Product Marketing for SaaS with Tino Ho: How "Growth at Any Cost" Became "Profit ASAP"

The SaaS playbook has changed. After years of growth at all costs, venture capital and business leaders alike are now demanding sustainable, profitable growth, and that shift is forcing a rethink of how go-to-market teams are structured. In this first instalment of a two-part conversation, Flow State host Stew sits down with long-time collaborator Tino Ho, a B2B SaaS veteran with close to two decades of experience across fintech and ESG technology, to unpack what has really changed in go-to-market thinking, and what has stubbornly stayed the same.

Key takeaways

• The sales and marketing gap persists. Despite years of research into changing B2B buyer behaviour, Tino argues that sales and marketing alignment "still really hasn't changed" and there's "a lot of catching up to do."
• Growth at all costs has run out of road. SaaS valuations are no longer based on high multiples of top-line revenue alone; investors now want sustainable, profitable growth, and the wave of tech layoffs reflects businesses correcting for headcount that scaled too fast, too early.
• Costs are rising while growth slows. Data from around 400 SaaS companies shows customer acquisition costs have doubled while growth rates have halved, reinforcing the need for a more disciplined approach.
• Pick one go-to-market model and scale it before adding another. Mixing operating models (for example, product-led growth alongside enterprise sales) without the right resourcing behind each is, in Tino's view, where costs blow out and execution falls over.
• Busy work is not confined to big companies. Even lean, focused startups can fall into "shiny new object syndrome," chasing new channels or tactics that aren't tied to overarching strategy, creating the SaaS equivalent of feature creep.

Notable quotes

"Based on a data set of about 400 SaaS companies, costs of acquisition have doubled and the growth has halved."

"I think, perhaps, a growth at all costs [approach] which was never going to work, has come to an end because it's caught up to them."

"Where the mistake happens is, I guess, shiny new object syndrome, trying to chase different things... I think where the mistakes I've seen is trying to do all of those things at once before gaining traction in one."

"Focus on one first, scale that, and then you stack on another."

Summary

Tino Ho brings a rare dual perspective to this conversation, having spent years on the agency side before moving client-side across several fintech and ESG SaaS businesses. That vantage point shapes his central argument: the fundamental misalignment between sales and marketing hasn't disappeared, but the economic pressure forcing companies to fix it has intensified. With acquisition costs doubling and growth halving across the sector, the "growth at all costs" era has given way to demands for sustainable, profitable expansion.

The practical fix, according to Tino, lies in matching the right go-to-market operating model (low-touch, product-led growth through to high-touch, enterprise sales) to the stage and audience of the business, rather than running several models simultaneously. Trying to co-mingle approaches, such as using an inbound SME team to also chase enterprise deals, is where costs spiral and execution suffers. He suggests businesses typically find one model that works to reach an initial revenue threshold (often around the first ten million) before needing to stack on a second approach to break through the next ceiling. The conversation closes on a candid note: even small, focused teams aren't immune to wasted effort and misaligned priorities, a theme the pair will continue exploring in part two.

Listen to the full episode above.