The more I work with B2B SaaS companies across growth stages, the more I see that the best ones have taken the time to deeply understand and operationalize their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). There's something striking about how scaled SaaS businesses — typically €30M+ ARR — talk about their customers.
They don't talk about product features. They talk about budget access.
They know exactly which market segment buys fastest, sticks longest, and spends from a budget line that renews year after year. This level of clarity is rarely present in earlier-stage companies — and understandably so.
Between €1M and €10M ARR, SaaS companies are transitioning from a product-led phase, where the goal is to solve a painful problem, to a go-to-market (GTM) phase, where repeatability becomes the priority. It's a period of ICP exploration: testing different segments, refining positioning, and figuring out what makes a customer truly "ideal."
In many ways, this is exactly why venture capital exists — to fund ICP confusion. It gives founders the room to test hypotheses, misfire, recalibrate, and, ideally, discover the repeatable GTM motion that underpins scalable growth.
But not all companies get there. Many VC-backed businesses accumulate logos across diverse segments — each promising, none truly repeatable. When the capital dries up — due to market tightening or investor fatigue — they turn to M&A.
Here's where the problem starts: their M&A pitch is still rooted in possibility. It emphasizes product flexibility and highlights multiple potential ICPs — unvalidated, unscaled, and disconnected from any clear budget line.
The underlying assumption is that the buyer, with deeper resources and stronger distribution, will "figure out" how to scale it.
This mindset is exactly what kills the deal before it even begins — especially when the company is sub-scale (under €10M ARR).
One of the most common objections from buyers is resource allocation: will this acquisition materially impact the P&L? As I've written before, buyers care deeply about how their M&A bandwidth is used.
If a company doesn't move the needle financially, then it must at least offer clarity around how it helps the buyer win in a known budget category.
When companies pitch multiple unproven ICPs, hoping the buyer will "choose one," it's like asking an elite basketball player to try baseball because both involve a ball. Michael Jordan is one of the greatest basketball players of all time — but a mediocre baseball player.
This is why a mindset shift is essential to generating intent with strategic buyers.
For sub-scale SaaS companies, we focus heavily on deep ICP clarification: tying the product to real budget categories, understanding the buying process in each segment, identifying USP features that matter for each, and mapping buyers who already target the same ICPs and budget lines.
The goal is to shift the narrative from "a flexible product with optionality" to "a proven ability to access budget with initial results and a clear expansion path." That's what buyers need to see — especially when the target is below their usual acquisition threshold.
In fact, one strategic buyer told us that it was this clarity in budget access that convinced them to move forward on a deal, even though the company was well below their typical minimum viable scale. But that's a story for another post.
Good luck!