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- 🚀 Clay's new ads play
🚀 Clay's new ads play
Plus how Supabase fixed its activation drop-off and when PLG needs a sales layer
Ian Ito
February 01, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
ISSUE #279
B2B SaaS growth plays, right in your inbox
Happy Sunday 👋
Three reads to think about this week:
Clay launches its ads integration for better audience targeting
How Supabase improved its user activation problem
A guide on navigating the shift from PLG to Product-led Sales
Let's dive in!
Ian at SaaS Weekly
THIS WEEK IN SAAS
Interesting LinkedIn posts and industry news
You can now build hyper-specific audiences (with Find People Search) and push them into ad platforms like LinkedIn, Meta, and Google. The launch improves the audience match rate, which was an expensive blocker in my experience. My boss and I tried running a targeted ads play before this official launch: ran a People Search, exported the audience, and imported it into Google Ads. This flow cost us like 350K in credits (sorry, RevOps 🤷🏻♂️).
Curious what the integration strategy is here – G2 likely has the strongest brand (IMO), but the data sharing between platforms could be interesting. A crazy idea is how procurement Agents will interact with review sites in the future via MCP (no scraping): “Hey, G2 Bot: tell me what tools I should buy OR what alternatives exist for x.”
HOW COMPANIES GROW
My analysis of industry trends & perspectives
How Supabase grows: improving user activation in a PLG motion
Product-led Growth | Zao Chen, Craft Ventures
Overview: User acquisition is often the main focus in any PLG motion.
But growing top-of-funnel means little if users drop off before they close the time-to-value gap. Low activation leads to lower retention, which leads to lower upsell conversion, which means you need an ever-growing user base just to hit the same revenue targets. Here's how Supabase solved its activation challenge.
The problem: The company broke its user journey into three stages: org creation (sign-up), org initialization (creates a database), and org activation (actively using the product over time). When they looked at the data, they saw a significant drop-off between sign-up and database creation.
The solution: Supabase started tracking telemetry across the funnel, pairing data with user feedback. They then redirected users straight to database creation instead of the dashboard. A small UX change that streamlined the time to value – and immediately boosted initialization rates.
Key takeaways: Track conversion at every stage of the user journey and track retention on a weekly or monthly cohort basis. Then, identify where the drop-off is sharpest and design around reducing that friction (even small UX changes can have an outsized impact).
ARTICLES TO BOOKMARK
Resources to design your next growth play
How to navigate the shift from PLG to Product-led Sales
Product-led Sales | Sophie Buonassisi, The GTMnow Newsletter
Bookmark this for when: Your company is PLG-first, but you're starting to see existing customers ask for procurement conversations with a sales rep.
Why this matters: PLG has been praised as an efficient growth motion (lower CAC, faster new logo growth) because users sign up and adoption grows without direct sales interaction.
But over time, larger customers show up asking for security, compliance, and team-wide onboarding. Without an enterprise sales motion layered in, you either turn away up-market customers or lose them to competitors.
Key takeaways: Map how free users upgrade to enterprise buyers today. Look for in-product signals (integrations, increased seat count, feature usage patterns) that indicate expansion potential. These signals drive your "Product Qualified" criteria and inform when sales should reach out. Two examples worth noting:
Calendly used Salesforce integration data to identify high-intent users, then offered value-driven outreach instead of pushing immediate sales calls.
Asana initially kept enterprise and product-driven marketing separate, but realized this fragmented approach didn't match how customers purchased.
How to build your enterprise expansion playbook
Expansion Strategy | Liz Christo, GTM in Practice
Bookmark this for when: You have an enterprise sales motion and need to figure out who owns upsells and cross-sells: your AEs or your post-sales team?
Why this matters: As companies mature, compounding growth shifts from new logo acquisition to customer expansion (i.e., land-and-expand). But without clarity on who owns what, you can't properly model capacity or align incentives – who carries quota, on what number, and how handoffs flow between roles.
Key takeaways: Start by understanding the status quo. Are expansions inbound (customers asking to upgrade) or outbound-driven (proactive effort from your team)? For example, tw expansion types require different motions:
Units: firmographic-driven – how many departments, users, or locations do they have vs. what you've already sold?
Package upgrades: product usage signals and lifecycle triggers – milestones, renewal windows, adoption patterns that lead to higher tiers
Segment your customer base before you add headcount. Use wallet share scoring to surface expansion-ready customers. Not every account wants or warrants the same level of interaction – this helps you avoid over-engineering the org before you know where opportunity actually exists.
FROM THE TRENCHES
Perspectives from industry operators
The buying journey is an orbit, not a funnel
Marketing strategy | Mike Northfield, Artifacts of Influence
Most marketing strategies are designed like buying is a linear journey we can speed up with enough pressure. But, in reality, buying doesn’t happen in a funnel. The journey looks more like an orbit where buyers cycle through three different phases around central business problems at their own speed:
Phase I: Dead Zone (~60% of market): Buyers are insulated from the problem, distracted by more pressing priorities or satisfied by an existing solution.
Phase II: Evaluation (~35% of market): Buyers independently research solutions, synthesize data, and decide on a favorite before contacting sellers.
Phase III: Validation (~5% of market) Buyers verify technical claims, navigate financial scrutiny, and make final decisions (many times, no decision).
Bottom-of-funnel pressure worked when marketers held all the information. Today, between review sites, Slack communities, transparent pricing, and self-guided demos, that leverage is gone. Buyers now complete most of their education journey anonymously.
The best way to win in today’s landscape is by directing more attention to buyers in the broad side of their orbits where they spend most of their time. If you can secure preference before they come in-market, you have the best chances of winning in today’s landscape.
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
My analysis of industry trends & perspectives
Why the highest-leverage media format in B2B is a person
Content strategy | Ian Ito, SaaS Weekly
When I first started writing SaaS Weekly in late 2022, the brand was the interface for content. An audience followed the newsletter or blog, not necessarily the person behind it. Fast forward to today, and that format has shifted. Companies are building media properties around the individual.
I started noticing this pattern across the industry. Stripe launched the Cheeky Pint podcast with the CEO as the interviewer. Linear produced a series on building products with employees as the storytellers. Early-stage founders like Patrick Thompson (Clarify) and Varun Anand (Clay) are doing the same on Substack and LinkedIn.
I suspect two things influenced this shift. First, the supply of content exploded. With LLM-generated blogs, "objective explainer" content became abundant and cheap. The differentiator for content is grounded in personal observation or lived experience (i.e., unique insights). Second, trust started localizing around individuals. As distribution fragments across more channels, the consistent anchor is the person featured across them. I started following a spokesperson from one podcast to the next, independent of who owned the channel.
The old way: build a brand, let the brand accumulate trust, bring that trust to your spokesperson. The new way: build up a person, let them accumulate trust, then attract your audience to the company page.
You don't have to build a net new media property to apply this principle. Instead, weave individual-first content into your brand ethos and build a culture around it. Place employees at the forefront of your content -- be it emails, blogs, or LinkedIn.
TOP READS FROM LAST MONTH
The most clicked-on links
The education advantage in AI [Clouded Judgement]
Growth Is Now a Trust Problem [Elena's Growth Scoop]
The favorite B2B GTM tools [Kyle Poyar]
I'm a little disappointed about AI products in GTM tech so far [Adam Schoenfeld]
Five ideas to drive upgrades [GoodBetterBest]
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