Haven't listened to the entire pod and don't focus on SaaS, so I may be misunderstanding some of the points, but ecommerce is historically one of the worst growth models to scale. The category is considered largely uninvestable by VC as a result (of course there are outliers like Quince). Why is that? When product is static and ads are your only path to growth, you typically target the best customers first online. Great conversion, great activation, great LTV and therefore great payback periods. But to scale growth, you have to widen the circle and target less ideal customers on less ideal channels. Conversion gets worse, activation gets worse, LTV get worse and payback balloons to untenable levels. This is not mention algo changes, and the ease with which competition can copy in this model. Very few are able to scale reach on social without a hefty paid / influencer budget. The Superhuman example falls flat for me as I consider that exit a suboptimal outcome given their initial traction. But it might have been a miraculous save to do what he did there when he arrived. I don't know. This gets into why distribution is the only moat is a problematic statement also. The best solution to scaling paid is a product that gets better faster than the customers you target get worse. That tends to happen with network effect businesses. So scaling marketplaces with paid has been a dominant strategy, doubly so if raising capital is cheap (along with other channels like SEO, incentived referrals, sales). Network effects are still the best moat even though they have been rare with AI companies (data, cross-side or direct opportunities are theoretically there, but not seen much in this first wave). They are not always possible in SaaS vs. marketplaces/consumer networks though. But I'd be much more bullish on SaaS that can go multiplayer early. Outside of network effects, products that get leverage out of their product in other ways for acquisition are much preferred to me than the ecomm model. Invitations, people creating content through your product and sharing it or high AOV that can support sales all seem much more sustainable. Don't get me wrong. They all have their downsides as well. No free lunches in growth. That's why at scale I want to be able to leverage as many of them as possible and not locked into one. I also dislike that when we talk about growth, we only talk about acquiring customers. Improving conversion, activation, engagement, and monetization makes every form of acquisition a lot easier because you have more engaged users to get to do things to help you grow or just a lot more of their money to reinvest. If what he really is implying is when I do paid, I want to treat everything like performance marketing, I couldn't agree more. While you should infuse brand into everything you do, of course (and that will compound in value over many years), when you measure everything based on fully loaded payback period instead of saying "oh it's just for awareness", you build a discipline of understanding what is actually working and learn how to test to find out what works and resonates properly. And you can extend that to a lot of channels people typically consider brand channels e.g. OOH, TV. There are actually lots of ways to measure the incrementality there. Most startups fail to build the muscle there they should, but you tend to see the most skilled people here in ecommerce or marketplaces, not in SaaS. Bringing that discipline into SaaS and leveraging these traditionally ecomm channels alongside traditional PLG techniques and sales is something I'll always recommend.