👋 Hi, I’m Kyle from OpenView and welcome to my newsletter, Growth Unhinged. Every other week I take a closer look at what drives a SaaS company’s growth. Expect deep dive takes on product-led growth, pricing, benchmarks, and much more.

In the old world of… just a few months ago… software companies had plentiful access to cheap capital and were seeing extremely strong demand for their products. The name of the game was to grow at (almost) all costs, leading to ever-increasing performance expectations, sky-rocketing valuations, and a knife-fight for top talent.

Well, things have changed. 😱

And they’ve changed seemingly overnight. Valuations are down, capital is harder to come by, and companies are bracing for a potential recession—and a subsequent slowdown in demand.

I won’t pretend to know where the bottom is or exactly what will happen in the macroeconomic landscape. But I do know that in cases of uncertainty, it’s important to preserve optionality and to be in a position to quickly adapt to changes in the market. No one comes out of a recession unscathed, but some will come out of it stronger than they went in and be better positioned to thrive in the market that emerges.