Episoder
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to build mission-critical billing infrastructure for complex B2B SaaS pricing models. My guest is Griffin Parry, Founder and CEO of m3ter.
Griffin Parry is a serial Entrepreneur. In 2013, he founded GameSparks, a backend-as-a-service platform for video games, which he sold to Amazon in 2017.
Combining his firsthand experience with the challenges of usage-based pricing at GameSparks with the problems he encountered at a much larger scale at AWS became the founding idea behind m3ter.
He founded m3ter in October 2020 - it's a platform that helps B2B Software companies manage complex pricing and automate complex billing calculations.
Their mission: To enable B2B Software companies to deploy and manage usage-based pricing intelligently.
This inspired me, and hence, I invited Griffin to my podcast. We explore what it takes to build a successful pricing and billing infrastructure company. Griffin shares his experience identifying and solving real market problems. He talks about the importance of a strong founding thesis and continuous iteration and why he opted to build for operational complexity and enterprise integration from the start. Last but not least, he shares some of his big lessons on how he defined his ideal customers and what not to do when approaching those customers if you want to gain traction.
Here's one of his quotes
Early on, we overdid it. We would go, 'We are revolutionizing your pricing. And they go, 'Okay, why?' And we go, 'It's going to allow you to ship product faster because you're gonna have more pricing agility. We just weren't talking the same language as them. We just pulled it back, pulled it back, simplified the story, and now we meet them where they are. We go, 'Billing operations is a real pain point for you, isn't it? And they go, 'YES.'
During this interview, you will learn four things:
Griffins' 3 success factors in growing his business.
How he's building trust with his ideal customers from the start.
What he's doing differently to give development a headstart when it comes to building new products.
Why he hired a data scientist from day one - and why you should possibly too.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Griffin Parry
Website: m3ter
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to change the way healthcare nurses can work to improve patient safety. My guest is Hadassah Backman, CEO of Guardoc Health.
Hadassah has nursing roots: She started her career as a registered nurse and has built hands-on experience in emergency room and hospice care.
This clinical background gives her unique insights into the challenges faced by frontline healthcare workers.
Besides that, she holds a master's degree in public health policy and management from Columbia University.
At this intersection, the big idea for Guardoc was born - which she founded in July 2021 - in the middle of COVID-19.
Guardoc is a clinical data integrity solution that uses artificial intelligence to address nursing challenges.
Their mission: to prevent medical errors, reduce wasted nursing hours, and improve care for chronically ill older adults.
And this inspired me, so I invited Hadassah to my podcast. We explore what's broken when it comes to supporting nurses in preventing medical errors. Hadassah shares her vision of how to solve it and how she bootstrapped her way to delivering a solution that nurses just kept talking about. She elaborates on some of her big lessons learned (and the resilience needed) in getting traction and attracting funding. Last but not least, she advises on building momentum through laser-sharp focus and smart product development decisions.
Here's one of her quotes
We have apps streaming to our phones. You can watch your kids on your phone remotely. You can open doors and close doors and lock people out. There are all these things - but we still haven't figured out how to help what, to me, is the most important workforce. Because they really deliver holistic care to patients so that they can provide the care that they were trained to do and that they want to do. And so that really compelled me to ask: why isn't there a solution that captures mistakes?
During this interview, you will learn four things:
Why taking a 'user-centric' approach is not enough to succeed in building a successful software business.
How she started to deliver remarkable value without having built any product yet - and how that helped accelerate the journey.
What she did differently to put a flywheel for growth in motion for her business - in a world that requires a high-touch GTM approach.
How she's built a resilient mindset to navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship successfully.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Hadassah Backman
Website: Guardoc Health
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Manglende episoder?
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to build deep vertical business solutions that deliver 10x value for every 1x in price charged. My guest is Dan Uyemura, CEO of Pushpress.
Dan has had an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age. He was a Dot-com era pioneer: During college, he founded Mixture.com, a platform that was ahead of its time and preceded social media giants like Myspace.
After working in tech, including a stint at Myspace, he made a dramatic career pivot by opening his own CrossFit gym.
He quickly got frustrated with the poor software options available for gym management.
So in January 2012, he leveraged his tech background to create PushPress and rebel against manual paperwork and complicated, overpriced software.
Their mission: to make gym management the easiest part of starting a fitness business.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Dan to my podcast. We explore his journey from MySpace coder to gym owner to software entrepreneur. Dan shares his insights on what it takes to create a competitive advantage that's hard to beat. He elaborates on empathy-driven support, value-based pricing, and the "layer cake" approach that makes his SaaS products invaluable. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on customer value over traditional SaaS metrics and shares innovative strategies to outmaneuver competitors. Last but not least, he shares his data-driven decision-making framework and lessons on team building.
