The SaaS Podcast - SaaS, Startups, Growth Hacking & Entrepreneurship 455: Accelevents: How 5 Years of Nights & Weekends Built a $10M ARR SaaS - with Jonathan Kazarian
Oct 2, 2025
Jonathan Kazarian, the Founder and CEO of Accelevents, turned a hedge fund side project into a $10 million ARR event management platform. He candidly shares his journey through the pandemic, pivoting from in-person to virtual events and pre-selling features to survive a zero-revenue crisis. Kazarian reveals the importance of lightning-fast customer support, how hosting dinner events generated leads more effectively than cold outreach, and the tough lessons learned from layoffs during the tech downturn.
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Fundraiser Sparked The Business
- Jonathan built the first event software to run a 1,000-person fundraiser when existing tools were unaffordable and unsupported.
- Attendees loved it and organic demand turned that project into a business he incorporated two months later.
Five Years Of Nights And Weekends
- For five years Jonathan worked nights and weekends, often 60 hours a week, while keeping his hedge fund job.
- He hired through Upwork and cycled through 21 contractors before finding a committed engineer who helped build the team.
Pre-Sell To Survive Rapid Shifts
- Pre-sell features you haven't built if you can confidently deliver them and need rapid revenue.
- Build iteratively after signups, but avoid this tactic as you scale and reliability becomes critical.
