“I don't care about the 14. I care about the 4.”

The kind of truth only a 40-year veteran boldly owns. A conviction. One that defied everything I saw around me. And that most people in this industry haven't figured out yet.

For the longest time, there was one metric that was the gold standard of success in B2B SaaS. The one I was taught to reach for. The one every leader in the room was chasing. In gatherings, the respected nod that came when people realized who had the biggest number.

That metric?

The ARR.

For a long time, I chased it too. Until I owned P&L. And looked up one day to realize: I wasn't building a business. I was building a cost center. A house on stilts. Impressive from the outside. One storm away from the ground.

Things look different when you own the P&L. The metrics you used to celebrate start telling a different story. From that view? ARR tells you how much is flowing through. Not whether your business is actually healthy.

And even if you don't own the P&L — if you influence it, build toward it, or optimize for it — this matters just as much to you.

When I realized this, almost everyone around me was still focused on ARR. But a few were building differently. Not faster. Not louder. Just more sustainably. A house with strong foundations. Built to withstand any storm. Built to last decades.

David Woroch is one of them.

David Woroch is the President and CEO of Tucows. You've likely never heard of him.

He is 63. The kind of person who has spent decades building something lasting and has nothing left to prove about it.

I went into our first conversation expecting an Olympic sprint. He wanted a walk in the park. Slow. Deliberate. Deeply curious about who I am before we ever discussed business strategy.

He had already researched me before we spoke. Beyond my LinkedIn. He wanted to talk about my rowing experience at Cambridge University. About identity. About how I think.

It's the kind of conversation where you feel seen and come out of it transformed.

That's how he runs his business too. Methodical. Intentional. Deeply human.

He knows the numbers better than anyone in the company. He knows his people even better than that. By name. By story. By what matters to them.

One of the companies in his portfolio is Tucows Domains. The world's second-largest domain registrar. On paper, it looks like a $250M business. But David doesn't see it that way.

And he's explained it using the publicly stated figures from his earnings calls.

“I actually think of our revenue as $75 million, not $250 million.”

Here's the simple reason: most of what flows through Tucows Domains doesn't stay. Money comes in, a large portion goes straight back out to suppliers. What Tucows Domains actually earns is the margin. And that's the number that tells you the business is healthy.

David put it this way: “So when you buy a dot com, you might pay $20 to our client, a domain reseller. Then our client pays us, Tucows, $14. And then we pay $10 to the registry. I don't care about the 14. I care about the 4.”

That 4? Multiplied across millions of transactions, it becomes something remarkable.

“It costs me $30 million to run a $75 million business. I've got $45 million of profit on what we consider $75 million of revenue. Unbelievably profitable, efficient business. None of our competitors match that.”

That last line isn't a boast. It's a quiet statement of fact from someone who has spent 25 years building something his competitors can't replicate.

$45M EBITDA. A 60% margin on what the business actually earns.

Because his competitors? Were busy chasing the 14.

You might be thinking: Tucows is an internet infrastructure company. Our business model looks nothing like theirs. And you're right. Your surface area is different. However, the principle? It isn't.

Let me show you what I mean.

How does Tucows Domains generate $45M EBITDA, a 60% margin on what the business actually earns?

It comes down to a Hybrid Product-Led and Sales-Led motion. Hybrid PLG.

Tucows Domains serves thousands of small digital agencies. Companies that manage websites, domains, and online presence for their own customers. These agencies are their resellers.

The entry point is a free billing platform. Tucows gives it away. No cost, no friction. Which makes it easy for these agencies to add Tucows services — domains, hosting, email — alongside what they already offer.

Once an agency is inside the Tucows ecosystem, their first transaction is domains. Simple, transactional, self-serve. Small margin per transaction, but multiplied across thousands of agencies and their customers.

And here's where the motion compounds:

An agency managing domains for their customers is a warm signal. They're already in the ecosystem, trusting the product, delivering value to their customers. That's when Tucows expands into another feature: web hosting. Same agency. Same customers. Many times the margin of domains without the new customer acquisition cost.

And for larger resellers who need more support, more integration, more customization? That's where the sales-led motion steps in to serve the accounts the product has already warmed.

This is what the Hybrid PLG motion produces. The metric that actually tells you whether your business is healthy. Not just ARR. But what the business actually keeps. For David, that's EBITDA — $45M on $75M of real revenue.

The principle? Is the same. Lower CAC at entry, higher margin at expansion, the motion that compounds.

This is available to any B2B SaaS company willing to measure the right metric.

Portia

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