The SaaS Podcast: Build, Launch & Scale Your SaaS

Saket Saurabh defied standard SaaS advice by skipping SMBs and selling directly to Enterprise giants like Instacart and LinkedIn from day one. Here is the "Enterprise First" strategy that allowed Nexla to become cash flow positive with multiple 7-figures in revenue before their Series A. In this episode, Saket (Co-founder & CEO of Nexla) breaks down exactly how to navigate complex corporate buy-cycles without a track record. Learn how he used "consultative selling" to close 6-figure contracts, the "Magic Moment" live-coding tactic that won Instacart, and the painful "Zero Salary" pivot the founders took to save the company and hit profitability. 🔑 Key Lessons 🏢 The "Enterprise First" Bet: Why targeting SMBs would have failed and why he went straight for the Fortune 500. 🪄 The Magical Moment: How his co-founder live-coded a fix during a pitch meeting to close Instacart. 📉 The Hard Reset: Cutting founder salaries to $0 and downsizing to achieve cash flow positivity. 🤝 Founder-Led Sales: How to sell "Build vs. Buy" to technical buyers who think they can do it themselves. 🧠 Nvidia Lessons: The "Critical Path" advice from Jensen Huang that guides his leadership today. 📖 Chapters Introduction & The "Profit" Quote What is Nexla? (Solving the Data Fragmentation Problem) The Origin: From Ad Tech to Data Infrastructure The Contrarian Strategy: Why "Enterprise First"? Landing the First Customer (Instacart) The "Live Code" Sales Demo Strategy Figuring out Enterprise Pricing & POs Founder-Led Sales: Closing the First 15 Customers Overcoming the "We Can Build It Ourselves" Objection The Pivot: Going "Zero Salary" to Hit Cash Flow Positive The Impact of AI on Data Engineering Lightning Round: Best Advice & Productivity Tools This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/464 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Ibby Syed accidentally built a consulting agency while trying to build software. Then, he executed a SaaS Pivot to AI Agents and hit $1M ARR. In this episode, Ibby (Co-founder of Cotera) reveals how to escape the "Service Trap." Learn why hitting $150k ARR in consulting revenue was actually a "local maxima" that nearly killed the startup, how his co-founder replaced months of data science work with 100 lines of code, and the specific LinkedIn Outbound Strategy (sending free leads) that books meetings with high-value buyers. He also breaks down why teaching customers to build their own AI Agents is the secret to scaling a horizontal platform. 🔑 Key Lessons 📉 The Consulting Trap: Why early revenue can trick you into building a service business instead of a product. 🤖 The AI Pivot: How 100 lines of OpenAI API code outperformed a massive data science stack. 📧 LinkedIn Outbound: The "Value-First" message script that books 25+ meetings a week. 🛠️ Horizontal vs. Vertical: Why broad tools (like Zapier/Cotera) will outlast niche AI wrappers. 💰 Pricing Strategy: Moving from custom enterprise contracts to a $20/mo usage model to fuel PLG. 📖 Chapters: Introduction & The "White Collar" Quote The Y Combinator Journey & The First Idea (Customer Analytics) Old Outbound vs. New Outbound (LinkedIn Strategy) The "Consulting Trap": Revenue vs. Scalability The Wake-Up Call: 100 Lines of Code vs. Data Science The Pivot: Building an AI Agent Platform (Cotera) The "Teach, Don't Do" Service Model Prompt-Based Workflows vs. Drag-and-Drop Pricing Evolution: From Enterprise Sales to PLG Why Vertical AI Startups Might Die Founder Advice: Focus & The "Local Maxima" This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/463 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Bilal Aijazi built a multi-million dollar SaaS on Slack despite competing features and clunky onboarding. Here is his 7-figure SaaS growth strategy. In this episode, Bilal Aijazi (Founder of Polly) breaks down how he navigated the treacherous waters of building a business on top of a major platform. You will learn how Polly achieved viral product-market fit with an 80% completion rate on a difficult 5-step installation process. Bilal reveals the evolution of their Freemium Pricing Model, how a fantasy football user led to enterprise HR contracts, and the critical playbook for surviving when platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams launch features that compete directly with you. 🔑 Key Lessons 🚀 The "Pain Tolerance" Metric: Why 80% of users endured a nightmare install process (and what it proved). 💰 Pricing Evolution: Moving from $8/month fantasy football leagues to 5-figure Enterprise deals. 💡 Suriving "Sherlocking": How to pivot and thrive when the platform builds your core feature. 