that’s where we step in. Dm me 'Growth' for a free growth blueprint.

Non-technical, want to launch a SaaS in 2026? Here’s the 30-day plan I’d give you if we were on a Zoom together right now:

I'm a CTO, I've worked with dozen of SaaS 
Mostly non-tech founders like you...and honestly

You don’t need to speak “dev”.
You need a clear operating plan.

No branding.
No logo.
No “MVP” yet.

Just 30 days of work that actually matters.

📌 Week 1 – problem + people**

Your job this week is simple: prove the problem is real and painful.

- Make a list of 30 people in your target market
- Book 10 honest conversations (short DM, clear ask, no fluff)
- Ask about their workflow, current tools, and what they’ve already tried
- Listen for the exact phrases they use when they complain
- Write those phrases down word for word

End of week 1, you have:
A 1-page doc with your problem statement + the 10 strongest quotes from the market.

📌Week 2 – offer + pricing**

Now we test whether people care enough to pay.

-Turn what you heard into 2–3 clear offer concepts
-Write a simple one-pager: who it’s for, what it solves, what changes for them
- Float 3 pricing options in conversations
- Watch reactions more than the words “yeah that sounds fair”
- Capture every objection and tighten your offer daily

End of week 2, you have:
Offer v1, early price points, objection list.

📌Week 3 – product shape**

Only now do we start talking about “the app”.

- Map 2–3 key user flows on paper or in a simple whiteboard tool
- Strip steps until a dev could build version one in 6–8 weeks
- Record a Loom walking through those flows in plain language
- Shortlist 3 technical partners based on products they’ve shipped, not buzzwords
- Share the Loom and ask for rough time + cost ranges

End of week 3, you have:
Clear user flows and a shortlist of people who can actually build version one.

📌 Week 4 – numbers

If the math fails, the product doesn’t matter.

- Build a simple sheet: visitors → leads → trials → paying → churn
- Set a first-year target: number of customers, average revenue per customer, runway
- Choose 3–5 OKRs for the next quarter
- Sketch a lean hiring plan: who you bring in after the first 10–20 customers
- Stress-test the model with worse conversion and higher churn

End of week 4, you have:
A basic financial model, early OKRs, and a clear first hire.

You don’t need to code to start a serious SaaS in 2026.
You need sharp problems, real people, and honest numbers.

If you want me to pressure-test your idea against this 30-day plan, 
DM me “30 days” and I’ll walk you through it.

Non-tech Founder's 30-day SaaS Launch Plan

The features that got you to $3M ARR will keep you stuck there. I learned this at Amazon the hard way:

Last quarter, I sat with a founder at $4.1M ARR. 
His team spent 6 months building an AI-powered analytics dashboard. 

- Beautiful UI. 
- Complex algorithms. 
- Zero revenue impact.

Meanwhile, his churn climbed to 8.2%.

I asked one question: 

"What workflow causes your customers to call support most often?"

Answer: Confusing onboarding at step 3.

We scrapped the AI roadmap. 
Built a 4-field form instead.

Result in 47 days: 

→ Support tickets dropped 63%
→ Trial-to-paid conversion up 28%
→ Added $37k MRR

The Amazon lesson nobody teaches:

Your users don't care about your technical architecture. 
They care about getting unstuck faster.

At $3-6M ARR, your product team becomes a bottleneck when they optimize for "impressive" instead of "revenue-moving."

The brutal truth: If you can't explain how a feature will impact MRR in one sentence, you shouldn't build it yet.

Comment "ROADMAP", I'll DM you the exact 3-question framework I use with clients to kill 70% of feature requests (and focus on the 30% that actually grow revenue).

The Adobe–Semrush deal isn’t about SEO.
It’s about something bigger:

The death of the homepage.

We’re headed toward a world where:

Customers ask AI what product to buy.

AI finds the answer.

AI makes the recommendation.

