The SaaS Revolution Show

Seven startups. All seven of them acquired. 16 launched products. All 16 of them repositioned. Roles as varied as CEO, CMO and COO. There has never been a dull moment in April Dunford’s career. Throughout all that, she has become the world’s foremost expert on positioning. Improving the context a product creates for its customers became April’s lifelong passion. It’s why she has taken on seemingly very different roles in the various startups and their acquirers she joined. As she puts it, positioning encompasses the entire organisation. Currently, April is working on a book, which she hopes will offer the first scalable methodology for doing positioning right. Listen on to hear: Why so many startups and companies fail at positioning What are the signs you are having a positioning problem How to start fixing your positioning and create the right context for your customers Examples of product repositions April has executed What is the best way to track the effect of repositioning April is one of many speakers we will host in Dublin at SaaStock18 taking place October 15–17. As we are coming to the 100th episode of the podcast soon, we are offering a €100 discount on tickets to listeners. Tune in to find out more. See who else is speaking at SaaStock18 https://www.saastock.com    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

According to Alexis Prenn, CEO and co-founder of Receipt Bank, SaaS is a bit like playing a video game — every 9 months or so you move to the next level. Each level is as difficult as the one before. Alexis began playing the Receipt Bank game nearly 8 years ago. For the first three years, they went the bootstrapping way, not so much out of strong conviction to do so but because they were too hard on themselves. They feared rejection more than anything else. The two co-founders believed that they had to make themselves a little more beautiful and their metrics a little better before they asked anyone for a penny. Eventually, both realised that this mentality was missing the point of what it means to be a growing SaaS company. On February 10th, 2011 they decided to be serious and not make any more excuses. And pursue a realistic growth rate. Three percent at a time, Receipt Bank has reached 2,964% growth. It’s on a path to reaching $25 million ARR and has banked $65 million in funding. Listen on to learn: How and when Receipt Bank became a serious company Why growth and retention are the only things that matter? Why you should avoid averages with metrics like the plague How to keep the growth mindset as the company scales How to choose acquisition channels Bringing wisdom from founders, operators and investors to your doorstep is why we are taking SaaStock on Tour. Our next stop is Paris on May 3rd. We have limited tickets left so grab one and learn from Rachel Delacour, Philippe Botteri and Jean-Charles Samuelian https://www.saastock.com/ontour/city/paris    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

Simon Grabowski, CEO and Founder of email marketing automation platform GetResponse is the latest guest on the SaaS Revolution Show, hosted by Alex Theuma. Simon started his first Internet business back in 1996, aged 16. Frustrated with how tedious and boring sending emails manually to prospects was, he decided to write a little script to automate the process. With 1000 Polish zloty in his back pocket, by 1998 Simon decided to turn the script into GetResponse, which would become the first email and marketing automation platform in Europe. Selling globally from Gdansk, Poland early on and fueling the growth through an early affiliate program, GetResponse has grown to 350,000 users spread over 180 countries, and 400 employees on three continents. Celebrating the company’s 20th anniversary this year, Simon has achieved this by being completely bootstrapped. Listen on to hear: How to achieve growth when you don’t have the money What was the opportunity that opened the enterprise market for GetResponse How Simon differentiates GetResponse from competitors How embedded virality early on is still paying off, 20 years later Why focus on UX early on can have a huge effect on the company’s bottom line Simon is one of many speakers we will host in Dublin at SaaStock18 taking place October 15–17. As we are coming to the 100th episode of the podcast soon, we are offering a €100 discount on tickets to listeners. Tune in to find out more and learn from Simon Grabowski. See who else is speaking at SaaStock18 https://www.saastock.com    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

A Math PhD dropout, Florian Douetteau, was only 20 when he first got the startup bug. The practical ways of learning through immersing himself into startups appealed more to him and he has never looked back. The SaaS Revolution Show latest guest, Florian started Dataiku, his latest venture, five years ago in Paris. The collaboration platform for data scientists was profitable from the early onset. Florian had seen the struggle of growing a company in France, where there is a steady growth up until a few million in revenue but then a stagnated growth when it comes to getting to the next stage. Maybe it was because the European market was not dynamic enough or the companies would become almost too European. Listen on to hear: How he initially scaled into the US when Dataiku was very small -What were the factors that helped Dataiku with American customers, including NPR How he organises his time between the three locations and spends enough time at each P.S. Florian is one many excellent speakers we will host at SaaStock on Tour Paris on May 3rd. He will be joined by the likes of Rachel Delacour, VP for Startups at Zendesk, Christoph Janz, Managing Partner at Point Nine Capital and Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel among others. Get your early bird tickets before April 12th https://www.saastock.com/ontour/city/paris    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

