SaaS Origin Stories

Dan MacGregor, Co-Founder at Nexxiot, shares insights on evolving tracking hardware to analytics, vertical vs. horizontal approach, and bundled vs. unbundled products. Key takeaways include focusing on vertical growth, challenges of transparency in business, and building hardware products for the physical-digital world.

Episode Summary:In this episode of SaaS Origin Stories, Phil Alves is joined by Dani Grant, CEO, and Co-Founder at Jam.dev. This successful SaaS startup offers developers and project managers a fast and reliable debugging solution. Dani shares her insights on the different ingredients that make up a successful startup, including funding, attaining product market fit, and working with small and agile teams. Along the way, she also busts some commonly-held startup myths.Guest at a Glance:Name: Dani GrantWhat she does: Dani is the CEO and Co-Founder at Jam.dev, a SaaS startup that offers a fast and reliable debugging solution. Connect with Dani: LinkedInTopics we cover:Don't start without concept validation Investor meetings: how to ace themIs product market fit enough on your mind?Myth Busting - #1 -  Go-to-market speed is criticalMyth Busting - #2  - Ship fast; just get it in front of the customerKey Takeaways:Worry About Concept Validation Before Thinking About Market ValidationThe concept of fast and reliable debugging software was born out of Dani’s struggles while working as a project manager at Cloudflare, where project delays due to endless communications cycles on bugs and fixes were endemic. So the concept of Jam.dev was to deliver software that would speed up the debugging process. To validate the concept, she connected with over 50 project managers across various industries to understand if the problem was universal. Validating your idea is the first brick of your SaaS startup and a nifty talking point when in front of investors.  We interviewed over 50 project managers across different industries to check if this was an issue they faced as well.Be Who Your Investors are Looking For - Helpful Tips for Investor MeetsDani spent two years at a VC listening to pitches, and she offers her insights on the typical investor's playbook. The investor's appetite is minimal, so how and what you pitch is critical. Don’t focus on the investment you need; instead, focus on making the meeting a great experience for the investor. One that they will remember for a while and hence remember your proposal. Face-to-face meetings are better than Zoom meetings. Keep your answers short and engaging, don’t jump into micro details. Offer a top view and then move on to offer further details. Make your meetings memorable. When answering questions, give a high-level overview first and then offer to go into details. You’re now letting the VC steer the conversation.Achieving Product Market Fit and BeyondThe amount of mind space you devote to thinking about product market fit depends on the evolution stage of your startup. It should be front and center leading up to the launch and a couple of quarters down the line, and the retention rate is a good indicator of fit level. As the retention rate stabilizes, start thinking about how to tweak your product to improve the fit, customer feedback is vital at this stage. Once you achieve the desired PMF, other business priorities will occupy your mind, and you will think less about PMF.  We moved from living and breathing PMF to not thinking about it, and we probably achieved our product market fit somewhere in between. Myth Busting - Go to Market Speed is Critical - Don’t Reiterate the PrototypeOnce you have your prototype, don’t think of it as the Holy Grail, which doesn’t need fixing. Spending a few weeks revisiting your prototype and making required changes and upgrades can save you valuable time that you would spend on improving the framework post-launch. Pre-launch delays are less costly than post-launch ones. Spending a few weeks or even a month reiterating your prototype allows you to set a solid foundation and move faster one or two years down the line.Myth Busting - It Will Never Be 100% Right, so Ship Fast is Better Than Ship RightThe conventional logic says to get the product in front of the customer as fast as possible. But shipping a buggy product that is still a work in progress is a recipe for disaster. Dani gives the example of her startup, where they iterated the base software for 18 months before taking it to the market. At every iteration, they would use it as a customer to check if the software did everything it promised.  In a SaaS environment, people rely on software to do their daily tasks, which must work every time. 

