Navigating Growth and Innovation in Saturated Markets

Start with the Ugly Truth

Here’s what most people won’t tell you: It’s hard as hell to grow in a market that already looks maxed out. Every good idea gets cloned before you can even refresh LinkedIn. Customers are bombarded with options, switching costs are low, and the “next big thing” seems to last about six weeks.

I’ve worked inside (and coached execs across) SaaS, marketplaces, and straight-up cutthroat software businesses for twenty years. You want the playbook for sustaining growth in a saturated market? The honest truth: there is no playbook. But there are habits and moves that work - if you’re willing to break with the way most leaders think.

Let me tell you a quick story. A few years back, I took over product leadership for a well-funded, late-to-the-game SaaS company. Competitors had a head start. Their marketing budgets dwarfed ours. The product wasn’t noticeably better or cheaper. Some board members wanted to “pick a niche and double down.” Others said, “Let’s copy features - fast!” Both camps were dead wrong.

The tension was thick, and so was the fear of getting lost in the shuffle. But here’s the thing: If you want to lead and grow when everybody else is screaming the same pitch, you have to tune out the noise and create your own signal.

How Do You Even Stand Out?

Alright, let’s get concrete. You don’t break through crowded markets by out-yelling the competition, or living in hope that your next feature will be the breakthrough. Nobody cares about one more dashboard. You win by being extremely, almost uncomfortably, customer-obsessed.

Key ideas:

• Go deep, not wide: Instead of going after more features, go after more meaningful ones. Figure out a pain point everyone else tolerates or half-fixes, and own it better than anyone.
• Listen between the lines: The best insights don’t show up in surveys or NPS data. They pop up when you talk to your least happy users, your churned customers, and even quiet team members who see where everyone else settles.
• Execute with real urgency: In a crowded space, fast, focused execution matters more than elaborate planning. Get ideas out the door, measure results, kill what doesn’t work, and iterate. Rinse, repeat, relentlessly.
• Stop using your competitors as your roadmap: Chasing every move your rival makes is how you become a clone. Study the problem, not the solution. If you’re curious how this plays out for companies both big and small, my post on why following the herd doesn’t work in leadership gets into the weeds.

Every time I’ve seen growth stagnate, it’s usually because leadership is fixated on competition instead of the customer’s lived experience. Don’t confuse activity with progress.

Where Leaders Get Stuck (And How to Get Unstuck)

It always starts the same way: Someone looks at the dashboard, sees flatlining metrics, and panics. Suddenly, meetings double. People start obsessing over new features or “quick wins” to juice the numbers. Revenue targets get patched over with temporary discounts or wild marketing spend.

That’s short-term thinking, and it keeps teams spinning their wheels in place.

Instead, force your company (and board, if you have one) to anchor on this: What does our best customer actually need - not just like? What is everybody else, even the so-called “market leaders,” getting wrong, phoning in, or glossing over for convenience? That’s your wedge.

I’ll give you an example. One exec I work with runs a SaaS that tracks email productivity. When they focused on “more features,” usage got messy and retention dropped. When they zoomed in on a single workflow - helping users instantly triage their inbox before 9AM - suddenly, churn went down and NPS spiked. The product wasn’t flashier; it was laser-focused on a pain that others ignored.

Second, let’s talk about internal friction. Growth in saturated markets isn’t just about what you build; it’s about how fast and fearlessly you build. Politics, unclear priorities, overthinking, and risk-aversion are all innovation killers. Fix your decision-making. Empower small teams to ship, test, and own outcomes. The companies that win set clear, simple priorities - then give teams room to run.

Read more about shifting team dynamics and decision velocity here: Building Trust With Your Leadership Team: Candid Debriefs.

Find Your Customer’s “Hidden Anger”

This is my favorite exercise - find the hidden anger your customers have: What frustrates them every day that nobody’s solving? What do they mutter about after demos, or quietly complain about on Reddit? If you can surface and address these frustrations, you’ll create the kind of loyalty and advocacy that no amount of copycat features can.

Here’s how to hunt for it:

1. Read your customer support tickets. Not the happy ones - the rage-typed, all-caps rants.
2. Interview churned users. Ask them what pushed them over the edge (then listen twice as long as you talk).
3. Lurk in competitor forums and see what gripes crop up again and again.
4. Bring your engineers and designers onto live support calls. Empathy levels rise - and so does the pace of improvement.

I’ve watched more companies turn a corner just by owning one “unsexy” pain point and fixing it ruthlessly well. You might not win every prospect, but your true fans will carry your message further than any paid ad ever could.

Innovate in the Delivery, Not Just the Product

If you want to break out, start improving how you deliver - how people actually experience your product or service, end-to-end. Sometimes, standing out has nothing to do with what’s on the feature list.

Consider onboarding. Or pricing transparency. Or support that’s actually helpful. Case in point: when we launched TicketStumbler, we didn’t beat StubHub on inventory, but we absolutely destroyed them on the buying experience - no drama, straightforward interface, clear fees. Here’s a breakdown of what worked.

Or take Ubiqi Health. They didn’t have more sophisticated healthcare algorithms than their competitors, but they listened better - and it changed how they approached chronic illness management, leading to outsized loyalty. (Ubiqi Health's story.)

The little things? They aren’t little. They’re usually what your crowded-market competitors ignore.

Move Faster by Doing Less

Here’s a truth most SaaS execs resist: You can’t out-feature or out-market everyone forever. You need to out-learn them - by listening harder, narrowing focus, and acting quicker.

The best teams in saturated spaces ruthlessly say no. No to new side projects; no to chasing the latest shiny trend. They invest in learning loops instead: Build, test, learn, repeat faster than anyone else. Every week, pick one customer friction to solve. Do it in two sprints, not six months. Kill 70% of what doesn’t work, and double down on what surprises you.

One product leader I coach adopted a rule: “Always be learning something new about our users each month that we didn’t know last month.” Simple, but painful - because it demands vulnerability and humility from everyone, including the CEO.

For more on this, check out my hot take on why speed beats perfection in product - and life.

Tactics for Surviving and Thriving in Saturated Markets

What I Tell Every Exec Who Feels Stuck

You are not going to out-muscle a crowded market by working harder or copying faster. You will survive - and thrive - by getting closer to the real, lived customer pain than anyone else. By making hard calls that trade breadth for insane depth. By dropping the busywork, and focusing on actions that actually move the needle.

When I coach founders and product leads through these moments, the breakthroughs rarely come from some big vision offsite. They come from finally asking, “What are we tolerating that nobody else should?” and fixing that first.

If you want to go deeper on this, here’s where I break down leadership skills that fuel growth and clarity. And if you need structure to scale up your learning and execution, get smart about software development team structure. Your org is either helping you move fast, or holding you back. It’s never neutral.

Rethink Growth: It’s Not a Sprint, and It’s Not Just “More”

Let’s wrap with a real invitation: Rethink what growth means for you and your team when the market feels saturated.

The world doesn’t need another average product, or another fast follower. It needs people willing to slow down, listen, and really solve what customers hate. Then ship, fast and unapologetically.

If you’re stuck trying to out-feature, out-market, or out-R&D the competition, flip the script: Find the overlooked pain. Fix it better than anyone. And let your competitors keep chasing the same tired race - they’re only making more noise while you build momentum.

The best growth doesn’t come from fighting for a bigger piece of the pie. It comes from baking a pie nobody else saw was needed.

Want to dig in or trade war stories about saturated markets? I’m always up for a good riff - drop me a line at MatthewMamet.com. And if you want sharper, simpler, bolder ways to grow, you know where to find me.