The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help create the workplace culture we'd all dream of working in. My guest is Petri Lehtonen, CEO of FlowtracePetri is a startup leader turned entrepreneur. He's what he calls a professional Inter-team communicator. He's had significant exposure to strategic partnerships, nurturing startup cultures, and building cloud products. After 20 years of tackling the slow and manual processes of organizations and teams, Petri figured there must be an easier, modern way of making work more transparent and avoiding the recurrent pitfalls of teams not collaborating with each other. He realized that work is changing whether we like it or not. The tools we use are also part of that change. For a leader to understand their organization, new ways of overseeing are needed. The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 was the final push - as it made it even more pressing to solve the obstacles of collaborating remotely.That became the founding idea behind Flowtrace in 2020. Flowtrace is on a mission to bring about the future of work for everyone. It's doing this by building a platform and focusing on the things that really matter in inter-team collaboration – making modern work more meaningful.And that inspired me, and hence I invited Petri to my podcast. We explore what's broken when it comes to creating successful company cultures - and what the consequences of failing are. We discuss what culture creation really is all about, and how technology can play a fundamental role in amplifying the benefits in areas such as boosting productivity, creativity, quality, and/or innovation. Lastly, we dig into Petri's big lessons learned around creating a product-market fit and creating momentum through messaging.Here are some of his quotes:I started a little bit differently than many other founders. Becoming a founder, I knew I wanted to build something that b2b companies can leverage. I wanted to increase the communication and collaboration in the startup tech industry. So the next six months, I spent talking with people who are in the same position as I am. I was trying to find a viable, feasible and valuable solution in these conversations. So I was basically designing my solution just by talking the first half a year.Towards the end of those hundreds of calls and conversations I had some people started to ask at the end of the call, "Can I actually try your solution?" It obviously shocks you a little bit, but when it happens many times enough, you realize, I actually don't have any product. Maybe now it's time I need to actually build it.During this interview, you will learn four things:That success starts by being specific - Being specific about the value you create and who'd benefit most from this valueWhy selling the vision will help you grow momentum faster than selling the featuresThat it's essential to get to product-market fit fast - and how to achieve that almost without coding a single line That there's often a big difference between what customers want and what you think they want - and how to go about that by addressing the fundamentalsFor more information about the guest from this week:Petri LehtonenWebsite Flowtrace

This podcast interview focuses on the journey and the big resilience lessons learned by a startup as it moved from start, to launch, various pivots towards ultimate success. My guest is Paul Wickers, Founder and CEO of Huggg.mePaul spent 14 years in the Structured Finance team at RBS and then Santander. During this time, he came to study the social economics of the greetings card industry. He realized that the success of physically sending a greeting card in the offline world had never been achieved in the online world. This helped him develop the insight that the principles of giving and receiving emotionally impactful gifts could be applied in a digital way - it just had to be done in a different way. This became the launch of Huggg in 2015. Paul built the platform in his spare time, left his job in 2016, and the platform was first launched in July 2017. But the journey of his company wasn't an instant success from the start. And it's the story of business resilience that really caught my attention - and inspired me to invite Paul to my podcast. Listening to this interview will feel like watching a movie trailer unfold. We explore the lessons Paul learned as he took his product to market. Initially towards Consumers, later towards Business-to-Business. We discuss the importance of product-market fit. We discuss his lessons learned when it comes to allocating funding to the right levers in the business. We go through what happened when COVID hit the world - the rationalization that followed, then the hibernation, then the rebirth, and finally, how sheer perseverance and focusing on the problem, not the product, helped him succeed. Here are some of his quotes:At the start, any startup idea, especially if it's novel, is a great big bag of all the things that are likely to go wrong. Because in all likelihood, it won't be a success, it's just statistically unlikely for you to actually succeed. So on day one, you've got a great big bag of problems that you're going to have to overcome. And your job over time is to make that bag lighter before you take it to an investor. Because the more of those risks you've gotten rid of, and you've got a lighter bag, when you go forward to raise the next round of money, the better your proposition is because you don't want to prove it. Now what I spent was too long on like creating the first product and not enough time just knocking over those barriers. Actually, because I underestimated I was confident that the idea would work. And I didn't realize how hard product-market fit is. During this interview, you will learn four things:That if you can create a constant feeling of genuine urgency around the mission, you'll get the best out of people in the long term.That your company will become stronger by being plain honest about what's the real situation in a crisis situation. It helps create great bondingThat nothing is ever as bad or as good as it first seems. That when one thing goes away, other things will open up. So focus on the positive things that you can do, rather than the negative For more information about the guest from this week:Paul WickersWebsite Huggg.me