Episode Summary:In this episode of SaaS Origin Stories, Phil Alves is joined by Bogdan Maksak, CEO of DigitalGenius, a successful startup in the SaaS space. He shares his insights on the critical aspects of the startup journey, including achieving a good product-market fit and funding strategies and common pitfalls.Guest at a Glance:Name: Bogdan MaksakWhat he does: CEO at  DigitalGenius, an AI platform focused on providing customer service solutions to e-Commerce companies. Connect with Bogdan: LinkedinTopics we cover: A two-point playbook for achieving product market fit Funding your business, how, when, and pitfalls to avoidTwo metrics to measure and track PMFThree takeaways for building your SaaS startupKey TakeawaysYou Won’t Get to First Base Without a Good Product Market FitA good PMF is the oxygen for SaaS startups that delivers sales, conversions, and retention. Product market fit has two dimensions; product and market. The product benefits need to align with customer pain areas and on the market front, especially in the early stages, target customers who are losing sleep over the problem your product will solve. As you scale and work with larger customers with more unique needs, the product will need tweaking to realign with evolving customer needs. During this phase, the product team needs to stay in touch with the customer to understand the root cause of their problems and tweak the product to resolve these issues. In retrospect, we had lost focus. We were chasing too many companies with disparate needs instead of focusing on those who were losing sleep over the problem we could solve.A SaaS Funding PlaybookAngel investors and venture capitalists are two familiar funding sources for SaaS startups. To amplify your success rate, ensure that you get a referral. Start building your network at least six months before actively seeking funding by connecting with entrepreneurs who have gone down the funding route.Have a market-validated PMF in place before you seek funding; else, it’s easy to blow up millions of funding in scaling your marketing, sales, and revenue teams, only to discover you don’t have sales traction due to a less-than-ideal product market fit. In this business, you don’t get second chances.It’s very hard to get in front of an investor if you don’t have someone introduce you to them. So if you can, try and build a network for it.Tracking and Measuring Your PMF ScoreThe customer conversion journey starts with offering a limited period free trial of your product. Bogdan recommends not gating any features in the trial and offering a reasonable trial period of 6-8 weeks. The free trial should come with no strings attached, and there should be transparency on the purchase price post-trial. Once the customer has used the product, the two metrics to measure your PMF are trial conversion and annual retention. A trial conversion north of 80% and an annual retention rate of over 85% are critical milestones of an excellent product market fit. We had over 95% trial conversions in our first year and a 130% net dollar retention rate in our second year. And we were like, yeah, it’s working.

