Competitor Acquisitions: The Migration Playbook
SaaS consolidation is accelerating, not because it’s fashionable, but because it’s practical. With many assets trading at 3x to 5x revenue and organic growth harder to manufacture, investors are leaning on consolidation to create scale, take out cost, and build credible AI capabilities on top of larger install bases.
But competitor acquisitions don’t succeed in the model. They succeed in migration. Retention, timing, and cost discipline matter more than headline synergies, especially when AI raises the penalty for split platforms, fragmented data, and delayed unification.
This piece lays out a practical playbook for migrating customers without destroying value, why some churn is not only inevitable but rational, and how front-loading migration thinking in diligence leads to better deals, better execution, and more believable valuations.
The SaaS + AI GTM Playbook
In my earlier post, How to Monetize Your AI Roadmap, I laid out the ladder: Capability → Feature → Product → Digital Labor. This post is the GTM companion. As you climb that ladder, the go-to-market has to change.
If you treat AI as “just another feature launch,” you will ship plenty of capability and stall on revenue. This playbook is how to avoid that.
How to Monetize Your AI Roadmap: A Framework
AI adoption is accelerating, at a faster rate than AI revenue. This article introduces a four-level framework for AI monetization, spanning Capability, Feature, Product, and Digital Labor. Using real-world examples from Zoom, GitHub, Intercom, and Klarna, it explains why most AI initiatives stall at the lower levels, how pricing power correlates with workflow integration and economic ownership, and what it takes to move from bundled functionality to outcome-based revenue. The result is a practical guide for product leaders, operators, and boards trying to turn AI investment into durable business impact.