Here's one of his quotes
"Money is an output. It's the result of energy spent somewhere else. So the problem is, a lot of people build those businesses around money. How do I make more money? How do I generate more money? How do I increase my top line? Or bottom line? The reality is that's an output, and you can never affect an output. You can only affect the input. And the input is the order of magnitude and the sheer volume of value you provide to customers. That's what you got to focus on."
During this interview, you will learn four things:
How he's tuning his product strategy to grow a highly defensible position against competitors.
His framework for building conviction and speeding up decision-making in feature development
How he overcame the balancing act of horizontal feature breadth with vertical depth improvements
His approach to innovating pricing models to outmaneuver competitors and accelerate growth.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Dan Uyemura
Website: Pushpress
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to democratize political data and anticipate regulatory changes. My guest is Victor Kristof, Co-founder and CEO of DemoSquare.
Victor is a fascinating individual with a unique blend of academic excellence, entrepreneurial spirit, and a passion for leveraging technology to enhance democratic processes.
He holds a Ph.D. in Machine Learning from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, where he developed algorithms and statistical models to study human behavior within social and political systems.
That research became the foundational idea behind DemoSquare, a SaaS startup he co-founded in November 2022.
Their mission: to "democratize democracy" by making political and regulatory data more transparent and accessible with artificial intelligence.
It will change how companies and their public affairs teams navigate the complex world of politics and regulation and, potentially, how citizens engage with democracy.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Victor to my podcast. We explore the journey of transforming academic research into a change-making political data platform. Kristof shares his lessons learned by doing customer interviews and pivoting in the right direction. He highlights the value of sharing ideas openly, adapting to constant change, and maintaining resilience in the face of rejection. Last but not least, he offers practical advice on investor relationships, sales strategies, and personal stress management.
Here's one of his quotes
I've heard several times people saying, "I have this super cool idea. I don't want to share it with anyone until I do it. I had the complete opposite experience. Even when it wasn't completely ready, we were not selling it, just talking about it to people, not even in a professional or formal context. You go to a party, you go to a family gathering, and you meet with some friends. You just share your ideas and see what's happening. The most important feedback I got came from these informal discussions. I cannot count how many introductions to potential customers I've gotten through these informal discussions.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
How to gather feedback and validate your idea - and use both positive and negative feedback to refine (or even pivot) your product.
How finding the right co-founder can have a multiplicative effect on your business.
How to stay resilient in the Face of Rejection from both customers and investors.
What to look for to select investors who will make a difference for your business.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Victor Kristof
Website: DemoSquare
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to help all of us to have conversations that drive action and meaningful connections. My guest is Joaquim Lecha, CEO of Typeform. Joaquim (Kim) is a tech entrepreneur on a big mission, bringing over 20 years of experience in high-growth companies. He started his career in M&A, strategy, and financial advisory. In 2012 he joined the tech world as the CFO of Socialpoint, a world-renowned mobile game developer, later taking on the role of Chief Operating Officer.In 2018 he joined Typeform as Chief Operating Officer and quickly rose to become the CEO. Their mission: to create a world where conversations drive action and meaningful connections. Under his leadership, Typeform has grown impressively (+$1B valuation), now serving well over 150,000 paying customers worldwide and achieving profitability. He recently got recognized as one of the Top 50 SaaS CEOs of 2023 by The Software Report.This inspired me, so I invited Joachim to my podcast. We explore what it takes to profitably scale a SaaS business as it experiences rapid growth. He discusses what fueled their initial growth and what strategic changes he had to make to ensure growth won't stall. Last but not least he offers practical wisdom on product development, customer-centric innovation, and maintaining resilience in the face of challenges.Here's one of his quotesI was coming from games. I had not heard from those types of products so many times the word 'Love'. People love Typeform. So my most immediate reaction to all of that is, how can we make more people aware of this great product? And I even thought, since I come from a financial type of background; 'if we can find that scalable with quick feedback loop type of motion, and in addition to that, it's got a less than 12 month payback period. Then we can fund it.' So with that in mind, we got to work. We grew our customer base by 2.5x and our revenue by almost 4x.During this interview, you will learn four things:How to ensure your pricing reflects the true value your product provides to customers - so you don't undervalue your offering.How to choose marketing and sales approaches that can bring in thousands of new customers and provide quick feedback loops.How he found a segment in the market where Typeform provided the most value - and what that meant to their growth trajectory..What to focus operations and hiring strategy on - if you aim to create a sustainable, resilient, and easily scalable business over time.For more information about the guest from this week:Joaquim LechaWebsite: TypeformSubscribe to the Daily SaaS ReflectionGet my free, 1 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe hereYes, it’s actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed(Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say)Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to build a successful bootstrapped SaaS company in the highly competitive scheduling software market.
My guest is Bridget Harris, Co-founder and CEO of You Can Book Me.
Bridget has had three distinct careers, showcasing her versatility and adaptability:
She started in the television and film industry. Then, transitioned to politics, serving as a political advisor focusing on constitutional reform and the House of Lords. Her political career culminated in a role as an advisor to the UK Deputy Prime Minister.
Finally, she co-founded YouCanBook.Me, where she now serves as CEO.
Their mission: To provide the best booking experience for businesses' clients and customers.
Under Bridget's leadership, YouCanBook.Me has achieved impressive growth:
The company has reached $5 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) without external funding.
That route was a deliberate one. She decided from day one to avoid external funding that might have distorted business priorities, saying "I'd rather make a million dollars slowly than lose a million dollars fast",
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Bridget to my podcast. We explore her bootstrapping journey over the past 12 years. She shares how she's successfully competing in a saturated market against well-funded competitors and tech giants like Google and Calendly. She elaborates on how she's maintaining a customer-centric approach while managing limited resources. Last but not least, she shares insights on how she overcame the challenges of pricing, overcoming feature bloat, refactoring legacy code, and adapting to market change.
Here's one of her quotes
Feature bloat is real. You can say, 'Let's be really generous about our free tool and have loads of features in the free tool.' All you're doing is confusing free users who need a really simple tool and don't want to think because they're not paying for the software. So they just literally want it to work.
So if you have a problem that your free users can't contact support, it means that your free tool is more complicated than it needs to be.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
How she's aligning her entire team so they deliver on time and grow an eagerness to go above and beyond.
What she learned from refactoring their pricing approach and the lessons nobody talks about is that
How to avoid feature bloat in your development process.
What she's doing differently to create the best customer experience.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Bridget Harris
Website: You Can Book Me
Bootstrappers Manual
Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey from the last 5 years to turn Plum into the best Talent Intelligence solution on the market. My guest is Caitlin MacGregor, Co-Founder and CEO of Plum
Caitlin MacGregor co-founded Plum in 2012 and has been an earlier guest on my podcast (#54 in February 2019).
She was voted "most likely to save the world" in her high school yearbook, foreshadowing her future as an innovative entrepreneur.
Before founding Plum, Caitlin built two other businesses, which gave her insights into the need for change around talent processes in the age of automation.
Fast forward, she was recently selected for the EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ North America Class of 2024, a program that supports high-potential women entrepreneurs.
Caitlin's drive to democratize access to psychometric data so that no one would have to rely on luck for someone to realize their superpower still underpins the core of the company - although how this is brought to market has evolved a lot.
And it's noticed - HR Tech voted Plum the best Talent Intelligence solution in the market in 2023
This inspired me, and hence I invited Caitlin back to my podcast. We explore the journey over the past 5 years. How did the market change in general - in particular in relation to how we attract and manage talent? She also shares what this means to all of us in the coming years. She then drills into how this has changed their priorities around product strategy and Go To Market. As we discuss this, she reveals some valuable lessons learned in product development, positioning, and segmentation, and how her role as CEO changed in this period of rapid change.
Here's one of her quotes
12 months ago, we were working on how we best resonate. It was really just about how you get to that Aha moment, and it really has nothing to do with the product and the solution. It was really like the Why. Why should you care about Plum? How do we align to a top three boardroom problem? And how do we connect to that strategic problem [....] so we were able to get into a strategic conversation with the right people that had the power to decide to do things differently.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
How Plum expanded from talent acquisition to full employee lifecycle management
What made them decide to bet on Enterprise instead of SMBs
What internal capabilities organizations need to develop and prioritize to gain competitive advantage and become the winners of the future?
How her role as a CEO had to change to effectively lead the rapidly growing organization that Plum is today.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Caitlin MacGregor
Website: Plum
Plum Flourish Assessment
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to make complex code understandable for business leaders. My guest is Matt Van Itallie, Founder and CEO of Sema.
Matt has a diverse background spanning law, consulting, education, and tech, and he has held leadership roles at edtech and govtech companies like Social Solutions, and PeopleAdmin.
He earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School after studying history at Swarthmore College. He's also a thought leader on the impact and responsible adoption of AI in the tech industry. This multidisciplinary experience gives him a unique perspective as a tech founder and CEO.