In this special episode of SaaS Origin Stories, Phil Alves brings you the Best Moments in SaaS from four big players in the SaaS space, Rand Fishkin, Co-founder of SparkToro; Sujan Patel, Co-founder of Mailshake; Alfonso de la Nuez, Co-founder and CVO at UserZoom, and Bryan Clayton, CEO and Co-founder of GreenPal. Guests at a Glance:Rand Fishkin is the Co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, a SaaS company providing audience research for its clients. Rand is also the former CEO and Founder of Moz and the author of Lost and Founder. He shares practical advice on how to build a sustainable and profitable business without tapping venture capitalists. Sujan Patel is the Co-founder and CEO of Mailshake, and he shares his experience and mistakes while building and scaling Mailshake and how to identify product market fit. Sujan is also a data-driven content marketer, Managing Director at Ramp Ventures, and a part-time Board Member of the Entrepreneurs'​ Organization. Alfonso de la Nuez, the Co-founder and CVO of UserZoom, shares his insights on delivering the best-in-class user experience that helps amplify your net retention rate. He is also the author of the bestseller The Digital Experience Company. Winning in the Digital Economy with Experience Insights.  Bryan Clayton, CEO and Co-founder of GreenPal, joins the conversation to discuss how him and his co-founder turned a household errand into an incredibly successful SaaS business... while both working full-time.Key Takeaways:In this episode, we discuss the following:Audience research will be a game-changer in the next 10 yearsCustomer retention starts on day oneThe 80/20 rule for founders, i.e. be pretty good at everythingHow to create an excellent product-market fitRand Fishkin - Leading Through Sources of InfluenceMost customers won't care about your product in its early phases, though they will utilize a crappy product if it solves a problem they have. This conundrum persists because businesses benefit hugely from audience research since it clarifies which issues they should concentrate on or address first. Rand discusses the value of audience research, why you should know your audience thoroughly, and how audience research fits into a marketing strategy.The best way to influence the market is through audience research, which is SparkToro’s bread and butter. It depends on knowing and spending time in the places where your target audience already hangs out, so you can understand and relate to them directly.We are laser-focused on building a unique product that solves the audience research problem and not diversifying into other areas - Rand FishkinSujan Patel - Finding the Right CustomerThe first 250 customers of Mailshake were from pre-launch marketing but needed help finding the product market fit. The product had a retention and activation problem, and people weren’t using it successfully. Sujan was trying to solve these problems by talking with every new customer. Eventually, more salespeople started using it, so Sujan and his team decided to focus on them, rebrand, and improve their functionalities.Figure out how to remove noise first. But first, look at how to identify the noise. And again, you found a new customer. But who is the right customer? - Sujan PatelAlfonso de la Nuez - What Makes a Great User Experience?Retention is the holy grail for a SaaS business. You have to build a phenomenal onboarding and day-to-day user experience. Great UX design understands what the end user is looking for and exceeds expectations. When you deliver a great user experience, your customer will become your best salesperson and marketer.You only have one chance to provide a great first experience - Alfonso de la NuezBrian Clayton - Applying the 80/20 Rule to SaaSWhen you start a SaaS company, you need to be good enough at everything. That includes coding, product design, basic accounting, data science, and copywriting. Apply the 80/20 rule and invest your time to learn and get good enough at every skill. Then, hire somebody to do it.As a founder, you have to be 80/20 and good at about 30 different things - Brian ClaytonFor more interviews from the SaaS Origin Stories podcast, check us out on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player!

All founders dream that their business will skyrocket and succeed from the very beginning, but the reality is that most will fail. However, this isn’t a reason to give up. When you bounce back and start again, the story can repeat itself unless you learn the lessons of your failure. That was exactly the case for Jose Cayasso of Slidebean, who shares his insights and learnings from re-starting a SaaS business after failing the first time..In this episode, we discuss:The right moment to start a businessSolving problems for other SaaS entrepreneursWhy SaaS founders should focus on what they are good atHow to develop an effective customer acquisition strategyThe Right Moment to Start a BusinessBefore Slidebean, Jose left college and founded a startup that failed, which was when he started Slidebean. However, Jose believes that starting another company immediately after you fail is a bad idea because you focus on generating revenue quickly rather than following your business interests. For him, the best time to start a new business is once you’re an expert in an industry and discover a problem or opportunity. Then you can work on your company from a position of comfort rather than risking everything you have.I think the best companies get started when you have a job and discover something in the market that you have unique insight and expertise to solve. But you can do that from a position you can question this concept, whether it's a good or a bad idea - Jose CayassoLet Your First Product Do Its JobThe original version of Slidebean was simple, yet it served its purpose well. That’s a great strategy for building the first version of your product, in that it solves a specific problem for your customers. After that, you can develop it, add new features, and customize it for your clients.The original product was so simple, and I loved it. We came up with the concept that you could only build a slide with one piece of content and make a simple but beautiful presentation - Jose CayassoRunning an Effective Customer Acquisition StrategyIn a market where you have to compete with Prezi and PowerPoint, Slidebean started acquiring customers through organic reach, which proved ineffective. That forced the team to rethink the pricing and conversion funnels and opt for paid direct marketing acquisition channels, which feeds you customers quickly to test with and adjust your strategy.Any startup, any SaaS company, especially B2B, should first focus on getting profitable unit economics via paid marketing. It's an equation of running ads, understanding how much those ads cost, and understanding the revenue that those ads generated or the conversions that those ads generated are enough to pay for the cost of the service, the software, and the cost of acquiring those customers - Jose CayassoFor more interviews from the SaaS Origin Stories podcast, check us out on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player!