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to grow the impact we can make by super-powering our communications. My guest is Surbhi Rathore, Co-Founder and CEO of Symbl.Surbhi is an international tech leader who advocates for Women in AI with a personal mission to inspire more women to work in Data Science. She comes with experience from technical and customer-obsessed roles in both startups and enterprises, such as Nevis Networks and Amdocs. She is a national speaker, an accessibility equity champion, and the ultimate adventure capitalist.Today, she is the CEO and co-founder of Symbl.ai. With her team, she's on a mission to leverage AI technology to democratize conversational tech to make collaboration effortless. And in line with that, they created a new category of voice tech infrastructure – “Conversational Intelligence as a Service”. This inspired me, and hence I invited Surbhi to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we communicate and collaborate digitally. We discuss what is required to capitalize on the potential of human intellect by making collaboration effortless. We also address the tough choices Surbhi made in not going with the flow - but instead taking a radically different approach to solving the big problem in the market. Last but not least, we discuss what it takes to build a remarkable software business. Here are some of her quotes:When we started the company, it was super crowded. There were so many businesses trying to build automated meeting notes products. I think we always had the right positioning in our minds. But as a founder, it's so hard to articulate that and other people. It was hard for us to just articulate our go-to-market motion of the product that we are building the right way. Although we had an idea that what is going to set us apart. But I think it just came over time as we evolved in terms of 'Okay, we want to we want to build a platform that enables businesses to analyze conversation data without building an in house data science team.' So making it absolutely easy and removing the dependency on data. So there is no data labeling training annotation that goes in the cycle. It's a plug-and-play experience. And that really created a very compelling like aha moment for businesses.During this interview, you will learn four things:Why, to streamline your business and get razor-focused, it's key to get crystal clear on your positioning.That love for the problem is critical to success, but there are some other equally crucial skills to develop/look for in new hiresThe importance of the role of marketing and content creation early in the lifecycle of your company to establish the foundation for inbound trafficHow to prevent investing your newly gained funding on the wrong initiativesFor more information about the guest from this week:Surbhi RathoreWebsite Symbl

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform our workplace into a fair workplace - starting with fair pay. My guest is Maria Colacurcio, CEO of SyndioMaria is a tech veteran – she previously co-founded Smartsheet, which went public in 2018. She spent three years at Starbucks, one of the first Fortune 50 companies to go public with pay equity results. Having started her career working on congressional campaigns, she has a long history of mission-driven work, and a compassionate and competitive attitude to spur change.She serves on the board of the nonprofit Fair Pay Workplace and has been named by Goldman Sachs Builders + Innovators Summit as one of this year’s 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs.As a CEO and a mom of 7, Maria is walking the walk on eradicating workplace inequities. Today, Maria is the CEO at Syndio, a SaaS startup helping companies around the world create an equitable workplace for all employees, regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity. That inspired me, and hence I invited Maria to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's workplace when it comes to valuing people for the contribution they bring and paying them fairly, independent of who they are. We discuss the pivot and what it took to change course. We discuss the effects the Pandemic introduced, and what was critical to not only bounce back, but actually come out stronger. And last but not least, we address the role of the CEO in creating a business that people love talking about. Here are some of her quotes:If we get it right we quite literally transform society. I think the gender and race pay gaps resulted in lifetime wages that are often hundreds of 1000s of dollars less for women and people of color. So I think when you think about the wealth gap, and how we just compound over time, that's where we have a tremendous opportunity to transform society. And for companies, it's just as big because, if we get it right, it means they move away from this cycle of annual one and done remediation. And they actually get to stay on top of this proactively overtime on both sides.We really believe that workplace equity is a combination of two things. We started with pay equity, and now we're moving over to more broad workplace equity to look at promotions and when you can get to both. That's when you have a company that Really has an enduring ability to create value and to measure how they're valuing their employees not just for who they are, but the contributions they bring.During this interview, you will learn four things:That the odds of success and surviving any crisis starts with having a solution that's perceived as mission-critical, and not a nice-to-have.How to prioritize your roadmap by focusing on the smallest ingredient that driving the biggest impact for your ideal customersThat your ideal customers are not the ones that have the biggest budgets, but the ones where you align on world-views and show the courage to stick to it no matter whatHow to focus your leadership team on looking at a problem and brainstorming a solution collaboratively without blaming and fingerpointingFor more information about the guest from this week:Maria ColacurcioWebsite

