Richard White had 100,000 signups in his first month—and only 100 people actually using the product. His SaaS retention rate was effectively 0.1%. In this episode, early-stage B2B SaaS founders will learn how to fix broken SaaS retention before worrying about monetization.
Richard breaks down exactly how he turned a catastrophic retention crisis into an 8-figure business. You will learn why 99% of his signups had zero meetings on their calendars, how a "fake meeting" feature solved the trust problem killing activation, and the 60-day ultimatum that forced his team to monetize.
In this episode, Richard also shares how he sold a team plan before it was built—with just two features and a slide deck—and why that approach hit $100K ARR in month one.
🔑 Key Lessons
- 🔄 Use Bad Signups to Fix SaaS Retention: Richard turned 99,900 inactive users into a testing ground—iterating aggressively on onboarding without risking real customer relationships.
- 🛠️ Build Trust Before Asking for Commitment: Fathom's "fake meeting" feature let users test the AI bot safely, solving the trust barrier that was killing early SaaS retention.
- ⏱️ Set Aggressive Deadlines to Force Monetization: Richard's 60-day ultimatum forced his team to launch a paid plan—even before it was fully built—hitting $100K ARR in month one.
- 📈 Sell the Vision, Not Just the Product: Fathom sold a team plan with only two features ready, using a slide deck to show the roadmap. Customers bought the future.
- 🎯 SaaS Retention Beats Acquisition: 100,000 signups meant nothing with 0.1% activation. Fixing onboarding and retention was worth more than any growth hack.
- 🏢 Leverage Your Network for Founding Team: Richard recruited four engineers he'd worked with for a decade at UserVoice, getting a trusted team from day one.
Chapters
- Introduction
- What Fathom does and the AI note-taking market
- Richard's decade running UserVoice
- Why he decided to start over with Fathom
- Recruiting engineers from UserVoice
- The first year: Only 50 stable users
- The trust problem with AI meeting bots
- Building the "fake meeting" feature
- Zoom marketplace launch: 100K signups
- The retention crisis: Only 100 daily users
- Using bad signups as a testing ground
- Iterating on onboarding to fix activation
- The 2022 funding crash
- The 60-day monetization ultimatum
- Selling a team plan before it was built
- $100K ARR in month one
- Scaling to $1M ARR in a year
- Today: Eight figures ARR, 175K companies
- Lightning round
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