What makes great SaaS companies thrive? Every business has its own story.  But there’s one thing they all share, and that is a passionate founder who wants to solve a problem or cover a need. That is the case for Ben Dowling of IPinfo, who shares his company journey with the audience.In this episode, we discuss:How can IP data help your business?Building a business where you love to work Bootstrapping versus fundingAn effective hiring strategyHow to approach sales in SaaSHow Can IP Data Help You?IP data has plenty of uses, from website personalization to customizing website language, and currency and in cybersecurity, attacks on your network. Effectively, IP data also helps you gather more information and make more cost-effective decisions, deliver a better customer experience, and improve business advertising.We focus as a company on making sure our data's great and then leaving how customers want to use it to them. And there are a bunch of different use cases that it's useful for - Ben DowlingTake Your TimeSo many entrepreneurs try to move too quickly when building their businesses. Instead, try growing your company little by little, to the point where it makes enough money to support you. That allows you to create an enduring business where you love to work and don't need to rely on investors and instead can keep bootstrapping that company.I wanted to create something that I wanted to work on, a company where I wanted to work, the environment that I wanted to work in, and I was in no rush to see how big we can make it in a couple of years - Ben DowlingBootstrapping Versus FundingRaising money gives you a bunch of resources you can use. Funding can also be critical in some industries where you have well-funded competitors. However, bootstrapping allows you to grow your business slowly, experiment with different opportunities, and explore the problem you’re trying to solve.The nice thing with going at the pace that we're going at, which is quick for a bootstrap business, is that you get to identify opportunities as you go along. You incrementally build out what you're working on, and you have more time to explore the problem - Ben DowlingFor more interviews from the SaaS Origin Stories podcast, check us out on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player!

Every business has its golden formula for growth that works for them. But one SaaS platform might push things further by growing your brand awareness and referrals through word of mouth. That is Referral Rock, and today, its Founder and CEO, Josh Ho, shares in detail its origin story.In this episode, we discuss:How to make word-of-mouth referrals a part of your business growth strategyB2B versus B2C SaaS productsWinning strategies to build your team and scale your SaaS businessB2B Versus B2C SaaS ProductsThough B2B SaaS products are more complex, it's easier to sell and scale as you need fewer customers willing to spend more for a great product. For B2C, you need thousands of customers, and even if the market seems larger, it is much more difficult to sustain and develop from scaling and building infrastructure perspectives. But B2C seems more appealing to first-time entrepreneurs as they often want to deliver some value to the masses.I think people default to B2C because many are consumers first, and they want their friends and family to think it's cool. On the B2B side, you can find a small number of people, give them a huge value metric, and they don't really blink an eye at spending hundreds of dollars on software - Josh HoTake Notes of This Hiring StrategyBuilding and scaling a SaaS business implies strategically hiring the right people for specific positions. For Josh, that means learning enough first about a role and then hiring a mid-level specialist whom he can train to take on management responsibilities and build a team. And that person will also make the playbook, put it into an operation manual, learn it themselves, and then train other people.I modeled in my head as I would nail the job, and then I would scale up by finding other people and training them behind me - Josh HoLearn This Before Starting Your CompanyWhen you start being successful as an entrepreneur, you might feel mature enough to take on new challenges or that you're better than you are. But when you get to a new level, you might realize that you were not mature enough and there is still a lot you should learn. Be aware of this and constantly look for areas to improve before taking on new commitments.There was a lot more meat down in level two versus me trying to jump to level three or jump to level four - Josh HoFor more interviews from the SaaS Origin Stories podcast, check us out on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player!