🔥 Viral Loops: Leveraging "Respondent to Creator" conversion to drive organic growth. ⚖️ The Platform Paradox: The risks and massive rewards of building on Slack, Teams, and Zoom. 📖 Chapters: The "Punch in the Face" Reality of Startups Scaling to Millions of Monthly Active Users Leveraging Product Hunt for Viral Growth The 5-Step Onboarding Nightmare (That Worked) Transitioning from Viral Bot to Real Company The Fantasy Football Customer: Early Pricing Experiments Freemium Secrets: Converting Free Users to Paid Platform Risk: What Happens When Slack Copies You? The Mistake of Slack Workflow Builder Horizontal vs. Vertical SaaS Strategies Advice: Why Technical Founders Must Sell The "Just Don't Die" Philosophy This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/462 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

James Ashford sold his bootstrapped B2B SaaS for an 8-figure exit to Sage. Learn his counter-intuitive SaaS Exit Strategy for founders. In this episode, James Ashford (Founder of GoProposal) shares the playbook for building a highly sellable asset with zero external funding. Discover his unique SaaS Marketing Strategy, how he used the PATH sales method, and why customer proximity was the secret weapon that allowed a bootstrapped SaaS to defeat competitors with $75M in funding. He breaks down the "Built to Sell" mindset required to achieve an 8-figure exit with just a 12-person team. 🔑 Key Lessons 🚀 MVP Secrets: Building an 8-figure business on a simple WordPress plugin. 💡 Proximity Edge: How speaking to an accountant every single day provided an unbeatable advantage. 💰 Built to Sell: Why systems, playbooks, and exit readiness must come first. 🧠 PATH Method: The 4-step content and sales formula (Pain, Aspiration, Traps, How). 🎁 Extreme Onboarding: The shock-and-awe customer success approach that impressed acquirers. 📖 Chapters: The GoProposal Problem & Market Overview Productizing Services: The Consulting MVP The 10% Deal: Gaining Instant Credibility Content Marketing: Building Trust Without Domain Expertise Customer Proximity: Why James Spoke to an Accountant Daily Built to Sell Mindset & Exit Readiness Bootstrapping Advantage: Resourcefulness over Resources The 8-Figure Acquisition Process Life After Exit: Preparing for the Second Half This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/461 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Ryan Wang went from 8 months without revenue to building Assembled, an AI platform doing tens of millions in ARR. Here is his hard-won SaaS Growth Strategy. In this episode, Ryan Wang (CEO of Assembled) shares the gritty details of surviving a tough launch and scaling an enterprise platform. Learn the pivotal moment of finding Product Market Fit when he discovered the exact same color-coded scheduling spreadsheet at Stripe, Grammarly, and Casper. He explains the high-stakes risk of Usage Based Pricing with no minimums, how a data-driven ICP exercise unlocked growth from 10 to 50 customers, and the critical lessons on deciding which custom deals actually help versus those that generate unmanageable technical debt. 🔑 Key Lessons 💡 Product Market Fit Eureka: The common, messy spreadsheet that revealed a huge pain point. 💰 Pricing Risk: Why usage-based pricing with zero minimums nearly killed the company. 📈 Scaling Leap: The data-driven ICP exercise that unlocked growth from 10 to 50 customers. ✈️ The Custom Deal Filter: How to judge which custom integrations generalize versus those that hamstring the roadmap. 🌱 Founder Mindset: How to keep sowing seeds when there is no immediate harvest (surviving 8 months with $0 revenue). 📖 Chapters Seeds vs. Harvest: The Founder Mindset Founding Story: Stripe Origins & Support Ethos The Workforce Management Problem (WFM) Landing First Customers & Common Pain The Color-Coded Spreadsheet Discovery (PMF) Pandemic Launch Challenges & Slow Growth Surviving 8 Months Without Revenue Custom vs. Configurable: The Judgment on Deals Scaling Past 10 to 50 Customers Fixing Onboarding & Technical Debt Growth Through Communities & Mindshare Defining ICP with Data This episode is brought to you by: 🔐 ⁠⁠⁠Sprinto⁠⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and book a demo today⁠ 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/460 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Sam Darawish sold his first company for $50M and then bootstrapped Everflow to $30M ARR with zero outside funding. Discover his rare playbook for Bootstrapped SaaS growth. In this episode, Sam Darawish (CEO of Everflow) breaks down the philosophy of SaaS Capital Efficiency. Learn how six months of rigorous prospect validation allowed him to sell screenshots before building the product, leading to rapid Product Market Fit. He details why focusing on a tiny TAM first helped them hit $1M ARR quickly, and the major product challenges that arise when executing a Niche to Mainstream Strategy by expanding from affiliate networks to serving major brands. 