Back in 2003, tech wasn’t exactly having its most glorious days. The bitter taste of the dot-com crash was still pungent. Few entrepreneurs would be blamed for not willing to take a punt by starting a new tech company. Peter Bauer, however, didn’t succumb to that too much. He sensed SaaS would outlive that and become the next big thing. Peter placed a bet on a cloud-based email management system and Mimecast was born. From the early days, Mimecast defied rules and expectations. While everyone advised Peter to focus on just one aspect of email, he and his co-founder were religious about creating a supercategory. 15 years on the journey, Peter has had the rare chance to lead the company through all stages, including an IPO. He knows equally well the problems of having 5k in the bank and 35 people on the payroll as well as having 140 million in the bank and figuring what is next. Listen on to hear: How does the thinking behind the product change over time How do you know it’s time to move to a new market How Mimecast kept the cultural cohesion as it scaled What is the best way to approach compensation Which is the toughest stage on the journey and how to prepare for it P.S. This conversation was part of a fantastic first stop of SaaStock on Tour in London. The next stop on SaaStock on Tour is Paris on May 3rd. Find out more information https://www.saastock.com/ontour    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

Bjoern Zinssmeister is the co-founder and CEO of Templarbit, a San Francisco-based developer-oriented security platform. Started less than a year ago, it has already been through Y Combinator, has raised $3 million in funding and is successfully conquering the Asian market, starting with Japan. Bjoern left Germany for San Francisco as soon as he graduated university. In 2010 there simply wasn’t enough interesting tech coming from Europe to keep him around. It was all in Silicon Valley. Before he founded Templarbit, a developer-oriented security platform, Bjoern took seven years to learn the trades of building and running tech companies. His journey started at Match.com up and concluded in Design Inc where he was the CTO. Listen on to hear: How to pitch to Y Combinator with confidence Does going to Y Combinator help  How to go global as an early stage company How to conquer the Asian market Why closing a company even with a million in the bank may be the right thing to do P.S. Bjoern is one of many speakers we will have at SaaStock18 alongside the likes of founders and operators such as Corey Thomas, CEO at Rapid7, Frederic Kerrest, COO at Okta and Brynne Kennedy, CEO at MOVE Guides. Sign up for our Insider Sale https://insider.saastock.com by April 1st to get a 2 for 1 ticket discount code.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

Dave Grow always considered himself an operator. When he joined Lucidchart seven years ago, shortly after co-founders Karl Sun and Ben Dilts had built the product, he was there to take care of the business side of things. From answering customer support tickets and doing digital marketing to hiring and setting up partnerships, Dave did it all. Currently the company's COO and President, back then he did not dare put a C-level title in front of his name. “I was always convinced that someone more experienced will come down the line who will take it over,” he says. As COO and President, Dave has seen the transformation Lucidchart underwent, from offering freemium plans to single users all the way to signing up Enterprise customers such as Box, Dropbox, Accenture, and Groupon. Listen on to hear: How the pricing plans have evolved to reach 10 million users What are the different GTM strategies to get to that sort of scale and what has worked for Lucidchart? Should SaaS companies nowadays have a Freemium model? How Lucidchart moved upmarket and how they overcame the challenges they faced How to find the intersection between what you love and what brings value to your company P.S. One curious fact that Dave only touches upon is that Lucidchart has not used a cent of the $40 million in funding they raised to fuel that growth. It’s one of many topics he will get into detail at his SaaStock18 talk. Joining him will be many other founders and operators we have signed up as speakers such as Michael Litt, founder of Viddyard, David Cancel, founder of Drift and Meagen Eisenberg, CMO of MongoDB. Join our Insider Sale https://insider.saastock.com by April 1st to get a 2 for 1 ticket discount code.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

