“Every lifetime deal is a revenue time bomb. The only unknown is when it goes off.” Investors look at lifetime licenses and see a balance sheet problem disguised as a marketing win. The first year looks strong. Cash hits the account. Activation numbers rise. CAC looks low. Then renewal season never comes, support tickets pile … Read more
“The CMS you choose is not a software decision. It is a capital allocation decision with a 5 to 10 year cashflow impact.” Vendor lock-in with proprietary CMS platforms rarely shows up in the first-year budget. The license looks clean, the onboarding discount feels generous, and the sales team projects a strong ROI story. The … Read more
“The open web will not be killed by regulators or hackers. It will be killed by ROAS targets and quarterly revenue goals.” The open web is losing ground because money is moving somewhere else. Ad buyers keep shifting budgets into closed platforms where attribution looks cleaner, CAC is more predictable, and LTV models update in … Read more
“The next billion-dollar companies will not own more data. They will connect better data.” Investors keep putting money into companies that sit on top of someone else’s data, not their own. The market values API-first businesses because they move faster, ship product cheaper, and can show revenue before they ever build a full data stack. … Read more
“Lifetime deals do not kill SaaS. Mismanaged cash flow and poor product-market fit do.” Investors usually roll their eyes when a startup fills its early revenue chart with AppSumo spikes. Revenue from lifetime deals looks good in the deck, but the market values recurring revenue, not one-off cash grabs. The question that matters is simple: … Read more
“No-code will not replace developers. It will replace non-technical teams waiting six months for a developer ticket to be approved.” The market is pricing no-code tools as a way to ship internal software 3 to 10 times faster, not as a way to cancel engineering headcount. Investors see no-code as a force multiplier: it moves … Read more
“If your plugin is GPL, you are not selling the code. You are selling time, trust, and support.” The short answer is yes: if a WordPress plugin is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), you can legally resell it, even at a lower price than the original vendor. The catch is that your … Read more
“Every SaaS founder says ‘platform’ when they pitch. Investors hear ‘platform tax’ or ‘platform graveyard’ unless the numbers prove otherwise.” The market rewards real platforms with higher valuations and stickier revenue, but most SaaS companies that chase the “platform” label lose focus, slow growth, and fall into a gray zone: too complex to sell like … Read more
“The real media moat in 2026 is not content. It is owning the subscription ledger and the payment rails that sit under it.” Investors do not ask newsletter founders which platform they like more. Investors ask one thing: “Who owns the audience and the revenue mechanics?” Substack, Ghost, and fully owned media setups answer that … Read more
“Every dollar you raise that does not come from customers will, at some point, ask you to trade product love for growth charts.” The market keeps proving the same uncomfortable pattern: once a startup raises a significant round, user experience quality often flattens or drops right when growth charts spike. Revenue climbs, downloads grow, NPS … Read more
