[ SaaS Fuel Fund I · Champion Leadership Group ]
Capital, plus the operating system.
$55M into B2B SaaS and AI at $1M–$5M ARR — no management fee, a 9% preferred return, and $5M of our own money on the same terms as every LP.
[ The fund in brief ]
A $55M B2B SaaS and AI fund, closed oversubscribed against a $50M target — 100% inbound, no roadshow, no placement agent, in under 30 days.
[ The thesis ]
Aligned by design. The terms are the pitch.
Most funds get paid to manage money. We get paid only when LPs and founders win first. Three structural decisions carry the whole argument.
No management fee
Zero. We do not draw a fee for holding capital. The economics only work if the companies do — which is the point.
9% preferred, then carry
LPs get their capital back plus a 9% preferred annual return before we take a cent of the 20% carry. The hurdle comes first.
$5M of our own money
Jeff committed $5M personally — roughly 10% of the fund — on identical LP terms. We are in the same boat, not steering it from shore.
Every person who invested had watched us work. The oversubscription was not a marketing outcome — it was a trust outcome.
[ The operating system ]
Capital is the easy part. We back every check with the system.
Every dollar comes with the SaaS Fuel Operating System — proprietary growth infrastructure trained on 81,000 closed private-market transactions. It is the pattern library behind four exits and a decade of scaling B2B SaaS: pricing, GTM, revenue architecture, and the operational moves that carry $1M–$5M ARR companies to profitable growth.
Around it sits the Founder Flywheel — a warm network of operators, advisors, customers, and investors who have built and sold real software. When founders exit, we require them to come back. That is how the community compounds.
[ The operator ]
Five companies, four exits, ten thousand mistakes.
Jeff Mains is a five-time B2B SaaS founder with four exits, based in Dallas, Texas. He built Champion Leadership Group into a SaaS scale-up practice serving hundreds of founders, hosts the SaaS Fuel podcast, and has authored two books that together reached six figures of readers.
In 2026 he turned that operator credibility and the SaaS Fuel Operating System into SaaS Fuel Fund I — $55M, closed oversubscribed in under 30 days with no roadshow. Then he wrote a $5M check into his own fund on the same terms as every LP.
The pitch to founders is simple: he has sat in the seat. Not an LP brochure — a peer who has scaled and sold the thing you are building.
Flip the compass · the operator's course
[ What we back ]
First institutional checks into B2B SaaS and AI.
Fund I closed in 2026 and is deploying now — there is no named portfolio to show yet, and we will not invent one. Below is exactly where we invest and the bar we hold. The proof today is the terms, the operating system, and a decade of operator outcomes.
B2B SaaS
Vertical and horizontal software with real revenue and a path to profitable growth.
Applied AI
AI-native products and AI layered into software workflows — where the moat is the operating loop.
Operator-led teams
Founders who have shipped and sold — the SaaS Fuel OS compounds fastest with them.
[ SaaS Fuel ]
Operator intelligence, twice a week.
The SaaS Fuel podcast is leadership intelligence for founders building startup-to-scale software companies — founder interviews and industry experts on AI adoption and go-to-market. Years of authority that used to point at a coaching page. Now it points at the fund.
Two new episodes a week · founder-first · hosted by Jeff Mains.
[ On the record ]
The close, in the press.
[ Submit your deck ]
Building B2B SaaS or AI at $1–5M ARR? Send the deck.
One fund, one operator, one clear ask. If you are at first-institutional-check stage, we read every submission. No forms into a void — a real conversation with someone who has scaled and exited.
championleadership.com ↗Prefer to listen first? The whole thesis lives on the SaaS Fuel podcast — founder-first, twice a week.
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We read every submission from founders at $1–5M ARR and reply to real fits — a real conversation, not a form into a void.