Mid-Market Growth Begins with Shifting Perceptions
When Growth Depends on Changing Minds, Not Just Winning Deals
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Maven Associates helps leaders prioritize investments, shape strategy, and capture opportunities others miss. Learn more at www.maven-associates.com.
Welcome back!
Late Q3 deal flow remains active, and expectations for value creation are rising. In many portfolio companies, the low-hanging fruit is gone.
What remains are tougher, more strategic questions:
How do we grow in a skeptical market?
How do we shift a business model without losing momentum?
This quarter’s edition focuses on one such case. StatRecovery, a PE-backed provider of a supply chain cost management tool, faced a unique challenge—growing when customers are skeptical that your solution actually works. Their biggest competitor wasn’t another vendor, it was lots of customers being “non-believers.”.
We’ll walk through how Maven Associates helped uncover hidden opportunities and build a roadmap for real, durable growth.
Field Notes: Rethinking Growth in a Complex B2B Market
StatRecovery supports suppliers to major retailers with .a platform that helps suppliers manage deductions and streamline receivables. With fresh investment behind them, leadership needed clarity: where should growth come from next?
The answer wasn’t obvious.
Despite a strong domain reputation, many prospective customers believed they’d already recovered all they could. This skepticism wasn’t just a sales hurdle—it was a market constraint. Growth would require more than a better pitch. It would require changing minds.
Maven partnered with Stat’s leadership to develop a comprehensive strategy. We sized the market from the bottom up, segmented customers, and prioritized growth options across expanding their platform to new retailers, adding new services and adding new customers.
One of the most impactful moves? Reframing go-to-market strategy to meet the market where it was.
They were competing against customers who thought they had recovered all that was possible. They needed a marketing approach to convince skeptical customers to give them a shot to prove what they could do.
We also helped evolve the revenue model from pure success-fee to more recurring revenue. Which would help the financials be less volatile, improve scalability and increase the valuation.
The result: a roadmap aligned with both investor outcomes and a defensible strategy.
Seeing Untapped Opportunity? Let’s Talk.
If you’re working with a portfolio company that’s struggling to unlock demand—or selling into a market where customers think the status quo is good enough—we can help.
Feel free to send me a message here on LinkedIn or connect directly at mark.hess@maven-associates.com
Why Some Markets Need Education Before Expansion
In many strategy scenarios, growth means expanding reach or deepening share. But sometimes, the real unlock is shifting perceptions before expanding reach.
StatRecovery’s challenge wasn’t competitive pressure or pricing missteps. It was that many of their ideal customers didn’t think they needed help. The market believed the problem was already solved. That belief was the barrier.
When growth depends on shifting perception, strategy has to start with education. We helped StatRecovery understand which segments were most open to change, and where messaging could create a credible case for action.
The insight: in a market shaped by complexity and incomplete information, trust-building is the strategy.
This is a lesson we’ve seen in other vertical SaaS and managed services businesses. Customers don’t just need solutions—they need to be convinced a solution work.
Smart growth strategies don’t just target demand. They create it.
How We Find Growth Where Others Don’t Look
At Maven, we specialize in uncovering opportunities that don’t show up on the balance sheet.
In StatRecovery’s case, that meant moving beyond financial metrics and into market psychology. We built a fact base rooted in customer behavior, not just investor logic. We didn’t just confirm there was a market—we showed how to reach it.
This is what makes our work different:
Strategic synthesis: We don’t just collect interviews, we turn them into growth blueprints.
Market empathy: We identify where assumptions about the customer are holding a business back.
Owner’s mindset: We think like investors, which means we focus on what drives enterprise value.
Fact-driven evolution: From revenue model shifts to GTM pivots, we back change with data.
For companies stuck between ambition and execution, we bridge the gap. Feel free to send me a message here on LinkedIn or contact me on the Maven website here.
How We Find Growth Where Others Don’t Look
Maven helps investors and operators see clearly—when the data is murky, the market is opaque, or the story just doesn’t add up.
Our core focus is commercial diligence and growth strategy for mid-market transactions. We don’t just analyze—we design paths to value.
What we deliver:
Commercial Diligence & Market Studies Fast-turn analysis of market size, competition, and customer demand to validate the deal thesis. When the investment case hinges on one big assumption, we test it with precision.
Portfolio Strategy Support Post-close strategy design, annual planning, and offsite facilitation to align teams and accelerate value creation.
Whether you’re investing in a deal or rethinking growth in a portfolio company, Maven delivers insight that drives confident decisions.
Top-tier strategy talent, built for the mid-market.
At Maven, our consultants come from Bain, BCG, and McKinsey. They’ve worked inside the playbooks of global leaders, and now bring that rigor to the unique challenges of mid-market diligence.
People like Anuja Burns, an MIT and Stanford grad who started in tech, moved through BCG, and eventually founded and sold an education business. She brings a rare mix of operational experience and strategy depth—helping clients connect bold ideas with what actually works on the ground.
We staff every engagement with senior consultants who think like investors and know how to build value. Because when the right questions get asked, better decisions follow.
Let’s Continue the Conversation
Every market has its blind spots. The most valuable growth opportunities are often hidden behind assumptions, incomplete data, or outdated thinking.
If you’re thinking about footprint, product mix, or other structural moves, send me a DM or reach out via our contact page. Happy to connect.
Thanks for reading.