Claim OwnershipThe SaaS Podcast - SaaS, Startups, Growth Hacking & Entrepreneurship
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The SaaS Podcast - In-depth interviews with proven entrepreneurs and startup founders. Actionable insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business
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Jonathan Kazarian built Accelevents to $10 million ARR working nights and weekends for five years while keeping his hedge fund day job. But when COVID hit just as he went full-time, every event worldwide got canceled and revenue dropped to zero – forcing him to borrow $75,000 from his father's retirement to survive.
Instead of waiting it out, Jonathan pivoted hard to virtual events and started pre-selling features they hadn't built yet. Within three months, they hit a million-dollar run rate and 10X'd revenue by year's end. But when the tech bubble burst in 2022, revenue got cut in half and he had to lay off more than half his 117-person team while rebuilding their reputation from scratch.
You'll learn:
Why maintaining 19-second response times 24/7 became Accelevents' secret weapon in the high-stakes events industry
How hosting dinner events for event professionals generated better leads than cold outreach – without ever pitching the product
What Jonathan learned from going through 21 Upwork contractors that changed how he thinks about hiring remote developers
How pre-selling features they hadn't built yet helped them survive COVID and reach $1M ARR in three months
Why after 10 years and multiple pivots, Jonathan still believes focusing on one business is the only way to win
Full show notes → saasclub.io/455
This episode is brought to you by:
💖 Gearheart → Book a free strategy session + get 20% off select services
🚀 SaaS Club Launch → Build your SaaS to $10K MRR
Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
Richard Hollingsworth bootstrapped an executive assistant agency to $5M ARR, then pivoted to AI and grew from $1M to $18M ARR in just 8 months. Today, Fyxer serves thousands of professionals with their AI email assistant, and Richard's team has grown from 4 to 40 employees while raising over $40M.
Richard and his brother Archie started with data from their EA agency, waited for the right technology moment with GPT-3, then moved to San Francisco to scale. Their focus on professional services over tech companies, combined with a land-and-expand strategy, helped them close a $1.2M deal in 7 days and build a thriving AI SaaS business.
You'll learn:
How to turn an agency into an AI SaaS company using existing customer data and insights
Why targeting professional services instead of tech companies unlocked massive growth opportunities
How a land-and-expand sales motion helped convert single users into a 5,000-seat enterprise deal worth $1.2M
What mistakes nearly destroyed their customer success during hypergrowth and how they recovered
How to maintain culture and intensity while scaling from 4 to 40 employees in under a year
Full show notes → saasclub.io/454
This episode is brought to you by:
💖 Gearheart → Book a free strategy session + get 20% off select services
Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
Bernard Aceituno went from PhD research at MIT to founding StackAI, a no-code AI platform that's now generating 7-figures in ARR with over 100 enterprise customers and $16M raised.
In this episode, Bernard shares how he pivoted from academia to entrepreneurship, why his first product wasn't solving the right problem, and how a perfectly-timed MVP launch on Hacker News created overnight demand. He explains the painful lessons of chasing too many customer segments before finding focus with enterprise IT teams.
You'll learn:
What signals showed Bernard it was time to pivot from dataset management to workflow automation
Why chasing too many ICPs nearly derailed the company and how they found focus
How posting a scrappy MVP on Hacker News created 20 customer meetings in just two days
Why attempts at reseller channels failed and what Bernard learned from waiting too long to hire sales
How focusing on enterprise IT unlocked large contracts and steady expansion inside customer accounts
Full show notes → saasclub.io/453
This episode is brought to you by:
💖 Gearheart → Book a free strategy session + get 20% off select services
Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
Pat Kinsel went from years of painful struggle at Notarize to building Proof, a SaaS platform approaching $100M ARR with 230 employees and $260M raised.
In this episode, Pat explains how a notary error during his first startup exit sparked the idea, why he validated demand with a simple landing page before building, how he endured years of slow traction and false signals, and what changed when he expanded beyond notarization to transaction security.
You’ll learn:
- How Pat validated demand with a landing page and Google ads
- Why losing money on every transaction nearly killed the company
- What really happened when COVID demand spiked 100x overnight
- How he spent years pushing to make online notarization widely accepted
- Why many COVID-era enterprise signups never activated and what that taught about real product-market fit
Full show notes → saasclub.io/452
This episode is brought to you by:
💖 Gearheart → Book a free strategy session + get 20% off select services
📫 Mailtrap → Get 20% off with code THESAASPODCAST
Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
Todd Olson went from two failed startups to building Pendo, a SaaS platform now generating $200M ARR with 880 employees and nearly $500M raised.
In this episode, Todd reveals how early mistakes shaped his obsession with product-market fit, why he refused to hire salespeople until he validated the sales motion himself, and how creating an entirely new category forced him to abandon inbound marketing for manual outreach.
