The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on the big resilience lessons learned during the recent Pandemic. My guest is Ronni Zehavi, CEO and Co-founder of Hibob Ronni has over 25 years of experience in multinational, hi-tech companies. Prior to setting up hibob, he was an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Silicon Valley-based Bessemer Venture Partners. He’s the strategic advisor and co-founder of Team8 Cyber Security, a powerhouse developing disruptive tech in the cyber security space. Ronni was also the co-founder and CEO of Cotendo, a content delivery network which in 2012, just four years after it was founded, was acquired by Akamai in a $300m. Ronni has a BA in History and Educational Management from Tel Aviv University and a MA in Organisational Sociology from Bar-Ilan University. This is the second time Ronni features on my podcast, the first episode was launch in December 2019. The reason why I invited him again is to hear about his story of what happened after that - and in particular - how they navigated the effects of the pandemic. We explore what happened with HiBob the moment COVID kicked in in March 2020. How did Ronni and his Management Team shift their focus? What became the critical priories (and why). And what decisions did they take to not only survive but to actually come out stronger as a business?  Here are some of his quotes: The restart around COVID had a very good impact from an 18-month retro perspective. We were more focused. Really made a crystal clear vision, so we all understand what we do and why we do it, i.e. "all hands on deck, let's make sure that we cross this uncertainty together."We slowed down expansion to the US because we were new there. And we doubled on the markets where we felt more comfortable: Europe, UK, Israel. We tried not to cut our budget in engineering. Because we knew, at some point it will be over, so we really want to take advantage and speed up some other projects that we thought are relevant. During this interview, you will learn four things: The critical things to refocus the business on when a crisis kicks in, especially if you don't know if its behavior will be U, V, or for example W-shaped  What to do differently to ensure you will come out stronger from a crisis Why you should be on your marks not to BS yourself - and how to avoid that in a smart way. Why a crisis is a great opportunity to grow the bond inside the business, the alignment, and everyone’s commitment For more information about the guest from this week: Ronni Zehavi Website Hibob Link to our initial podcast interview See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give blind people their sight back and make robots see and interpret exactly what we see. My guest is Sheila Nirenberg, Founder, and CEO of Bionic Sight and Nirenberg Neuroscience. Sheila Nirenberg is a professor of neuroscience at Cornell Medical School and the founder of two start-up companies in New York City – one that develops new kinds of prosthetic devices (Bionic Sight, LLC), and one that develops new kinds of smart robots (Nirenberg Neuroscience LLC).  Her lab at the university focuses on basic science, and her companies take what’s learned in the lab and use it to develop solutions to real-world problems.    She’s won numerous awards for innovative research, including a MacArthur “genius” Award, and has been featured in a TED talk, a BBC documentary, a PBS documentary, the Discovery Channel, Scientific American, as well as many peer-reviewed publications. The reason? Her work on cracking the neural code of the retina i.e. the code the retina uses to communicate with the brain to allow us to see. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Sheila to my podcast. We explore what's still broken in deep-learning approaches and how that holds us back. We dig into her breakthrough - and what opportunities this enables for remarkable innovation that impact all of us. During our conversation, she shares some of her biggest challenges which were often led by the limited mindset of humans rather than driven by limitations in technology. She also shares her vision on what it takes to shape a software business that people keep talking about.  Here are some of her quotes: My claim to fame is that I cracked this code in the retina, so the transformation mathematically from images to the signals that leave the eye, and go to the brain, As soon as I did that, I realized immediately the application of it is that you can make an artificial retina that could restore sight to the blind. And then I was thinking, well, if I could make if that really were true, and I can make send the same signals to the brain, why couldn't I send it to a robot’s brain? So I quickly patented that and started a second company. During this interview, you will learn four things: True value can arrive when we challenge ourselves to find innovative approaches that require exponentially less data That often technology is not the issue to drive meaningful change, but skepticism, fear, and narrow mindedness - and how to go about that  The lessons to be learned on how to go about funding and taking the Venture Capital route The big lessons around having grid and perseverance to succeed For more information about the guest from this week: Sheila Nirenberg Website Nirenberg Neuroscience Website Bionic Sight See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to create top-performing sales teams that live and breath their sales ambition - because they're highly motivated and their natural competitive instinct is supercharged.  My guest is Sindre Haaland, Founder and CEO of SalesScreen. Sindre is the CEO & Founder of SalesScreen. Born and raised in Norway, but today lives in Brooklyn, NY.  He believes that the success of every company is a result of their combined talent. That even the leading products and services fall short if the people behind them can’t perform at their very best.  That sparked the big idea behind SalesScreen. A tool that turns the process of selling into a team effort, combining individual motivational instruments with cultural aspects and a winning mentality.   