The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to solve the global talent problem. My guest is Nemo D'Qrill, CEO at Sigma Polaris Nemo has traveled many paths driven by a passion to discover, understand, and solve worthy problems. From Mathematician to Logician to Flautist for the Danish Queen to Entrepreneur. He was honored as the youngest-ever Goodwill Ambassador of Denmark, presenting joint ventures of world-leading companies internationally such as Maersk, Vestas, Grundfos, and Lego.  His constant passion for understanding and solving problems naturally lead him down the path of Entrepreneurship. With passion and drive Nemo decided to tackle the age-old problems of inefficiency, discrimination, and inaccuracy in recruitment and HR in general.  That's why he founded Sigma Polaris around a singular vision; Creating a world where HR analysis is based solely on meritocracy and where bias and discrimination are things of the past. Its mission: To change the world of work and shift how companies build, engage, retain, and capitalize on the use of diverse teams in today’s workforce. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Nemo to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we recruit our talent today. That there isn't a talent problem, but a distribution problem - and how we can fix that with technology - in particular by removing bias and having to rely on intuition. Nemo shares the most important lessons learned from his startup journey. That building a business requires much more than just an amazing product. What advantage leveraging diversity gives them. And why his business couldn't have been what it is today without investing time in exercise i.e. taking care of himself. Here's a quote from him: There is a saying; 'you can get a book to be popular, by getting eight out of 10 people to like it, or by getting two out of 10 people to love it.' Now, when you are a giant, you need, most of the time, the eight out of 10. You need to be having almost all of the people you speak with think that at least you're interesting good. But I think as a startup, one of the things I've realized is this: we need to work with people that truly buy into it, the people that also believe in the mission. Because if you speak with them, sales cycles get shorter, and procurement gets easier. And all of a sudden, you get a reference, and you get a quote from every single client. And I think today, we've had a quote from almost every single client we have worked with because we choose clients that believe. Instead of trying to get tons of people interested, we try to get some people super excited.  During this interview, you will learn four things: His strategy to be less 'all over the place'  How you can create a 300% impact difference in a matter of just 3 months That you can get your product to be popular by getting 8 out of 10 people to like it or getting 2 out of 10 to love it That it doesn't matter how good your pitch deck is if it doesn't get shared.  For more information about the guest from this week: Nemo D'Qrill Website Sigma Polaris Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short daily reflection on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help bring the global unemployment rates down. My guest is Shay David, Co-founder, and CEO of Retrain.AI Shay is a serial entrepreneur who brings many years of experience in dreaming up products and making them a reality: from concept to market, from slideware to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. He co-founded of Kaltura where he helped define the future of video - thereby taking responsibility as CRO, then GM, and today as a member of the Board.  Prior to that he co=founded Destinator Technologies, a mobile-GPS-navigation software, and consulted on open systems to Fortune 500 companies Today he's the Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Retrain.AI a company founded on the vision to make a measurable impact on global unemployment rates by helping 10+ million users find meaningful career opportunities and help enterprises future-proof their organizations. Their mission: To inform, empower and redefine the way enterprises hire, retain and grow their employees.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Shay to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the Talent Development market and why the best strategy for managing HR & talent management today sadly is: "We'll do tomorrow what we did yesterday." Shay share's his vision of how to solve the global talent problem at the core. He also shares his secrets on how to create a sustainable advantage and what needs to be in place to shape a software business that people not only start talking about but keep talking about.  Here's one of his quotes:  Let me ask you, for any organization that you ever worked for when was the last time you logged in to a corporate learning network and expected to actually learn something? The answer is that never happens. Right?  When was the last time that you get an email from HR that actually had important career advice for you? Again, that never happens.  When was the last time that a candidate that a company submitted a resume and got a call within 15 minutes saying we've processed your request, we think we understand who you are, we have two questions, and we want to schedule an interview for you for tomorrow? Again, that never happens.  But this is not a joke. This is a problem affecting billions of people every day, the systems that are intended to manage talent acquisition to manage talent organization, and learning and development, those systems are failing. And the cost of that failure is catastrophic.  During this interview, you will learn four things: Why having a shared image with your customers about the future state of the world is critical to creating momentum That a way to understand whether you are on the right track is to ask your customers to articulate in one sentence how you give them immediate value Why it's not about finding product-market fit - but keeping product-market fit. Why, in order to succeed, you shouldn't think about technology, regulations, or money. That always comes second For more information about the guest from this week: Shay David Website Retrain AI Subscribe to a Daily Value Inspiration Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then subscribe here It's a short daily reflection on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to make 1-1 coaching approachable for all of us. My guest is Christine Tao, Co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board. Throughout her career, a central theme for Christine has always been leadership development. She uncovered the power coaching could have on people when she acted in her role as Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a mobile advertising platform, where she led the growth of Tapjoy’s network business from 0 to more than $100 million in revenue in less than 3 years.  She experienced it from the other end when she advised several venture-backed startups including Flyby Media (acquired by Apple), Immersv, and Comprendi.  She realized firsthand that today's workforce is increasingly overwhelmed and stressed with increasing responsibilities and an always-on culture. This inspired her to do something about it. Today, Christine is the CEO & Co-founder of Sounding Board, a company that was founded around the vision to make coaching accessible to leaders at all levels of the organization and break through the high-cost barriers that had made it impossible in the past. Its mission: Develop the world’s most impactful leaders. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Christine to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of leadership coaching and how this - by blending technology and people in the right way can be a thing of the past.  Christine further shares her big lessons learned during the pandemic - and how she and her team not only secured Sounding Board would survive but actually come out stronger as a company.  During this interview, you will learn four things: That the question in a Pandemic is not: 'where should we cut', but 'where can we continue to invest' How to create an organization that's aligned and autonomous, and at the same time more creative and powerful That the way to survive an existential crisis is not to increase focus on your own company, but on that of your customers Why being bootstrapped - and being less well-capitalized than your competitors can be very helpful. For more information about the guest from this week: Christine Tao Website Sounding Board  Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help customer success teams cut churn, boost revenue and grow faster. My guest is Firaas Rashid, Founder, and CEO of Hook. Firaas is a tech entrepreneur on a mission, and one of his passions is Customer Success. He was CTO and Head of Customer Success (EMEA) at AppDynamics and helped it scale from $170m to $550m Annual Recurring Revenue in 2 years. Prior to that, he was a Director of IT at Credit Suisse. Today Firaas is the CEO of Hook to realize his mission to change the way Customer Success is run. Hook essentially empowers Customer Success teams with accurate revenue predictions and intelligent, actionable insights to secure renewals. It takes the guesswork out of their day-to-day - and helps them focus on spending their time where it matters. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Firaas to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of customer success. Firaas shares his experience around what it takes to answer the question "What makes customers renew, and what makes them churn?" He shares his journey of building a SaaS business that changes the way Customer Services is run and creates impact. In this conversation, he explains the counterintuitive lessons he learned and how that helped him create defensible differentiation from the start.   Here is one of his quotes: People tend to focus on their loudest customers. I actually think the biggest problem is, the quiet customers, when you're running a SaaS business are the ones that are going to leave.  And the hard thing is, without looking at the data, you don't know who your quiet customers are because they're quiet.  When I was at AppDynamics, over the course of the couple of years that I was there, we started with very simple metrics. What we were able to find was that in none of those metrics that we looked at did sentiment make a positive or negative difference to whether or not someone renewed. Yet what we saw was that with engagement, there was a direct correlation in every number. If that number went down, the customer churned, if the number went up, they spent more money.  During this interview, you will learn four things: Why do so many SaaS products suffer from the value gap - i.e. what the customer paid for on day zero, is far away from what they're getting. What you can do differently in your product to minimize churn and increase net revenue retention Why do you have to slow down the sales process in order to speed it up The big lessons learned to create messaging that's humanly instantly understandable For more information about the guest from this week: Firaas Rashid Website Hook Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to ace customer interactions and accelerate revenue. My guest is Amir Konigsberg, Co-founder, and CEO of Pragma AI Amir is a Tel Aviv-based tech entrepreneur with vast experience seeding, building, and leading technology-driven companies, taking products to market and growing them into multimillion-dollar revenue-generating global businesses. He's founded, led, and held leadership roles at Twiggle, Israel Brain Technologies, mySupermarket, HourOne, CodeScan, Google, and General Motors. Amir holds a Ph.D. in Rationality and is the author of 18 US Patents. Today he's the CEO of Pragma AI, a startup that was founded to set the stage for a new way of selling. Their mission: keep sales human.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Amir to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we empower sales today to succeed in a remote-first world. We discuss the art of picking your niche, and what it requires to create something that's not only used but value differentiated. Amir shares his experience in what it takes to get your messaging right and how to navigate between the signal and the noise as you scale your startup. Last but not least he reveals his insights on what it takes to create a SaaS business that cannot be ignored.  