In September 2017, he founded Sema, a codebase scanning tool.
Their mission: to bridge the gap between the technical and non-technical worlds, particularly in the context of software development.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Matt to my podcast. We explore how most tech organizations carry more debt in their codebase - and the business risks that brings. Matt shares his vision of how to solve this - in a world where AI-generated code and Open Source are rapidly gaining popularity. He discusses the learning process he had as a founder in creating a singular, non-consensus vision for the company - and how their unusual approach upfront helped them gain deep differentiation and first-mover advantage.
Here's one of his quotes
What I know now that I didn't know as a baby entrepreneur was there are so many different versions of 'No,' except 'Here is some money.' Everything else is 'No'
"I love it. So interesting. I can really see this helping. This is a pain point. Yes, I want to pilot Yes, I want to tell my friends." That's all No. It's all versions of No, except "here is some money."
During this interview, you will learn four things:
How he uncovered a new, totally overlooked, target market where his product quickly became mission-critical, rather than a nice to have.
Why he's prioritizing building trust-based relationships with key players in the industry and how he's achieving this.
What he's doing differently around creating a team that is more than the sum of its parts.
His recommendations on choosing your business model wisely.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Matt Van Itallie
Website: Sema
Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection
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(Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say)
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to drive change and adapt as a B2B marketer in an evolving business landscape. My guest is Christian Klepp, Co-Founder of EINBLICK Consulting and Host of the B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast.
Christian is a global citizen, entrepreneur, podcast host, and B2B branding expert with over 13 years of experience across diverse markets. Throughout his career, he worked with major global brands like Philips, Caterpillar, Samsung, and Logitech.
He is a true "third-culture kid." He grew up in Austria, the Philippines, Singapore and China - and is currently living in Canada, giving him a multicultural perspective and ability to bridge East and West.
In 2019, Christian took a leap of faith and co-founded his own B2B branding and marketing consulting firm called EINBLICK. He's also the host of the popular "B2B Marketers on a Mission" podcast, where he interviews talented professionals in the B2B space and provides a platform for sharing cutting-edge insights with the B2B community.
Being a regular listener of his podcast inspired me to invite Christian to my podcast. We explore why marketing isn't optimally leveraged inside many B2B SaaS companies. He shares insights from well over 100 podcasts on what marketers should do differently to increase alignment and buy-in across the organization to make a larger impact. Last but not least, he explains how to avoid complacency in marketing and how, by leveraging different perspectives, the company can stand out more and increase resilience to adapt faster to market change.
Here's one of his quotes
The way that marketers need to deal with addressing buy-in is they need to understand how their organization works. How does your company generate revenue? Where is the most revenue coming from? Which industries? Which customers? Do you understand what EBITDA is? Because if you don't understand, you better start learning about it quickly because that's what your board cares about.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
How to turn marketing into a core driver for the business.
How to get insights that matter beyond just interviewing customers.
How to approach podcasting strategically, get instant value, and what to prioritize first to get going.
How to go about analyzing competitors' strategies to further strengthen differentiation.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Christian Klepp
Website: EINBLICK
B2B Marketing on a Mission Podcast (Spotify / Apple)
Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to empower business users, especially in SMEs, to easily find insights in their data without technical complexities. My guest is Thomas Wulff Wilhelmsen, Co-founder and CEO of Less.
Thomas and his co-founder Daniel previously worked as consultants in the data space before founding Less. Their experiences and frustrations in this role inspired them to create an analytics product for people like themselves.
And that led to the birth of Less in September 2022. The name "Less" embodies their goal of stripping away complexities to build a product that focuses on the end goal and takes care of the technical aspects behind the scenes.
Their mission: Set doers free to do what they do best: Roll up their sleeves and solve problems.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Thomas to my podcast. We explore what's, after decades of development, still broken in the Business Analytics solutions market. Thomas shares his lessons learned from steering Less' journey as a customer-funded startup. He shares how he got early traction with paying customers and how he's creating a culture of analogical thinking to solve problems in creative ways.. Last but not least, he'll inspire you with his fresh perspective on crafting a compelling narrative that sells.
Here's one of his quotes
"We've been focusing more on the persona than on the sector or industry. We call them doers. People that are curious by nature, that are frustrated with being dependent on other people and want to build cool things that they can show to other people in their teams and drive that change internally."
During this interview, you will learn four things:
Where he finds inspiration from taking Storytelling for his business to the next level.
What he's done differently from the start to get traction and stay in control as the business grows.
How he ensures everyone understands what's important, and does the right things right to create fans from the start.