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to move us to where we are at the centre of our own digital life, and back in control over our own data. My guest is Julian Ranger, Executive Chairman and Founder of Digi.me.Julian is an aeronautical engineer specialising in interoperability and the military internet. He founded STASYS Ltd in 1987, and grew it to a staff of 230, with subsidiaries in the USA, Germany, Malaysia and Australia prior to sale to Lockheed Martin in 2005. He's an angel investor in more than 20 start-up businesses, including firms such as Hailo, DataSift, and Astrobotic.His passion for the power of personal data led him to build new businesses. Today, he's the Exec Chairman and founder of digi.me, a company that's on a mission to enable the Internet of Me, enabling us to do amazing things with our personal data without compromising our privacy or security.And that inspired me, and hence I invited Julian to my podcast. We explore how the internet has become a place where no one is in control anymore over their own data, but no one is in control over all data. And exactly the latter is the problem that stops us from having the level of personalization we really want, and the big breakthroughs we all need, like precision medicine. Fixing privacy, security, and consent is not the way forward. That's about stopping the bad stuff from happening. What we need is a way to share more and better data - to make the good stuff happen (without the bad stuff)Here are some of his quotes:Rich data, now ask yourself, is there a company in the world that can do that? And people say, 'well, Google, and Facebook and Axiom', but if you take a circle of my data, they have a wedge. But they don't have my health, my purchases, or my media, my wearables, and stuff. In fact, because of all the stovepipes or silos, whichever analogy you like, it is impossible for any company to bring all that data together to get a rich data library view. So we are effectively stopped from our future at this point. And the laws are shrinking those wedges that people have, but nobody said, Well, how do I open up the whole circle to do it? Now when you look at it, no company can. But there is one entity in the whole system that knows all about you and me. Yourself.You know where your data is. You have a right for that data. And you're the only entity with unlimited usage rights.When you understand those three things, you can only aggregate rich data at the individual. And that's the key insight for what my business does.That's our big idea. And it's no less than enables the future of the world. During this interview, you will learn four things:Why too often we approach the problem from the wrong end - by not looking far enough ahead: the simple desired outcome for the userWhat it requires to succeed when your big idea hits the road and you discover that the road is not quite as smooth as you'd likeThat everybody is lucky - but that many are just not seeing the luck around them.Why as entrepreneurs we often spend too much time on the idea and the instantiation of it, and not enough time on the internal and external messaging For more information about the guest from this week:Julian RangerWebsite Digi.me

This podcast interview focuses on the art of transforming our visions into reality - and with that create products that create meaningful change. My guest is Radhika Dutt, Author of 'Radical Product Thinking'.Radhika is an entrepreneur and product leader who has participated in four acquisitions, two of which were companies that she founded. She is an Advisor on Product Thinking to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Singapore’s financial regulator and central bank. She teaches entrepreneurship and innovation at Northeastern’s D’Amore McKim School of Business and is an advisor to several startups. She graduated from MIT with a Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering, and speaks nine languages, currently learning her tenth.Radhika co-founded Radical Product Thinking as a movement of leaders creating vision-driven change. She was on my podcast in December 2019 as a consequence of that. Recently, she released her book 'Radical Product Thinking' - and that was the perfect reason to interview her again. We explore what's broken in the way we build software products - and the challenges that lead to excessive cost, compromised growth potential, demotivated teams, and so on. We discuss in detail how you can recognize looming problems, and what you can do differently to fix them once and forever. Here are some of her quotes:It's not that companies don't have a vision, you can have varying degrees of good visions. But it's incredible how expensive it is when your vision isn't quite right, or you haven't uncovered these misalignments. And the cost of not having this alignment is what really keeps coming up in organizations. You see it at every step where somehow your vision becomes disconnected and you start running into what I call 'product diseases', which is where innovation kind of dies on the vine. And that's really the cost of them. Not starting with a deep enough detailed enough vision.During this interview, you will learn four things:The methodology to create a remarkable vision and translate it into everyday action.What signals to look for to understand whether you have a sizeable innovation problem The simple framework to avoid vision debt in your organization and how to empower everyone to successfully apply itHow to engineer a culture of innovation by approaching it as if it was a productFor more information about the guest from this week:Radhika DuttWebsite Radical Product Thinking

