Long-form thinking,
written by operators.
We write because we have to think, and we publish because we think it might be useful. Essays as record of how we approach the work — not blog posts as content marketing. No 400-word listicles, no SEO filler. Things you might actually want to read.
Showing Industry analysis. Topic hubs above are the curated reading lists.
Recent essays.
Scaling ecommerce ads past $100k a month: what changes.
At $100k a month in spend, the game changes: marginal CAC replaces average CAC, single channels saturate, creative becomes a production problem, and measurement becomes infrastructure.
How we scaled a global book retailer 300% without breaking ROAS.
Awesome Books came to us wanting to grow fast without sacrificing profitability, across an inventory of millions of titles and a global customer base. We grew sales 300% in six months while holding their ROAS and CPA targets. Here is how the engagement was built.
Lead gen bidding when not every lead is equal.
Cost per lead is the most seductive metric in lead generation and the most dangerous. Optimize to it and the algorithm learns to find people who fill in forms, not people who buy. The way out is closing the loop between the CRM and the ad platform.
You are buying pipeline, not leads.
Optimizing lead gen to CPL is how you fill a CRM with people who will never buy anything. The feedback loop, bidding setup, and reporting structure that aim spend at pipeline instead.
The SaaS paid acquisition playbook.
The ratio everyone optimizes — LTV:CAC — is a solvency measure, and companies do not die of insolvency. They die of illiquidity, which is what payback period measures. This is the playbook with that constraint put first: how payback sets your maximum self-funding growth rate, why a change to billing terms can double the budget you can afford while a campaign optimization moves it a few percent, and why in SaaS a month-end review is not just correlational but measuring the wrong quarter.
Written by operators, not content teams.
One essay when we find something worth your time, from people running real accounts. How we research and correct this writing is set out in our editorial policy.
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