Why he embraces being "customer funded" rather than just bootstrapped.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Thomas Wulff Wilhelmsen
Website: Less
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey in identifying an emerging opportunity and building an innovative, fast-growing company that transforms how we shop online. My guest is Angelo Coletta, CEO and Co-founder of Zakeke.
Angelo is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and exited multiple companies.
In 2017 he co-founded Zakeke, an AI Visual Commerce platform. It's doing groundbreaking work in transforming the B2B customer journey and shopping experience. With this focus, it's now serving 10,000+ eCommerce brands worldwide across 400+ industries
Their mission: To improve the industry's environmental footprint through the use of technology in the display process, the shopping experience, and the purchasing experience.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Angelo to my podcast. We explore how the shopping experience is still broken today - and why. Angelo shares his how he's building an organization to fix this and shares anecdotes about his lessons learned in choosing the right team, fostering a culture of innovation, and setting ambitious long-term goals. He then elaborates on creating resilience across the business, customer-centric product development, and how strategic acquisitions and investment in eco-system helped to scale their business.
Here's one of his quotes
I wanted to create a company that was totally based on a long-term vision. This is one of the most difficult choices to make when you start because it means you burn more money in the first years of the company. My opinion is that if you don't start as a long tail business, it's difficult to transform a company with 200 or 300 big customers into a company able to serve 1000s of customers, maybe most of them small customers.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
Why have a global mindset from day 1.
Why focus on product excellence first before you consider a marketing push?
What Angelo specifically prioritizes when it comes to hiring the right people that will help the company grow in good and tough times.
The strategies he applied to establish trust and leverage their growth opportunity via the e-commerce ecosystem.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Angelo Coletta
Website: Zakeke
Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection
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(Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say)
My promise: It’s short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable.
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to make social a positive place again - for everyone. My guest is Matthew McGrory, CEO of Arwen AI.
Matthew is a tech- entrepreneur on a big mission. He has held tech leadership roles: IT Director at Logicalis, Director Managed Services at Acora, and Managing Director at Carrenza (a cloud service provider acquired by Six Degrees Group),
In the period from July 2018 and September 2020 he took a break from his corporate life to become a House Husband. In that period he developed a passion for using AI to drive positive change.
That led him to cofound Arwen AI in September 2020. Arwen AI is a platform that helps its customers actively moderate and manage their community, across both paid and organic.
Their mission: to make social media a more positive place by filtering out hate speech and toxicity.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Matthew to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's Social Media world. Matthew shares his vision to make Social a place without toxicity and spam. He then elaborates on his hard-won lessons from his journey to speed up direct sales and benefit from using ecosystems to grow even faster. Last but not least, he shares his framework to increase resilience across the organization.
Here's one of his quotes
I thought, 'This is great, we'll create some technology, fix the problem and everyone will buy it.' I was so wrong on that part. I got to about demo number 200, it was with a US broadcast news organization. And the head of digital said, 'Listen, I'm protected by the First Amendment, I can let anything go up on my channels. I don't have to get rid of it. You're giving me an extra job to do. An extra cost. Tell me why this is valuable to my business. Tell me how it makes me money or saves me money.'
During this interview, you will learn four things:
How he gained traction in a market where customers resisted to buy because they saw the solution as an extra job and an extra cost.
What he did differently to gain technical and commercial momentum.
What he invested in early on to get access to strategic accounts and speed up the commercial contracting process in enterprise sales situations.
How he goes about to keep the business humming, and keeping everyone aligned and motivated - especially in tough times.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Matthew McGrory
Website: Arwen AI
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to take GTM efficiency to the next level for enterprise SaaS companies. My guest is Josh Ellars, CEO of OpenGTM.
Josh has over 15 years of experience leading successful go-to-market (GTM) functions at high-growth SaaS companies like Metalogix, Qualtrics, and OpenGov. This extensive background gives him unique insights into scaling SaaS businesses.
In 2021 he founded Patri, which was rebranded OpenGTM in 2023. OpenGTM is platform to create content buyers love, capture high-intent leads, and uncover the truth behind your buyers and pipeline.
It's mission: to unite sales, marketing, customer success, and product around the attributes of highly-retained customers in order to boost revenue and retention.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Josh to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's world of Go-to-Market (GTM). Josh shares his wealth of experience in scaling SaaS businesses. He emphasizes the importance of the "sell, design, build" methodology, where market demand pulls product development. He also explains, how their approach helps companies cut through the noise of the crowded go-to-market tech landscape. And last but not least he shares some big lessons learned on differentiation and growing efficiently.
