Grow Your B2B SaaS S7E8 - The Growth Operating System: Building Teams That Deliver Real Value
Are you a SaaS founder wondering How to Build a Growth Operating System That Helps Teams Deliver Real Value? Growing a B2B SaaS company can often feel messy. Teams try lots of different tactics, hoping that something will finally work. But this kind of scattered approach rarely leads to long-term, repeatable success. In this episode of the Grow Your B2B SaaS Podcast Joran Hofman sits down with growth expert and coach Andrew Capland. Andrew explains how to move beyond one-off growth hacks and start building what he calls a Growth Operating System. This system helps teams focus on delivering real value, work together more effectively, and create results that can scale over time.
Key Timecodes
(00:00) - Cold Open: North Star Metric, Activation vs Retention, and Copying Playbooks Pitfalls
(01:02) - Host Introduction: B2B SaaS Growth Operating System with Andrew Capland
(01:46) - Why Tactics Alone Fail: The Case for a Growth Operating System in B2B SaaS
(02:01) - Andrew’s Journey: From Growth Content to Executing a Growth Operating System
(03:40) - When to Implement a Growth OS: From Random Acts of Growth to Repeatable Systems
(04:20) - Growth OS Building Blocks: Strategy, KPIs, Rituals, Templates, Frameworks
(05:37) - Plug-and-Play Templates: Customizing the Growth Operating System for Your Stage
(06:25) - Growth Strategy 101: North Star, Vision, Levers, Bets, and Milestones
(07:25) - Choosing a North Star Metric: Activation and Retention as Leading Indicators
(08:31) - Activation Example: The Facebook “7 Friends in 5 Days” North Star Metric
(09:43) - Defining Activation: Customer Interviews, Milestones, and Value Realization
(10:47) - Cross-Functional Growth: Sales, Product, CS Inputs and Growth Leadership
(12:26) - Earning Ownership: Become the Expert on the Problem (Activation/Retention)
(15:14) - Sponsor Break: SaaStock Dublin – B2B SaaS Founder Networking and Investors
(16:45) - Founder vs Growth Leader: Ownership Shifts from Early Stage to Scale
(17:35) - Common Growth Mistakes: Copy-Pasting Big Tech Playbooks vs ICP Fit
(19:06) - Case Study: Airbnb Referral Program Copycat That Flopped (and Why)
(20:13) - Managing Growth Setbacks: Trophy File Mindset and Learning-First Experiments
(23:08) - Using AI in Growth: Train on Your A/B Tests, Learnings, and Audience Data
(25:16) - Documentation is a Growth Lever: Standardize Learnings and Onboarding
(26:20) - Hiring Your First Head of Growth: Skill-Problem Fit and Translating Jargon
(28:40) - Alignment First: What Growth Owns, Accountability, and Collaboration Rules
(29:20) - Problem Selection: Scoping High-Leverage Bets and Measuring Outcomes
(30:34) - Low-Volume SaaS: Qualitative Research, Session Recordings, and User Testing
(32:12) - Essential Tool Stack: CRM/Marketing Automation, Product Analytics, In-App Messaging
(33:45) - The Next 2–3 Years: Train AI on Proprietary Growth Data to Predict Outcomes
(35:23) - Stage Advice: From 0–10K MRR—Find One Acquisition Channel and One Retention Channel