by 
Based on 9 years of working for high-growth B2B SaaS startups, this is a working list of things I deeply believe about marketing, product, and company strategy.
User experience is everyone’s job
Everyone in the company should be thinking about the customer and their experience at all times. Whether it’s using the product, talking to someone in support, or reading a blog article on the marketing site, it all adds up to your brand experience. And everyone should understand how they impact that to improve NPS and reduce churn.
Almost no product needs a prospect to talk to sales first.
Put pricing on your website. Offer a free plan or free trial. Put a demo of your product on your homepage and YouTube. Customers that need to talk to Sales will raise their hand to do it. For everyone else, streamline that process to make it as frictionless as possible to get started.
Org structure isn’t just a formality. It should provide inspiration and clarity.
If your org structure doesn’t look like an outline of your business strategy, you’re missing an opportunity to give managers and individual contributors clear ownership in how they impact the business and clarity on who they need to work with to do it. Don’t just build teams for the sake of having all the right departments. Set your strategy, and structure the company to achieve it.
Not every decision needs to be backed by data.
Being data-driven is stifling creativity, especially in marketing. Should you measure impact? Yes. Should you look for campaign baselines? Sure. Should you be smart with your budget? Obviously. But if your marketers don’t have the freedom to take a risk or do something to build the brand (even if they can’t measure it), they’re going to get bored and go help build someone else’s brand.
Employee morale is a critical growth lever.
Every change the business makes should take this into account, and consider how internal communications can be leveraged to maintain or improve how employees are feeling about something. When morale is down, it can cause the entire business plan to fall off track. Your job as a leader is to protect your business as a great place for people to work.
Work should be challenging and fun.
Celebrate the wins and work through the fails. Leaders should be measured not only on their business outcomes, but employee NPS and retention. And if the team isn’t having fun, what the heck is really the point? Connect people with work they’re passionate about and help them grow.
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