The Year Is Made in the First Six Months
Because buying cycles lag, your annual number is set by what you ship in H1, not H2.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- —
Balfour learned at HubSpot that the year is made in the first six months. Teams tend to set realistic goals for the first three-to-six months and then pencil in an ambitious back-half inflection to hit the number — but that isn't how it works. For most products the buying/decision window is long enough that anything you ship in H2 impacts customers and closes only in the following year. So if you don't do the work in H1, the levers left to move H2 numbers are incredibly small. Even in low-friction consumer products, viral loops, engagement and retention work take time to propagate through the user base, so the effect still lags. Plan the year knowing H1 execution determines the outcome.
Origin
Learned at HubSpot; Balfour frames it as especially true for SaaS, where buying windows run months to a year.
Core principles
- 01Buying and decision windows lag execution by months.
- 02H2 shipments mostly land revenue in the next year.
- 03Back-weighted plans are quietly unrealistic.
- 04Even viral/engagement work takes time to propagate.
How to run it
- 1
Map your buying window
Estimate how long it takes from shipping something to a customer feeling it and making a buying decision — for SaaS this can be months to a year.
Watch out Underestimating this window is what makes back-weighted plans look feasible.
- 2
Front-load H1
Schedule the highest-impact work for the first six months, since that is what actually moves the annual number.
- 3
Discount late-year inflections
Treat plans that rely on an H2 hockey-stick as unrealistic, because the levers to influence H2 are small once H1 has passed.
Pro tip Remember bigger customer bases need even bigger new numbers to show a meaningful impact.
Watch out Reorgs mid-year often blow up the back-half plan entirely.
In the wild
Balfour notes that in SaaS the buying window can run from a few months to a year, so a feature shipped in H2 plus the time to impact a customer plus the buying decision often lands revenue in the next calendar year.
→ Teams that front-load H1 hit their number; back-weighted plans miss.
Common mistakes
Penciling in an H2 hockey-stick
Assuming you'll build a back-half inflection to hit the goal ignores buying-cycle lag and leaves you with too few levers to actually move the number.
Is it for you?
Best for
Growth and product leaders doing annual planning, especially in SaaS.
Not ideal for
Very low-friction consumer products with near-instant conversion (partial exception).
From the episode
Brian Balfour: 10 lessons on career, growth, and life