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Hidden Multipliers: Jumpstart Growth With Your Existing Budget and Team
Jason Cohen founded two unicorns. At the first (Smart Bear), its prices went from $35 per seat to $1,300 in four years, yet signups went up. At the second (WP Engine), four changes to pricing and packaging took the company from $1 million to $5 million in a single year.
If you run a business—or a part of one, such as marketing or product—and need to grow it with the money and people you already have, this book explains how to do that using levers like what you charge, whom you sell to, how you position it, and why customers leave.
Jason calls these levers "multipliers," and the book explains eleven of them in detail, one per chapter, with a table in the Introduction that guides you from your most urgent problem to the chapter most likely to solve it.
Why haven't you found those levers already? Maybe you don't have the data. Maybe you know exactly what they are, but you're afraid to face them.
A few of the other
In one company, with data given in the book, 5% of customers brought in 40% of the profit, while the bottom 10% wiped out 30% of it.The same product can charge eight times more when its pitch changes from "halves the cost per lead" to "doubles the number of leads."WP Engine paid affiliates $200 a sale when the going rate was $100, in exchange for exclusivity. By typical financial metrics that was crazy, yet it built a growth channel competitors couldn't access.With a constant rate of cancellations, growth slows and then stops at a ceiling (2,000 customers in the book's example), however hard you sell.Each chapter explains why its multiplier works, with examples from many kinds of companies, so you can adapt it to your own. It's written for no worksheets, no templates. AI skills that come with the book walk you through its methods on your own business, step by step.
Over 25 years Jason has built four companies, bootstrapped and venture-funded, and invested in more than 60 startups. He started Smart Bear with no co-founder and bootstrapped it for seven years; WP Engine now has 1,200 employees and serves 200,000 customers.
It's your find your multipliers.
If you run a business—or a part of one, such as marketing or product—and need to grow it with the money and people you already have, this book explains how to do that using levers like what you charge, whom you sell to, how you position it, and why customers leave.
Jason calls these levers "multipliers," and the book explains eleven of them in detail, one per chapter, with a table in the Introduction that guides you from your most urgent problem to the chapter most likely to solve it.
Why haven't you found those levers already? Maybe you don't have the data. Maybe you know exactly what they are, but you're afraid to face them.
A few of the other
In one company, with data given in the book, 5% of customers brought in 40% of the profit, while the bottom 10% wiped out 30% of it.The same product can charge eight times more when its pitch changes from "halves the cost per lead" to "doubles the number of leads."WP Engine paid affiliates $200 a sale when the going rate was $100, in exchange for exclusivity. By typical financial metrics that was crazy, yet it built a growth channel competitors couldn't access.With a constant rate of cancellations, growth slows and then stops at a ceiling (2,000 customers in the book's example), however hard you sell.Each chapter explains why its multiplier works, with examples from many kinds of companies, so you can adapt it to your own. It's written for no worksheets, no templates. AI skills that come with the book walk you through its methods on your own business, step by step.
Over 25 years Jason has built four companies, bootstrapped and venture-funded, and invested in more than 60 startups. He started Smart Bear with no co-founder and bootstrapped it for seven years; WP Engine now has 1,200 employees and serves 200,000 customers.
It's your find your multipliers.
- GenresBusiness
332 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 10, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 12, 2026
Cohen has been there and done that, building two SaaS companies to billion dollar valuations, and advising many other startups on their growth strategies.
This book takes you behind the curtain to see the hidden levers available to you as a business owner to create more revenue (and profit!) without needing more resources.
What impressed me was that I consider myself a business strategy guy, and even I discovered new frameworks to help startups succeed, particularly the profit whale and the segmentation of your customers into Carols, Dianas and Eddies.
Cohen knows his stuff, and his clear writing style helps readers instantly understand the hidden multipliers that will help them grow faster. Highly recommended.
Plus he released a set of Claude skills to implement the growth strategies. I haven't played with them yet but they look super helpful: https://skills.asmartbear.com/
This book takes you behind the curtain to see the hidden levers available to you as a business owner to create more revenue (and profit!) without needing more resources.
What impressed me was that I consider myself a business strategy guy, and even I discovered new frameworks to help startups succeed, particularly the profit whale and the segmentation of your customers into Carols, Dianas and Eddies.
Cohen knows his stuff, and his clear writing style helps readers instantly understand the hidden multipliers that will help them grow faster. Highly recommended.
Plus he released a set of Claude skills to implement the growth strategies. I haven't played with them yet but they look super helpful: https://skills.asmartbear.com/
August 18, 2026
Jason's writing is phenomenal and his blog has helped me in various ways through the years in building my company. I was glad to see he published a book. The book is well organized and covers common themes like positioning, A/B testing, and finding your unique advantage. Where I felt this excelled was its depth, practical application, and prompts/skills/templates to actually put it into use. I've already run a positioning exercise on our website. Usually I read this book and just get inspired, but this one bridged the gap to action.
October 13, 2026
If you have an established software business with recurring revenue (SaaS), this book is gold. It's worth buying for the “Find your Carol” chapter alone (which walks you through finding your ideal customer [ie., who is the most profitable]).
I think if your business relies on one-time sales, or isn't software, some of the examples and exercises won't apply as much to you.
Jason's advice is sharp; it's not the generic fluff you're used to reading in business books.
I think if your business relies on one-time sales, or isn't software, some of the examples and exercises won't apply as much to you.
Jason's advice is sharp; it's not the generic fluff you're used to reading in business books.
August 13, 2026
Superb book. New and interesting ideas (and I've been following Jason for ages)!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews