Refersion was founded in 2014. Prior to that, CEO Alex Markov was in digital marketing and dabbled in programming since he was a kid. Alex credits his career experience in affiliate / influencer marketing to help him to reimagine affiliate marketing and innovate on the model.Important innovations included simplifying the onboarding process for merchants, and also tapping into emerging managed e-commerce platforms like Shopify. Importantly though he came to it from a developer's POV, he based his innovations on intimate knowledge of the pain points and gaps in solutions that e-commerce entrepreneurs were experiencingRefersion was an intentional bootstrap. It allowed them to rule their own destiny and manage to KPIs that were more organic to the business than what might have been mandated by VCs.  Alex was moonlighting until the business was able to support his basic needs. He called it a grind-it-out business model that enabled him to work on his passion with very little risk. He learned a lot about the real world of business as a result of having to make traction with an MVP product.Alex tested the need for the product before having it by setting up a landing page that explained the main features he planned to build. The first couple hundred responses  encouraged him to build the product. Alex is the second SaaS Backwards guest to mention using groups on social media to generate feedback and initial interest in his product (also true of Lemlist)."You either build your product or you raise money - very hard as a sole founder to do a good job at both," asserts Alex. As a bootstrap startup you have also to be willing to take a longer view. Hiring decisions are harder when you're keeping your eye on the bank balance. He made the first hiring decisions based on where he was spending too much of his own time, adding staff to offload work from his plate. And one of the key initial hires was in customer success, which remains a major focus for Refersion.An early decision that helped him grow was to build a partner ecosystem - SaaS firms like Shopify but also agencies that craft the e-commerce experience. They spend a lot of time on teaching agencies about the offering and that adds to sales momentum. These investments in partnerships and a platform model have been the main drivers of Refersion's growth. It's an interesting contrast with the venture-fueled model of SDRs, AEs and a lot of outbound pressure to try and generate sales. Alex recently sold the business to Assembly, an e-commerce company owned by Providence Strategic Growth, a decision he says was made at the right time. "All companies need to grow up," said Markov. "Now we have the best of both worlds, we can run the business as we always did but now it's like we're on steroids." He credits Assembly with accelerating investments in the business and bringing new capabilities via Assembly's extended family of companies.It's a great interview and I can't thank Alex enough for sharing his founding and growth story.Resources for SaaS Execs---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Here's another episode that is just incredibly valuable for CEOs and CMOs at early stage SaaS firms. Whether you're a services firm moving to SaaS, bootstrapping, or pre-launch, there's a wealth of insight shared by Amit Bivas, VP of Global Marketing at Optimove.Optimove is a marketing SaaS that helps companies to communicate right message to right segment at the right time... consistent with the micro-audiences we hear leading edge CMOs talk about -- targeting smaller and smaller cohorts to act on their motivations and intent.Bivas explains how Optimove helps large enterprises to use data as a differentiator. In particular he talks about how it helps commoditized products and brands to create a better customer experience to create repeat purchase. And to customize that experience at scale and as their preferences change.Optimove was originally a services firm taking data from retailers and wholesalers to understand how customers migrated from "state to state" or segment to segment. Early on, the founders knew they wanted to become a software company that could scale. All revenues from its services business were invested to build the software so they could have a platform to scale. Since it was started as a moonlighting project, they were able to funnel a lot of revenues back to product development.Among the highlights from this episode:When you start as a service provider you gain a lot of experience and understanding before you build the product. And those customers who you are selling services to can become your first customers for the software. And since you know their issues so intimately, you can build the roadmap based on real-world customer experience. You do need to be prepared, however, for the reality that not every services customer is going to want your software, and you put at risk the services relationship when you transition to a software company - people still want their hands held. You need to make sure that your critical mass is centered around the product not the service for a variety of reasons - ability to scale and when you do take investment, services are not as highly valued as SaaS revenues. Moving consultants into customer success and solutions engineering roles also helps support the transition from services to SaaS.A great interview and insights for those considering a startup or transitioning from an established services company to a Software-as-a-Service company.Let us know what you think!Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Terry Sydoryk is the CEO of Chaordix, a SaaS that helps brands to build communities with their end users.  This sounds quotidian at a surface level, but it's remarkably impactful.Effective growth and nurturing of a community can drive product innovation, enable feedback for consumer / CPG brands where it's hard to generate contact with end users and makes it possible to be closer to employees as well. B2B brands also can generate tremendous value from communities of users.This episode is  a great thought starter for product and brand managers who are looking for ideas on how to engage more deeply with end users. I also made a call for social media strategists to take a deeper look at communities as an extension of their SoMe plans.Our conversation is also interesting in that this firm was originally a "consultant with kit" before Terry joined. In order to scale up, they realized that the crowdsourcing opportunity had a wider applicability than they could implement as a service and achieve growth ambition. And so, a SaaS was born. This idea of a services firm leveraging a homegrown technology to transform to a SaaS model isn't new, but it remains a difficult transition to make. Terry  offers valuable insights on how he helped make it happen.You're really getting two episodes in one here! Love to hear your feedback on this one.Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

