#252 - Alex Theuma, CEO SaaStock - on avoiding the valleys of death in B2B SaaS

This podcast interview focuses on sharing some of the big lessons learned from building Europe's largest B2B SaaS community. My guest is Alex Theuma, CEO of SaaStock. Leave a comment or a question for Alex and Ton. After 11 years of sales experience in IT, Telecoms & Cloud, Alex started a blog on SaaS called SaaScribe. This soon caught on, and he built a powerful network across the SaaS founder and investor community. The blog soon led to the creation of the first-ever podcast on B2B SaaS, called The SaaS Revolution show, which led to the first exclusively SaaS-themed meetups in London, Dublin, and Berlin. In 2015 SaaStock was founded on the back of that, which, in the meantime, has become the world’s most impactful conference for SaaS founders on the journey to $10M+ ARR and beyond. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Alex to my podcast. We explore what Alex sees as key criteria to succeed in B2B SaaS. We discuss how to start off on the right foundation, what to bet on, and what not, and how to avoid making the costly mistakes other SaaS founders made.  Here's one of his quotes I speak to people that have been running a business for like two years and are struggling, and they're still trying to figure out their ICP. So try to figure it out super early - maybe even before you launch your product. Another bonus is one is positioning. We've seen how that's transformed companies. An example of that would be DocSend (bought by Dropbox). The thing that really created the inflection point for them after many years was when they nailed their positioning. That caused them to get the hockey stick growth. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why segmentation and positioning are wrongly undervalued What signals to look for from customers to know you're on the right track Why each B2B SaaS Founder should build a personal brand  What to do and avoid doing to prevent ending up in the valleys of death For more information about the guest from this week: Alex Theuma Website: SaaStock Leave a comment or a question for Alex or Ton. Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration Get my free, 2 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices