Cosmo Tech | The Decision Twin Platform for Supply Chain, Finance & Asset Leaders at Fortune 500 Scale | Simulate Tomorrow. Decide Today.

I specialize in the messy middle of B2B SaaS scaling—taking companies from erratic growth to a disciplined, high-performance revenue engine.

Most sales teams don’t fail because they lack talent; they fail because of ambiguity.
When forecasts can’t be trusted, pipelines move only through founder heroics, and managers report activity instead of owning outcomes, you don’t need another playbook—you need an operating system.

My operating philosophy: Cadence | Ownership | Process

I install a repeatable flywheel of operational excellence:

Cadence
A rigorous Rhythm of Business—daily, weekly, and monthly operating cadence that surfaces execution risk early, before it becomes a board-level surprise.

Ownership
Managers own outcomes, not just activity. Forecasts are built bottom-up so leadership can commit without caveats.

Process
Qualification and execution are standardized before adding headcount, ensuring hiring is tied to capacity and real revenue impact—not hope.

The proof (Ekahau — SVP, Global Sales, 2019–2024)
	•	Revenue: Scaled $25M → $65M ARR in five years
	•	EBITDA: Increased $7M → $32M (margins ~20% → ~50%)
	•	Team: Built a 130-person global organization while reducing per-employee cost 25%

Selected wins
	•	Healthentic: Doubled ACV ($5M → $10M) and drove 10× pipeline growth through GTM transformation
	•	ControlCase: Delivered 34% YoY growth and 300% expansion revenue growth

Currently

Available for VP of Sales or Fractional GTM leadership with B2B SaaS companies $5M–$30M ARR. I also lead SalesGSS (revenue operating frameworks) and DigitalRegIntel (regulatory intelligence for AI/fintech).

The Senator perspective

Two terms as a Washington State Senator taught me the value of high-stakes negotiation and public accountability. I bring that same discipline to sales: clear ownership and execution when the pressure is real.

“Steve is ‘Instant Offense’ for sales—rare and valuable. World-class at creating strategic, data-driven sales teams.”
— Jeff O’Mara, CEO (Healthentic) / GM (Ekahau)

If revenue per employee is flat while headcount rises, you’re not scaling. You’re diluting.

Most $10M–$50M ARR teams are measuring the wrong thing.
They celebrate hiring.

Elite teams watch revenue per employee.

Here’s what 2026 is quietly proving:
Growth doesn’t stall because opportunity disappeared.

It stalls because attention fragmented.
New ICP.
New vertical.
New pricing model.
New feature set.
New partnership.
All rational.
All defensible.

Collectively? Expensive.

Revenue per employee isn’t a finance metric.
It’s a focus metric.

Bootstrapped SaaS companies at $1M–$3M ARR average ~$110K per employee.

Equity-backed peers average ~$94K.

Capital didn’t create the gap.

Discipline did.

Fragmentation increases decision latency.

Decision latency expands Signal-to-Action Time.

And once SAT expands, velocity stops compounding.
You don’t lose because you’re wrong.

You lose because complexity expands faster than discipline.

Pressure test your system:
• If you asked three reps to define your ICP, would they say the same thing?
• Do your top 20 deals look similar — or random?
• Has revenue per employee improved in the last two quarters — or are you hiring into flat output?
• When was the last time you killed an initiative?

Elite teams don’t run more plays.
They run fewer — with intensity.

Focus multiplies revenue per employee.
Complexity multiplies meetings.

Week 7 of the 2026 Operating Series.

Link in comments.

Steve Litzow

VP of Sales | Scaled $25M → $65M ARR | Operating Discipline for Growth & Scrutiny

FinCEN just made compliance easier.

That’s exactly why your documentation burden increased.

On February 13, FinCEN eliminated beneficial ownership verification at every account opening.

The same day, SEC Chairman Atkins testified that current crypto guidance isn’t “future-proof” without legislation.

That’s not regulatory confusion.

It’s the new supervisory model.

Fewer procedural checkboxes.
Higher expectations for documented judgment.

When regulators give you discretion, they’re not giving you a pass.

They’re giving you a decision to defend.

