CONVERGENCE
Real growth strategy from a startup CMO: The frameworks, interviews, & honest insights that 100k+ founders and operators actually use. The weekly newsletter by Lillian Pierson that cuts through the noise and gets straight to what works.
300 DMs a day with $0 in paid ads (with 1 big risk)
Reader- Did I ever tell you the story of how, in 2011, I filed 600 job applications and heard back from almost none of them. That was the year I stopped applying and started building my own business instead. Fifteen years later, I still don't apply for jobs… and the system that broke me back then only got noisier with AI on both sides of it. So when Eric Bruder, co-founder of Poozle, told me he watched 8,000 applicants collapse into a single hire at a previous company, I heard the exact thing...
I just built an entire company second brain in < 1 hour doing this...
Hi Reader, This evening I built the knowledge layer (aka; Obsidian vault) for a new AI-native growth program we're launching soon. It took about an hour. I used Claude Code and my existing IP. While a lot of people may think that time-to-value is the real exciting piece here, that's not it for me... The growth strategy now has lightening fast retrievability to be executed across 6 different growth engines at scale. The part that I love most about this vault is the growth strategy it houses,...
Adding this 1 non-negotiable fee filtered every bad partner before they got in
Hi Reader- Last week I introduced you to Balendran Thavarajah, Founder and CEO of Getmee, who came to Australia 22 years ago as a refugee with no English and no formal education, and has since built five companies including one that listed on NASDAQ. Part 1 covered his origin story, how he turned it into a startup go-to-market strategy, and the market signals that pushed Getmee from B2C to B2B. This week is the operational playbook. Specifically, the channel partner strategy Bala used to get...
The 3-layer context system I build before touching any AI tool
Reader I've worked with enough AI-native startups to recognize the pattern fast. The founder has good instincts, a technically solid product, and a team that's excited about AI in their marketing. They're producing content, posting on LinkedIn, and running tools across the stack. And their audience is quietly tuning out. When they come to me, they usually have a sneaking suspicion that something's off with the content itself, but they can't name it. So I run the diagnosis. And almost every...
His migration story closed deals faster than any pitch deck (5 companies, 2 exits)
Get this Reader Twenty-two years ago, Balendran Thavarajah arrived in Sydney from Northern Sri Lanka with no English, no formal education, and nothing to lose. A few years later, he was walking into small supermarkets with a laptop and a barcode scanner, asking owners for five minutes of their time. That same day, they were shaking his hand and telling him to come install the system. In four months, he had 20 customers. No CRM, no email funnel, no content strategy. Just a founder who saw a...
B2B SaaS is spending $2 to make $1. Here's why.
You know Reader... The median B2B SaaS company right now is spending $2 to acquire $1 of new revenue. That means more than two years just to break even on the cost of closing a customer… and that’s before accounting for churn risk, delivery costs, and everything else that goes into running a business. When founders see that number, most reach for one of three responses: Hire a better marketer, Increase the budget, or Cut marketing (and go back to founder-led sales). Most of the time, none of...
Something I keep seeing at $1M to $3M ARR
Reader - There's a pattern I keep running into with technical founders at the $1M to $3M ARR stage. The pipeline is thin. The founder is in every deal. They know it's not sustainable, so they hire a sales rep. And then, about three months later, the rep can't close without the founder in the room, and nothing has actually changed. What's frustrating about this, and I mean genuinely frustrating, is that the founders I'm talking about are actually great at sales. Pacific Crest data puts founder...
2.3x slower growth. Here's why, and how to stop it.
Hi Reader - At startups under $2M ARR, about 68% of revenue comes from the founder's personal network. That list is finite. Most founders hit the end faster than they expect. And when they do, the instinct is to hire a sales rep. Three months later, nothing has changed. The rep can't close, the founder jumps back in, and the business is exactly where it started, except now it's paying an extra $80K a year. It may surprise you that founders are usually pretty great at sales. Founder win rates...
The free offer that got Planoverse into Australia’s biggest retailers
Howjer Gu started Planoverse with a clear understanding of what his software could do, and a willingness to show up and prove it for free. He hadn’t yet built a case study, a recognizable brand, or a marketing budget. What he’d built was a structured way to create value before any contract conversation began. The model he built was a half-hour monthly workshop with enterprise retail decision-makers. Five minutes of live product demo. Twenty-five minutes of open co-design conversation. No...
Something I keep seeing… I finally put on camera
Hey Reader, I’ve been sitting on this one for a while. It’s not that I was ashamed of the results (10,000 leads at $5 each with zero paid ad spend is pretty hard to argue with)... I just wanted to make sure I presented the solution in the best possible structure. The thing I keep running into with technical founders… they’ve usually built something that’s genuinely remarkable. They’re marketing team is putting in lots of work. But… the pipeline’s still not moving. When I walk into those...
Real growth strategy from a startup CMO: The frameworks, interviews, & honest insights that 100k+ founders and operators actually use. The weekly newsletter by Lillian Pierson that cuts through the noise and gets straight to what works.