🔑 Key Lessons 💡 Validation Strategy: Selling screenshots for 6 months—how to confirm PMF before writing code. 💰 Capital Efficiency: The financial discipline needed to hit $30M ARR without taking a single dollar of funding. 📈 Niche to Mainstream: The specific product differences (payments, resources) needed to expand TAM. 🎯 Targeted TAM: Why focusing on a small niche market first accelerated their time to $1M ARR. 🧠 Persistence vs Perfection: The core founder mindset required to live with uncertainty and achieve an exit. 📖 Chapters Bootstrapping & The Opera Acquisition Idea Validation: Six Months Before Building Early Product Development & Selling Screenshots The Philosophy of Bootstrapping & Capital Scarcity Defining the First Tiny ICP (Mobile Affiliate Networks) Customer Feedback & Iteration (Why Engineers Hate Janky Products) Reaching $1M ARR with Niche Customers The Challenge of Expanding from Niche to Mainstream Product Challenges: Why Brands Need Different Features Capital Efficiency Philosophy & ARR per Employee This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠⁠⁠Sprinto⁠⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and book a demo today⁠ 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo⁠ 🚀 ⁠SaaS Club Launch⁠ → ⁠Build your SaaS to $10K MRR Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/459 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

David Shim sold his first startup for $200M, but when he started Read AI in 2021, he built something that failed spectacularly — 5% retention after 30 days. Instead of pivoting to chase revenue, he focused obsessively on fixing one metric: day-one ROI. In this episode, David Shim (CEO of Read AI) breaks down the Product-Led Growth playbook that took them from 5% retention to 81%, generating 8-figures in ARR with virtually zero ad spend. He reveals how building viral loops into the product creates a flywheel of 1M+ new accounts monthly, and why competing against giants like Google and Zoom requires building a "bridge" between their ecosystems rather than a walled garden. 🔑 Key Lessons 📉 From Failure to Fit: Why the first product failed with 5% retention and how focusing on actionable insights jumped it to 81%. 🚀 The $0 Ad Spend Model: How to build viral loops (like auto-shared meeting notes) that drive 1M+ signups without paid ads. 💡 Day-One ROI: Why prioritizing immediate value over revenue is the secret to PLG success in a crowded market. 🤖 The Multimodal Edge: How analyzing tone and body language (not just text) differentiated Read AI from generic GPT wrappers. ⚔️ Competing with Giants: How to survive when Microsoft, Google, and Zoom launch features that compete with you. 📖 Chapters Intro & The $200M Placed Acquisition The Read AI Origin Story (The ESPN Glasses Moment) Why Our First Product Failed (5% Retention Mistake) The Pivot: How Multimodal AI Beat Simple Summarizers The 81% Retention Strategy (The Key to Day-One ROI) The $0 Ad Spend PLG Playbook & Viral Loops Competing with Platform Features (Microsoft, Google, Zoom) Land and Expand without Salespeople The Future of AI Agents and Decision-Making This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠⁠Sprinto⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠Learn more and book a demo today 🚀 SaaS Club Launch → Build your SaaS to $10K MRR Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/458 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Kevin Wagstaff and his brother Michael turned a $5,000 investment into a $27 million ARR home inspection software business—without raising venture capital for the first six years. After nine months of customer research, they built Spectora by focusing on one philosophy: serve before selling. Kevin answered every support message within 60 seconds for five years, showed up daily in online communities without pitching, and even took a 6AM Sunday demo that unlocked their biggest growth wave. Today, Spectora serves 12,000+ inspectors while Kevin has stepped back from the CEO role, recognizing he was best suited for the zero-to-10 journey. 🔑 Key Lessons 🚀 The SEO Head Start: Why writing content 12 months before launch created an unfair advantage. 🛠️ The Agency Wedge: How building 200+ websites manually became a critical wedge to sell software. 💰 Pricing Wars: How to convince an old-school industry to switch from one-time fees to monthly subscriptions. 