Here are some of his quotes "We work very, very closely with customers. And we try and listen as much as we can. And it's very difficult to do by the way. You say you're listening, but most of the time, you're actually you're looking to get a thumbs up for what you've done, because it's pretty painful when sometimes you don't hear that. Or sometimes you can hear 'Thumbs up' but it's kind of soft. And what we're basically looking for, as you do with every startup: 'We need this. When are you going to deliver this because we can't live without it!' " During this interview, you will learn four things: How to go about crafting your message so that it resonates? Why you should not rest until you're certain that what you're doing is distinct enough to be remarkable, and not just something that people use. That running a SaaS business is a marathon, not a sprint - and how to go about sustaining yourself and your team to move mountains for a long time How to find the nuggets to focus on that people are prepared to pay a premium for? For more information about the guest from this week: Amir Konigsberg  Website Pragma AI  Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to practice sales conversations without pressure. My guest is Ariel Hitron, Co-founder and CEO of Second Nature Ariel has held various executive positions including VP of New Markets and VP Sales and Customer Success at Kaltura, where he ran global sales teams with dozens of reps He's a tech entrepreneur drawing from experience in both the field and the lab. He's run global sales teams with dozens of reps; built playbooks and training sessions for sales as a product marketer; and earlier in his career, designed and developed multiple software product lines from the ground up, each generating tens of millions of recurring revenue, used by millions of consumers.  What he learned is that the key to success in scaling a sales organization is hiring the best people and coaching them to be even better.  That's why he co-founded Second Nature in 2018. Second Nature is on a mission to help make talking about your products as easy as second nature, to ace every sales call.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ariel to my podcast. We explore what's broken in way we equip sales to deliver top performance. We discuss the disconnect between marketing and sales, and how things can change for the better if these departments would understand each other better. Ariel shares the big lessons learned from starting and gaining traction with a SaaS business in a very crowded market. Last but not least, he tells about the do's and don'ts to create a software business that no one can ignore. Here are some of his quotes: We're getting the materials and the kind of messaging from marketing. We're getting everything, here's our messaging. The reality is, nobody cares. Nobody cares about your messaging. Yeah. And now you have a very short time span, and you have to understand what do they care about at this point in time? What do I have to prove to them today? In 13 seconds, or five minutes or 25 minutes, if you're lucky? And how do I focus the conversation on that? During this interview, you will learn four things: Why many software vendors don't get the traction they hope for How to overcome the cynicism in the market around embracing innovation The best investments to make in the early stage of your product evolution How to go about making big steps forward on your start-up journey without burning yourself out For more information about the guest from this week: Ariel Hitron Website Second Nature Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation enabling more electric, autonomous mobility to become a reality. That paves the way for automated compliance. Seamless transactions. And smarter, cleaner, more efficient cities. For everyone. My guest is Dan Hubert, Founder and CEO AppyWay Dan initially founded AppyParking after experiencing first-hand the pain of parking caused by a fragmented and broken market when trying to park near the Royal Albert Hall for a concert. From this was born the AppyParking mobile app, but more questions quickly arose... What if we could digitise parking spaces? And not just spaces – but all of the UK’s kerbs? What opportunities would that unlock? How could a digitised, dynamic kerb not only meet the ever-growing demands of urban transport today – but shape that of tomorrow? From that lightbulb moment onwards, Dan was hooked. He became unashamedly kerb obsessed and founded AppyWay a startup that's on a mission to lead the charge to help cities thrive, from the kerb up. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Dan to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of parking. Dan shares his vision of how to make the kerbside a value driver and turn it into a positive revenue engine that benefits all of us. He shares how incredibly hard it has been to create momentum, and what he's done to create breakthroughs, momentum and secure defensible differentiation for his business. Last but not least he shares is advice on what it takes to create a SaaS business that the world will talk about (and keep talking about). Here are some of his quotes: I pitched it to all the parking departments of London. And they looked at me like I was a lunatic. Basically, their business is to manage parking enforcement and make money from parking sessions. And I was trying to convince them: here's data to create better information to make sure people can get to the destination without a fine and reduce pollution. And at that meeting, there was a guy from BT, who's in charge of a big 40.000 fleet of which 8000 operating in London, and he had a £3.6 million parking problem in London, And he asked 'Can I have your data into my system, please, because this will help my drivers.' And I was like Ok, here's the opportunity. During this interview, you will learn four things: How meaningful value can be created if do the opposite of the norm and breaking the pattern That extremely valuable innovation ideas are often right in front of us - we just need to develop an eye to spot it. How to win governmental authorities to champion your idea and help realize it - even though they appear to be the biggest blocker at first sight That momentum sparks when we start telling stories and paint a visual picture of 'what can be' For more information about the guest from this week: Dan Hubert Website: AppyWay Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help B2C business spend their money right - to increase profitability. My guest is Tobias Konitzer Ph.D., CEO of Ocurate Tobias Konitzer is an academically trained entrepreneur who has a proven track record of turning research into technology and into a product that addresses ubiquitous pain points.  He worked for Facebook Research and completed a Ph.D. in computational social science at Stanford University. In 2017 he co-founded of PredictWise, where he initially acted as Chief Scientist and became their CEO in 2020.PredictWise processed a large array of public opinion data collected from 260M+ Americans on hundreds of data points.  During his tenure at PredictWise, Tobias started to understand the value of this database in conjunction with modern machine learning for consumer-facing companies: Companies have a hard time optimizing over and understanding margins (LTV:CAC ratio) that is crucial for both profitability and accurate financial forecasting.  