24–36 months from now, no one will ask:

“Did you follow the rule that no longer exists?”

They’ll ask:

• Why did you reduce controls?
• What risk assessment supported that?
• Who reviewed it?
• Where is the record?

Relief does not eliminate supervisory liability.

It reallocates it.

This week’s DRI Supervisory Brief covers:

→ FinCEN CDD relief and the judgment gap it creates
→ SEC-CFTC coordination that lacks statutory permanence
→ FinCEN’s data-driven enforcement model
→ EU AI Act entering pre-enforcement phase

Link in comments.

No new rule last week.

That’s the risk.

On Feb 13, FinCEN quietly operationalized its whistleblower portal.

Now AML, AI governance, and digital asset supervision gaps can be reported directly to enforcement — before an exam ever starts.

This changes the timeline.

Enforcement is no longer tied to regulatory cycles.

It’s tied to internal observation.

An email.
A Slack message.
A deferred monitoring upgrade.

Those can now become time-stamped federal evidence.

The real shift isn’t rulemaking.

It’s attribution infrastructure.

When regulators look back 24–36 months from now, the question won’t be:

“Did you know the rule?”

It will be:

“Can you prove you supervised in real time?”

Documentation is no longer defensive.

It’s existential.

Full breakdown in this week’s Brief. (Link in comments.)

February 25, the OCC published the first federal implementing rule for stablecoin supervision.

The FTC’s 90-day AI enforcement deadline arrives this week.

The EU AI Act transparency clock is ~150 days from enforcement.

No headline. No drama. Just the window closing.

Here’s what shifts when a rule is published:

The question is no longer, “Did you know about it?”

It becomes:
“When did you assess it — and who signed off?”

Most organizations can show awareness.

Very few can produce a dated record showing:
→ who evaluated applicability
→ what determination was made
→ what action (or deferral) followed
→ and that the entry wasn’t created after the fact

That’s the documentation gap.

Once a rule is published, silence becomes a record.

This week’s DigitalRegIntel Brief breaks down:

• OCC GENIUS Act proposed rule — what a defensible record should include before May 1
• FTC AI enforcement posture — shaped by enforcement, not rulemaking
• EU AI Act transparency window — three obligation tracks converging August 2

One question worth sitting with:

If an examiner or investor asked today what your organization assessed in Q1 2026 — what does your record show?

Full brief in the comments.

US enforcement is accelerating through whistleblower infrastructure.

EU regulation is accelerating through statutory documentation and logging requirements.

Different systems.

Same burden.

You must be able to prove:

• What management knew
• When it knew it
• How it assessed applicability
• What action (or deferral) followed

Frameworks don’t fail companies.

Missing chronology does.

Your deal didn’t lose to a competitor.

It died in a conference room.

40–60% of B2B deals end in “no decision.”

Not lost.

Just never aligned.

At $10M–$50M ARR, most teams still sell to a champion.

But the real sale is to the committee.

If a deal is single-threaded beyond day 45, your forecast isn’t aggressive.

It’s structurally optimistic.

This week’s issue breaks down how elite teams prevent ghost pipeline.

Comment PLAYBOOK and I’ll send it.

Slow teams don’t catch up.
They fall permanently behind.

Here’s the math nobody wants to say out loud:

Every week your team debates,
a faster competitor runs three experiments,
kills two,
and scales one.

That gap compounds.

By Q2, it’s structural.

The assumption killing most $10M–$50M teams:

“We’ll move faster once we have more resources.”

It’s backwards.

Speed isn’t the result of scale.
Speed is the cause of it.

I call this Signal-to-Action Time (SAT) —
the gap between seeing a problem and doing something about it.

Elite teams compress SAT.
Average teams debate it.

And debate feels productive.

But it’s just delayed learning.

The cost of being wrong fast
is almost always lower
than the cost of being right slow.

Your competitors aren’t smarter.

They’re just running more learning cycles than you are.

And speed can’t be bought later.

It has to be installed.

Week 6 of the SalesGSS 2026 Operating Series.
Full breakdown (with data + operator discipline) in this week’s newsletter — link in comments.

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