---
id: ins_sam-mallikarjunan-advance-the-market-not-just-share
title: 'The biggest impediment to growth isn''t a cheaper competitor; it''s that the market is bad at marketing and sales'
operator: Sam Mallikarjunan
operator_role: 'GM, Agent.ai (formerly Head of Growth, HubSpot Labs; CRO, Flock; CEO, OneScreen)'
source_url: https://content.buysellads.com/regrowth/hubspot-marketing-experiments
source_type: essay
source_title: 'HubSpot''s Sam Mallikarjunan on Running Marketing Experiments'
source_date: 2018-09-01
captured_date: 2026-05-04
domain: [pmm, gtm, growth-demand, marketing]
lifecycle: [strategy, market-development]
maturity: applied
artifact_class: framework
score: { originality: 4, specificity: 5, evidence: 4, transferability: 5, source: 4 }
tier: A
related: []
raw_ref: https://content.buysellads.com/regrowth/hubspot-marketing-experiments
---

# The biggest impediment to growth isn't a cheaper competitor; it's that the market is bad at marketing and sales

## 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.