4 Strategies to Prioritize User-Centricity with Richard White of Fathom

Episode Summary:

In this episode of SaaS Origin Stories, Phil speaks with Richard White, CEO of Fathom, a free Zoom app that records, transcribes, and highlights the key moments from your Zoom calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. He is also the Founder and was the CEO of UserVoice; currently, however, he is Chairman of the Board at the same company.

One of his previous colleagues, Jim Wright, has praised him for his approach to problem solving, “Rich is one of those developers who can see the whole picture and find a real world solution, not just a fix for a particular technical issue.”

They discuss how the conception of SaaS products are usually due to finding roadblocks in technology, what it’s like searching for investors, the amount of effort it takes to keep an audience’s attention, and how Fathom became a Zoom native app and if they have any plans to expand outside of it.

Guest at a Glance:

Name: Richard White

About Jon: Richard White is the CEO of Fathom, a free Zoom app that records, transcribes, and highlights the key moments from your Zoom calls so you can focus on the conversation instead of taking notes. He is also the Founder and was the CEO of UserVoice; currently, however, he is Chairman of the Board at the same company.

Richard on LinkedIn

Fathom on LinkedIn

Fathom’s Website

Topics we cover:

• Why Fathom came at the perfect time
• Understanding exactly what users want
• Searching far-and-wide for investors
• Building a solid SaaS team and product 
• When are you ready to launch your product?
• Trying to keep the audience’s attention
• The high standards of making something easy and memorable
• How Fathom became a Zoom native app
• Plans to expand outside of Zoom

Key Takeaways:

The Difference Between Hearing and Listening to Your Customers

Fathom was created for people like Richard, who have a lot of meetings on Zoom, yet struggle to take notes at the same time. Ever since the pandemic, people have been faced with this issue, and after researching into the user experience, Richard came up with the idea for Fathom, an app which takes important notes from zoom meetings so you don’t have to.

Understanding what users want and need is a skill; it’s something you have to train yourself to look out for. Pay attention to how your customers are speaking, how they’re asking questions, what specific words are they using? It’s only because of this ability that Fathom was able to exist in the first place.

Searching Far-and-Wide for Investors

Since its conception, Fathom has managed to raise about six million dollars in investments; a million of that money is from the users themselves. It started off by asking friends and family and putting on events, but they also wanted to try to reach people with connections to Zoom, considering it was the platform they were focused on. If they could find people there to invest, then they could not only raise money, but they could build solid and professional relationships. They also did a WeFunder campaign which allowed users to donate and invest.

“I’ve found that, when you get people putting their own skin in the game - angels and our users - you just get a very different kind of relationship and engagement.”

Houston, We’re Ready for Takeoff…

You have to make sure that before you launch your SaaS product, everything is ready. Richard explains, although they had a rough version of Fathom ready within the first few months, it took about a year before they could confidently release it into the world. In fact, a lot of the time, even when your product is in the early stages of its existence, warts and all, it’s easy to see what it could evolve into, and if you can envision that end goal, then you can easily tolerate some of the bugs at the beginning.

“If you can create something that solves a problem you have, and make sure there’s a big market for that problem, it’s such a hack. I had such high conviction for the product at an early stage because it’s like, I’m willing to tolerate some of the bugs at the beginning, we just needed to polish it up.”

Keeping the Audience’s Attention

When creating anything - not just a SaaS platform - that involves grabbing an audience’s attention, you need to be able to keep them interested for at least the first five minutes, otherwise your product just won’t work or take off. Once you’ve lost a customer’s attention and focus, it’s exceedingly hard to get it back, so make sure your product performs the best it possibly can when showcasing it. 

Try to take a step back from your work and be honest with yourself about it, be subjective - ask yourself what you need to alter, what needs to go and what needs to be added. This way, you’re more likely to keep the audience engaged and interested.

“You learn a lot of things about how hard it is to get people’s attention. We  actually started off as a desktop app, then a zoom app, but we moved back to being a desktop app because we saw that in the zoom app, people would start a meeting and then they’d have to remember to turn on Fathom [...] It’s  very easy to be forgotten, especially when you’re trying to change people’s habits and behaviors.”