Andrew Capland

Five years ago I walked away from my dream startup job with a 6mo old at home to create a new life. Everyone thought I was crazy. My wife wasn't working and I was covering all our income and benefits. Objectively a terrible time to bet on myself. But after 13 years in tech, working at five startups, and surviving two layoffs, I was burnt out and anxious. I knew something had to change. So I started my business, Delivering Value. Coaching directors, vps, and heads of growth. And advising product-led saas startups. Now 5 years and 100+ clients later, it's become the longest job I've ever had. Here's the good, messy, and parts i don't usually share.

A mentor of mine said a PIP should work both ways. If your company isn't meeting your expectations - put them on a performance plan. Tell them, and give them a chance to improve. And if things don't change, move on.

Just got hired as head of growth? Don't come in too hot, and piss everybody off before you understand how the company works. Here's the 4-step plan I'd follow for your first 30 days. It might feel slow, but it's the fastest way to make a big impact. 1. Learn where the leverage is (growth model & qual research) 2. Build trust with your team, peers, and boss (alignment & relationships) 3. Define your role before someone else does (ownership & accountability) 4. Get first wins without stepping on toes (quick wins & give away credit) youtube.com/watch?v=_mTuTtVv…

A Head of Growth just graduated from my coaching program. He’d led growth before, but at a pre-revenue startup. This new gig was at a product with 100k+ users. He said, “I didn’t know what I was coming into and what being a head of growth looks like in this environment.” We worked 1:1 for a few months. And he said our sessions "set myself up for success." Here’s a bit of what we did together: 1. Diagnosed the growth model before picking priorities We mapped the funnel from traffic to churn, then modeled a few paths to the company’s revenue goal. 2. Ranked every lever against the revenue goal For each one we asked - would the impact be, and how fast? That showed us where to focus. 3. Tested big ideas cheaply before scaling We cut his long list down to 4 big bets. He picked one and ran a quick test, then we turned what worked into a scalable playbook others could run. 4. Got him out of the execution weeds On our first call he said he was spending too much time on work that should belong to someone else. We sorted his work into what only he could do and what someone else could run. His job became trailblazing - getting each thing running, handing it off, and moving to the next one. 5. Prioritized marketing the work We stress-tested his dashboards to make sure they tied the tactical growth work back to the revenue goal. Then we set a sharing cadence and scripted a 30sec opener to reinforce what he’s doing, why, and how his team operates. We covered the 3 things every Head of Growth needs. A plan to grow the biz, a system to run the team, and the soft skills to level themselves up along the way. I have 2 open spots in November. If you’ve got the Head of Growth title but you’re still figuring out how to fully step into the role, DM me.

The first of many more?

I have 18x more followers on LinkedIn than I do here on X. 22,829 followers on LinkedIn. 1,280 followers here on X. (and mostly non-active accounts from when I first signed up in 2012) But I just posted the exact same thing on both platforms, and they got roughly the same number of impressions. Hard not to feel like I wasted years building that Linkedin audience I can't reach anymore.

Maybe it’s just my client portfolio. But I haven’t heard anyone really crushing it with AEO. I've heard about some small wins. But most websites lost around 40-60% of their organic search traffic. I haven't heard of anyone getting back anywhere near those levels from the LLMs.

Unless we see a new marketing channel emerge quickly, saas teams will be forced to prioritize generating more revenue from the customers they already have. In practice, I think this looks like: price increases more usage based expansion creating new products to cross-sell additional plans/features to drive upgrades Because many SaaS companies are heading toward a difficult period. And the companies that figure this out early will have a big advantage.

I hope I'm wrong, but I think we're going to see many SaaS companies forced into raising prices in 2027. Across my client portfolio, I'm seeing churn starting to increase and acquisition getting way harder. That means revenue growth is slowing. More companies will reach that painful point where new customer revenue doesn't offset the revenue they're losing. A dollar in = a dollar out. They'll be forced to find ways to generate more revenue from existing customers to survive. Higher prices, more premium tiers, usage based pricing levers, additional products, etc. I hope I'm wrong.

If you're looking for a playbook to avoid the saaspocolypse and reignite growth, I think all roads lead through MCP adoption and optimization. I would spin-up a growth team obsessed over your MCP usage. And set OKRs around: - number of users connected - number of uses per month I'd have them learn every conversion barrier that impacts those two metrics. Then systematically test, iterate, and segment your way through them. This is going to be 10x more more impactful than your traditional user onboarding work moving forward. And I haven't heard of too many businesses doing it yet.

Um hells yeah I’ll be there

I've started helping a few companies hire growth leaders. My advice to early-stage founders... you probably shouldn't have a head of growth. For most, it's just too early. You don't even know what kind of growth leader you really need at that stage. The odds of you picking the right type of leader, scoping the role correctly, and having someone come in and be successful from day 1 is pretty slim. Instead, hire an amazing Jack (or Jill) of all trades and pair them with a really experienced growth advisor. The advisor figures out where to focus. The generalist executes a wide range of projects. It works even better if the generalist is ai-pilled. That's the winning combo for early stage.

This echos my biggest frustration with the a/b testing community. They get so fixated on rigor and statistical significance they forget the whole point of an a/b test is to learn. if you learn why something works you can do more of it. if you learn why something doesn't work you avoid making the same mistake over and over. It's worthless to test without understanding the why.

Hoping this will be a competitive advantage for my personal brand. (tomorrow's substack post)

Having a really weird year in my business. Financially, it's one of my strongest years ever. But my pipeline has me worried about 2027. Historically, I convert 30% of sales consults into clients. But out of the last 26... only 2 have converted. (same offer, product, and pricepoint) I think it's a sign that things are unsettled in the tech world right now.

I have a 5yr old boy and 2.5 yr old girl. Parenting two young kids is exhausting. But every once in a while, the game slows down enough to appreciate how good it really is. Last night was one of those. I woke up at 5am and spent the day smoking a pork butt. And when it was finally ready, the whole family crowded around the kitchen island to help. Both kids standing on chairs. Everyone pulling the meat apart with forks, sneaking bites, laughing. And for a second, I found myself stepping outside the moment, to take a mental picture.

3k on youtube... Hells ya 🙌

After 5 yrs as a biz owner, I've seen all kinds of weird stuff. But I'm still shocked when full-grown adults reach out (I do zero outbound) then ghost you instead of saying they've gone in a different direction. Is this a generational thing, or am I old school?