🤝 Community Growth: The strategy of being the "first to comment" in Facebook groups for 12 hours a day. 🛑 Founder Transition: Recognizing when you are the bottleneck and how to exit gracefully to Private Equity. 📖 Chapters The "Zero to 10" Founder Mindset The $5k Bootstrap Origin Story 9 Months of Customer Interviews (That Actually Worked) The MVP: Focusing on Workflow vs. Features The "Smart Home Inspector" SEO Strategy The Agency Wedge: Building Websites to Sell Software Serving vs. Selling: The 10-Year Trust Game The 6 AM Sunday Demo: Doing Things That Don't Scale The Failed $10k Ad Experiment Raising Capital via Private Equity (Secondary Offering) Stepping Down as CEO This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠⁠Sprinto⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠Learn more and book a demo today 🚀 SaaS Club Launch → Build your SaaS to $10K MRR Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/457 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Back in 2011, Sergiy Korolov's team accidentally sent 20,000 test billing emails to real customers—a complete disaster. They built a simple internal tool to prevent it from happening again, shared it with the Ruby on Rails community, and it exploded. Fast forward to today: Mailtrap generates seven-figure ARR with 100,000+ monthly active users. In this episode, Sergiy Korolov (Co-founder of Mailtrap) reveals the SaaS Pricing Strategy behind converting a massive free user base into paid customers. Learn his controversial "Mandatory Survey" tactic that unlocked deep customer insights without hurting conversion, how he used a "Fake Door" test to validate a massive product pivot before writing code, and the specific challenges of expanding from a simple testing sandbox into a full-scale Email API platform. 🔑 Key Lessons 📊 The Mandatory Survey: Why forcing users to answer questions during signup actually helped growth without hurting conversion. 🚪 The "Fake Door" Test: Validating a major feature (Email Campaigns) with a dummy button before building it. 💰 Monetization: Transitioning a free community tool into a profitable recurring revenue business using data-driven pricing. 🛠️ Developer Marketing: How to build a product that developers naturally share (PLG) without a sales team. 🔄 The Pivot: How they navigated the risky shift from blocking emails to sending them reliably in production. 📖 Chapters The 20,000 Email Disaster (Origin Story) Building Internal Tools: The "Eat Your Own Dog Food" Strategy The Decision to Monetize a Free Tool Pricing Strategy: Using Data & Interviews to Find the Price The Onboarding Myth: Why Fewer Clicks Didn't Increase Conversions The Mandatory Signup Survey (That Didn't Kill Growth) The "Fake Door" Test: Validating Email Campaigns Before Building The Pivot: Expanding from Email Testing to Email Sending Competing with Giants (SendGrid, Mailgun) AI for Developers: Hype vs. Reality This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠⁠Sprinto⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠Learn more and book a demo today 🚀 SaaS Club Launch → Build your SaaS to $10K MRR Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/456 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

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. In this episode, Jonathan reveals the reality of bootstrapping a global platform without quitting your day job. He shares the brutal truth about hiring remote developers (firing 21 Upwork contractors to find one good one), the "19-Second Support" strategy that wins enterprise deals, and how they survived their entire revenue stream vanishing overnight during COVID by pivoting to virtual events. 🔑 Key Lessons ⏰ The 5-Year Grind: Balancing a hedge fund job with a growing SaaS (and why he didn't quit sooner). 📉 The COVID Crisis: Losing 100% of revenue in March 2020 and 10X'ing it by December. 🛠️ Hiring Mistakes: Why he had to fire 21 remote developers to build a stable product. 🍽️ Event-Led Growth: Hosting intimate dinners to close high-value customers without pitching. ⚡ 19-Second Support: The customer success metric that beats competitors with bigger budgets. 