How We’re Building a Media Company and a Software Company from Scratch

Anyone in sales or marketing can feel a return to rigor.

As buyer rigor returns, growth can't stop for GTM leaders. But we have a higher bar and will need to adjust focus for this reality.

For me personally, as CEO of a young startup, I'm betting that a community-first model will help my company endure in this paradigm. The specific approach we're taking involves two parts of a learning loop:

1. Media company (our starting point, community drives software)
2. SaaS company (built with community, software powers the media)

We've seen examples of this idea with big SaaS companies buying media cos (e.g. Hubspot & The Hustle, Zapier & Makerpad, Pendo & Mind The Product). But there are few examples from scratch.

I'd like to share our backstory and approach so far...

In September 2021 I published The PLG List on PeerSignal.

I noticed that PLG companies were dominating their categories. They had great products, but much of their success came from differentiated sales & marketing. They were making it better for buyers.

We all know what bad looks like in B2B. Spray and pray, turn and burn, growth at all costs. I've been building and selling B2B software since 2009. I've gotten increasingly sick of the buyer-second playbook. I don’t think that playbook will survive as buyers return to rigor.

With PeerSignal, I wanted to study GTM excellence.

GTM excellence is not just PLG. It's not one "new way" tactic, channel, or motion. It's not a platform that you need to buy. There’s no silver bullet. It's a pursuit.

PeerSignal has has resonated with the community we seek to serve.

16 months later, 12,000+ sales & marketing people from 7,800+ companies now study go-to-market with PeerSignal. That includes 72% of Cloud 100. And members from Snowflake, Figma, Slack, Zapier, Qualtrics, Adobe, Gong, Salesforce, and Clickup to name a few. This community’s feedback has driven our research.

The community opened our eyes to sales and marketing problems that we can help solve with software…

Keyplay is our SaaS company.

We're starting with a very specific, very old problem — your ideal account list. We believe it's a foundational problem. We believe it's increasingly important as buyers return to rigor.

We just launched in early access yesterday after 10 months of building with our pre-launch customers.

We’ve discovered a flywheel between media and software

Awareness is one output, but the learning loop is the most important part.

1.) SaaS Powers Media — How Keyplay makes PeerSignal better.

• Keyplay software powers PeerSignal research. Camille and I do the curation and analysis, but automation and workflow unlock more/better insights.
• Keyplay customers help us build new capabilities. Each new signal or workflow in Keyplay unlocks new angles for research and insights for PeerSignal.
• By monetizing the underlying SaaS platform instead of the media company, PeerSignal research is paywall-free, ad-free, and independently minded.

2.) Community Accelerates SaaS — How PeerSignal makes Keyplay better.

• Community-driven development. We have received hundreds of email replies and comments with ideas, problems, and suggestions. Many of these things lead to new capabilities within the Keyplay platform that benefit both our SaaS customers and media consumers.
• Credibility. Many SaaS vendors act like tourists selling a quick fix. We want to do the opposite. We want to be citizens of our community. We spend time and money to create content and participate. There is no way to measure credibility, but I’m certain that it will help our SaaS stand out.
• Distribution. By powering PeerSignal, Keyplay gains awareness. Very few of you will ever buy Keyplay, but our relationship has already helped Keyplay gain reach and referrals. Our 8 pre-launch customers came without a single outbound call or investor referral. We didn’t even have a website for Keyplay. 100% were curious community members who engaged.

We will practice this playbook in public.

We have our own specific configuration of media, community, and SaaS, but we expect to see other versions of this playbook flourish in the next decade.

We’ve seen examples of big SaaS companies acquiring media companies. Zapier bought Makerpad, HubSpot bought the Hustle, Pendo bought Mind The Product. But few have built both from the ground up.

We’re working to discover and practice this playbook in public.

The next chapter

Getting Keyplay to market, getting the right investors onboard, and building our founding team has been an all-out effort for the last year. None of this would not have been possible without your support. I am beyond grateful for your attention, participation, and insights.

This is a big moment for our team, but a small step in the longer journey. Our 3-year BHAG is to help 100K+ B2B sales and marketing professionals to study GTM excellence and get inspired to improve their craft.

We now have the team, capital, and platform in place to double down on PeerSignal. Stick with us and you’ll see more datasets, more unique signals, deeper insights, and new research formats (podcasts, video, long-form, and more).

The next chapter starts now.

If you read this whole letter, I appreciate your attention. I took care in these words and your support motivates me and our team. ??

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