Andy McCotter-Bicknell

I interviewed 50 SaaS leaders about competition. - how they differentiate - how they approach competitive intel - how they think about category creation - how they create competitive advantages Here are the tips that stood out to me 👇

the Apollo app in ChatGPT is now live. 🚀 now you can search prospects, enrich contacts, then add them to sequences in one conversation, zero tab switching. this is what AI-native outbound actually looks like → bit.ly/4tagW7z

Your @claudeai conversation just became an Apollo workspace. Search prospects. Enrich contacts. Add to sequences. All without leaving the chat. Apollo is now available as a connector in Claude. No API keys, no tab switching, no excuses. Connect it here → bit.ly/4tREqzJ Ps. For power users, we also shipped a Claude Code/Cowork plugin that bundles multiple Apollo actions into end-to-end workflows. Demo coming soon!

@TheRealCorpBro roasted my mullet on stage in front of hundreds of people. Then my team lost Pipeline Feud (sales version of Family Feud). .....So!! Hopefully I can turn things around for my session with Anthropic later this afternoon 🤠🤙 #ApolloNEXT

@mattyp trying to do this with @useapolloio and its AI suite 🙏 you almost need to encourage people think just one level deeper from where they're at, otherwise it just goes way over their heads.

There is insane demand for people who can understand and explain technology in a compelling way.

Modern GTM is broken: too many tools, too much manual work, too long to get to value. Today, we’re fixing that with the world’s first GTM AI Assistant that actually works — what used to take hours now takes minutes. See it in action from our founder & CEO @timatapollo 👇

Hey that's me!

@peeplaja @MadeWithCapsule @doyouknowchamp The difference I noticed is they're doing this not just thru emails and tickets, but also 1:1 via a user Slack community. Not sure what else they've done to scale this out. I'm sure @doyouknowchamp can speak to that.

@AMcBick @MadeWithCapsule @doyouknowchamp most/all small startups do this, no? i reply to every customer email, elevate bug tickets etc ultimately this doesn't scale (no large company CEO responds to customer emails, wouldn't be able to get anything done otherwise)

Which B2B SaaS companies differentiate/compete on support and customer experience?

@peeplaja @MadeWithCapsule @doyouknowchamp Hyper responsiveness directly from founders / leaders. "It sounds so simple, but in my opinion this is what the race is all about: shortening the time between hearing a customer's problem and shipping an elegant solution. [...] I think we’re doing it faster than anyone else."

@AMcBick @MadeWithCapsule @doyouknowchamp what's the tl;dr of what they're doing for customer experience?

But Puzzle is laser-focused on addressing problems that can't be solved with traditional whiteboards. They're niching down on serving process and system builders in ways that go beyond what any general-purpose whiteboard can offer. I asked Brian if he had any parting advice for revenue leaders competing in crowded markets and this is what he told me: "Go experience the problem first hand. It's crucial to feel the pain points your users face as they rely on the next-best alternative to do their job." 🔥 Read more about their competitive strategy here: healthycompetition.beehiiv.com/p/approach-buy…

So he started @puzzleapp_io—a tool for operators to plan, visualize, monitor, and collaborate on their processes and manage the big picture. Today, they remain a single-founder, 100% bootstrapped company building software in an incredibly crowded space. Competitors are valued at multiple billions of dollars, e.g... LucidChart: $3B, Miro: $17B, Figjam: $12.5B...

Imagine experiencing a "pain point" so badly that it lands you in the hospital. That's what happened to @b_ragone back in 2017. He was leading ops for a 15-person startup, and the pure chaos of the role gave him an anxiety attack. Over the next few years, he tried using tools like @LucidSoftware and @MiroHQ to make his job easier and keep systems organized. But they didn't work like he wanted them to...

