Fire Ready Aim

How SaaS CEOs Waste Valuable Resources

SaaS businesses must be nimble. Put out an MVP, market it, get feedback, iterate. The early days are often chaotic, with experiments in every part of the organization. Unfortunately, the frantic pace can cloud judgments. Instead of Ready, Aim, Fire, SaaS CEOs — confusing agility with organization — jumble the order. Firing without aiming is fraught with errors, wasting time, consuming capital, and frustrating stakeholders. We’ve seen SaaS CEOs waste valuable resources numerous times in our community and muddled through this challenge ourselves. Let’s turn Ready Fire Aim into the right sequence for SaaS.

SaaS Strategy for Ready

The foundation of your SaaS strategy should originate from research. It could start with simple interviews, surveys, or competitive analysis. The goal is to understand the job you’re going to do, whether it’s product development, marketing, onboarding, or something else. What is the pain? What are existing remedies. What is missing? Developing personas (or ICPs) should help guide many aspects of your strategy. Language matters — listen or look carefully for the dialect of the audience. For example, in sales you’ll see terms like demand gen, MQL, and B.A.N.T. You’ll want to speak like the natives of your market. Your research will include both qualitative and quantitative data.

Experiment for Aim

With data in hand, it’s time to consider how to use it. We love experimentation — develop a hypothesis and experiments to test it. There are a variety of factors to consider in planning. What is the value to the organization? What are the costs and effort required? How long will it take? Can we do it or do we need tools or help? If you need to “score” your experiments, you’ll find numerous frameworks for feature/test prioritization. Experiment design should include inputs and outputs.

If we spend $500 on Google ads, we’ll track clicks, conversions, and sales.

If we add this feature, we’ll track how many users use it and run an in-app survey to rate it.

Feedback loops and metrics are the gold for your experiment mindset.

Deliver for Fire

EXECUTE! You have a well-designed plan, so follow through. It’s “lather, rinse, repeat” mode — you’re going to collect data and iterate based on your metrics.

We spent $500 on Google ads, 200 users clicked on the “free trial” ad, 100 users clicked on the simple branding ad, 50 users signed up for trials, and 25 subscribed to the Pro package.

The new User Comment feature went live on April 1, 124 users tried it, 34 rated it an average of ~2.3 stars.

Fire Ready Aim Version

Chances are that you see the logic behind this workflow. But as we mentioned, we seem to take a radically different path.

*opens Google Ads account, sets $50 daily budget, and let’s Google rep make ads.

Let’s hire a developer to build that new feature. We’re not sure anybody needs it, but it seems like a good idea. Let the developer figure out how it should work.

Results? What results? You wanted results? Insert credit card here…

Ready Aim Fire:
How SaaS CEOs Save Valuable Resources

In SaaS, Ready, Fire, Aim can lead to costly misfires. Strategic precision matters. Through research, experimentation, and delivery, a well-orchestrated sequence emerges. Understand your market, test hypotheses, and execute with purpose. Don’t fire blindly; aim with data-driven decisions. A structured approach is not just theory -— it’s a proven path to success. SaaS CEOs should prioritize clarity over aimless speed.