The first touchpoint is not your website…
…it’s an AI agent.

If that’s the future, then visibility becomes the new battlefield.

Adobe just paid $1.9B to prepare.

The question is: Are you?

Most “MVPs” either cost too much or they don’t teach you anything.  If you’re a SaaS founder, here’s where it usually goes wrong: 

1. You treat MVP as v1.0

You’re trying to ship a baby version of the vision, not a test of the risk.
You spend 6 months building what you could have validated in 2 weeks.

2. You build for a demo, not for learning

The goal quietly becomes “impress investors” 
instead of “reduce uncertainty.” Nice UI, shallow insight.

3. You start from features, not from a bet

An MVP should answer a sharp question:
“Will people do X this way?”

If your team can’t state the bet in one sentence, 
you’re not testing, you’re just building.

4. You ignore manual + hacked solutions

You jump straight to code.
But the cheapest MVP is often:

Google Sheet + email + a human behind the scenes.
If that doesn’t work, software won’t rescue it.

5. You don’t define “what we’re measuring”

No success criteria.
No guardrails.

So every result becomes “interesting” and nothing becomes decisive.
Write the win/lose conditions before you build.

6. You overfit to early feedback

First 5 users say “Can you also add…?”
You turn the MVP into a Christmas tree.

Keep a parking lot. 
Ship only what directly tests the core bet.

7. You stop the experiment too early

You launch, get a few lukewarm responses, and quietly kill it.
Most MVPs don’t fail rather they die from silence and zero follow-up.

Talk to users. Watch them use it. 
Ask uncomfortable questions.

If you’re planning an MVP right now, try this:

- One sharp bet.
- One core action to test.
- One simple way to measure it.

Everything else is decoration.

You don’t need a CFO to understand if your SaaS is healthy.
You need 5 numbers you can check every month:

- New ARR added
- ARR lost (churn + downgrades)
- Cash spent on acquiring new customers
- Number of new customers
- Gross margin %

From that, you can already see:

Net new ARR = new − lost
CAC = acquisition spend ÷ new customers
Payback period = CAC ÷ (annual gross margin per account)

Open a fresh tab in Google Sheets.
Put those 5 inputs at the top.
Make the formulas once. Never touch them again.

Now, any time someone asks
“Can we hire 3 more reps?”
you don’t rely on vibes.

You look at the sheet and say:

Our payback is 10 months? 
Great, we can press the gas.

Our payback is 28 months? 
Slow down. Something in the model is broken.

Non-technical doesn’t mean “bad with numbers.”
It just means nobody gave you the right ones to stare at.

Your $50K MVP is probably testing the wrong thing. I've launched 12+ SaaS products. Here's what I see killing most MVPs:

Founders build for the user they WISH they had, 
not the user they can ACTUALLY get.

The advice you're following? It's from 2011.
The bar for "viable" has completely changed.

Here's the 3-step framework that works:

1. Identify your riskiest assumption

Not your biggest feature. 
The ONE thing that, if wrong, kills the business.

Example: For AI contract software, it's not "lawyers want faster reviews."
It's "will lawyers TRUST AI for legal work?"

2. Design the minimum test

What's the cheapest way to test it?
For contract software: Manually review 10 contracts. 

Present results to lawyers. See if they trust it.
That's a $500 MVP vs $50K MVP.

3. Define success criteria BEFORE building

"We're right if 7/10 lawyers use our recommendations"
"We're wrong if fewer than 4 say yes"
"We need 20 lawyers to trust the data"

Not "let's see what happens."

Real example:

Client wanted to build automated onboarding for B2B SaaS.
Their MVP: NO automation. 
Manually onboarded 5 customers at $2K each.

All 5 paid. All 5 wanted the software.
THEN they built it.

Cost: $0 dev, 2 weeks.
That's how you validate.

Take 30 minutes today: Write down your riskiest assumption.

Can't identify it? 
You're not ready to build. Simple.

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