@thesamparr Dude they're great!! Been listening for years

Do I have any punk rock followers? If that's you, you're gonna think this is the coolest story. So I went to college at Belmont University, a music school in Nashville. One day in an accounting class I'm sitting next to this punk rock looking kid named Jordan. Long hair, tight jeans...he looked cool. We have this conservative, Jamaican professor. She goes around asking people's story on the 1st day of class. She gets to Jordan and asks what he's into. "I'm in a punk rock band. Its called Diarrhea Planet." I start giggling because he says it with a straight face, no shame and she's a pretty uptight woman. She asks if they have any songs she'd be into. He goes, "yeah our most popular song is Ghost with a Boner, you'd dig it." It was so funny because he was serious and not shy about it. So during class I go to their website. They didn't own their URL, were using like a free wordpress URL. So, I buy diarrhea planet .com right there. A few days later I'm like hey Jordan, I bought your URL. I can give you it for free, just let me know your email. He kinda brushed it off. and we talked about something else. Well a few years later they start getting popular. In the punk world, they have a huge cult following. I'm living in SF at the time and they're coming to tour there. I hadn't talk to em for years and I email 'em hey its the guy who owns your domain name, do you guys want it? I'll give it to you for free. Intro me to who handles your website and its easy. Also, if you need a place to sleep, I got you! They don't know much about tech. But he's like "hey, yes we'd love to stay at your place to save some cash." So that night after the show I set up their website so they can use the domain name. I paid for it for like 10+ years or something then gave them ownership. And to say thanks, they gave me free tickets whenever I wanted to go to a show. I used to bring dates to their shows and they'd call me out on stage and make me look cool. It was so badass. I never looked cooler. So, if you're a punk rock fan, I just wanted to take a second to brag...I'M NOT JUST AN INTERNET NERD, I'M COOL. Also...LONG LIVE DIARRHEA PLANET!

@beehiiv healthycompetition.beehiiv.com/subscribe

like this tweet and reply with the link to your newsletter for a tbh

@gaetano_nyc Balance it out w/ a section for legit marketers doing cool stuff too.

I’m thinking of starting a monthly newsletter called THE WEASEL REPORT that exposes marketing weasels for their lies and tricks. Similar to how baller busters exposes fake gurus on Instagram. Would you subscribe if I launched this and did a monthly tear down?

So I'm trying something a little different. Affiliates in my community get 100% of the first year's membership cost ($190). But it doesn't recur. Reasons: 1. I don't have enough $$$ to pay for software to handle recurring affiliate payments. 2. Feel like one bigger payout has more draw than multiple smaller ones. Just rolled it out a few weeks ago though, so can't back it up with any success metrics yet!

Underrated membership growth tactic: Members as affiliates. It sounds obvious, but I see so few people doing it. Obviously, when you allow your members to become affiliates, they are incentivized to grow the membership on your behalf. But here's the real magic... Make them recurring affiliate commissions. Pay your members for the lifetime of the membership. Now, they aren't just incentivized to bring in great people but to contribute to making the space great, too. If people want to stay, they get paid each month/year/whatever. I pay Labmates 25% of any member they refer. And with membership tiers of $1999 and $3999, that's $499-$999 per referral! Affiliates have accounted for $76,556 in revenue for The Lab ($19,139 paid out to members). Even if a member doesn't renew their OWN membership, I pay them for anyone they've referred who renews. It's awesome to turn your membership (which is generally a COST to members) into something that can actually generate revenue for them.

The reason? "It's way easier to explain why we're different and better rather than try to explain in the abstract what we are and why people should care." 🔥 Here's more of Jacob's thoughts on competition and strategy: healthycompetition.beehiiv.com/p/startup-that…

During their beta, they struggled to find product-market fit. They tried: → jamming in more features → improving their sales process → hundreds of meetings with customers But things still didn't feel right! So they pivoted their product to compete directly with Zapier, and added a couple big differentiators. And their numbers REALLY started to take off.

"Run towards competition, not away from it." @jebank shared this take with me from his experience building @relay, a Zapier competitor. His first startup got acquired by Google. Now he's looking to disrupt the automation space. He didn't always think this way though...

@hankai1998 Yo! What are the issues you're experiencing? I'll bring this back to the team.