December Update from Hedgehog Growth Partners ❄️

Hello Hedgehog Community,

Quick note: I’ve improved email deliverability so this newsletter reaches more of you. If you missed the last, inaugural announcement, you can find it at news.hedgehoggrowth.com

Now, onto the updates!

Learning from Company of One

Paul Jarvis’ Company of One teaches us to challenge the idea that scaling headcount accompanies revenue growth. Here are some takeaways for B2B SaaS companies:

• Serve Better, Not More: Capital-efficient growth starts with doubling down on your ideal customers. Deeply understand their needs and invest in delivering outcomes - not just features. Lenny’s Podcast recently hosted Michael Margolis, who shared excellent, practical steps to identify your “Bullseye Customer” in a day.

• Automate Where Possible: Focus on systems that allow revenue to grow independently of human resource expansion. Operationalize processes and tools to reliably and efficiently execute recurring tasks. Zack Estes recently started processarb to help businesses of all types (not just B2B SaaS) do exactly this. 

• Iterate and Improve: Growth doesn’t have to mean “new.” Pick up the phone this afternoon and call your 5 best customers. Ask them what problems they contend with. 

• Small Teams, Big Impact: Unless you’re doing hard science or otherwise adding novel information to the corpus of human understanding, prioritize generalists over specialists to stay agile without ballooning costs. Jason Yip wrote about T-shaped people in 2018. They happen to be perfect for high-agency, cross-functional teams. 

• Hidden Costs of Large Teams: Big teams often means overhead, communication bottlenecks, and higher fixed costs. Staying small reduces costs, keeping your business nimble and resource-efficient.

Scaling thoughtfully means focusing on sustainable, profitable growth that aligns with your vision. 🦔

Advisory Services for Every Stage

While I don’t intend for advising to be HGP’s core focus, I view these as 1) a great way for teams to start collaborating with me without committing to a growth project or 2) as a bridge between projects. 

Whether you’re a solo founder, leading a small leadership team, or managing a senior executive group, I’ve done my best to thoughtfully consider high-impact, but capital-efficient ways to work together:

• Advisory Services:

  • For Founders & CEOs: Bi-monthly strategic sessions and asynchronous support focused on your most pressing challenges - starting at $2,000/month. (learn more) 

  • For Leadership Teams: For CEOs and key members of the leadership team.  Supporting alignment on focus, priorities, planning, and execution - starting at $4,250/month. (learn more)

• Operational Support: Quarterly board planning, strategic offsite facilitation, and leadership coaching to address specific needs without long-term commitments. (learn more) 

I’d deeply appreciate any thoughts or feedback from you about these offerings! - Let’s meet for a hike or coffee. cal.com/hedgehog-growth

Hedgehog: Winter ‘24 Collection Is Coming ☃️ 

I’m blown away by interest in hats and vests! By popular demand Hedgehog Winter '24 Collection will launch as soon as my friends at CTE teach me a thing or two about merchandising. Stay tuned for more updates on availability. 

This is only partially a joke. 

Website Announcement (Almost!)

The website launch is just around the corner. It’s not quite ready for primetime yet, but I’ll share more information soon.

Warm Regards,

Michael