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š Top 1% Founders
š Staying ahead shouldnāt be left to chance, here's how you'll make sure your startup's success is no random luck.

š Hi there - itās Egemen.
Staying ahead shouldnāt be left to chance.
There is a lot of good, not-so-good, bad, and ill advice for founders out there.
Itās already tough enough to launch a product, gain customers, hire people to scale and move on with operations.
Bad practices (or malpractices) due to poor advice can cost a lot. One area that I often see lately is in early sales and the dilemma āproduct-led growthā creates and how itās misrepresented.
This edition is all about making sure that you stay on top of your game.
Hereās a snapshot of whatās on the menu today:
š” Spotlight: The Edge You Need
š§ Deep-Dive: Key to Win in Early-Stage SaaS
šŗļø Method: #1 Bestselling Book on Product-Led Growth
ā¾ļø Catch: Start Mastering AI
āļø Scaled This Past Week: Quantexa
š” Spotlight: The Edge You Need
For a while now, Iāve been sharing insights through the newsletter.
But I wanted to create something deeper, more practical, and more hands-on.
So, Iām introducing Membership Packages ā a space for founders who want to move faster, make better decisions, and gain an edge.
If the free newsletter has been valuable so far, this takes it to another level.
Full access to content library (fundraising, product, GTM, growth, and more)
100% OFF in Scalable Template Store ($847 value)
Perks & discounts in 20+ tools and platforms
Invite-only workshops & masterclasses
Discounts in all future resources
Private founders community
Weekly 1:1s

š§ Deep-Dive: Key to Win in Early-Stage SaaS
If your first instinct is to build a signup flow instead of selling, youāre optimizing for convenience, not growth.
Iāve seen this tweet the other day by Albert Mao, the founder of Vectorshift, and I think itās criminally underrated.
You are better than 99% of founders if every day you:
1. Talk to users
2. Iterate on your product
3. Sell the productEverything else is a distraction.
Repeat this every day and you will be among the best.
ā Albert Mao (@AlbertZMao)
2:00 PM ā¢ Mar 7, 2025
In the early days, founders have to sell.
That means getting in the trenches, talking to customers, refining your pitch, and closing deals manually.
In my experiences and observations so far, in practice, I can say that product-led growth (PLG) is often misunderstood and misconducted within this context by many founders.
Founders see companies like Slack or Notion and think they can āgrow without sales.ā But PLG isnāt about skipping sales - itās what kicks in at scale, when thereās already demand.
š This is why most startups fail with self-serve or gradual engagement.
They think removing friction will bring growth. But if no one is buying, the problem isnāt the funnelāitās demand.
Self-serve works when customers already know they need you. At the start, they donāt even know what problem youāre solving for.
In the early days, sales isnāt optionalāitās essential.
Youāre not just selling the product, youāre selling the idea. Youāre refining your messaging, learning objections, and figuring out what actually resonates.
PLG doesnāt replace thatāit builds on top of it once the messaging is already dialed in.
So PLG isnāt a shortcut to growth. Itās a scaling strategy, not a market-entry strategy. If you skip sales and hope your product speaks for itself, you might never find out why people arenāt buying in the first place.
š Early-stage founders need to get their hands dirty, sell manually, and iterate fast.

beehiiv š | refind š |

šŗļø Method: #1 Bestselling Book on Product-Led Growth
As we talk about product-led growth (or PLG), Wes Bush is the man ā with quite literally the nickname of āThe PLG Guyā.
I learned a lot about PLG simply by reading through his short book, which is available for free on his website.
š If you truly want to have a solid grasp of what product-led growth is, how it should be implemented in your startup properly and how to use it as a growth catalyst - I highly recommend reading this.

ā¾ļø Catch
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āļø Scaled This Past Week: Quantexa
British tech unicorn Quantexa bags $175M at $2.6B valuation - itās the scale of the week!
Hereās what they do:
Provides AI-powered Decision Intelligence (DI) solutions, helping enterprises and government agencies make smarter, data-driven decisions.
Recently launched Q Assist, an AI-powered assistant that enhances investigations by allowing analysts to interact with data using natural language.

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