šŸ† Top 1% Founders

šŸ‘‰ Staying ahead shouldnā€™t be left to chance, here's how you'll make sure your startup's success is no random luck.

 šŸ‘‹ Hi there - itā€™s Egemen.

Staying ahead shouldnā€™t be left to chance.

There is a lot of good, not-so-good, bad, and ill advice for founders out there.

Itā€™s 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 ā€œproduct-led growthā€ creates and how itā€™s misrepresented.

This edition is all about making sure that you stay on top of your game.

Hereā€™s a snapshot of whatā€™s on the menu today:

šŸ’” Spotlight: The Edge You Need

šŸ§  Deep-Dive: Key to Win in Early-Stage SaaS

šŸ—ŗļø Method: #1 Bestselling Book on Product-Led Growth

āš¾ļø Catch: Start Mastering AI

ā˜ļø Scaled This Past Week: Quantexa

šŸ’” Spotlight: The Edge You Need

For a while now, Iā€™ve been sharing insights through the newsletter.

But I wanted to create something deeper, more practical, and more hands-on.

So, Iā€™m 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

šŸ§  Deep-Dive: Key to Win in Early-Stage SaaS

If your first instinct is to build a signup flow instead of selling, youā€™re optimizing for convenience, not growth.

Iā€™ve seen this tweet the other day by Albert Mao, the founder of Vectorshift, and I think itā€™s criminally underrated.

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 ā€œgrow without sales.ā€ But PLG isnā€™t about skipping sales - itā€™s what kicks in at scale, when thereā€™s already demand.

šŸ‘‰ 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 isnā€™t the funnelā€”itā€™s demand. 

Self-serve works when customers already know they need you. At the start, they donā€™t even know what problem youā€™re solving for.

In the early days, sales isnā€™t optionalā€”itā€™s essential. 

Youā€™re not just selling the product, youā€™re selling the idea. Youā€™re refining your messaging, learning objections, and figuring out what actually resonates.

PLG doesnā€™t replace thatā€”it builds on top of it once the messaging is already dialed in.

So PLG isnā€™t a shortcut to growth. Itā€™s 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 arenā€™t buying in the first place.

šŸ‘‰ Early-stage founders need to get their hands dirty, sell manually, and iterate fast.

beehiiv šŸ

refind šŸŒ€

šŸ—ŗļø 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 ā€œThe PLG Guyā€.

I learned a lot about PLG simply by reading through his short book, which is available for free on his website.

šŸ‘‰ 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.

āš¾ļø Catch

Start learning AI in 2025

Keeping up with AI is hard ā€“ we get it!

Thatā€™s why over 1M professionals read Superhuman AI to stay ahead.

  • Get daily AI news, tools, and tutorials

  • Learn new AI skills you can use at work in 3 mins a day

  • Become 10X more productive

ā˜ļø Scaled This Past Week: Quantexa

British tech unicorn Quantexa bags $175M at $2.6B valuation - itā€™s the scale of the week!

Hereā€™s 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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