In short, SalesScreen transforms the challenging work of sales into a professional, motivating and exciting game. A game where all your employees will have fun whilst competing amongst each other for the top-position! This inspired me, and hence I invited Sindre to my podcast. We explore his journey as a tech entrepreneur. What he did wrong, that caused him to waste a full year. What it takes to break new ground in a highly competitive space like Sales Automation. We discuss why humanizing software (rather than automation alone)  is key to delivering remarkable impact. Lastly, Sindre shares his experience about the importance of embracing emotion as a way to stand out in the market.  Here are some of his quotes: At our first client, I remember one guy there, he took up the mobile phone application, went to the middle of off the sales floor, kind of demanded attention of everyone, and then he hits "sale." Then all the TV screens lit up with Eye of the Tiger playing. Everyone was just going crazy, the energy was so good. We were like, "Okay, we found something here." And look and behold, a week later, this executive from a large insurance chain in Europe called because she had visited this particular call center and seeing the energy for herself. She said "I'm not sure what this product is called or if you're the right one, but we want to buy. We want this for our sales teams as well.  During this interview, you will learn four things: Why making people love what they do rather than just like it can mean the difference between success and failure. A massive innovation opportunity The journey to create a product that has a wow-effect that's too compelling to ignore How to break new ground and defend your price tag when you're selling something people aren't necessarily looking for Why investing in amazing people who have relevant experience and have done it before is the best thing you can do as an entrepreneur. For more information about the guest from this week: Sindre Haaland  Website SalesScreen  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to enable creative thinkers and storytellers to create content people actually want to read. My guest is Ryo Chiba, Co-founder, and CEO of Topic. Ryo started his first business in 2012 at USC. While in college, he co-founded a marketing technology company called TINT which he grew to 40 full-time employees, millions in annual recurring revenue, and 1000+ customers in 172 countries. In 2018 we sold the company to Filestack. Today he's working on his next venture, Topic, which he co-founded in 2019. Their mission: Helping organizations produce better content. This inspired me, and hence I invited Ryo to my podcast. We explore what's broken in content creation and how current solutions are obsessed with metrics and creating more content, not content that people want to read and engage with. We also dig into the key learnings Ryo took away from his entrepreneurial journey, why he stopped obsessing about the competition, and what's required to create a business that can accelerate growth based on word-of-mouth. Here are some of his quotes: We were working on a Pinterest clone because social media and visual social media were a big trend at the time. However, we struggled to gain users, pivoted to turn it into a b2b product, and we almost ran out of cash. But then, with about two months of runway left, we were looking for some way to create a sustainable business. I'd self-learned SEO and sort of taught myself how to produce content. And we ended up taking that business and growing it and bootstrapping it to around 40 employees and hundreds of customers. And we were able to do that all through our SEO program and the content that we were producing. What I found during that journey was that the actual act of scaling up content is extremely challenging, even for highly technical and analytical people. So you can imagine how much more difficult it is for people who don't have that kind of mindset, who are more creative thinkers and storytellers. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why building relationships with your competitors can be extremely handy as you evolve your venture Why being supercritical with yourself on 'who's it for' i.e., which persona to become your ultimate ambassador is critical to securing product-market fit and creating momentum Why, even if you're loaded with funding, you should keep a bootstrappers mindset and be disciplined and legitimate about deploying them How it's possible to operate in a highly competitive space and still find space to succeed and stand out. For more information about the guest from this week: Ryo Chiba Website Topic Free Content Tools by Topic People Also Ask Question Finder Wordpress Table of Contents Generator Ideal Blog Post Length Calculator Blog Idea Generator See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give marketers the freedom to leverage the combined power of direct and digital marketing while removing the compromises. And my guest is Dennis Kelly, CEO of Postalytics Dennis is a serial entrepreneur. He started off as a sales guy, spent time building products, and running data centers. Late 90's he co-founded Anyday.com which was sold to Palm in 2000. This immersed him into the world of wireless.   After leaving Palm he co-founded Adjoin to tackle some challenging Webservice management problems. He sold this company to Computer Associates, to then become the CEO of Adesso Systems, an enterprise mobility software company.  In 2006 he became the co-owner of Wireless City - a chain of 37 Verizon Wireless stores. He sold this company to Go Wireless in October 2011.  From there he switched his focus to researching startup ideas, angel investing, and helping local startups with strategy & advice. This led him to become the CEO of Boingnet, a software platform helping direct mailers generate personalized, multi-channel campaigns across mail, web, and email channels. This is where he saw a big disconnect in the market between direct and digital marketing, and that sparked the idea behind Postalytics of which he's now the CEO As digital marketing channels get more crowded, and marketers are all using the same playbook, they’re increasingly looking for new ways to put their messages directly into the hands of their audiences. That's why they are giving direct mail another look. The problem is that the direct mail industry hasn’t kept up with changes in technology. It feels very…1990’s - it's slow, costly, disconnected from the marketing technology stack, and impossible to track. That's what Postalytics solves. This inspired me, and hence I invited Dennis to my podcast. We explore the opportunity for value creation by blending the online- with the offline marketing world, and how this can create a  1+1=3 concept because you're combining unique strengths into one. We also address the lessons Dennis learned to create growth and momentum in B2B technology, and what it takes to build a great software business that customers just keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: We started having some brands come to us and say, "Hey, I just invested in Salesforce, you guys are living in this kind of a hybrid between digital and direct. Can you help us deploy direct mail more efficiently, more quickly, as a part of our Salesforce as a part of our HubSpot?"  And it took a few of those conversations, let's realize there's a bigger opportunity out here to take some of this measurement and analytic work that we've done and to solve a problem that is far more pervasive and has a much bigger scope. That was happening in 2015, and 2016, and we spent about a year just heads down building Postalytics. And now Postalytics is our primary focus. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why limiting your focus on a highly specific audience  is essential to maximize buzz and fuel the growth and momentum of your software business The positive things that happen when you decide sales is actually part of your onboarding process Why killing something early is often the best move - and what early signs you should be highly sensitive to Why the goal of a startup should be to create a great business instead of focusing on a great exit For more information about the guest from this week: Dennis Kelly  Website Postalytics See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to take our personal growth to new levels in a way that's not only fun and easy to accomplish, but also highly accessible and affordable. My guest is Elena Agaragimova, Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Bessern Elena is both an entrepreneur as well as an engaging skilled trainer and talent development specialist. She is known for her ability to drive change within individuals and organizations that are looking to reach their potential and maintain their competitive edge in the business world. She has started her career in higher education but then shifted towards corporate learning and talent acquisition in the last few years of her career, providing talent onboarding and development to multi-nationals across the MENA region. Elena has a strong passion for L&D, promoting creative and engaging workplaces, and all about optimizing performance through the development of others with a keen interest in neuroscience. In 2019 she co-founded Bessern - and is on a mission to fast-track behavior change and disrupt the way people learn. They believe the future of learning is individualized and that learning is about action and consistency. Change is not easy for most of us; unless we create consistent routines (micro-actions) so that change does not depend on our motivation This inspired me, and hence I invited Elena to my podcast. We explore what's broken when it comes to the traditional approach to Learning & Development. We dig into how people learn, and how technology can help people learn more, faster, and with more joy by taking a radically different approach. We discussed their journey from idea to go-to-market and how this could be done in a way that was financially attractive. Beyond that, we explore how they overcame one of their biggest challenges to creating app-stickiness - a critical ingredient to their growth strategy. Here are some of her quotes: Being self funded, b2c is a very expensive market, a very saturated market. To spend the kind of marketing that you need to get noticed in a b2c market is very high.  We purposely tried to avoid investments for as long as possible. So we said; "How can we make/create a product and how can we test it in a way that makes sense for us financially?" What we know and what we practice is that at the end of the day, it's about creating processes. Just like when you're building a startup - you're going through that agile methodology, where you're just continuously experimenting, like the lean methodology for startups. And we apply the same for the personal growth, whether it's leadership development, etcetera. So it became more interesting for organizations, and we already had the network. So it was a much easier market entry for us to be honest with you. During this interview, you will learn four things: How you can deliver transformative change to any industry even if it has not changed in decades How, by offering a solution that's delivered through a blend of both technology and people can give you a highly defensible advantage.  That stickiness grows once individual users start to realize they get nuggets of value that they'd miss if they were gone That creating new products to take to market can accelerate if you're architecting for reusability  For more information about the guest from this week: Elena Agaragimova Website Bessern See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform the virtual experiences we have today into near-live experiences. My guest is Sean Heiney, Founder and COO at SignalWire. Sean is an experienced entrepreneur and product marketing/management start-up executive with extensive expertise in SaaS, network security, communication, and VOIP. He has 18 years of startup experience as a serial entrepreneur. In the early 2000s, Sean formed and built Periscan, a pioneer SaaS-managed security software company specializing in VISA/Mastercard PCI Compliance. The company got acquired by Catbird Networks in 2006. Sean then led, developed, launched, and marketed new products at Barracuda Networks to over $300M in revenue and IPO.  