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Ines Lourenço leads product growth at Usercentrics, where the team recently achieved a significant milestone of €100M ARR while maintaining profitability.

The reality behind that milestone involves far more failure than success. In fact, most experiments at Usercentrics didn't work.

This year, the company invested substantial resources into what they considered their most important initiative, only to roll back the entire project within weeks of launch.

The seemingly smooth growth trajectory often presented in case studies masks six years of continuous transformation, where the company fundamentally restructured itself through approximately 50 distinct iterations.

This episode provides information on the actual challenges of scaling a SaaS company. Inês discusses a critical hiring lesson learned during their growth phase: the significant difference between recruiting leaders who have worked at companies in the next stage versus those who have actively driven companies through that transition. While this distinction appears subtle on paper, it proved to have substantial operational and financial consequences for Usercentrics.

If you're tired of generic scaling advice and want the unfiltered playbook from someone who built a cross-functional growth machine from 20 employees to €100M ARR, this is your episode.

Talking points include:

• Why the transition from generalists to specialists creates dangerous blind spots,
• How Usercentrics structures autonomous growth pods where teams own ARR metrics, build without approval, and kill their own failed experiments,
• The massive unified product bet that failed spectacularly (and the first-principles lesson it taught about user behavior vs. user research).

Listen to find out more about:

• The exact salary structure that ties every growth team member's compensation directly to ARR—and why it works.
• How Usercentrics transitioned from founder-led to sales-led to product-led growth by reading market signals, not following playbooks.
• Why most growth experiments fail (and how to build a culture where teams stay resilient through constant failure).

Key segments of this podcast and where you can tune in to go direct:

[00:06:00] The critical difference between hiring someone who saw the next stage versus someone who took a company there—and why this distinction changed everything

[00:13:00] Inside the cross-functional pod structure: How PMs, engineers, growth marketers, and data analysts collaborate without approval gates

[00:19:45] The autonomy model: How teams commit to ARR outcomes, run their own experiments, and build without leadership approval

[00:28:00] The unified CMP bet that failed: What happens when user research contradicts actual user behavior at scale

Ready to Scale Smarter?

If Inês's insights resonated with you, this is just the beginning. Follow our SaaSGenius Podcast for more unfiltered conversations with the leaders who are actually building and scaling successful SaaS companies—without the hype, just the hard-won lessons.