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to provide all of us with a highly intelligent and hyper-personalized assistant. My guest is Peter Voss, Founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist of Aigo AIPeter is a serial entrepreneur, engineer, inventor, and pioneer in Artificial Intelligence. He coined the term ‘AGI’ (Artificial General Intelligence) with fellow luminaries in this space.He started in electronics engineering, then fell in love with software. His first major success was developing a comprehensive ERP package and taking that company from Zero to 400-person IPO in seven years.Fueled by the fragile nature of software, he embarked on a journey 15+ years ago studying what intelligence is, how it develops in humans and the current state of AI. This research culminated in the creation of a natural language intelligence engine that can think, learn, and reason -- and adapt to and grow with the user.He founded Aigo in July 2017, where he's focused on commercializing the second generation of their AGI-based ‘Conversational AI’ technology. The simplest way to explain what the product is about is this: It's a chatbot with a brain. What does this mean? It remembers what was said before. It can learn interactively. It has a deep contextual understanding. It can reason and explain itself. The result: It finally makes meaningful ongoing conversations with technology possible.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Peter to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of Chatbots - and why conventional approaches can only bring us so far. We then explore what can be i.e. what potential is ahead of us if we take a different approach. Peter further talks about the challenges he faced and overcame through sheer perseverance. Here are some of his quotes:We started with a brain. This was really my motivation of initially starting the AI company in 2001. It was not to build a chatbot. The motivation was to build an intelligent machine, an intelligent system, a system that can learn and reason and understand and remember, and so on. So that was the starting point. And then we said: "Okay, we have a brain. What do we want to use this brain for?" Do we want to put it into a robot to help, run the robot? Do we want to use it for conversation? Or do we want to use it for image recognition, to help it to drive a car or something? And, as I said - we decided that the best path forward for us was to focus on the conversation.During this interview, you will learn four things:That the more human our software becomes, the less friction in adoption we'll experienceThat staying true to your vision and aiming to be different (not just better) will give initial pushback, but will help overcome the biggest hurdlesThat true innovation is not about embracing the latest shiny technology, but about solving meaningful problems in a remarkable way.How to overcome the trap of losing all your resources and energy on building table-stake features to overcome sales bottlenecks - thereby risking you'll lose your biggest sales argument: your edgeFor more information about the guest from this week:Peter VossWebsite Aigo AI

This podcast interview focuses on the big resilience lessons learned during the recent Pandemic. My guest is Ronni Zehavi, CEO and Co-founder of HibobRonni 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 cybersecurity 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 has featured on my podcast; the first episode was launched 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 priorities (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 crisisWhy 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 commitmentFor more information about the guest from this week:Ronni ZehaviWebsite HibobLink to our initial podcast interview

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 - the mathematical transformation from images to the signals that leave the eye and go to the brain,As soon as I did that, I realized immediately that this could lead to an artificial retina that could potentially restore sight to the blind.And then I was thinking, well, if that were true, and I can send the same signals to the brain as the normal retina does, why couldn’t I send them to a robot’s brain and make a new kind of computer vision? 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 dataThat technology is not the only issue to drive meaningful change, but overriding others' skepticism and fear of change are often necessary too. The lessons to be learned on how to go about funding and taking the Venture Capital routeThe big lessons around having grit and perseverance to succeedFor more information about the guest from this week:Sheila NirenbergWebsite Nirenberg NeuroscienceWebsite Bionic Sight

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 opportunityThe journey to create a product that has a wow-effect that's too compelling to ignoreHow to break new ground and defend your price tag when you're selling something people aren't necessarily looking forWhy 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