Navigating SaaS Growth: A Seven-Year Journey

In episode 747, Rob Walling interviews Jane Portman, co-founder of Userlist, to discuss the evolution of their SaaS customer success strategy. Jane shares the four stages of Userlist’s customer success journey, from the early days of trial and error to implementing done-for-you services. They also discuss the challenges of customer onboarding for complex products.

Topics we cover: 

• (2:20) – How customer success works at Userlist
• (5:27) – Dealing with upfront onboarding friction 
• (9:51) – Stage 1, “young and naive”
• (12:16) – Stage 2, “hire someone”
• (19:06) – Stage 3, “done for you services”
• (25:47) – Leveraging the Userlist blog
• (29:26) – Stage 4, “developing your own frameworks”

Links from the Show: 

• SaaS Institute
• TinySeed
• Jane Portman (@uibreakfast) | X
• Jane Portman (@uibreakfast.com) | Bluesky
• Userlist
• Episode 471 | Fighting to Gain Traction in a Crowded Space with Jane Portman of Userlist
• Episode 742 | Normalizing Hard Things, Facing Your Biggest Threat, and Making it Fast (A Rob Solo Adventure)
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Userlist Closes a Pre-Seed Round with 21 Angel Investors
• SaaS Email Marketing Strategy: Everything You Need to Know
• 20+ “Invite Your Team” Email Examples
• Atomic Emails: Our Proven Method for Writing Email Campaigns

If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you!

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