📖 Chapters Introduction & The Charlie Munger Quote The Origin Story: A Cancer Fundraiser Event The 5-Year Grind: Nights & Weekends Hiring Disasters: Going Through 21 Upwork Contractors The COVID Crisis: Revenue Going to Zero The Pivot: Pre-Selling Virtual Features Before Building Them Event-Led Growth: Hosting Dinners to Win Customers B2B Sales Strategy & Consolidating Tech Stacks The "19-Second" Customer Support Standard Advice for Founders on Focus 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 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/455 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Richard Hollingsworth bootstrapped an executive assistant agency to $5M ARR, then pivoted to AI and grew from $1M to $18M ARR in just 9 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. In this episode, Richard (Co-founder & CEO of Fyxer) breaks down the "Agency to SaaS" playbook. He reveals how they used six years of manual agency data to train their AI models (giving them an unfair advantage), how a "Land and Expand" strategy turned a single user into a $1.2M enterprise deal in 7 days, and the brutal reality of scaling support when your user base explodes overnight. 🔑 Key Lessons 💡 The Data Moat: How they used 6 years of manual agency data to train GPT-3, creating a product better than generic AI wrappers. 📈 Hypergrowth Reality: Scaling from $1M to $18M ARR in under a year and the specific things that broke (like support response times). 🏢 The $1.2M Deal: How they turned a single Facebook Ad signup into a 5,000-seat enterprise contract in just 7 days. 🎯 Contrarian Targeting: Why they explicitly ignore the "Tech" market to target Real Estate and Professional Services instead. 🧠 Culture of Intensity: The "Unreasonable Effort" mantra used to align a team during a period of extreme scaling. 📖 Chapters Introduction & The "Unreasonable Effort" Mantra Rich's Background: From Farming to Tech Transition to SaaS: Bootstrapping an Agency to $5M Early Product Lessons: Why Tech-Enabled Services Failed Launching the First Product with GPT-3 Building the Team: Pitching Technical Co-Founders Scaling Challenges: The "Build or Talk to Customers" Rule Product-Market Fit: Leveraging LinkedIn Influencers Sales & Customer Acquisition: The Move to San Francisco Partnerships: The $1.2M Real Estate Deal Key SaaS Metrics: Moving from Single Player to Multiplayer Tough Lessons: When Support Broke During Hypergrowth Company Culture: Hiring for Intensity SaaS Trends: AI Agents & Future of Work Lightning Round This episode is brought to you by: 💖 Gearheart → Book a free strategy session + get 20% off select services Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/454 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Bernard Aceituno went from PhD research at MIT to founding Stack AI, 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, and the "Monte Carlo" framework he uses to validate sales channels. 🔑 Key Lessons 🚀 The Hacker News Launch: How a simple "Show HN" post for a scrappy MVP generated 20 enterprise meetings in just 48 hours. 🎯 Finding Focus: Why chasing too many ICPs (SMBs, Startups, Enterprise) nearly derailed the company and why they fired their small customers. 💡 The MVP Pivot: What signals showed Bernard it was time to move from "Dataset Management" to "Workflow Automation." 🧪 The Experiment Framework: How to use a "Monte Carlo" approach to test sales channels without wasting time on mediocre experiments. 🛑 Channel Mistakes: Why attempts at reseller channels failed early on and what Bernard learned about timing partnerships. 📖 Chapters Introduction & The "Risk" Mindset From MIT PhD to YC Founder What is Stack AI? (Enterprise AI Toolkit) The MVP Launch: 20 Meetings in 48 Hours Early Traction: Finding the First $100k ARR Discovering the ICP: Why SMBs were the Wrong Customer The Enterprise Pivot: Selling to IT & Compliance Teams Founder-Led Sales: Closing the First 12 Enterprise Deals Hiring Sales Teams: When is the Right Time? The "Mediocre Experiment" Trap This episode is brought to you by: 💖 Gearheart → Book a free strategy session + get 20% off select services Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/453 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

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. 🔑 Key Lessons 💡 Validation Strategy: How Pat validated demand with a simple landing page and Google ads before writing code. 💰 Surviving Negative Margins: Why losing money on every transaction nearly killed the company and how they fixed unit economics. 📈 The COVID Spike: What really happened when demand spiked 100x overnight and why many of those customers churned later. 🏛️ Regulatory Moat: How he spent years lobbying to change state laws, turning red tape into a massive competitive advantage. 🔄 The Pivot: Why he rebranded from "Notarize" to "Proof" to expand TAM beyond just digital notary services. 📖 Chapters Introduction & About Pat Kinsel Validating Demand: Landing Page & Google Ads Losing Money, Struggling for Profitability Lobbying to Change Notary Laws Origin Story: Where the Idea Came From Early Investment Experience & Industry Connections Initial Research & Testing (Unbounce Landing Page) Building the MVP: Mobile App for Online Notary Early B2C Go-to-Market Strategy Recruiting the First Notaries Educating and Acquiring Consumers Marketing Tactics: Google Ads, SEO, Channel Partners Long, Slow Early Growth and Doubts Breaking Even & Gross Margin Challenges Lobbying Strategy & Industry Support COVID-19 Impact: Exploding Demand Shift to Enterprise Customers During COVID Post-COVID Reality Check & Refocusing Expanding Beyond Notarization: The Proof Platform Enterprise Transaction Security & Deepfakes Technical/Engineering Moat & Compliance Lightning Round 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 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/452 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