This episode features an enlightening conversation with business transformation change agent Michael Richardson , founder and managing director of Tech Azur, a consultancy providing support for digital business transformation initiatives, scale-up operations and c-suite advisory. His advice? You don't have to learn everything the hard way. What does that mean? Operationalizing the organization to be able to scale is often a blind spot for CEOs. "What got you funded won't get you scale," according to Richardson. As a founder, CEO or CTO, you should be proud of what you've built, early customer success and impressing investors. The skills to operationalize are not necessarily the same as what got you to your first big VC round. You have to grow the organization across many areas of expertise.For founders, why would you seek an outside expert? The CEO when he/she presents wants to seem like a superhero, but the investors know there's no such thing as perfection and no exec can know anything. In fact, they look for continuous improvement and realism in how you plan to scale. Act in a foreground role or in a coaching mode. Don't mask the issues but deal with them.The virtual c-suite exec can help you deliver on the pitch you made - and post-funding you're just 90 days from your first meeting with your new bosses. Take the weekend off post-close but now the hard work really begins. With a virtual c-suite augmentation you can keep the core team focused on the really hard work that is right here, right now - and amplify what the core team can do.Examples - young SaaS firms dealing with large companies can be a mismatch in terms of process and procedure, and if it's your first big money raise, you might not know what is expected from your investors and get off to a bumpy start. Outsourcing a senior operating role can help you grow these skills in your SaaS.Michael and I drill-down deep into what it takes to build a scaleable SaaS and there's a lot here for scale-up CEOs, CTOs and CMOs to learn from this deeply skilled and experienced exec.Take a listen and let me know what you think!Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Guillaume Moubeche is a fascinating SaaS founder. He recently gained fame for a PR stunt in which he publicly mounted a VC fundraising campaign only to turn down $30 million. But he is so much more than that. He's a real deal entrepreneur who cracked the code on bootstrapping his startup and he did so through a modern approach and old-fashioned focus on the customer."G," as he likes to be called, covers a lot of ground in this "things you can do, too," episode that should be of high value to any SaaS founder in the early days, VC-fueled or not. In particular, G talks about how:Bootstrapping can lead to hyper-growth, and high profitability. The PR strategy around the public fundraising and rejection was to shine a spotlight on the viability of bootstrapped SaaS and his company in particular.Creating a business was a way for him to create freedoms he experienced in a gap year between his chemical engineering degree and marketing studies. First business with his dad failed for lack of customers. Went in business with a friend to help others drive sales and then decided to start his own business helping others to drive sales.He identified opportunity - saw that sales campaign tools available weren't doing the job. Met a couple of tech geniuses in an incubator, built some things for others and decided to form a company among them.Built an MVP in a few weeks, took market and initial user feedback and kept innovating. Relentless iteration got them to a product and company that people really want to use.Selling on value vs features. Lemlist's unique value proposition started with dynamic images within emails. Used his own tool to acquire customers. By running his own campaigns on Lemlist he could show how it worked.This episode is a deep dive on how G growth hacked via organic, hand-to-hand marketing, sales and customer success.He also talks about how focus is key - doing one thing as a big differentiator. Mass customization of email was the point of difference for Lemlist. Participating in FB groups (like startup founders) to generate audience and fans. And eating your own dog food to show the value of the solution.G also talks passionately about how from the early days until today he remains most focused on his users, spending hours a day in touch with them to ensure his success.Give the episode a listen and let me know what you think!Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about ---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Gaurav Harode is the founder and CEO of Enablix, a sales enablement platform that makes it easier for marketing and sales to manage, collaborate on and share content with prospects. According to Harode, "organizations create content on a daily basis, but there's no simple solution to get it in the hands of salespeople."He's got the mission sorted now, but his SaaS started out as a knowledge management solution. With so many well entrenched competitors, and ROI elusive, he found it difficult to gain traction. A pivot to helping sales be more effective has been key to growth and a path to a sustainable business.The new positioning answers a true yearning within marketing and sales organizations to work better together and for marketing to be able to provide more relevancy in its content for the sales process. And speaking of that process, Gaurav reveals an interesting nuance in the difference between scripted journeys as envisioned by marketing and the truth of the iterative and somewhat random nature of enterprise sales  and relationship building... and how Enablix helps its users to succeed in that environment.Lastly, Gaurav discusses a lead generation tactic he's found that pays for itself, G2, and his search to expand investments in ways that are equally ROI-obvious. A great listen for those in early stages who want some inspiration on bootstrapping their SaaS products.Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Neil Becker is a soft spoken yet hard driving CMO. His approach to marketing is that it must serve the organization's purpose, which is to sell its products. This puts marketing in a service provider role to sales, where the two teams share the same KPIs. Interestingly, Neil is the second SoftBank-funded CMO to appear on the podcast (the other was Erez Yerselove of Globality), and they share a lot of perspective on the transformative nature of a $100 million investment.This is a fast-paced and valuable conversation that touches on post-funding goal setting and building the organization to scale, how marketing and sales can do better together, ABM as a strategic practice (doing it for real), and the power of thought leadership to change marketplace realities.I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode.Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Accelerating SaaS growth is a multifaceted challenge. For the right kinds of SaaS applications there might be nothing that accelerates growth  faster than a strong integration or "platform" ecosystem. Fraser Davidson, CEO of iPaaS Cyclr goes deep in this episode on the value and strategy for building integrations. Davidson puts forward the idea that there are three kinds of integrations: Strategic to the product, which should be built in-house (think Google Maps for a real estate SaaS); Commercially important to drive sales and retention (the more integrations in use, the stickier your SaaS); and, Emerging use cases that aren't yet important but might need a path to support and could develop into something meaningful.Fraser also talks about what a CEO needs to consider post-funding - setting priorities as you scale your SaaS fueled by VC or PE money. It's a revealing and valuable conversation with a CEO who used to be a private equity exec, so he really knows the subject in depth. Lastly he talks about leadership at Cyclr being a match between a business exec and a tech visionary (he's the former) and how he makes that work to Cyclr's and his clients' advantage.Fraser is a fascinating interview subject and his company is a valuable resource to SaaS firms which are scaling up. Take a listen and let me know what you think!Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Erez Yereslove is a serial marketing leader whose company, Globality, is changing the way professional services are sourced. By applying AI to the process, the company creates efficiency in specifying requirements, finding the right partner (starting with incumbents) and negotiating a clearer scope and fairer deal for all.Erez talks about innovating in professional services, reveals a new feature that enables proposal comparison "apples to apples" vs "apples to kumquats." Saving time for CMOs and CIOs as they procure services and for the suppliers as well is a key benefit. AI and natural language processing make the process of buying services more organized, detailed by asking questions buyers might not anticipate (going way beyond what is possible in an RFP) and effective by narrowing the choices to likely fits. It's also valuable for supplier diversity and finding suppliers outside your home territory or for services where the buyer has no network to draw from.Interestingly Globality is an enterprise commitment to change the way professional services are procured, and so is an interesting case study in go-to-market. They're elephant hunting by design, with highly focused and strategic approach to identifying, proposing, and onboarding clients.. Conversely, there are thousands of suppliers on the platform who make themselves available to economic buyers.This is a fascinating conversation with a successful CMO on how he's driving go-to-market for a groundbreaking product and service to its clients. Enjoy!Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.

Jim Sharpe was a man with a strategic plan just a few weeks into his tenure as CEO of Aventri, an enterprise-class SaaS for live events, when the pandemic hit. While many SaaS weren't impacted, his firm's life blood, trade shows and private in-person events, came to a halt.Using his strategic plan as a starting point, Jim, his team and their board / investors, regrouped, reinvested and pivoted the business to support the virtual events his clients were holding. He's also driving toward a new vision for in-person events where virtual attendees are an important and permanent part of the strategy going forward.This is very deep dive on how leadership can and did make the difference between go forward or go home... the pandemic could have been fatal to Aventri, but it looks like it won't just have survived but in fact will thrive as 2021 unfolds.Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.---Not Getting Enough Demos? Your messaging could be turning buyers away before you even get a chance to pitch. 🔗 Get a Free Messaging & Conversion Review We’ll analyze your website and content through the eyes of your buyers to uncover what’s stopping them from booking a demo. Then, we’ll give you a personalized report with practical recommendations to help you turn more visitors into sales conversations. And the best part? 💡 It’s completely free. No commitments, no pressure—just actionable advice to help you book more demos. Your next demo is just a click away—claim your free review now.