In December 2017 he co-founded SignalWire. He drives strategy and business around the SignalWire products and services as well as the FreeSWITCH open-source project. SignalWire has, in the meantime, become the technology backbone of modern communications applications like Amazon, Netflix, and Zoom.  Their mission is a simple one: To empower you to build whatever you can imagine utilizing software-defined telecom capabilities.  SignalWire wants its customers to do one thing: To focus on their ideas instead of worrying about developing, scaling, maintaining, and of course, overpaying for complex communications technology and services. This inspired me, and hence I invited Sean to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the telecom industry and what’s kept it behind for so long. We also discuss why the video communication tools we’ve become use to like Zoom and Teams are very degrading, demoralizing or even soul-sucking. Sean elaborates on ‘what can be’ – that it’s up to our own imagination to create the experiences we hope for, and how they are growing a global community of developers from the grass-roots up to enable this. He finishes by sharing his believes about what it takes to build a software business people keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: Everything we're doing with our tools, we're enabling developers to do. We don't claim that we're gonna have the best ideas around the best way. But we know that the world's changing, and the current video and audio products that we're left to collaborate with our soul-sucking. And what we hope to do is enable the next developers, the next product builders: “hey, you don't have to worry about the technology on the audio-video side. SignalWire has that taken care of. I have to just think about the interface, how I'm going to creatively interact with people using this new technology and make something more human than the current options. During this interview, you will learn four things: That business resilience can be hidden in simple things – like productizing elements that underpin the power of your own infrastructure That to build virtual experiences people keep talking about is about understanding the essence of what people truly value from the non-virtual experiences How giving away some of your product can help you build a vending-machine for growth, and give you the platform for true leverage Why it’s key to break-away from the pack i.e. have an x-factor, and how that can be achieved with very simple, but very lucrative ideas. For more information about the guest from this week: Sean Heiney SignalWire Website See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give under-represented groups a fair opportunity in the workplace while helping businesses attract 70% more diverse talent and twice the relevant talent, in half the time. My guest is Helen McGuire, Co-founder, and CEO of Diversely. Helen is a champion of under-represented groups. She’s an international speaker on the topics of diversity, equality, and inclusion and has meanwhile become an award-winning entrepreneur in the diversity space. She founded the first women’s careers platform in the Middle East – Hopscotch.work – in 2016, which grew to a worldwide community of over 80k working with businesses like Facebook, Mastercard, and Nestle. Still, she experienced frustration with the lack of impact of its in-person business model and the fact that 75% of businesses say they are committed to improving diversity, yet just 8% have the tools in place to measure hiring improvement;  This led her to found Diversely in 2020 together with her co-founder Hayley Bakker. The vision for the company is clear and compelling: A global workplace that’s freed from bias for all those from under-represented groups – not just women. Their mission: to provide an integrated solution to the issues around diverse hiring. This inspired me, and hence I invited Helen to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the workplace when it comes to hiring the best people for the job, and how this bias is actually impacting the performance potential of many businesses around the world. We discuss Diversely’s approach to solving this massive global problem at the very core, and what obstacles they had to overcome to ensure a rapid go-to-market. Here are some of her quotes: You don't see representation of real-life within those offices in those boardrooms, or those shop floors, or those restaurants or wherever it might be, you're not seeing a genuine representation of even the customers or the clients that you're trying to serve. And that really puts you on the back foot in terms of attracting the right employees to your business, but also in terms of being able to serve those people in the best way you could possibly serve.  And if you don't have the perspective of 50% of the population where women are concerned, or 20% of the population where disabled people are concerned? Or whatever the percentage population is of your specific race and ethnicities in the location that you are, then how are you really understanding what your client or your customer wants? And are you actually limiting your sales revenue because of that? During this interview, you will learn four things: That teams that are slightly uncomfortable with each other, come up with much better solutions. How starting with solving the essence of the problem, not aiming to reinvent the wheel, and changing behavior in that very moment can spark momentum How pricing can be used as a lever to get to market quickly Why taking a rebellious mindset and looking at the problem from a completely different perspective is the recipe to create something remarkable (and not burn out along the way) For more information about the guest from this week: Helen McGuire Website Diversely See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help creative people know upfront whether their Creative will work – and with that produce work that has an exponentially bigger impact. My guest is Coen Olde Olthof, CEO of Alpha.One Coen started his career at KPMG in information risk management. He then moved to Getronics, where he became responsible for digital identify management and later on IT Services Sales. When Getronics got acquired by KPN, the largest Telco in the Netherlands he was asked to lead the process to turn KPN into an online organization. Shortly after that he added Marketing to his portfolio as well.  