The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

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 retentionWhy do you have to slow down the sales process in order to speed it upThe big lessons learned to create messaging that's humanly instantly understandableFor more information about the guest from this week:Firaas RashidWebsite Hook

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 AIAmir 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 timeHow 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

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 NatureAriel has held various executive positions, including VP of New Markets and VP of Sales and Customer Success at Kaltura, where he ran global sales teams with dozens of repsHe'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 the 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 forHow to overcome the cynicism in the market around embracing innovationThe best investments to make in the early stage of your product evolutionHow to go about making big steps forward on your start-up journey without burning yourself outFor more information about the guest from this week:Ariel HitronWebsite Second Nature

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 of AppyWayDan 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 his 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 operate 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 we do the opposite of the norm and break the patternThat 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 sightThat 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 HubertWebsite: AppyWay

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 OcurateTobias 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 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 wavelengthWhy valuing slowness can be the key to rapid growthWhy too many SaaS businesses don't have a product-market fit issue, but a positioning issueWhy you shouldn't found your SaaS business before you deeply understand the real pain pointFor more information about the guest from this week:Tobias Konitzer, PhdWebsite Ocurate

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 SwapcardHe'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 worthlessThat even in the densest markets you have ample opportunity to dominate a nicheThat 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 BoulardWebsite Swapcard

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 Luma1John 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 LUMA1, which he established 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 conceptWhat 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 dependenceWhat it takes to spark arousal amongst users and customersFor more information about the guest from this week:John HudsonWebsite LumaOne

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give us back the energy and power to do the things where human intelligence and imagination shine. My guest is Ilia Zelenkin, CEO of Bitskout.Ilia spent close to 15 years of his career at Nokia, ultimately as head of product & service innovation, Global Services. He then co-founded SafeRoom, a control center for Encrypted Data. In 2020, he co-founded Bitskout, which he's heading up as the CEO.He's passionate about technology changing the world, excited to build Star Trek-like futures, and solving problems that matter.What gets him out of bed every morning is his passion to help people become happier doing their work. The thought that 83% of people who go to work today are disengaged makes him triple his efforts.Bitskout was founded to free people up to do creative and meaningful work and with that bring back passion and satisfaction to the job. Their mission is to give us the affordable tools to make it happen NOW.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ilia to my podcast. We explore what's broken in managing projects within small companies - and why we should not accept the waste that goes on with that. Ilia shares his vision about how to make the most advanced technology affordable and the journey he's on to turn his intelligence platform into an expert platform that could not only forecast your work but also check it later on as well.We also dig into his first principles to create solutions that create a pull from users, i.e., a desire for more.Here are some of his quotes"What I did, I wrote every any crazy, stupid ideas that I had in my head for six months, five ideas per day, anything crazy. Anything that comes to mind. And eventually, what happened, you start noticing patterns, and you start noticing things, how they're connected. They came up with the problem, and it was a combination, a sequence of problems. So number one was building solutions to help deliver teams' projects faster. And I noticed that we couldn't breach a certain kind of project waste percentage. So we always were losing around 30% of the project times on some stupid things."During this interview, you will learn four things:That the ability to invent something is a skill - a muscle that you can trainThat the best roadmap choices start with minimum viable experimentsHow to optimize your pricing strategy so it incentivizes desired behaviorThat it takes the same amount of effort to do something great - so why settle for something mediocreFor more information about the guest from this week:Ilia ZelenkinWebsite Bitskout

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that gives B2B SaaS businesses the opportunity to increase their value by making their product multiplayer. My guest is Nimrod Priell, CEO of Cord.Nimrod has been a software pioneer from the very first start. He's got over 20 years of experience in development, data science, and product management, and decided in 2019 it was time to make the jump to take on the entrepreneur role. He loves thinking about how we work and how we can make that experience better. This is exactly why he started Cord. With a team of designers, engineers, and product craftspeople that have collected some secrets from their tenures at leading tech companies like Google, Facebook and Adobe - they are on a mission to leverage those secrets to make collaboration at work more effective.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Nimrod to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way SMEs can create true value from their ever-growing SaaS stack. We discuss the underlying problem and what needs to change in mindset of the SaaS Vendor community to cross the chasm that will bring more value for all. Lastly, Nimrod shares his views on what it takes to build a SaaS business that cannot be ignored.Here are some of his quotes:"The average SME today, Okta says, has over 90 different SaaS tools. So I saw how these companies work internally, with a lot of tools that are bought, not built-in, and don't have this 'connective tissue.' The tools are built single player and all the communication around them gets stuffed into Slack and inbox. I saw this as a problem because these are b2b SaaS vendors, and this is a problem for their clients."During this interview, you will learn four things:Why the winners in the next decade in SaaS will be the ones building collaboration in their toolsWhy complacency in SaaS is the biggest risk of becoming irrelevant - and what to do about it. How turning away a lot of business can be a very solid way to grow fastA secret to creating a viral effect with the products you buildFor more information about the guest from this week:Nimrod PriellWebsite Cord

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to finally prevent us from relying on anecdotes that lead to biased decisions and, with that, build products customers love. My guest is Daniel Erickson, Founder and CEO of Viable.Daniel has been active in software development since 2006. He took an untraditional path from most. Together with his co-founder, he skipped college altogether and, straight out of high school, created a consulting firm in Portland to help early-stage companies build their very first products, create MVPs, get their first users, and/or get their first investment. After doing the same thing over and over again for clients as a consultant, he really wanted to dig into a longer-term problem. And being an early member of the Node.js community, where he helped organize a lot of conferences, got him an early engineering job at Yammer.From there, he moved to Getable, where he was the CTO, and to Eaz,e where he was VP of Engineering. Today, he's the founder and CEO of Viable.Viable is on a mission to help us better and more quickly understand what customers are telling us, so we can immediately find the most important things we should be working on.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Daniel to my podcast. We explore the challenges many SaaS businesses face in finding product-market fit. Daniel shares his experiences, and what's required to do / not to do in order to achieve this - whether you build a product from the ground up, or evolve an existing product. He also shares his experiences that not every product is fit for a product-led growth approach, and what it takes to spark adoption and to grow meaningful traction. Last but not least, he leaves his views on what it takes to build a software business the world talks about.Here are some of his quotes:"It actually came from my time at Gettable. And I spent four years there, trying to find product-market fit, and never quite found. But I did learn a lot about collecting customer feedback and using customer feedback to guide a roadmap. And it just kind of got me obsessed with this idea of using customer feedback to build a really great product. So I started actually looking around on that one and came up with this idea to go tackle that. So the initial spark was actually solving my own problem. It was I knew I was going to have to solve the product-market fit problem at some point. And I knew that customer feedback was the best way to improve a product. I actually came across a blog post from Rahul Vora about how Superhuman found product-market fit, I applied some of those ideas to the system. And then went off to the races from there and quickly realized that this was a larger problem than early-stage startups."During this interview, you will learn four things:That it can take years to find product-market-fit if you are not making some critical choicesWhy it's way easier to design and build a remarkable product when you got a very specific user in mind.How to create products that result in jaw-drop moments every time you demo them.That just solving a customers problem doesn't mean that you're going to have a product that growsFor more information about the guest from this week:Daniel EricksonWebsite Viable