Jordi Buller

A common misconception I’ve heard over the past few weeks is that engineering teams should build native integrations to "keep the IP in-house”. A sizable integration library is a competitive advantage. If there’s a well defined product strategy backing the integrations you build, they can be a force multiplier for your GTM teams. There are a few reasons to build native integrations, but treating them as part of your product's secret sauce by default isn’t one of them. Offloading cumbersome integration tasks via unified APIs, iPaaS products, or even contractors specializing in integrations is often the optimal choice that fast-growing product companies could make. I recently listened to Lenny Rachitsky's podcast with Shreyas Doshi and learned about his framework for optimizing work for opportunity cost vs. ROI. The gist of his thesis is that several teams fall into the trap of committing to tasks that are a good use of their time vs. the best use. This is especially true of those in high-leverage roles (founders, product, engineering, and design). Working on individual integrations for your customers is almost always going to yield a positive ROI, but they are unlikely to be high leverage features that result in an impact that’s an order of magnitude higher than the required effort. Features that are difficult to replicate, and that double down your product's core value proposition are higher leverage tasks worth having your product and engineering teams focus on. The few scenarios in which it is worth building native integrations are: ✅ Your product requires a handful of shallow integrations ✅ 1-2 strategic partners drive a significant amount of your revenue and deep integrations with their platforms make your product stickier & increase co-selling opportunities ✅ Integration platforms don't support your specific integration requirements and contractors lack the expertise to build them What are other considerations for building integrations in-house vs. leveraging products or service providers to build them?

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How do you keep engineering teams aligned with business goals while embracing innovation? Ada, the world’s leading customer service automation company, found the answer with Jellyfish. When pivoting to a generative-first strategy, Ada faced a key challenge: balancing innovation with supporting existing customers. They needed clarity on how their teams worked and invested their time. With Jellyfish, they achieved: 🚀 A 14% improvement in cycle times 🎯 Ranked in the top 97th percentile for “days with commits” 📈 Over 10% growth in technical investments “Jellyfish has become our go-to dashboard to understand how we’re operating as a team at a glance,” says William Mora, Head of Engineering at Ada. Now, Ada’s team is striking the perfect balance—focusing on reliability, experimentation, and investments that drive their business forward. Read the full story. Link in comments👇

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Few agencies without a technical lead are able to get by (and none thrive). Relying on contractors can be a double-edged sword: they bring specialized skills but often lack a cohesive vision that aligns technology with your customer’s long-term goals. This disconnect results in software bloat, where unnecessary features and technical debt pile up. The pain is real: without a consistent, forward-thinking approach, your business is at risk of compounding technical debt that will stifle innovation. Don’t let short-term fixes lead to long-term problems. It’s time to rethink how you approach technology, ensuring it supports—not stifles—your growth.

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Three Wins I Hope Every Founder, Builder Experiences 1. Hands-On with the Cool Tech Nothing beats diving into promising tech and seeing the impact firsthand. Getting up close with foundational models and LLM applications over the last three years is an experience I hope everyone got a taste of. 2. The Magic of an Aligned Team Being part of a team that’s not just smart but also daring greatly and committed to winning together - that's the best. A great mix of people bringing purpose, energy, and good vibes. 3. The Win of Creating Real Value Watching ARR take off, seeing customer value grow significantly, and knowing your work drives real impact - that's amazing. ----------- Looking back on the past three years at everc, I'm grateful for all that and more. From the hands-on work with LLMs to the friendships, amazing memories and lessons — What a ride. Together, we tripled ARR, drove significant customer value growth, and built a product group focused on speed and impact. A big thank-you to everyone who made this journey special ! Keep on keeping on — daring greatly, building, pushing forward, and inspiring each other. So long, and thanks for all the fish 🐟🐟🐟 ----------- What’s Next for Me? Exploring: • Zero-to-One LLM app product opportunities • Fractional product roles in early and mid-stage startups Who are the startups you know that could use an expert product hand to drive significant impact quickly?

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The engineering team at SaaSGrid pumps out features faster than I can write about them, but I wanted to highlight one thing we released recently that has made a big impact for our customers. SaaS leaders are used to looking at monthly ARR, but that can leave them in the dark to the day-in-day-out changes in their customer base. Are new customers getting signed? Are renewals happening (and happening on time?) Is there organic expansion or contraction? Our new ARR Movements timeline gives day level granularity for every change in ARR, down to the specific products and quantities that were updated. Keeping track of data in real time lets our users move from reactive proactive, and never get surprised at the end of the month. If you're a SaaS leader, you're constantly faced with hard decisions about how to grow your business. SaaSGrid can't make those decisions for you, but everything we build is designed to deliver you the right data at the right time, and hopefully make those decisions a little easier.

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Two posts I shared with my team this week about LLM's impact on SaaS. SaaS has always been about solving a problem. Engineers I interview often ask me "Why spend so much time on the LLM stuff?". Aka, "Why are we working on all the hard stuff that is barely working, when there's plenty of problems to be solved the old way?". Brett Queener's tweet about the UI. He talks about a world where most of a software product's user interface will be a prompt or a recommendation. "..its far better user experience than forcing people to hunt and peck across your tabs, list views, form views and dashboard for them to get done what they want to. It also means that what you used to compete on / differentiate on traditionally (I have these capabilities / better easier to use screens / yada yada yada) are kinda irrelevant" Matt Turck's LinkedIn post, "Is SaaS dead?" SaaS vendors are currently perceived as “last generation” despite best efforts to add AI quickly. Customers trying to build themselves, since it's pretty easy to get started. He says what happens next: "* customers realize that “build” is a headache, not always good * OpenAI / Azure etc can’t / doesn’t want to build hundreds of problem specific/ vertical specific apps * Takes time, but legacy and new SaaS companies truly become AI-first (not just marketing), abstract away complexity of deploying LLMs * macro environment eventually rebounds * AIaaS becomes the new SaaS - what is old is new" Both are linked in the comments. #who-moved-my-cheese

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Last Friday, Vinay Hiremath, founder of Loom (USD 900M exit to Atlassian), shared on his blog about leaving Loom, leaving $60M payout, breaking up with his girlfriend, dealing with insecurities, a brief stint at DOGE, and how he is now in Hawaii self-studying physics. I, along with a few founders I know who had substantial exits at a fairly young age (late 20s to early 30s), experienced something similar. Post-acquisition, most of us underwent—and many are still going through—a self-discovery phase largely centered on finding a 'purpose' and determining the best possible use of our time at this point in life. Does it mean taking risks that nobody else can, building more companies, accumulating more wealth, reaching the pinnacle of mental and physical health, building a family, getting involved in social impact, or leaving everything behind to sit on an isolated island? Capital does give you freedom and excessive optionality in life choices, especially if you're still unmarried. However, it is difficult to find your anchor, and most of the time, the abundance of choices becomes overwhelming. I was fortunate to meet a few exited founders who had gone through the acquisition process, and they were kind enough to share what worked for them. In one of my conversations with David Haber, he said: "As entrepreneurs, we build companies, but while we do that, we can't discount life. And life is what happens outside our companies." That thought has stuck with me. Today, three years after exiting Recko | A Stripe company to Stripe, I feel there are multiple ways to make life more fulfilling. It is not just the single-minded, unidirectional professional pursuit, which more often than not is driven by a chase for external validation rather than an internal desire to become better at your craft or to do something that uplifts people around you. Until the time you find that burning desire, restlessness, or drive to pick up the shovel again, take that family trip, get in shape, try something that you always wanted but never could, embrace the nothingness, enjoy the boredom, and keep exploring!

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Great points about selling into small business. I think it's universal of any kind of sale, not just selling software. Small business owners don't have people to qualify or determine which vendor will give them value, so you have to over-demonstrate value—and quickly—to close that deal. Enterprises have more room to breath and people dedicated to purchasing and analyzing solutions—they'll take their time deliberating and perhaps have more red tape, but ultimately greater purchasing power. Re-thinking sales processes has to be done for each. Love the points about 100% market share for full verticalization. I have a few clients that need to think about this...

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As we move deeper into 2024, tracking the right metrics is critical for scaling a SaaS business. This insightful guide outlines the top metrics to watch and includes valuable benchmarks to keep you on track. Whether you’re focused on ARR, CAC, or CLTV, understanding where your company stands is key to driving sustainable growth. Check out the article for a comprehensive look into the latest SaaS trends and metrics! #SaaS #BusinessGrowth #Metrics

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SaaS leaders spend a lot of time on the micro. When will this feature ship? Is that customer churning? What led to that production issue? Even the most senior leaders often get caught here. Then you see OKRs to match. Trailing churn, grow revenue from new features, maintain x% uptime. And processes and tools spring up to measure all of this with drilldowns and rollups to match. Sure sometimes this starts with a strategic vision, identifying areas of opportunity, and then breaking that down into manageable tasks. Planfully creating process and the organization to execute. But I reckon that's less common than we'd like to admit. The secret is, it's often more like this: - Oh bleep, I just got a call that super important customer threatened to leave! - Let's get five people in an emergency meeting with the customer! - The customer said the competitor has a better version of a highy specific feature! Is an upgrade on our roadmap? How can we rally the team to execute on it sooner? We need a swat effort - who can we pull into a team without making any sacrafices? - We need a r/y/g to discuss customers with this issue. And other customers with issues. And other issues we've noticed internally. We'll go through the list item by item, thrice weekly at 8 am. - etc. And this is of course all common and natural. Once the firehouse starts it's hard to fit in anything but more reaction. So the products and processes adapt to fit reality. And they grow. So we attempt to make that process we don't have time for twice as fast. And the overwhelm sets in, and the to do list gets too long. Since so many very succesful companies experience this that we assume it must be the way. There isn't a magic fix, but I don't think it happens by saying "I'm going to spend less time on the micro by optimizing the time I spend on the micro." It starts by carving out time for macro strategy. This may be the 30 minutes that doesn't feel urgent researching your place in the market. Maybe it's a call with a customer that doesn't need anything right now. Or - I hope - a solution like Rabble AI which can put the strategic priorities right in front of you in plain language. Will this turn the firehouse of micro off? No, nothing will. But at least it prevents the micro from completely washing the strategic away.

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On this Tech Tuesday we're talking testing SDKs. Whether you're building SDKs or consuming SDKs someone else built, here are the topics to consider and ask your SDK vendor about.

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RevOps leads - is leadership tasking you with AE-sourced pipeline initiatives? As companies use this channel to close gaps in 2025 pipe coverage, many RevOps leads struggle to operationalize the goal. Why? Even with a fancy tech stack, prospecting gets deprioritized when AEs go deep on active deals, and without a structured process, the habit breaks entirely. The most effective RevOps teams tackle this head-on by embedding prospecting into the daily workflow. They make it simple, manageable, and aligned with their broader revenue strategy. Here are a few tactics helping RevOps teams drive AE-sourced pipeline: Manageable daily lists: Reps receive 2–5 high-priority accounts in their inbox each day, based on historical signal and ICP performance. Contextual alerts: Insights from enrichment and signal data surface clear reasons to engage, cutting down necessary research time. Streamlined sequences: Pre-built outreach tied to each account’s context minimizes research and effort. Streaks: Gamifying daily prospecting with streaks and leaderboards, while simple, goes a long way in maintaining the prospecting habit. Manager-level reporting: Clear metrics empower leaders to drive accountability and reward engagement with spiffs. In summary, RevOps should strive to eliminate all friction for AEs, create a daily prospecting habit, and maintain leadership focus on the initiative with data. Without this process and attention, AE-sourced pipeline initiatives usually fizzle out for most AEs. RevOps leaders, what’s working for you to ensure AEs hit their pipeline goal?

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NEW: Internal Threads Internal threads allow you to spin up conversations in Slack from Pylon. It's great when you want to start a conversation with someone, but they primarily use Slack (e.g. engineers, product people or anyone who isn't living out of the support system). Common internal threads we are creating at Pylon: 1/ #bugs to report a potential bug 2/ #project channels to ask a team a question about a specific feature 3/ #feedback to report product feedback to the team It's been one of the most game-changing features we've released and we're so excited to share it with everyone. Enjoy!

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Trying to “go enterprise” too early in SaaS can kill an entire year of growth or more if you’re not ready for it. Enterprise customers can hold your product roadmap hostage. They’ll ask for new features, more integrations, enterprise level security, etc. You’ll rationalize it by saying that your Mid Market and SMB customers will also benefit, but realistically they might not actually care that much and maybe it has no material impact on retention or new sales. Expectations of service will be on another level. They’ll want executive level involvement. Dedicated onboarding resources. Much more sophisticated post-sale solution engineering. The works. You’ll feel like you have no choice but to do whatever they want because they’re paying you maybe $500k-$1m per year and meanwhile you’re in some weekly or bi-weekly sync with half of your exec team trying to figure out how to balance and keep your 2-3 enterprise customers happy because you’re worried they might churn. While you were busy spending a year building your enterprise team some small competitor(s) that you had never lost a customer to before is starting to pick up steam with a pretty strong offering to your original core segment, they’ve ripped off a few of your best features and are undercutting on price and you’ve lost a considerable amount of your lead in the market. Happens all the time. So unless you absolutely need it for growth then maybe wait another year. 

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I'm ending 2024 on the Scaling Tech Podcast with a conversation with my friend Doug Ramirez about how to lead effective 1-1s! These are an incredibly important tool in your management toolkit, but they are often done haphazardly or inconsistently (🫣 guilty as charged - so I learned a lot from this episode! 🤣 ). I've known and worked with Doug for a long time, and his strong experience as an engineering manager shows in this conversation, where he talks about a structured approach to 1-1s that will improve your team and your leadership skills. You can see the full interview here, and make 2025 the year you improve your management skills! 🫵 https://lnkd.in/evtQnW8k #engineeringmanagement #leadership #OneOnOnes #management

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Seeing lots of earnings calls with SaaS providers meeting revenue targets but missing EPS. How much do you want to bet those providers aren't using SLOs broadly yet? (I know this is true for a fact in certain cases). Poor operations will eat your margin and there's no better way to optimize ops (spend less on operating software and get better outcomes) than fully implementing SLOs. Many customers now ask me why spend the time to do SLOs correctly now? My answer - you can't afford NOT to as you have to get more efficient to deliver the margins investors expect.

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Do you start your platform engineering user stories with "As a platform engineer..."? I wrote a blog post about how you need to re-frame your user stories to get into the product mindset: https://lnkd.in/eFqPHmtN

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Our partnership with Brex now gives us unparalleled insight and breadth in SaaS purchasing reports

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Was playing around with v0.dev before last weeks Next.js conf, wanted to stress test how much it could help someone build a complex feature in Catalyst. One of our merchants was looking to add a Gift Certificates section like Stencil has and we just haven't got to it yet within the out-of-the-box version. Was a perfect scenario! High level take? If you are building in Next.js you should 100% add v0 to your toolbox. It'll help you slice away at features much faster than any other AI solution in market. I include more notes in the PR along with a demo of what was built on GitHub: https://lnkd.in/eBm6wVdP

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