On this week’s episode, we take you back to one of the panels we hosted on the SaaStock17 stage. Benedicte de Raphelis Soissan, founder of Clustree, Phil Chambers, CEO and co-founder of Peakon, and Jonathan Anguelov, co-founder and COO of Aircall discus the power of people, and how to hire, keep and develop people for the success of the company. Benedicte shares how she has grown Clustree to 25 people in the past three years, carefully crafting a hiring plan and an idea who is a right fit. Phil eludes to the importance of alignment, which Peakon has aimed to get from the first moment and has scaled to 70 people spread between three offices. Jonathan shares how Aircall has developed an outcome based onboarding process, where every employee has a bespoke and detailed plan, making sure that they get quickly on track with everything they need to know and be able to execute. Listen on to hear: What are the recruiting processes of three of the most exciting European SaaS companies How to onboard people so they feel part of the organisation and can quickly deliver How to transcend company culture through geographical boundaries How to create the company values and get a buy in from people When is the right time to establish remote teams P.S. Bringing such diverse viewpoints on key SaaS topics is one of many ways SaaStock helps to grow your company. We already have signed up over 50 exciting speakers for SaaStock18 such as Michael Litt, founder of Viddyard, David Cancel, founder of Drift and David Skok, Managing Partner, Matrix Partners. Join our Insider Sale by March 31st https://insider.saastock.com to get a 2 for1 discount code on April 1st. This is not an April fools joke. 2 tickets for the price of 1. By entering the Insider Sale, you also get the chance to win great prizes like platinum tickets, team tickets, and cool SaaStock swag.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

Kyle Poyar is a self-professed pricing and growth nerd. The latest guest on the SaaS Revolution Show, Kyle is Senior Director of Market Strategy at Openview, one of many speakers we will welcome in Dublin for SaaStock18. His passion lays in seeing how packaging and pricing have the power to build large and enduring business. Kyle helps OpenView’s portfolio companies accelerate to top-line growth through deep insights into their market landscape and customers. Kyle recently published an article studying the price changes Netflix introduced https://labs.openviewpartners.com/netflix-pricing-strategy/#.Wnx15pOFjOQ. The point he was making there, as he does so on the podcast as well, is that few companies understand the true effect price increases have on a company’s bottom line, a contributing factor to the reluctance of many SaaS founders to charge more. Kyle is also the author of a comprehensive pricing e-book - Mastering SaaS Pricing. http://offers.openviewpartners.com/mastering-saas-pricing Listen on to learn How to be more data-driven in your pricing decisions How to have better pricing conversations with customers What are the signs it’s time for a price increase What are the impacts of increasing prices and why no one should be scared of that How do you implement and communicate a price increase P.S. Boston where Kyle comes from, like many other cities around the world, has become a hotspot for SaaS. In the next year, we will visit some of them, bringing SaaStock on Tour, starting with London on March 21st where we’ll gather 300 SaaS founders, their executive teams, and local VCs. In an epic day of content, learning, and networking, we will host amazing speakers such as Peter Bauer, who to this date is the only UK headquartered SaaS to IPO with Mimecast, Peter Holten Muhlmann, CEO of one of Europe’s greatest scaleups, Trustpilot, and Des Traynor Co-founder of Intercom. To see full agenda and grab yourself a ticket head over to SaaStock.com/ontour/city/london. For a special 20% discount for podcast listeners use code saasrevolution. https://ti.to/saastock/SOT-London/discount/saasrevolution    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

Few people grow up deciding sales will be their career. Matthew Bellows, CEO of Yesware, is no exception. The latest guest on the Saas Revolution Show, he is something of an accidental salesman. It never was the plan but as soon as Matthew began working he figured that was where he could be of best use to a business. Through the years he got into more managerial roles and eventually became a VP of Sales. After a few years on the job, however, he got fired from it. It was the last straw. For years he had experienced challenges doing his job. It was time he addressed them. Nothing had felt as painful as presenting the quarterly forecast to the board. It had been impossible to gather all the information from the reps to have any certainty in his numbers. Software could help, Matthew was convinced. In 2011 Yesware was born. Seven years later, Yesware currently has over 60,000 paying customers and $20 million in ARR and to date has raised $38 million in VC funding. In this candid interview Matthew shares many valuable insights. From why appearance to employees is a CEO's most important role, which requires personal care such as one-hour meditation every day in Matthew’s case, to much more specific topics such as: Why Yesware killed freemium and what was the impact on customers What are the go-to-market strategies that work for them now Why companies should look for internal rather than external metrics for word of mouth Why there never is an endpoint to the SaaS journey and what to do about it as a CEO Why no one really knows what they are doing and that’s okay. If you like the episode, please leave a review. P.S. We are bringing SaaStock on Tour. First up is London on March 21st. Spend the day in the company of 300 SaaS founders, their executive teams and local VCs and see Des Traynor Co-founder and CSO of Intercom, Ryan Singer, Head of Strategy at Basecamp, Peter Holten Mulhmann CEO of Trustpilot, Philippe Botteri Partner at Accel and Laurence Bret Stern, CRO at Pipedrive to name a few. https://www.saastock.com/ontour/city/london    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)