You’ll learn:
- Why Todd waited until $500K ARR before hiring salespeople
- How raising prices 10x overnight changed Pendo’s trajectory
- What two failed startups taught him about product-market fit
- Why category creation required a bold go-to-market approach
- The counterintuitive product strategy that made Pendo stand out
Full show notes → saasclub.io/451
This episode is brought to you by:
💖 Gearheart → Book a free strategy session + get 20% off select services
📫 Mailtrap → Get 20% off with code THESAASPODCAST
Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
Flo Crivello is the founder and CEO of Lindy, a no-code platform for building AI agents to automate workflows.
👉 This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap. Try it at Mailtrap.io — use code THESAASPODCAST for 20% off
Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/450
Join Email List: Get weekly SaaS learnings, new podcast episodes, and actionable insights right in your inbox: https://saasclub.io/email/
Join Community: SaaS Club is the community for early-stage SaaS founders and entrepreneurs: https://saasclub.io/join/
Richard White is the founder and CEO of Fathom, the #1 rated AI note-taking app that automatically captures and summarizes meetings.
👉 This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap. Try it at Mailtrap.io — use code THESAASPODCAST for 20% off
Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/449
Join Email List: Get weekly SaaS learnings, new podcast episodes, and actionable insights right in your inbox: https://saasclub.io/email/
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Rob Woollen is the Co-Founder and CTO of Sigma Computing, a data analytics platform that lets business users analyze cloud-scale data without writing SQL.
👉 This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap. Try it at Mailtrap.io — use code THESAASPODCAST for 20% off
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Join Email List:
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Jared Siegal is the founder and CEO of Aditude a monetization platform that helps digital publishers maximize their ad revenue.
Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/447
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David Zitoun is the co-founder and CEO of Submagica tool that helps creators and small businesses turn their videos into viral-ready shorts in just a few clicks.
Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/446
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Stefan Bader is the co-founder and CEO of Cello, an all-in-one referral platform that helps SaaS companies reward their users for bringing in new customers.
Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/445
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Jonathan Festejo is the co-founder and CEO of Salesbricks, a platform that helps startups close deals faster and take the manual work out of quoting, billing, and getting paid.
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Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/444
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Joseph Lee is the co-founder and CEO of Supademo, an AI-powered platform that helps you create interactive demos for onboarding, sales, and product education.
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Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/443
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Sam Naficy is the CEO of Prodoscore, a SaaS platform that uses AI to show companies how work gets done by analyzing data from the cloud tools employees already use every day.
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❤️ This episode is powered by Gearheart https://saasclub.io/gearheart
Book a free 1:1 consultation: https://saasclub.io/gearheart/book
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Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/442
Join Email List: Get weekly SaaS learnings, new podcast episodes, and actionable insights right in your inbox: https://saasclub.io/email/
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Egidijus Pilypas is the co-founder of Exacaster, a SaaS company that helps subscription-based businesses grow revenue by turning customer data into actionable insights.
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❤️ This episode is powered by Gearheart https://saasclub.io/gearheart
Book a free 1:1 consultation: https://saasclub.io/gearheart/book
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Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/441
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Rami Tamir is the co-founder and CEO of Salto, a platform that helps teams manage and automate the configuration of SaaS apps like Salesforce, NetSuite, and Okta.
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❤️ This episode is powered by Gearheart https://saasclub.io/gearheart
Book a free 1:1 consultation: https://saasclub.io/gearheart/book
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Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/440
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Sameer Al-Sakran is the founder and CEO of Metabase, an open-source BI tool that helps teams quickly turn raw data into charts and dashboards.
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❤️ This episode is powered by Gearheart https://saasclub.io/gearheart
Book a free 1:1 consultation: https://saasclub.io/gearheart/book
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Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/439
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Callum Mckeefery is founder and CEO of Partner.io, a platform that helps companies run smoother partner programs and grow revenue faster.
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Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/438
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Onur Alp Soner is the founder and CEO of Countly, a privacy-first product analytics platform.
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❤️ This episode is powered by Gearheart https://saasclub.io/gearheart
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====================================
Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/437
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Oscar Rubio is the founder and CEO of LodgerIn, a SaaS platform helping organizations manage housing and relocation services for students and employees moving abroad.
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❤️ This episode is powered by Gearheart https://saasclub.io/gearheart
Book a free 1:1 consultation: https://saasclub.io/gearheart/book
====================================
Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/436
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Something about the guest sounds fishy.
Great episode! It was really enlightening to hear Dominik Angerer delve into the journey of scaling Storyblok from a prototype to a major SaaS player. For anyone looking to extend their Storyblok experience, especially in multi-language projects, checking out the Storyblok offerings on Crowdin's store might be worth your while. They https://store.crowdin.com/storyblok have some fantastic tools that enhance the storyblok multi language capabilities, making content management seamless across different languages. Highly recommend giving it a look if you're scaling content globally!
A great lesson for saas Ecom product businesses.... dynamics change fast for Ecom space....
This is one of the best podcasts for anyone interested in software startups. Great job!