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. He also explains the controversial pricing decision—raising the minimum from $99 to $1,000 overnight—that changed the company's trajectory forever. 🔑 Key Lessons 💡 Product-Market Fit Obsession: Why Todd refused to scale until he had undeniable fit, unlike his first two startups. 💰 The 10x Price Hike: How raising the minimum price from $99/mo to $1,000/mo filtered out bad customers and accelerated growth. 🤝 Founder-Led Sales: Why Todd personally sold the first $500k in ARR before hiring a single salesperson. 🏗️ Building the MVP: How Pendo launched with critical features (Auto-Track) that competitors like Segment ignored for years. 🚀 Category Creation: The challenge of selling a product nobody was searching for and why "Product-Led Growth" didn't work early on. 📖 Chapters Introduction & Favorite Quote What is Pendo? Product Overview Company Metrics Todd’s Early Coding Career First Startup Failure & Lessons Missing Product-Market Fit Inspiration for Pendo Building the First Product Landing First Customers First Paying Customer Pricing Evolution Hardest Challenges Scaling Lightning Round 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 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/451 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Flo Crivello is the founder and CEO of Lindy, a no-code platform for building AI agents to automate workflows. Before Lindy, Flo built Teamflow, a virtual office platform that raised $50M but ultimately failed when the pandemic ended and remote work habits shifted. In this episode, Flo reveals how he pivoted from a "dead" $50M startup to building Lindy. He shares his controversial "Build in Public" strategy on Twitter that generated a 70,000-person waitlist before a single line of code was written, why he fired his entire go-to-market team to restart from scratch, and how a single YouTube review catalyzed their growth from "middling" to exponential. 🔑 Key Lessons 📉 The Hard Pivot: How to recognize when your startup is dead (Teamflow) and make the painful decision to pivot, including laying off 50+ people. 🚀 The 70K Waitlist: How Flo used a "Build in Public" strategy on Twitter to generate massive demand before the product existed. 💡 Positioning Strategy: Why positioning Lindy as "The Zapier of AI" (a familiar anchor) worked better than "AI Employee" (a scary new concept). 🛠️ Shipping Ugly: Why you must launch before you are ready (even if the product sends emails to the wrong people) to get true feedback. 🔄 The "Boulder Downhill" Moment: Recognizing the specific signal (Lindy 2.0 launch) that shifted them from pushing uphill to chasing growth downhill. 📖 Chapters Introduction and Favorite Quotes Overview of Lindy: No-Code AI Platform Business Metrics and Team Size Flo's Background and Team Flow The Birth of Lindy Building a Twitter Following Launching Lindy and Initial Challenges Iterating and Improving the Product Advice for Founders: Shipping Early and Making Noise Customer Reactions to Early Product Issues Vision vs. Reality: The Gap in Expectations Positioning the Product in the AI Market The Turning Point: Lindy 2.0 Navigating Rapid Growth and Competition Lightning Round: Insights and Advice This episode is brought to you by: 👉 This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap. Try it at ⁠⁠Mailtrap.io⁠⁠ — use code THESAASPODCAST for 20% off Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/450 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Richard White is the founder and CEO of Fathom, the #1 rated AI note-taking app that automatically captures and summarizes meetings. Today, Fathom has over 175,000 active companies using it monthly, but the early days were a struggle to find product-market fit. In this episode, Richard reveals why he refused to monetize until he solved retention first. He shares the "Session" metric mistake that plagues most analytics tools, how a 100,000-user spike from Zoom nearly broke the company (and why 99% of them were low quality), and the counter-intuitive decision to offer a generous free plan that competitors charged for. 