ISSUE #266

What happened to the roundups?

The loss of taste

From the beginning, SaaS Weekly had one goal: to inform your next growth strategy.

Every Friday, I would deliver the best content to those in the trenches of growing a B2B SaaS company. Be it the founder, growth team, or GTM lead.

I would send a roundup of hand-picked links I discovered. Not every article. Just the most influential and informative artifacts.

But somewhere along the way, I started chasing growth instead of curating it.

More content. More clicks. More reach. Until the feed I was building no longer reflected my taste.

Earlier this year, I reviewed my latest editions, skimmed through the content, and didn’t recognize the value. Nothing felt essential.

That’s when I knew…

I wasn’t curating with intention. I was producing to produce.

So I took a 5-month break.

During that pause, I had to confront a question I’d avoided for months: if my own curation didn’t feel valuable to me…why would it matter to anyone else?

We’re all drowning in content

We’re living in a time where content is easier to create than ever.

LLMs generate copy, code, even characters – all on command. Tools help you publish faster. Feeds reward output, but don’t (yet) measure insight. And while all this acceleration is exciting, it comes with a cost.

We're flooded with more words, more noise, more content that sounds like it has something to say – but doesn’t actually say anything (useful).

The result? We get good at producing, but worse at filtering.

To be clear, I’m not anti-AI tools – I use ChatGPT and Claude too. They help me productionize my ideas, but I don’t outsource the framing or copy style. The starting and ending states of my writing always go through my filter.

The damage is when there is no care and context…and words without context will forever be commodities. Today, there is simply a lot more commoditizing going on.

For me, the better question isn’t: “What can I say about this?”

But rather: “Is this worth saying?”

And if the answer isn’t obvious, maybe it’s not worth sharing at all.

Why curation matters

Because we’re past the age of information scarcity – access is no longer the constraint. The challenge today is discernment.

Everyone’s writing. Everyone’s shipping. But for the reader, the consumer, the audience? This cycle creates a different kind of pressure: “What do I actually pay attention to?”

That’s where curation comes in.

A well-curated feed is more than a list of links. It’s a reflection of editorial taste: what’s worth your time, what’s quietly shaping the industry, what you’ll wish you read six months from now.

If that taste doesn’t resonate with you, you wouldn’t be subscribed.

Taste is what helps you build your own signal. You stop chasing trends. You stop reacting like everything is urgent. You stop and do…less.

For SaaS Weekly, that meant surfacing the right content to the right people – without the noise.

As Stepfanie Tyler writes in Taste Is the New Intelligence:

That’s what this newsletter was always meant to be. Not just another feed. But a filter.

Not a response to everything. But a reflection of what matters.

So when I say SaaS Weekly is coming back, I don’t mean more content. I mean less – but sharper. A tighter filter. A better signal. A recommitment to sharing only what survives the churn.

Because not everything deserves your attention.

And the job of a curator isn’t to echo what’s trending.

It’s to say: “This matters. That doesn’t.”

Bringing the taste back

So I’m bringing SaaS Weekly back. Again, again, again. (For-real this time, for sure.)

But I’m not picking up where I left off. I’m coming back with a sharper filter, a clearer purpose, and a new format.

Here’s what you can expect:

• Weekly roundups - shorter, punchier, designed for idea discovery

• Monthly perspectives - longer-form deep dives on frameworks, trends, and narratives shaping how we build and grow

• The SaaS Archive – a living database of the best content I source. Curated, organized, and searchable.

Plus, I'm working on a brand refresh (about time).

…

If you’ve been here since the early days (since September 2022), thank you.

If you’re new, welcome. This isn’t for everyone. It’s for people who care about their craft.

Let’s get back to what matters.

(Note: We will return to the regular scheduled program this Friday 🫡.)

Ian at SaaS Weekly