Founders keep asking me how much they should spend on growth.
Wrong question.
If you’re asking how much to spend to create growth, you probably don’t have product-market fit. The companies that do aren’t spending to generate momentum. They’re spending to keep up with it.
PMF companies get pulled by the market. They raise money and spend money to support growth that already exists—not to manufacture it.
The Pull Signal: Growth That Already Exists
You know you’re being pulled when inbound demand shows up before you scale sales.
Your calendar fills with demos you didn’t chase. Prospects find you through word-of-mouth. Users are asking for features faster than you can ship them. The bottleneck isn’t convincing people to try your product. It’s handling the people already trying to use it.
Product usage expands faster than you can onboard. You’re scrambling to provision accounts, answer support tickets, and build the infrastructure to handle load you didn’t plan for. It’s chaotic. But it’s the right kind of chaos.
This is what demand pull looks like. The market is dragging you forward. You’re not generating interest—you’re trying to catch up with it.
Spending to Support, Not Create
When you have pull, capital gets deployed differently.
You’re not spending to create growth. You’re spending to handle growth that already exists. Hiring isn’t driven by a growth projection on a spreadsheet. It’s driven by customer pressure. You need more support engineers because tickets are piling up. You need more account managers because customers are asking for help. You need more infrastructure because your product keeps falling over.
The spending feels reactive. Not because you’re undisciplined. Because the market is moving faster than you are.
Most founders who don’t have PMF are spending to manufacture demand. Paid ads. Outbound sequences. Sales headcount to chase leads that aren’t converting. They’re pushing. And pushing is expensive.
The companies being pulled aren’t pushing. They’re trying to keep the wheels on.
What Changes When You’re Being Pulled
The constraint shifts. You’re not asking “how do we get more customers?” You’re asking “how do we serve the customers we already have?”
Spending to keep up with momentum feels different than spending to create it. When you’re being pulled, customers are waiting—not the other way around. You’re triaging who gets onboarded first. You’re postponing deals because you can’t handle more volume. You’re turning down opportunities because your team is maxed out.
Growth constraints stop being about demand generation. They become operational. Can you onboard fast enough? Can you ship features fast enough? Can you hire fast enough to support what’s already happening?
If you’re being pulled, every dollar you spend is about unlocking capacity—not convincing people to care.
If you’re spending to create momentum, you don’t have PMF. If you’re spending to keep up with momentum, you do.
The difference is everything.