🔑 Key Lessons 📉 Retention First: Why Richard refused to charge a dollar until user retention was stable, and why "First 10 Customers" is the wrong goal. 🚀 The Zoom Spike: What happened when Zoom sent them 100,000 signups in one month (and why only 100 stuck). 💡 Free Forever Strategy: How giving away unlimited recording for free created a viral loop that paid ads couldn't match. 🛠️ The "Fake Call" Feature: How adding a bot to simulate a meeting solved their biggest activation problem. 🔄 Serial Founder Advantage: How Richard "speed-ran" Fathom by bringing his best engineers from his previous exit (UserVoice). 📖 Chapters Welcome and Introduction Fathom: The AI Note Taker Richard's Background and Early Ventures The Journey to UserVoice Founding Fathom: From Idea to Execution Building and Scaling Fathom Challenges and Early User Acquisition Zoom Marketplace Launch and Initial Struggles Improving Onboarding Processes Challenges and Silver Linings Monetization and Market Shifts Balancing Growth and Monetization Launching the Team Plan Overcoming Skepticism and Leveraging Virality Expanding Beyond Zoom Rapid Growth with AI Integration Insights and Reflections Lightning Round: Business Advice and Personal Insights This episode is brought to you by: 👉 This episode is sponsored by Mailtrap. Try it at Mailtrap.io — use code THESAASPODCAST for 20% off Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/449 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Rob Woollen founded Sigma Computing with $8M in funding and a massive vision, but for the first seven years, the company generated almost zero revenue. They built products that failed, lost early team members, and struggled to find a working interface. In this episode, Rob (Co-founder & CTO) reveals how they survived the "Valley of Death" to eventually hit product-market fit so hard they grew from $0 to $100M ARR in just 3.5 years. He breaks down why their early "AI Suggestions" product failed, how a lunch with Snowflake's CEO changed their trajectory, and the specific "Spreadsheet Interface" insight that finally unlocked the enterprise market. 🔑 Key Lessons 📉 The "Tale of Two Companies": How Sigma survived 7 years of stagnation before finding the fit that led to $100M ARR. 💡 The Interface Pivot: Why their initial "AI Auto-Analysis" product failed and why returning to a "Spreadsheet" interface won the market. 🤝 Strategic Partnerships: How piggybacking on Snowflake's growth (and solving their biggest user gap) fueled Sigma's explosion. 🧠 Founder Resilience: Rob's mindset during the "dark years" when the team shrank to 3 people and the office was empty. 🏢 Enterprise Sales: How they transitioned from founder-led sales (giving out personal cell numbers) to a scalable enterprise motion. 📖 Chapters Introduction and Favorite Quote Overview of Sigma Computing Company Growth and Milestones Founding Story and Background Early Challenges and Iterations Securing Funding and Initial Team Product Development and Prototypes First Startup Failure & Lessons Missing Product-Market Fit Inspiration for Pendo Building the First Product Landing First Customers First Paying Customer Achieving Product-Market Fit Rebuilding the Product for Broader Appeal Leveraging Strategic Partnerships Reflecting on the Journey and Key Milestones Lightning Round: Insights and Personal Reflections 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 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/448 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Jared Siegal quit his job on a whim to start a consulting business, grew it to $2M in revenue, and then successfully pivoted it into a high-growth SaaS platform. He bootstrapped Aditude to over $5M in revenue before raising a $15M Series A. In this episode, Jared reveals the "Service-to-SaaS" playbook he used to transition from hourly billing to recurring revenue. He shares how he convinced a client to lend him an engineer for free to build the MVP, why he forced all customers to pay 100% upfront (creating negative working capital), and how he closes his biggest enterprise deals by taking prospects to Disney World instead of boring steak dinners. 🔑 Key Lessons 🚀 Service-to-SaaS Pivot: How to transition a $2M consulting firm into a scalable software business without losing revenue. 🛠️ The "Client-Funded" MVP: How Jared got a client to give him an engineer for 6 weeks for free to build the first version of the product. 💰 Cash Flow Strategy: Why he enforced a strict "Pay in Advance" policy to bootstrap to $5M without external capital. 