The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform the way we experience commuting for all of us. My guest is Ryan Green, Co-Founder and CEO Gridwise.   Ryan is a driven, self-starter with a passion for building businesses that positively impact the lives of millions. He co-founded his first business, FXConnection back in 2012. FXConnection was a platform that provided tools to educate people on the Forex Markets, and connects them to trading coaches. He then joined PNC in FX Sales and trading, after which he co-founded Gridwise in June 2016 to turn an idea that sparked during his time at the US Navy into reality.    Their mission: To impact the global society by improving the way people and goods move in cities. How? By creating a smarter mobility grid that empowers on-demand drivers, cities, and mobility stakeholders to plan ahead by understanding transit patterns across the major service providers in real-time.   This inspired me, and hence I invited Ryan to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in mobility, and all the problems that lead to. We then dive into his founder story, what sparked the big idea, and how persistence helped Ryan succeed when no one believed in his idea upfront. We discuss his extremely lean approach to innovation and what he believes is required to build a software business your customers just keep talking about.   Here are some of his quotes: What was really important was – and I think a constant battle for people who are starting out a new concept but also just people at different stages of growing a product in launching new features - is always taking initially a minimal and iterative approach to product development. We started with an email that we manually produced every week and a text message service that was us manually typing alerts to drivers. There's no automation to it at the start. And we did things that didn't scale. But it allowed us to prove out, and just save a lot of time and a lot of money by being able to learn from our users, before we built something that nobody wants. And so I think that was that approach and that mindset, we applied to the first concept, and then the next version of the app, and the next version, we just continued to maintain that mentality. And I believe that really led to our success and enabled us to grow Gridwise to what it is today.   During this interview, you will learn three things: 1)   How taking an abundance approach to problem-solving can help you make an impact on a global scale 2)   That just because people don’t believe in your idea at the start doesn’t mean it has legs. Just start – start small, validate, iterate and evolve your vision from there. 3)   Why our assumptions are sometimes totally off – and that can stop us from achieving our biggest breakthroughs in creating value 4)   How giving something of value away can help you unlock and accelerate much larger value monetization opportunities. For more information about the guest from this week: ·     Ryan Green ·     Website Gridwise   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 every business the intelligence to anticipate hacker attacks before they happen. My guest is Karim Hijazi, Founder and CEO of Prevailion Karim is a cybersecurity veteran who has worked closely with the US intelligence community for many years. He’s been at the forefront of attacker counterintelligence and infiltration research for the last decade, developing new ways for security teams to clandestinely monitor hackers and anticipate attacks before they happen.  His previous startup, Unveillance, was acquired by Mandiant (now FireEye) in 2012. Karim noticed a vulnerability in the way businesses have begun to rely on their third-party partners. The size of a business’ perimeter had increased along with the size of their third-party ecosystem, and there was no clear way to monitor that vast new space. That inspired the start of Prevailion. Prevailion envisions a world in which the adversary no longer has the benefit of stealth and surprise, but is instead openly tracked and monitored through a real-time intelligence platform that all companies and organizations have access to. Through clear visibility and real-time tracking, we can turn the tables on threat actors and give network defenders the upper hand. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Karim to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the market of cyber crime protection. Why the typical reactive approach of traditional solutions is more a hinder than a help – and why to really tackle this problem we have to approach it by taking an outside-in perspective. We discuss the challenges of solving this problem – not only technically, but most of all also commercially, since so much is in changing perspectives and behaviours. You’ll be inspired with some fresh thinking and true entrepreneurial mindset. Here are some of his quotes: What makes us uniquely different is that instead of looking at the victim organizations, and determining, by way of investigations and looking through their data to see if they have anything that can be considered malicious, we actually chase down the adversary back to your point about that we look for the infrastructure that these criminals setup. Those servers are intended to be the equivalency of what would be like a dumping zone or drop zone for something. That dumpster is effectively the equivalency of what we're looking for online to infiltrate and sit and wait to see what actually gets dumped there. And we do this without the adversaries understanding of that.  So what's really powerful about that is that because it's digital, everyone that gets impacted by these adversaries all communicate to that digital dumpster, and we are able to see who's victimized by it, just like the adversary can see. So our perspective is that of the adversary. And that does exactly highlights the fact that the security technologies in these organizations may or may not be working. During this interview, you will learn four things: How creative spirit combined with highly technical science skills can give you an advantage that’s hard to beat Why instead of creating solutions that are about repairing something that’s broken, we should aim our efforts at taking out the root cause. That we’re too focused on communicating how we help reduce cost, while we can easily flip the narrative around how our solutions accelerate growth How to create critical mass by changing behaviour of people  For more information about the guest from this week: Karim Hijazi Website Prevailion 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 make difficult conversations about money, that little bit easier. My guest is Cormac O’Neill, CEO of Webio. Cormac is an experienced business leader with extensive hands-on experience of multiple aspects of growing profitable businesses. He led myTravelGuide from start-up to €15m turnover in the period ’99 to 2011. He then moved to Voice Sage to establish them as the UKs leading omni-channel customer contact provider. He loves to inspire and motivate people and teams, challenging, supporting and mentoring them to reach higher than they thought possible. Beyond that, he’s passionate about Retail and Sales including effective Customer Communications, the Customer Journey and the Sales Process. He understands the impact that financial wellbeing can have on a person’s mental health, as an entrepreneur he’s had had his fair share of financial challenges. That inspired him, Paul Sweeney and Mark Oppermann to co-found Webio in 2016. Webio is on a mission to make those difficult conversations about money that little bit easier for everyone concerned. That inspired me, and hence I invited Cormac to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the Credit Collection space and why traditional methods just drop in effectiveness. We discuss how taking a different perspective on the problem can fix this – and what the critical ingredients are to stand out, and deliver a remarkable impact for both your customers, and their customers. Last but not least we discuss how to stay resilient and come out stronger from crisis situations and why success starts by making tough decisions to say goodbye to groups of customers. Here are some of his quotes: What our customers have seen, and something we've seen ourselves from having experience in the industry is that traditional methods of how these companies communicate are just not effective anymore. And to solve a problem, you must be able to have a conversation. Communication is fundamentally key here to solve the financial difficulties.  So, historically, debt collection agencies or collections departments would use the telephone to try and contact their customers. And unfortunately, as an engagement tool, the engagement rates have been declining on telephone over the last number of years because it's stressful talking about money. Sometimes asynchronous conversations are better than real time conversations. Sometimes people need that little bit of breathing space between their answers. So, the first thing you're doing is you're increasing the engagement rate. Once you got engagement, then you've got opportunity to solve the problem. During this interview, you will learn four things: How thinking in micro-steps can help your customers make massive-steps forward in progress as a result of changing behaviour  Why the problem you’re solving often isn’t so much about improving what your customers do, but how they feel doing it: The relief of stress, anxiety, frustration,.. Why asynchronous conversations often result in better (data) quality, engagement and outcome than real-time conversations – especially if it’s about stressful topics Why you shouldn’t second guess your customers – get your product into their hands as early as possible and let them tell you (even if you think it’s far from ready) For more information about the guest from this week: Cormac O’Neill Website Webio 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 get all of us closer to professionals we value. My guest is Ashley Friedlein, CEO and Founder of Guild Ashley is one of the most influential and connected figures in digital and marketing. As one of the 100+ recommendations for him on LinkedIn reads, “If Ashley doesn’t know it – it ain’t worth knowing.” He’s the author of two best-selling books on digital. A columnist, commentator and blogger, he speaks worldwide on digital and marketing trends and best practice. Ashley is involved in a number of digital businesses and ventures as investor, adviser, mentor and operationally.  He believes the world deserves a new kind of digital communications platform and hence founded Guild, a messaging platform for professional groups, networks and communities.. The purpose behind the company is bring people together for professional good. It’s a technology business, but it cares most about human behaviours and the power of connecting people to collaborate and do good things together. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Ashley to my podcast. We explore how technology can help in creating more meaningful connections around professional use cases, and how there’s room for new players, even in a market that densely populated. Asley shares his wisdom around where he puts his focus in building a remarkable software business, what it takes to grow by word-of-mouth and create virality. We also dig into the potential pitfalls to avoid in growing your start-up, especially when venture capital steps in. Here are some of his quotes: Obviously we want and we'll need growth. We want quality and value more than quantity. We don't need massive volumes of usage to drive an ad funded revenue model, because ours isn't an ad funded revenue model. But we, if we're going up against the WhatsApp and LinkedIn and things, ultimately we do need to get engagement, even habits. There is a network effect thing that the more people are on Guild, in many ways, the more valuable it becomes. And if your contacts or professional contacts and your most valued professional contacts are all on Guild, that builds massive defensibility against other competitors or future competitors. We experienced that the other way around, like when you're going up against WhatsApp and stuff, it can be hard cause some people say ‘Yes, I'm just used to using that and yes, yours is better, but I still can't be bothered to switch.’ So you know, we do need the growth but I need to try and not sacrifice quality at the same time. So, what we're trying to achieve I call various things but intimacy at scale. During this interview, you will learn four things: How you can create remarkable products by not only solving a specific problem – but also cater to a human need or desire Different insights how to think about creating a viral effect with your product Why big impact is often created by being relentlessly focused on the adding incremental improvements all the time How to go about spending (VC) money in a phase where you haven’t reached product market fit yet For more information about the guest from this week: Ashley Friedlein Website Guild 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 potential to prevent well over half a billion females on this planet suffering from mental health problems. My guest is Michel Valstar, CEO BlueSkeye AI Michel Valstar is a visionary scientist and new-found entrepreneur. He’s the founder and Co-CEO of BlueSkeye AI, and remains a part-time professor at the University of Nottingham, where he also is the deputy-director of the Biomedical Research Centre’s Mental Health and Technology programme. Having worked for 15 years on computer vision and machine learning for facial expression analysis, Valstar now wants to see his ground-breaking research turned into real products to improve the lives of people. He is particularly interested in solving the problem of self-management of mental health using technology that runs privately on people’s own hardware. This inspired me, and hence I invited Michel to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the world of treating Mental Health. We discuss why this domain is still in the dark ages and what can be done with technology to take it into the 21st century and make a meaningful impact. We explore what it takes to build solutions people in different demographics actually love to use day to day – and build a trustworthy relationship with. We also discuss how take on this massive global problem, with a very small team, while being resourceful and profitable very early on in the journey.  Here are some of his quotes: With blue sky, we really wanted to grab a big problem and try to solve it, not just conceptually, but all the way through to implementing it, validating it, making it self-sustaining. Making it actually value generating in the end. And in perinatal mental health, roughly half of the people on this planet will give birth to a child at some point. And 10 to 20% of those women will suffer, unfortunately, from poor mental health. These are extremely large numbers. We hope to help a very large percentage of these people. But even if we could only help 10% of the people that suffer from this is still a massive contribution to humanity. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why creating something for everyone will end up pleasing no one  How you can speed up time to market by working with partners that break your stuff How leveraging one product category can become the funding source for realizing your big vision Why the two core selection criteria for picking your projects should be: Alignment with vision and employee motivation For more information about the guest from this week: Michel Valstar,  Website BlueSkeye AI 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 the mindset and approach to shaping a software business that successfully plays the infinite game. My guest is Chairman and CEO of Sensory Todd has broad business and general management experience. He's got a Stanford MBA with technical roots and is a founder, co-founder, or early management team of 3 successful venture-backed high-tech silicon valley startups. Each startup has been involved in audio, music, and speech & AI technologies for consumer electronics markets, including toys, musical instruments, Bluetooth headsets, mobile phones, voice assistants, smart devices, or IoT.  He founded Sensory with the mission to enable people to communicate with consumer electronics as we communicate with each other.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Todd to my podcast. We explore their journey as a pioneer in neural networks and how they transformed from inventing everything in house to leveraging the open-source eco-system in a way that strengthened their advantage. We also discuss their drive towards embracing deep fusion – blending different technologies to create exponentially more value. Last but not least, Todd shares his wisdom around building a software business that thrives long-term. Here are some of his quotes: When you have really smart PhDs from the top schools that have strong egos, sometimes, the not invented here syndrome exists with a lot of our customers and within sensory itself. And to get people that are really smart and really capable, and tell them: 'let's not do it ourselves, let's use what somebody else has done,' that can be challenging. When we move to the cloud, we started using open-source acoustic models, but with our own in-house language models There are some advantages to being small. We can move faster, and it's easier for us to integrate different technologies because we don't have these giant groups that are in separate silos. So, for example, we talked about deep fusion of face and voice. Well, it's not like Google and Facebook, and Apple aren't doing voice and face, but they have them in different silos. So, kind of combining them isn't as easy as for a company like sensory. