The Guest – Amin Manzouri, Founder & Managing Partner of Axis Growth Advisory
Amin Manzouri is Founder & Managing Partner of Axis Growth Advisory, a strategic advisory firm with a focus on portfolio value creation through strategy, enterprise-wide transformation and strategic M&A. He is a senior level transformation leader and operating partner with over 17 years of experience gained from working for some of the world’s leading organisations such as Bank of America, JPMorgan, PwC, Accenture and KPMG. He also holds an MBA from London Business School and is here to talk to us about value creation in the investor market.
Some highlights of this episode include:
- The 60-30-10 value creation framework
- Low-hanging fruit in SaaS value creation
- Importance of culture in value creation
- The role of technology and AI in efficiency & scale
- Exit planning from day one
Q: Surely within businesses, there are always some low-hanging fruit to increase valuation. Based on your experience, what are some of the common areas you’ve seen where companies can quickly unlock value? For example, is pricing optimization something most companies overlook? Can you walk me through some typical examples?”
“Yeah, absolutely. I typically work with software and SaaS-based businesses, and some of the most common low-hanging fruit include pricing optimization—adjusting pricing tiers, introducing usage-based pricing, and ultimately increasing the value of enterprise contracts.
Customer expansion is another area; driving broader wallet share through higher-tier plans, add-ons, or additional user seats. Churn is a killer in SaaS, so improving onboarding, implementing proactive customer success, and introducing stickier features is essential. Microsoft does this very well—high switching costs make it difficult for customers to leave.
There’s also increasing sales efficiency—optimizing lead scoring, streamlining demos, and improving top-of-funnel conversion rates.
Other areas include onboarding automation, reducing cloud and infrastructure costs by right-sizing instances, leveraging discounts from AWS or Microsoft, and actively monitoring spend.Then there’s working capital—cash flow is king. You can reduce billing cycles, enforce timely renewals, and optimize contract and payment terms.
And finally, AI and automation can be powerful, not just for cutting costs, but also for improving customer and user experience – ultimately driving both revenue and margin improvements.”
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