🎢 Event-Led Growth: The unique strategy of hosting multi-day Disney World trips for prospects that converts better than traditional sales. 🧠 Founder Urgency: How a personal health diagnosis (MS) drives Jared's relentless focus on revenue over vanity metrics. 📖 Chapters Introduction and Favorite Quote Overview of Aditude's Product and Market Company Growth and Funding Journey Founder's Background and Early Career Transition to Consulting and Early Challenges Building the SaaS Product Client Relationships and Early Success Bootstrapping Challenges and Decision to Raise Capital Effective Fundraising Strategies Bold Outreach and Networking Targeting the Right Investors Referral-Based Growth Advance Payment Policy Event-Based Client Engagement Transitioning Leadership Roles Lightning Round: Business Insights 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 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/447 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

David Zitoun and his co-founder bootstrapped Submagic from zero to $1M ARR in just 90 days—and hit $8M ARR within two years. They did it with no funding, no ads, and a team of just 14 people. In this episode, David reveals the scrappy playbook behind their hyper-growth. He shares how they used "Y Combinator Co-Founder Match" to start 12 startups in 12 months (Submagic was the winner), how he recruited 50 TikTok affiliates in one week to drive massive traffic, and why they intentionally built an "ugly" MVP that did only one thing perfectly. 🔑 Key Lessons 🚀 The 90-Day Sprint: How they went from $0 to $1M ARR in 3 months using a viral TikTok strategy. 👯 The "Affiliate Army": How David recruited 50 young content creators to post daily videos on TikTok, generating massive organic reach for free. 🛠️ The "Ugly MVP" Rule: Why they launched a product that only did one thing (captions) with one template, and why perfectionism kills growth. 📉 Breaking the $5M Plateau: What happened when growth stalled at $5M ARR and the counter-intuitive pricing change that fixed it. 🤝 Customer Obsession: How creating a WhatsApp group with early customers turned them into "Product Managers" who built the roadmap for free. 📖 Chapters Introduction & The "Opportunity" Quote The Origin: Solving the "Alex Hormozi Caption" Problem The YC Co-Founder Match Strategy The First Viral TikTok Video (Zero Followers) The Affiliate Army: How to Get 50 People Posting Daily Timing the Market: Why Being Early Matters The $5M Plateau: Fixing Churn to Keep Growing Launching "Magic Clips" (Repurposing Long Form Content) Lightning Round This episode is brought to you by: 💖 Gearheart → Book a free strategy session + get 20% off select services Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/446 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus

Stefan Bader couldn't find a referral tool that integrated directly into his SaaS product, so he quit his job as a CRO to build it himself. Today, Cello is a $2.5M ARR platform powering referral programs for giants like Typeform, Miro, and Pipedrive. In this episode, Stefan reveals the "Growth System" playbook that helped him land his first customers through network sales (turning investors into customers), how he used content collaborations with influencers like Kyle Poyar to drive massive inbound, and why he made the controversial decision to hire a Head of People as his second employee. 🔑 Key Lessons 🚀 The "Casual Contact" Loop: How the "Powered by Cello" badge creates a viral loop that drives linear inbound leads from every customer they sign. 📄 The "Notion Page" MVP: Why they launched without a customer portal, managing everything manually via Notion pages to validate demand first. 🤝 Network Sales Strategy: How Stefan used his pre-seed round to turn micro-funds and angels into his first design partners and customers. ✍️ Content Collaboration: The strategy of partnering with high-authority creators (like Kyle Poyar) to borrow trust instead of building an audience from scratch. 👥 Contrarian Hiring: Why hiring a Head of People as employee #2 (before sales or marketing) was the secret to scaling the team effectively. 📖 Chapters Introduction & The "Incentives" Quote What is Cello? (Referral Infrastructure) The Origin: Why Existing Referral Tools Failed The "Compliance" Moat The "Notion Page" MVP Strategy The Growth System: "Casual Contact Loops" Explained Content Strategy: Partnering with Kyle Poyar Network Sales: Turning Investors into Customers Why Hire a Head of People First? Rapid Fire Questions 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 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/445 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus