Claim
At HubSpot Labs, running growth experiments to find new opportunities, Sam reframed the question every CMO asks. The threat isn't a competitor with more features or a lower price. The threat is that most companies still do marketing and sales the same way they did ten years ago — which means a product like HubSpot's is incompatible with their operating practice. The growth ceiling isn't market share; it's market readiness.
"The biggest impediment to growth that we have is not someone selling a cheaper software or a software with more features. The biggest impediment to growth is that the majority of companies are still pretty bad at sales and marketing."
— Sam Mallikarjunan, BuySellAds Re:Growth interview
Mechanism
If your category's growth is gated by buyer sophistication rather than feature parity, the highest-ROI marketing investment is advancing the thinking in the market — even if individual pieces don't drive immediate revenue. HubSpot Labs launched ThinkGrowth.org (a Medium publication for executives) as an explicit market-development play, not a lead-gen channel. The bet: if more companies become competent at modern marketing, the entire TAM grows, and you'll capture your share of that larger base.
Conditions
Holds when: you're a category leader (or contender) in a category where buyer practice lags the product. Fails when: you're early-stage in a saturated category where standard practice is already set — the lift goes to the share-stealer, not the market-developer.
Why it matters for PMM
Most PMM strategy focuses on competitive differentiation against named alternatives. Sam's frame is the third axis: differentiate against no-decision and bad-practice. The deck slides "vs. Competitor X" matter; the deck slide "this is what good looks like" often matters more.