on a journey to PMF: the numbers say quit. I disagree.
Passion is a business model. I'm still unclear whether it's a good one, but it means something to me.
Hey everyone,
I took last week off for Easter, but I’m back.
A few weeks ago, I was on a wrap-up call with Steve Brady — he’d been helping me build and test an outbound system for Journey. Clay tables, Claygents, PQS-based prospecting across three ICPs. The architecture was solid. The signals were dialed. The execution was about as good as it gets.
The results were not.
And at the end of that call, I said something I hadn’t said out loud before: I don’t know if I should keep doing this.
That’s where the numbers pointed, but I think there are more options than just letting something go when it seems there isn’t a solution in sight (at least in this situation).
fun stuff (before we get into things…)
Over the long weekend, we were craving some pizza, so we decided to go check out one of the more famous spots in the Dallas area, Fortunate Son, a spot that Dave Portnoy reviewed.
Anyways, it was delicious. We waited 30 minutes for a table, the kids got hanger, so we actually went next door to eat and ordered the pizza to-go. My wife and I then had the pizza as a late-night snack, but it was still one of the best.
It’s New Haven-style pizza. Not sure what that means, but it was very good.
the flaw that keeps me here
I have never been able to grind on something that doesn’t mean anything to me. Even if the economics make sense. Even if it’s the rational move. Even if it makes a ton of money.
At XO Capital, we acquired 12 SaaS companies in about four and a half years. Mostly, we flipped profitably. A couple — AI bets — wrecked us. Across all of those, the ones where I did my best work were the ones I actually cared about. The ones where I was just operating for the return? I could feel the drag every day.
Journey is the one I held onto, partially because I really had a lot of passion for the idea, the problem, the opportunity, and the bones of the business. Long story short, it hasn’t been what we expected. There are a lot of things outside the business that are making an impact on this road to PMF, but even after executing some of the best GTM experiments I could, the numbers say quit. I have to disagree. That’s either conviction or delusion.
I genuinely don’t know which one yet.
what i learned from a friend
I read a piece this week from the Wildfront guys. two dudes I’ve come to admire and look up to, called “Who you’re building for determines if SaaS is dead or not.”
The sentiment they shared was basically if you’re selling SaaS to indie hackers and technical founders, you’re fighting uphill. They’ll vibe-code your tool over a weekend. But if you’re selling to people too busy running their businesses to build their own tools — agency owners, sales leaders, marketing teams — SaaS is alive and well.
Journey lives in that second world, thankfully. Our customers aren’t trying to replace us with a weekend project. They’re trying to close a deal, so I know we’re in the right market.
The question is whether I can get in front of enough of the right people to prove it.
Alex, the author, mentioned another Alex, the founder of Groove (see screenshot above).
I am experiencing this. We don’t have a churn problem, per say. The number is generally sub 5%, but we don’t grow, so we slowly become zombies.
The best customers definitely still love us, but the market is moving…
Where is it moving to?
Why is it moving from where it was?
How is it moving?
When will it stop?
What does it mean for small companies like us, based on the direction it’s moving?
I’m not sure.
keep doing the work
I’ve been testing Gojiberry.ai for outbound — an AI-powered lead gen tool that tracks intent signals and surfaces warm leads. People engaging with competitor content, searching keywords in your space.
1,537 leads in my Manufacturing ICP alone. Campaign running since March 8th. 675 leads touched. 45% connection rate. 26% reply rate.
And out of all that: 4-5 genuine yeses.
4-5 out of 675.
It’s not a flood. It’s a handful of real humans who said “yeah, I need that.” And right now, that’s enough to keep going.
passion is the only thing that survives this part
The Wildfront piece makes the point that the bar has gone up in SaaS. You can’t build a good product and coast. I agree.
But I’d add: you can’t survive the pre-PMF grind on discipline alone. Discipline gets you through a quarter. Caring about the thing, really caring, is what gets you through a year of flat growth and out the other side.
Eric, my first boss at RevBoss, told me something twelve years ago: always run towards something, never away from something. Journey has been the biggest thorn in my side, but it’s a great battleground for my passion. Some months, I fail it. Some months, I’m just running toward something I can’t fully see yet.
But I’m still running.
That’s it for this one. Let’s keep it going
Cheers, Danny