Two SaaS founders can end the year with wildly different growth rates—and both be right about how it went.
In my work with dozens of bootstrapped SaaS CEOs at Practical Founders, the real tension isn’t fast vs. slow growth—it’s whether the hard work you did actually moved the business forward.
Some founders push hard for big numbers and end up frustrated because the underlying problems didn’t change.
Others intentionally slow things down to fix product gaps, team issues, or customer friction—and feel better about the year despite modest growth.
The mistake is assuming the scoreboard tells the whole story.
It doesn’t capture focus, leverage, resilience, or whether you’re setting yourself up for better years ahead.
This is something I talk about often with founders who’ve chosen independence over outside pressure.
When you’re not optimizing for a VC narrative, you get to decide what progress really means.
That freedom is powerful—but it also means you have to be honest with yourself about what matters most right now.
This perspective comes up again and again on the Practical Founders Podcast, especially in conversations about planning for the next year.
The best founders I know aren’t chasing a “correct” growth rate—they’re lining up the right hard problems to work on next.
