Field Notes

Notes from the field

Tactical writing on fixing broken SaaS growth engines — GTM alignment, customer lifecycle engineering, revenue intelligence, and the technical foundations that let growth systems actually run.

March 31, 202611 min read · Mike

Analytics Plumbing: Event Tracking That Survives the First Product Iteration

Broken analytics costs more than no analytics. Event taxonomy, the Segment/PostHog/Snowflake stack, and the "one dashboard per audience" rule.

analyticstoolingdataproduct-management
January 20, 202611 min read · Aly

The Enterprise-Ready Checklist: Security, SSO, and RBAC for Growing SaaS

What "enterprise ready" actually means on a sales call. The non-negotiables, the common asks, build-vs-buy tradeoffs, and a realistic timeline.

securityssocomplianceenterprise
November 18, 202510 min read · Aly

Multi-Tenant Architecture: When to Start Caring About It

The premature multi-tenancy trap vs. waiting too long. The three tenancy models, migration paths, and the signals that tell you it's time.

architecturemulti-tenancysaaspostgres
October 21, 202510 min read · Aly

Technical Foundation for SaaS Growth: What Infrastructure Actually Unblocks Revenue

Infra that blocks growth vs. infra that enables it. The five foundation systems, what to invest in first, and when technical foundation work pays for itself.

infrastructuredevopsarchitecturescaling
September 16, 202510 min read · Mike

Closing the Loop: Telling Customers What Shipped Because of Their Feedback

Silent shipping is a trust leak. The five-stage feedback loop, the per-customer notification patterns, and the public changelog design that builds renewals.

voice-of-customercustomer-successretention
August 5, 202510 min read · Aly

Competitive Intelligence Pipelines: Know What Competitors Ship Without Reading Every Release Note

Manual competitive tracking is dead. The source inventory, the monitoring stack, and the weekly digest template that keeps Sales and Product calibrated.

competitive-intelligenceautomationproduct-management
June 10, 20259 min read · Mike

From Scattered Feedback to Prioritized Backlog: A Framework for SaaS Product Teams

"Who said what, who cares" is the default state of product feedback. Here's the tagging taxonomy, ARR-weighted scoring, and the handoff to PM workflow.

product-managementprioritizationvoice-of-customer
May 6, 202511 min read · Mike

Building a Voice-of-Customer Engine That Actually Drives Product Decisions

Scattered feedback becomes gut-feel roadmaps. The five sources, the tagging taxonomy, AI-powered extraction, and the prioritization math that works.

voice-of-customerproduct-managementfeedbacktooling
March 18, 20259 min read · Mike

Lifecycle Automation That Keeps CS Ahead of Churn

Reactive CS is losing CS. A trigger taxonomy, alert designs that don't create fatigue, and the tool-wiring patterns to get ahead of churn before it happens.

customer-successautomationlifecyclechurn
February 25, 20259 min read · Aly

Self-Service Onboarding: When Your CS Team Is a Human Bottleneck

Signs your CS team is the bottleneck, the four things to automate first, and the portal pattern that scales onboarding without losing high-touch customers.

onboardingautomationcustomer-successself-service
February 4, 20259 min read · Mike

Activation Milestones: How to Define the First Value Moment for Your SaaS

Vague activation is unmeasurable activation. How to find your product's first-value moment, instrument it, and build the dashboard that matters.

activationproduct-analyticsonboarding
January 14, 20259 min read · Mike

How to Cut SaaS Onboarding Friction in Half (Without Adding Headcount)

Customers sign up but never reach value. The four friction types, the milestone framework that fixes them, and how to cut onboarding time without adding CS headcount.

onboardingactivationtime-to-valuecustomer-success
December 10, 20249 min read · Mike

Sales → SE → CS Handoffs: The Document Nobody Writes But Everybody Needs

Broken handoffs are where expansion revenue quietly dies. The three handoff moments, a template that works, and who should own each one.

handoffscustomer-successsales-engineeringprocess
November 19, 20249 min read · Aly

Dynamic Demo Environments: Why Static Datasets Are Killing Your Sales Cycle

Your demo is only as good as its data. Why static datasets fail, what 'dynamic' actually means, and how to pick the right demo infrastructure.

demosdemo-infrastructuresales-engineeringtooling
November 5, 202410 min read · Mike

The POC Playbook: How to Run Proof-of-Concepts That Actually Close Enterprise Deals

Enterprise POCs drag on, fail silently, and never reach a decision. Here's the four-artifact framework that closes them — scope, criteria, runbook, decision memo.

pocsenterprise-salessales-engineering
October 22, 20249 min read · Mike

Why Your SaaS Demos Aren't Converting (And How to Fix the System Behind Them)

Demos go well and deals still stall. The problem isn't the pitch — it's the system behind it. Four failure modes and how to rebuild each one.

sales-engineeringdemospocssaas-growth