On this premise, Tobias founded Ocurate, empowering brands to focus on the right customer by predicting lifetime value, churn, conversion and growth at the individual level, with unprecedented accuracy. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Tobias to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the ability of many B2C companies to grow profitably. Tobias shares his big lessons learned in starting a revolution, and what it took to create solid traction. He touches upon the importance of investing in getting positioning right. Last but not least he shares his advice on what it takes to build a SaaS business that cannot be ignored, and what mindset and habits to develop to not burn out from the many failures you'll have to deal with on your way. Here are some of his quotes "I used to tell my investors, the vision is making a new way to thinking about efficient spending, the organizing principle of b2c companies. And this new way of of efficient spending, we call, folks call, lifetime value. And I want to say one more word here. The idea behind lifetime value is using AI to predict exactly how much profit, not revenue, but profit, every customer will bring to you as a company. And now, the big idea here is, if I would know that with 100% accuracy, all these other things all of a sudden, are very, very easy." During this interview, you will learn four things: How to win more customers by getting on the same wavelength Why valuing slowness can be the key to rapid growth Why too many SaaS businesses don't have a product-market fit issue, but a positioning issue Why you shouldn't found your SaaS business before you deeply understand the real pain point For more information about the guest from this week: Tobias Konitzer, Phd Website Ocurate Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to connect business people in ways that are more engaging and drive more value. My guest is Baptiste Boulard, CEO of Swapcard He's an ex-lawyer who turned entrepreneur and tech enthusiast. This Henry Ford quoted what drives him the most: “Anyone who stops learning is old – at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. Life is about keeping your mind young.” Today, Baptiste is CEO and Co-Founder of Swapcard. He swapped his career in law to launch Swapcard alongside two childhood friends with a vision to change the way people network at events. What's underpinning their vision is the belief in the impact of human-to-human interaction in a digital world. Swapcard is therefore on a mission to bridge the gap between the online and face-to-face world - thereby aiming to unlock meaningful encounters that have, until now, been impossible. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Baptiste to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the space where we make our biggest marketing investments: the world of events. How a lot of things have been solved on the process side - but not what's most valuable: Networking. Baptiste shares the big lessons learned from his entrepreneurial journey. What was required to not only survive the Pandemic crisis but to actually come out stronger. The pivots he's led to move from 'nice to have' into the 'mission critical' domain. And what is required to build a SaaS business that the world talks about? Here are some of his quotes: "When you are an entrepreneur, you're building a future which doesn't exist. So if you're not curious it's very hard to because there is no recipe and no one who can really help you. What you have to do is be very curious in terms of your reflection, the people you meet, and grab ideas from everything you do" During this interview, you will learn four things: What skills to develop when you're building a future that doesn't exist - and there's no recipe. What to do when everything you've done and all the value you build seems to become worthless That even in the densest markets you have ample opportunity to dominate a niche That a strong culture is the foundation to survive any crisis - and how to go about building one. For more information about the guest from this week: Baptiste Boulard Website Swapcard Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to grow the success of every organization by enabling a fluid knowledge flow. My guest is John Hudson, CEO of Luma1 John is a global tech entrepreneur and investor. While he's worked in tech including retail, e-commerce, and real estate, the main focus has been based on his belief that training is the fastest way to move the needle in any organization and the right technology can make it move faster and be even more impactful.   This became the founding principle behind founding LUMA1 in 2017. The company is on a mission to enable people and organizations to drive tangible improvements to training and communications by creating and delivering video experiences that today’s workers want. And this inspired me, and hence I invited John to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's business world when it comes to transparent communication and sharing knowledge. We discuss how it holds organizations back when it comes to accelerating change, and what's missing to fix the problem. We discuss his big lessons learned in his attempt to embrace product-led growth and how he's steering product development to focus on what matters. Last but not least John shares his views on what it takes to build a B2B SaaS product that makes people say "I need to have that!" Here are some of his quotes "The fastest way to move the needle in any business is knowledge flow. And that can be done through communications, or it can be done through formal learning, coaching, whatever it might be.  A lot of organizations just don't do it. I've visited a billion-dollar company that actually does no formal training. It's all done ad hoc, But it's got nothing to do with time, money and knowledge to do it. Oftentimes in businesses, there's this sort of black box, things are sort of cloaked in this mysterious thing." During this interview, you will learn four things: That people need to feel cared about - and how to embrace that as a product concept What we can learn from mistakes made in the eLearning space when it comes to getting users engaged and committed. Why a critical design criteria in development needs to be how your product helps organizations move as fast as they need to move - without dependence What it takes to spark arousal amongst users and customers  For more information about the guest from this week: John Hudson Website LumaOne Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices