💸 Are You Overspending? Here’s the Benchmark

Greetings! Ben here.

I’m the owner and operator of SEA. And I’m also a SaaS CFO. There wasn’t much engagement on the previous newsletter format, so I’m switching it up a bit.

I’ll watch the click rate, b/c that’s a good gauge of interest in the subject matter.

Hope you enjoy!

📊 How to Benchmark Your SaaS OpEx Profile

Revenue and gross margin get all the attention—but what about the bottom half of your P&L?

In this post, I break down how to benchmark your operating expense (OpEx) profile, so you can understand whether your team is investing efficiently across R&D, Sales, Marketing, and General and Administrative (G&A) expenses.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• 📉 Why % of Revenue Matters: Track each department’s OpEx relative to revenue—not just spend in dollars.

• 🧾 When Sales & Marketing % Misleads: Why S&M spend alone isn’t a proxy for GTM efficiency (and what to look at instead).

• 📈 Real Benchmarks from HubSpot & Benchmarkit.ai: Compare your OpEx profile to SaaS peers by ARR stage.

• 💡 How OpEx Evolves: What to expect as you scale—when to invest, when to pull back, and how to create operating leverage.

👉 Read the full post