Insights on Growth from Baremetrics CEO Luke Marshall

By: Maya Sharma and Bretton Lam

Luke Marshall, CEO of Baremetrics

Luke’s Professional Journey

7 years ago, Luke Marshall entered the SaaS (Software as a Service) world. He started out in the military, but soon began the search for something out of his comfort zone: “I didn't really have a need to [leave the military]. I had a want more than anything else,” Marshall explained. “I could have stayed where I was […] chipping away at my standard career, but, you know, you get that itch to do something different.” His military experience prepared him well for his future roles, sharpening his skills in discipline, leadership, and management. Marshall pivoted and pursued an MBA to get involved in the exciting world of entrepreneurship. “I got a real interest in learning everything there was to know about business,” he stated, “I even started to pursue my own startup.” 

Marshall’s first startup, an e-commerce company creating bamboo underwear, was a derivative of a greater passion in his life. For him, “it was all about […] that idea of solving a problem. Solving a problem for people and being able to manage that process.” He continued working in business and kept looking for problems to solve when he got into SaaS. He was exposed to a veteran SaaS sales team that “knew how to sell and did it well.” Later Marshall moved into an advisory role where he got to work with multiple companies. He analyzed their goals and their position in the industry to create a strategic plan for growth. Every career shift—from the military to bamboo underwear to SaaS—was not about sticking to a plan, but about choosing environments that challenged and excited him. Today, he’s come full circle by becoming the CEO of Baremetrics.

Advice For Business Owners

Having been a part of and advised many businesses and startups, Marshall has a valuable perspective on what differentiates companies that grow and companies that fail. In the early phases of a startup, Marshall highlights the importance of entrepreneurs staying in touch with the communities that their product serves. To make a great product, it's important to pay attention to “what people are complaining about the most and identify a trend.” Marshall says to talk to these communities or look at the top ranking negative reviews of a competitor. Let’s assume a big competitor doesn’t “integrate with X, but a lot of people want it. I'm gonna build that integration with X,” Marshall says. “I'm gonna do it really well and I'm gonna do it for that subset of clients. So, moving in those sort of spaces and talking to the community where your clients are gonna be is one way to validate your idea in the first place.”

However, knowing what to build is only one side of the equation—equally important is knowing how to measure whether it’s growing sustainably. Marshall emphasizes the importance of metric tracking for SaaS founders, the core service of Baremetrics. He shares that many early-stage founders still fall into one of two traps: either building so fast they forget to monitor performance, or getting overwhelmed by too many metrics at once. Instead, he advises founders to “identify the core metrics that will move the needle at each stage.” The ability to step back, reassess, and shift focus as the business matures is what separates sustainable startups from fragile ones.

A Look At AI

An exciting aspect of the SaaS industry is the rapidly changing AI landscape. For Baremetrics, according to Marshall, there’s still a bridge to be crossed when it comes to AI interpreting financial data. “AI isn’t replacing people; it’s replacing tasks,” he says. The tech can identify trends and patterns, but it can’t replicate the strategy needed for higher-level decision-making, like crafting a marketing plan from raw financial data. 

He’s especially interested in the relationship between AI and advertising. The shift from traditional platforms like Google toward tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT takes organic traffic away from sponsored posts on Google’s search engine, and it will be fascinating to see how advertisements will be integrated with AI interfaces. 

Advice for High Schoolers

Marshall’s advice to the high school students of today is to study what you want to study, not what you think you have to study. Particularly, he says that “you should pursue things that make you happy and are going to continue to drive a passion for you.” Marshall’s passion for business stems from “being a part of something that's really exciting and rapidly changing every year.” He advises young people to “be aware of those things that you do in your current job [...] that get you interested, that get you going, that gives you passion, that gives you energy, and try and pursue them elsewhere and figure out if that's exactly what you want.”

Oftentimes it feels easier said than done. Pursuing business is a path for the most innovative and driven people in the world. As Marshall says, “It takes a certain personality to want to step outside of your comfort zone and do something fundamentally different to what you know. But sometimes embracing that change and embracing that challenge is worth it and it's gonna give you a lot of professional growth.” Business is for the proactive and the forward thinking, for the people that are comfortable with change and challenge.

As a concluding thought, Marshall shared with us a quote he considers noteworthy: “We often suffer more in imagination than reality.”  Embracing change, growth, and risk requires understanding that discomfort. It’s not a setback. Just a necessary step toward pursuing your passion and achieving professional growth.

A final thank you to Luke Marshall for dedicating his time to helping younger students navigate the world of business. To get in contact with Luke, you can reach him at his email: luke@baremetrics.com, or at his LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukebaremetrics/.