Problem
Company Context
FinFlow is a B2B SaaS company that provides spend management software for small and mid-sized businesses. The company has reached $24M ARR, is growing 28% year-over-year, and serves 3,200 paying customers in the US and UK. Its product is strongest with companies that have 50-500 employees, and its current go-to-market mix is 55% sales-led, 30% partner-led, and 15% self-serve. Growth has recently slowed: new ARR growth fell from 38% to 28% over the last two quarters, and the CEO wants a sharper, more disciplined approach to growth experimentation.
Strategic Situation
You are the Head of Growth Strategy. The leadership team has identified several competing growth experiments, but budget and execution capacity only allow the company to run one major experiment first in the next quarter. Your task is to recommend which experiment should be prioritized, based on expected impact, speed to signal, strategic fit, and execution risk.
The four experiments under consideration are:
- Launch a self-serve free trial for companies under 100 employees
- Build an accountant referral program targeting outsourced finance firms
- Expand paid search and LinkedIn acquisition in the UK market
- Introduce usage-based pricing add-ons for existing customers
Data Points
| Metric | Current State |
|---|---|
| Annual new pipeline generated | $18M |
| Sales win rate | 22% |
| Average contract value (new customers) | $7,500 ARR |
| Gross margin | 81% |
| Net revenue retention | 104% |
| CAC payback period | 16 months |
Experiment-specific estimates
| Experiment | Estimated 12-Month ARR Impact | Upfront Cost | Time to First Signal | Key Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-serve free trial | $1.8M | $450K | 8 weeks | Lower lead quality may burden sales team |
| Accountant referral program | $1.2M | $180K | 10 weeks | Channel adoption may be slower than expected |
| UK paid acquisition expansion | $1.5M | $300K | 4 weeks | CAC may rise above target in a crowded market |
| Usage-based add-ons | $2.0M | $600K | 14 weeks | Pricing changes may increase churn or slow renewals |
Deliverables
- Build a framework for deciding which growth experiment to run first.
- Compare the four options using quantitative and qualitative criteria.
- Recommend one experiment to prioritize now and explain why.
- Identify what you would measure in the first 90 days to validate or kill the experiment.
- Briefly explain why the other options should be sequenced later or deprioritized.
Constraints
- Growth team can support only one major cross-functional experiment this quarter.
- Budget available for the quarter is capped at $500K.
- Engineering can allocate at most 6 full-time equivalents for 12 weeks.
- The CEO expects a measurable signal before the next board meeting in three months.
- The company cannot accept a material increase in logo churn above +1 percentage point.
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