You found a problem and came up with an idea of how to solve it. All you have to do now is make it a reality. To do that you need a great plan to launch your business, get money, find your product-market fit, and so on. And one of the best ways to do that is by taking examples from successful SaaS founders, like John Stojka, the Co-Founder of Sertifi.In this episode, we discuss:Bootstrapping versus raising capitalHorizontal versus vertical marketsHow to find your vertical marketFinalizing Business FasterSertifi provides an agreement platform that brings contracts and payments together. Historically, people would send the contract, get it signed, and then request the payment. The platform combines those things into one process and builds a workflow around that. The idea for Sertifi came to John and Nick when they noticed that the contracts were getting lost and the contract execution component was time-consuming.We thought that the most important thing was to make sure that the contract signing and the payment processes were easy - John StojkaBootstrapping Versus Funding a SaaS BusinessIf you raise too much money too quickly, the risk of you not having a great outcome can be higher, and there is also time pressure that comes from the investors. When investors give you money, they expect you to either become a huge success or die. When bootstrapping, you move at your own pace, and the chances of your business growing are much higher. But, if you don't invest enough, and you don't get the capital that you need, you could miss the market too, and someone else will fill the gap.If you can get product market fit and some acceleration, I think you're pretty likely to get a base hit or a double, maybe even a triple. But if you're gonna raise a lot of capital, you will be gunning for that Grand Slam - John StojkaFinding Your VerticalIf you build a product and choose a vertical market, you can expand to other verticals. Besides, in a vertical market, it may be an easier customer solution. A horizontal market is more challenging and competitive and requires more money to succeed. The challenge is to find your vertical. The best way to do that is by asking the following questions: Has this market adopted any tool like this yet? Is there a standard CRM or a place of integration I can integrate into? Is there a need for this product?You pick a small pond, and you dominate it. We had this product that could solve various problems for many different people. But we didn't start getting success until about 2015 when we verticalized the solution for a specific vertical - John StojkaFor more interviews from the SaaS Origin Stories podcast, check us out on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player!

Every SaaS product aims to solve one specific problem its founder encountered. But some products become all-round solutions to multiple problems in their category or niche. In the world of events, that is Accelevents. Today, its Founder and CEO, Jonathan Kazarian, shares his SaaS journey.In this episode, we discuss:How events impact your B2B marketing strategyGrowing numbers during an economic crisisHow to set up your SaaS product for endless growthInvesting more in customer experience rather than marketingHow Can Events Impact Your B2B Marketing Strategy?Delivering a better customer experience starts by gathering and analyzing data. Traditional marketing techniques for capturing that first-party data limit marketers in the level of information they can get. But events offer you the possibility of getting multiple touchpoints with your customers. People are more likely to share their data and help marketers leverage their efforts.Technology needs to be there to make life easier for event organizers - Jonathan KazarianFrom Zero to Hero and BeyondThough managing events is stressful, it can help companies bring in more data, customers, and revenue. However, during the pandemic crisis, many layoffs occurred, and companies were firing people responsible for organizing events. For Accelevents, the pandemic meant both the moment the business hit bottom rock, as it went down to zero in revenue and the beginning of constant growth. Jonathan and his team have been focusing on helping their clients and making them realize why events are significant for their businesses.In the world of events, you spend three months building this experience that culminates in three hours. You don't have even ten minutes to wait for a response - Jonathan KazarianA Golden SaaS StrategyIn terms of sales, for some brands, the final step is selling their products. For Accelevents, this is only an intermediate process. The company invests heavily in customer experience and focuses on helping their customers learn their platform and constantly engage to get their feedback and improve. So we made the decision that we want to invest in customer experience, and we won't invest in any mechanism of growth that will lead to a decrease in customer experience - Jonathan KazarianFor more interviews from the SaaS Origin Stories podcast, check us out on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player!

Lindsay Tjepkema, Founder of Casted, talks about the importance of creative content in marketing and the challenge of measuring its value. She shares her journey of building Casted and discusses topics such as amplified marketing, developing a Minimum Viable Product, and the value of a strong network for customer growth. Lindsay also emphasizes the need to take risks in order to avoid regret and talks about the qualities of a successful SaaS founder. Plus, she shares insights on starting a business during a pandemic and recession, the impact of recessions on marketing budgets, and book recommendations for early SaaS founders.