Designing the product for variety

Saket Saurabh closed Instacart by live-coding a fix during the pitch—and that "magical moment" became the foundation of his founder-led sales playbook. In this episode, early-stage B2B SaaS founders will learn how Saket closed the first 15 enterprise customers himself using a consultative founder-led sales approach.

Saket breaks down exactly how to navigate complex corporate buy-cycles without a sales background. You will learn why he went "enterprise first" instead of starting with SMBs, how to overcome the "we can build it ourselves" objection by creating magical demo moments, and why founder-led sales is essential for connecting product, market, and customer needs.

In this episode, Saket also shares the "zero salary" pivot that made Nexla cash flow positive before their Series A—and why founders must do sales themselves before hiring a team.

This episode is brought to you by:

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🔑 Key Lessons

• 🎯 Founder-Led Sales Connects the Dots: Unless founders sell deals themselves, they can't fully understand how product, market, and customer needs intersect.
• 🪄 Create "Magical Moments" in Demos: Saket's co-founder live-coded a fix during the Instacart pitch—solving problems on the spot closes enterprise deals.
• 🏢 Go Enterprise First: Architecting for SMBs first prevents you from understanding enterprise-grade complexity. Nexla went straight to Fortune 500.
• 🤝 Consultative Founder-Led Sales Builds Trust: Don't pitch—listen. Saket's first goal in meetings was to understand if the prospect saw the same problem.
• 📉 The "Zero Salary" Pivot: Saket and his co-founders cut salaries to zero to reach cash flow positivity before their Series A.
• 💰 Price Against Internal Cost: Calculate what it costs the prospect to solve the problem internally, then price at a fraction.

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" Founder-Led 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

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Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/464
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