Here's one of his quotes
Too often in Go To Market and in company building in general, we're driven by product market fit. And that's wonderful. But a big portion of that is really identifying: Is there security and regulatory fit? Is there a financial fit? Can we get some sort of return out of this investment we're making in this customer? And I absolutely saw that I had to learn the hard way and lose some very large deals. That got me thinking that I think there's a better way to to vet these opportunities.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
What B2B SaaS companies should look for beyond product-market fit to grow more efficiently.
Their framework that drives product strategy in order to build remarkable products.
How they avoid getting caught up in tech-stack rationalization.
How to expand market scope gradually while maintaining a narrow focus on the ideal buyer profile.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Josh Ellars
Website: OpenGTM
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#326 - Niklas Hanitsch, CEO of SECJUR - on balancing culture and growth challenges
A story about maintaining a blue ocean market in the rapidly evolving compliance automation landscape.
This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to sustain in a heavily competitive market. My guest is Niklas Hanitsch, Co-founder and CEO of SECJUR.
Niklas is a tech entrepreneur on a Mission. He was an idealist punk who turned lawyer, then SaaS founder. He's got deep expertise in data privacy, compliance, and agile product development. And entered the prestigious Top 40 under 40 list by Capital Magazine in November 2023.
Over the years, he grew the belief that while data protection and compliance requirements are important, the implementation should not become a stumbling block for companies.
And that became the big idea behind SECJUR, an AI-driven compliance automation platform, which he founded in December 2017.
Their vision: A world where businesses are always compliant, but never have to think about it.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Niklas to my podcast. We explore how personal tragedy grew into entrepreneurial drive. He shares how he bootstrapped the company towards growth, navigated fundraising during a recession, and built a resilient team culture from the start. Beyond that, he elaborates on his frameworks for strategic decision-making, hiring for values fit, and relentlessly delivering customer value. Last but not least he shares practical advice on how to stay motivated and sane in the crazy world of building a software business.
Here's one of his quotes
"Bootstrapping was definitely something that made us successful because we had time to really focus on the business and not focus on fundraising, on report creating reports and stuff like this. So we learned a lot about what customers really want in that time, because we could spend all our time with customers."
During this interview, you will learn four things:
How Bootstrapping gave him an advantage you cannot get when you start your venture with VC backing.
His approach to staying ahead of the competition as the market gets more crowded.
His advice (having been a lawyer himself) on how to go about committing to contracts
His 3-step framework for hiring talent
For more information about the guest from this week:
Niklas Hanitsch
Website: SECJUR
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to finally solve the problem of managing all your personal and professional relationships. My guest is Matt Achariam, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Clay.
Matt has a diverse background in product development and design.
He was a principal at design agency FortySix, working with clients like Disney, BBC, Expedia, and the University of Pennsylvania and held product roles at Custora (acquired by Amperity) and LayerVault (acquired by Tiny Capital) and
He has a lifelong obsession with the craft of design, sparked by childhood curiosity about why certain objects elicit feelings of joy. This led him to question the status quo in relationship management software - and that's how the vision behind Clay was born.
In 2018, he and his co-founder, Zach Hamed, founded the company, an app for managing personal and professional relationships.
Their mission: to help people be more thoughtful and helpful with their relationships, ultimately helping them achieve more and be happier by putting others first.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Matt to my podcast. We explore his journey of building Clay. Matt shares how he and his team create meaningful differentiation beyond just solid functionality. He elaborates how they gained early traction and created strong organic growth that enables them to now manage over 100 million relationships. Last but not least, Matt shares his insights on navigating tradeoffs, maintaining confidence in decision-making, and staying true to company values while scaling rapidly.
Here's one of his quotes
Be very clear about the values and the lines that you will cross and won't cross because when things start speeding up, momentum is something very precious.
When you move really fast, you have to move with confidence. And if you don't have the confidence and that foundation, you're not going to be able to make decisions rapidly.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
His unconventional approach towards creating a "minimum remarkable product" instead of a "minimum viable product"
How they strengthen their differentiation by focusing on things other than just functionality, and where he focuses to find inspiration.
How they've managed to achieve all their growth to be entirely organic and driven by word-of-mouth
What signals, he in hindsight, wishes they had paid more attention to in order to grow even more.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Matt Achariam
Website: Clay
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to build a business that can survive crises and emerge stronger every time. My guest is Lee Rubin, founder and CEO of Confetti.
Lee is a visionary culture leader with over a decade of experience in B2B sales. In 2014 she founded Wekudo - a remote corporate event planning agency. The idea behind it came while working at ZocDoc, where she struggled with the bureaucracy and logistics of planning team-building events.
Soon after that, she founded Confetti, realizing that the problem could only be solved through a combination of technology and people (not just people).
Under Lee's leadership, Confetti achieved exponential 600% growth during the COVID-19 pandemic and grew it as the leading solution for virtual team-building through a relentless focus on quality experiences.
Their mission: to simplify event planning while empowering organizations to build stronger, happier, and more holistic teams through unforgettable shared experiences that make work life more memorable.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Lee to my podcast. We explore her journey to build a successful B2B SaaS company in a period when most of her competitors ceased to exist. Lee shares her story about a remarkable pivot during Covid, and why she decided to do nothing when "back to work" kicked in again. She also shares how she wasted 3 valuable years at the start, and what she could have done differently to avoid that. Last but not least, she elaborates on what ingredients she doubles down on to build a product people just keep talking about.
Here's one of her quotes
The main contributor to our success is that we built a platform that had a very strong form of agility. The platform can support various different use cases if we really want it to. It allowed us to pivot super quickly [during Covid]. The last invoice that we got from an in-person event and the first invoice that we got for a virtual was 10 days. We didn't spend time sitting in sadness that our events business was in shambles. We got right back to the drawing board, back to playing and having fun and trying to see what sticks - and the virtual events stuck.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
What she has done differently to survive during & post-COVID when other competitors closed their doors.
How she managed to pivot her entire business in less than 10 days when Covid started.
What she learned from niching down, where everyone else was widening the net - and how that played to their advantage.
How she's embedded delivering "wow factor" in every aspect of her company - and why this has become unnegotiable for her.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Lee Rubin
Website: Confetti
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(Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say)
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to create a sticky and healthy B2B SaaS business. My guest is Emeric Ernoult, Founder and CEO of Agorapulse.
Emeric is a serial entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in social media and SaaS. He co-founded affinitiz, one of the first modern social network SaaS platforms in France in the early 2000s.
In 2010 he founded Agorapulse, social media platform. He grew it from generating €140,000 in annual revenue to achieving the same figure every three days, without taking significant outside funding.
This makes Agorapulse an inspiring bootstrapped SaaS success story. Hence I invited Emeric to my podcast. We explore his insights on what it takes to create a successful B2B SaaS company without having to rely on external funding. He shares is big lessons learned running the business through a PLG motion, and explains why they've pivoted to a sales-led SaaS motion, thereby moving up market. Last but not least, he elaborates on his approach to customer segmentation, creating measurable business value, and how to enable constant evolution
Here's one of his quotes
"Do not raise money. VC firms and investors are going to tell you that you're going to get more than money... if you don't know how to leverage that money, you're basically just given away part of your company for something that you're not going to get value from."
During this interview, you will learn four things:
Why you should prioritize investing in amazing customer support, especially when bootstrapping and the product is still evolving
How to go about hiring people that have the highest chance to bring your company success
What to focus on when you want to transition from PLG to a sales-led motion
His first principle when it comes to prioritizing features to create products people start talking about and keep talking about.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Emeric Ernoult
Website: Agora Pulse
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(Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say)
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to turn a startup into a +$100M ARR growth business. My guest is Jim Yu, Founder & Exec Chair at BrightEdge
Jim Yu is the visionary. He started his career at Mercator Software (now IBM), serving as Director of Product Development, and then moved to Salesforce.com, where he was a Director of Product Management.
He graduated from university when he was 16 years old, and holds an MBA from Stanford University, a Master's in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of South Dakota.
In 2007 he founded BrightEdge where he's been at the helm as CEO for 16 years. He grew BrightEdge into a global leader, helping more than 8,500 of the world's largest brands drive measurable, predictable revenue from their websites and search engines
Their mission: to help marketers deliver content that resonates with their audience and drives business impact. More specifically, BrightEdge aims to transform online content into tangible business results, such as traffic, revenue, and engagement.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Jim to my podcast. We explore his journey of building BrightEdge into a successful SaaS company that crossed the $100M ARR bar. He elaborates on his first principles when it comes to building core differentiators, being intentional about market choices, and setting clear milestones for each growth stage. Lastly, he shares his advice on managing go-to-market investments and staying driven by a strong mission to scale intelligently.
Here's one of his quotes
It really paid off was when we found the big box retail segment. So if you think about social networks, they have a lot of web pages that represent musicians or people or things like that. But on the retail side, they have a lot of products, they have a lot of categories. And if those show up well on search, it leads directly to purchases and revenue.
So the next use case we built into our technology was connecting the dots back to purchases and orders. And so then you could see, as you optimize for organic search, what was the impact on revenue, and then that's when we started to really get forth. We ended up getting most of the big retailers.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
Why he has been intentional about certain GTM techniques and how he's picked his verticals to bet on.
His first principle on making strategic choices that are aligned with the core capabilities and DNA of the company.
His approach to scaling, and when to step on the gas and when not.
How he defined their unfair advantage and what makes them different as a company
For more information about the guest from this week:
Jim on Linkedin
Jim on Twitter
Website: BrightEdge
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to solve the most challenging productivity challenge in Manufacturing: human action. My guest is Max Fischer, Founder and CEO of Deltia.
Max is a mechanical engineer. In 2014 he was a founding member of HackZurich, the largest hackathon Switzerland has ever seen.
In 2015 he co-founded Actyx and digitized 40+ factories. In this startup, he led product management, sales, and marketing teams.
Meanwhile he has established himself as a thought leader in the space of digital transformation for the factory floor.
In November 2022, Max founded Deltia, a startup focused on helping factory operators track, analyze and improve efficiency by identifying the best possible processes and assisting workers with digital tools.
Their mission: to make human work in manufacturing more productive and less error-prone by taking out the guesswork.
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Max to my podcast. We explore what's broken in identifying productivity opportunities in manufacturing. Max explains how for the first time ever - this is possible. He shares some of his big lessons on building the company, especially when it comes to foundational questions like "who's it for" and 'what's it for' - and how that helped them remain highly focused.
He elaborates on his first principes for building the platform - and how that helps them stay resilient and offer scalable solutions. .
Here's one of his quotes
There are a lot of decisions that you take both on the technical level and what customers you're serving. Who is the user that you're trying to focus on? We decided quite early on to not specifically target the Toyota's of this world. The automotive OEMs are basically the best-run manufacturing companies in the world. There are use cases, obviously, also for technology, no doubt about that. But I think a big opportunity is to help the 98% of other factories to come to a similar level to where Toyota of Volkswagen are today.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
Why functionality is important - but not as important as system design
How to go about building for business scalability rather than just technical scalability of your solution.
Why the dream is not to help Toyota or Volkswagen - but companies much smaller and weaker than those brands.
What they are doing differently to accelerate stakeholder buy-in from IT, legal, and Unions.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Max Fischer
Website: Deltia
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Yes, it’s actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed
(Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say)
My promise: It’s short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable.
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This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to redefine the way we learn and solve the growing skills gap. My guest is Ruban Phukan, CEO of Goodgist.
Ruban is a serial entrepreneur with more than two decades of experience building technology products that solve real-world problems. He's written books about AI and holds several patents in this field.
He was part of Yahoo's first data scientist team, collaborating closely with co-founder David Filo to use data to address complex business problems.
In 2005, he co-founded Bixee.com, India's first vertical search engine employing patented technology. This company then merged with market leader MakeMyTrip and DataRPM, a pioneering Enterprise AI platform for industrial IoT, which was then acquired by Progress Software in 2017.
He 2019 he co-founded GoodTrade.AI, an asset management and investment analysis platform centred around Generative AI.
Most recently he co-founded GoodGist, an AI startup for upskilling and research that tackles the challenges of scaling corporate skill development.
Their mission: To organize the world's knowledge and make it universally accessible, conversational, and digestible in bite-sized chunks on demand.
Their belief is that this creates a significant moat for their clients against competitors in today's fast-paced landscape,
And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ruban to my podcast. We explore the challenges of continuous learning in today's fast-paced technological environment.
He explains his first principles for making his strategic bets and why he opts to take a platform approach rather than a point solution approach. Last but not least, he explains his lessons from niching down and verticalizing his GTM approach around the platform.
Here's one of his quotes
We don't try to build a custom solution for a custom problem. We try to look at the problem and say, 'Okay, so we are not trying to only solve for a gas turbine failure, how do we build that technology, so that now instead of just only solving for data coming out of gas turbines, it can also look at data coming out of smart cars? How can it also handle data coming out of smart televisions? So, the focus has always been in trying to understand the problem and try to generalize, so that it can solve more business use cases, without having to recreate something new every single time.
During this interview, you will learn four things:
How he's accelerating traction by packaging his horizontal platform around highly valuable & business-critical problems.
How he goes about successfully serving the mid-market and large enterprise companies in their own unique ways.
His approach to identifying new value possibilities in the market that are worth building solutions for.
How he makes decisions on what to invest in, and what not.
For more information about the guest from this week:
Ruban Phukan
Website: Goodgist
Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection
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Yes, it’s actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed
(Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say)
My promise: It’s short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable.
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