Today he’s Ranked as a one of the top 10 Marketeers in the Netherlands and the CEO of Alpha.One. Alpha.One a fast-growing consumer neuroscience company that’s on a mission to ‘Helping good companies make better decisions.’ Coen has a fascination for decision  architecture. What drives people in their day-to-day choices? And how can we use neuroscience to decode this.  Together with a team of scientist he analyses the brains’ reaction to content to predict market level outcomes.  And that inspired me, and hence I invited Coen to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the creative media & marketing landscape. We discuss why the traditional approaches don’t work, and why it’s not technology but and open mindset that prevent the route to success.  Coen shares fascinating wisdom about what drives the behavioral change that lead to adoption and more sales. He also explains how exponential thinking helped them create the remarkable solution they have today. Here are some of his quotes: “I was brought up with an understanding that if your NPS scores are higher, people are more likely to buy from you or more likely to stay. If you look at the research, that's not the case. People that give you high NPS still are not likely to buy more. The only thing that you can really measure from that measurement is that if you have a very low NPS, that's a solid basis for people going away. Byron Sharp, an Australian Professor of Marketing, who looked at 10s and 10s of years of data, concluded that if you have a product that is physically available, and mentally available, you will do very well. Those are very data driven, solid insights that most of the marketers should know, but not all of them do” During this interview, you will learn four things: How driving momentum is highly dependent on your ability to hit the right nerve i.e. creating positive tension and desire with the right people Why making things memorable is essential to influence behavioral change How exponential thinking puts you in the right mind-set to create transformational change in a market. That if your customer doesn’t say ‘Exactly’ you won’t have a deal. And that’s all about finding the unfair thing that hurts your customer most. For more information about the guest from this week: Coen Olde Olthof Company Website Alpha.One  Platform website: Expoze.io Coen’s Ted Talk  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that enables small & medium businesses around the world escape the chaos of managing their software subscriptions. My guest is Gordian Braun, CEO and Co-founder of onetool Gordian is bilingual, analytical, and a highly creative leader experienced in entrepreneurship & innovation. He’s got a strong passion for product marketing, performance marketing, product management & development, and business development. He started his career as a financial analyst, and quickly after that became the co-founder of a music record label startup in 2010. In 2015 he co-founded his second startup, Locana. He went back into the financial world in by joining G51 Amplify Venture Capital, after which he became the director of growth and business acceleration at CleverShuttle in 2017. In 2019, he then co-founded onetool – where he acts as CEO. onetool is on a mission to solve the daily chaos and outrageous fees small & medium sized businesses encountering when it comes to managing SaaS subscriptions, software usage and access rights.  This inspired me, and hence I invited Gordian to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the SaaS market when it comes to managing subscriptions, usage and access. The sheer simplicity of adopting SaaS solutions is growing the problem every day. We discuss what’s missing, and what’s required to solve the problem. We dig deep on what it took to create a solution that stands out from the pack, and what mindset tech-entrepreneurs need to embrace to shape a software business that creates products their customers cannot live without.  Here are some of his quotes: The first strategic choice that we had to do is: “Do we do long sales cycles with a lot of consulting effort, or do we do, what I call, funnel automation?” A lot of people will say, especially in the VC industry, if you are a b2b Enterprise product, then do Enterprise Sales. Whereas we decided to do the opposite – saying “No, we want the more customer centric approach around this. We want to make it so easy that people can start using the whole thing in 10 minutes.” That's obviously a very challenging decision. Because on the one side, you spend endless hours optimizing your product, and you cannot really sell something if it's not perfect. On the other side, you have the highest demands on yourself, and you know what you would like to be using, rather than what our competition is offering. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why approaching things differently gives you powers that are hard to beat by competitors That becoming a great entrepreneur is about shipping fast (not perfect), being open minded and don’t worry too much. That just because you spend five years on something, trying to make it perfect, doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect eventually Why it’s essential for every CEO to not have one mentor, but to surround themselves with a lot of the right people around key aspect  For more information about the guest from this week: Gordian Braun Website onetool See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices