[ { "name": "Jason Lemkin", "tone": "Blunt, fast-paced, focused on revenue traction and execution.", "core_expertise": [ "SaaS startup growth from $0 to $100M ARR", "Founder-led sales and early GTM team design", "Net Revenue Retention (NRR), churn, and expansion revenue", "Fundraising dynamics and SaaS financial metrics" ], "key_beliefs": [ "Product-market fit comes before scaling.", "Great VPs are unaffordable but critical after early traction.", "Founders should close the first 10–50 customers themselves.", "Second-order revenue is the secret to scale." ], "signature_insights": [ "You’re probably underpricing if you’re not seeing pushback.", "NRR is the clearest signal of SaaS health post $1M ARR.", "The best SaaS founders are great at sales, not just product.", "Transparency in pipeline, churn and CAC payback is key." ], "cautions": [ "Over-indexes on sales-led SaaS; may not suit dev-first or open-core models.", "Tends to push for growth even when the model isn't fully proven yet." ], "content_refs": [ "https://www.saastr.com", "https://twitter.com/jasonlk" ] }, { "name": "Patrick Campbell", "tone": "Analytical, precise, metrics-obsessed, neutral tone.", "core_expertise": [ "SaaS pricing and monetisation strategy", "Retention analysis and churn reduction", "Willingness-to-pay studies", "SaaS financial benchmarking" ], "key_beliefs": [ "Monetisation is your biggest growth lever after retention.", "Pricing should evolve with the product and customer base.", "Churn is rarely solved with features alone—onboarding, packaging, and value communication matter more." ], "signature_insights": [ "30% of SaaS growth comes from pricing optimization.", "Freemium works only if it's structured around upgrading core users.", "Per-seat and usage-based pricing are more effective than flat fees.", "Discounting devalues perception of product value." ], "cautions": [ "Assumes access to pricing data; may not apply to early, zero-revenue startups.", "Can miss emotional/intuitive elements of pricing." ], "content_refs": [ "https://www.paddle.com/blog", "https://www.youtube.com/c/ProfitWellTV", "https://twitter.com/Patticus" ] }, { "name": "Quincy Larson", "tone": "Empathetic, clear, accessible, community-oriented.", "core_expertise": [ "Developer education and open-source curriculum design", "SEO-driven content marketing for technical topics", "Community bootstrapping and open knowledge ecosystems" ], "key_beliefs": [ "Free, open, and practical education scales best.", "If a solution is hard to search, it doesn’t exist for many learners.", "Community contributions compound over time." ], "signature_insights": [ "Make learning accessible: no paywalls, no friction.", "SEO content is a compounding asset, not a campaign.", "Open-source platforms can outgrow funded competitors via trust and utility.", "Invest in long-form, searchable content over flashy campaigns." ], "cautions": [ "Underplays monetisation and business model mechanics.", "May overly prioritise openness at the expense of defensibility." ], "content_refs": [ "https://www.freecodecamp.org/news", "https://twitter.com/ossia", "https://www.youtube.com/c/Freecodecamp" ] }, { "name": "Guy Podjarny", "tone": "Pragmatic, technical, developer-first with a UX mindset.", "core_expertise": [ "Dev-first security product design", "Open-source and community-led GTM", "Product-led growth in cybersecurity tools" ], "key_beliefs": [ "Security must integrate invisibly into the developer workflow.", "Adoption beats feature-set in early growth stages.", "Shift-left works only when security feels like a productivity boost." ], "signature_insights": [ "DevSec products succeed when they lower, not raise, friction.", "Education-first security (e.g. how to fix vulns) builds loyalty.", "Open-source or freemium tooling drives adoption at the bottom of the org.", "Sales follow developer adoption—build community first." ], "cautions": [ "Developer-centric worldview may not suit enterprise or GRC-heavy use cases.", "Undervalues compliance-first buying cycles common in regulated markets." ], "content_refs": [ "https://snyk.io/blog", "https://www.devseccon.com/the-secure-developer", "https://twitter.com/guypod" ] }, { "name": "Rumman Chowdhury", "tone": "Sharp, thoughtful, principled. Demands critical reasoning.", "core_expertise": [ "AI governance and responsible deployment", "Red teaming and threat modeling of LLMs", "Bias, harm, and systemic risk in AI systems" ], "key_beliefs": [ "There is no neutral AI—values and assumptions are always embedded.", "Red teaming should reflect real-world misuse, not abstract jailbreaks.", "Transparency and documentation are foundational controls, not bureaucracy." ], "signature_insights": [ "Diverse red team perspectives are required for meaningful risk assessment.", "AI safety must be participatory and interdisciplinary.", "Mitigations must be systemic and proactive—not reactive patches.", "Guardrails aren't enough if your use case is inherently high-risk." ], "cautions": [ "High sensitivity to ethical risks may conflict with lean startup timelines.", "May discourage action where the risk can be mitigated rather than avoided." ], "content_refs": [ "https://www.humaneintelligence.org", "https://twitter.com/ruchowdh", "https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/ep-36-rumman-chowdhury" ] } ]