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why focus on solving the hard thing first can give you instant profitability How blending technology enables you to grow a position of advantage while creating impact previously believed unattainable for your customers Their secrets in obtaining highly valuable feedback from their customers How to shape a software business that your best people don't ever want to leave For more information about the guest from this week: Todd Mozer Website Sensory 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 everyone of us the opportunity to deliver our best work by controlling our work-environment. My guest is Benjamin Carew, Co-founder and CEO of Othership Ben started his career as an engineer, working on electric and special vehicles for Ford, Ricardo and Nissan. He then led a team driving digital transformation at Ford, before moving to BP as a Digital Program lead.  Ben is passionate that the best commute is no commute. His ambition is to break down borders by making it possible for anyone to work from anywhere. That’s how he started Othership. It’s is a membership for people who want to work the other way. It’s built around the believe in a new world of work that revolves around you. That adapts to your needs, and allows you to pursue the work you want to do, wherever you are. Where working for yourself doesn’t have to mean working by yourself. And where fulfilling work is a fundamental right, not a rare luxury. Othership was founded to spark a global flo-working™ revolution. Inspiring people to adopt a new way of working controlled by them. This inspired me, and hence I invited Ben to my podcast. We explore how the world has changed with regards to the way we do work. We dig into the role of the workspace – and what important values it drives that we too often ignore. We discuss how critical it is (for creating traction) truly understand what users care about – and what drives their use-case. And last but not least we discuss Benjamin’s secrets to build a software business people keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: The way that we try to deliver value is to constantly seek for feedback and use our own service as well. So we live the life that we do. So we work from our spaces, if I'm not working from my spaces, then would I want to be paying that membership. If the answer is no, why am I not working from that space? Why am I not doing that phone calls from a space? Why am I not having a meeting from that space? It’s just accepting that that's our place in this point is to take the pain away from building that relationship, building that connection, finding that right space. It's just our responsibility day in day out to do that. And that's why we will do better than everyone else. Because our first point in is to just make sure that it does add value to you. And then I will worry about making money During this interview, you will learn four things: Why often what customers buy from you is not at all what you instinctively think it is That technically your product fits many people – but to thrive is to get really specific on their exact use case – and exceed expectations there That to grow a position of advantage is to challenge your business by aiming to become your own best customer That if your customers aren’t talking about you – ask them why. They’ll tell you. For more information about the guest from this week: Benjamin Carew Othership 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 the approach to product innovation to grow remarkable momentum in enterprise software by creating a swell that keeps building because of bottom-up user demand. My guest is Rick Hall, CEO of Aginity Rick Hall is a software entrepreneur focused on the analytics market. He has led the development of over a dozen software products and taken several companies from the early stage to an eventual sale. He founded Kairn Corporation in 2018 to help organizations, plan and implement intelligent products and systems. Together with his co-founders he have defined a "Pathway to Intelligent Systems." to guide companies on their journey. In support of this journey they begun to invest in companies that will simplify the process of building and implementing analytical programs. That has led to the purchase of Aginity in March of 2020 where Rick has taken over the CEO role as a result.   Aginity was an early innovator in Analytics Management. They are on a mission reinventing the Analytics Engine Room and with that do with the challenges of complex architectures which are dependent on highly skilled engineers, frequently cost millions of dollars, and are not flexible to move at the pace of business. This inspired me, and hence I invited Rick to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the world of Enterprise Analytics and why the millions and millions of investments underdeliver. We dig into the effects of switching to a product-led growth approach, and how creating a community of fans helps drive multiple X growth with a minimal marketing budget. Last but not least we talk about the secrets to staying resourceful – and resilient for anything that’s next to come.  Here are some of his quotes: I think the three key areas of a SaaS company are Sales, Marketing, and Product and Engineering. Product and Engineering is a natural tension. So, I always say that if the two heads of those two groups don't kind of love each other and hate each other, then there's something wrong. Because product is about the idea of anything that I could do - big ideas. And engineering is about the world of the possible. And there's a tension built in there. And then sales is the third piece of that, because sales and marketing is about the demands of the customer. And so, putting the three things together in a world of what I like to think of as constructive conflict is really, really key. I think that is probably one of the most important elements of success for a company. During this interview, you will learn four things: That real value unlocks when you realize it’s not about solving a users’ task in isolation, but about how they effectively collaborate with the business  How introducing a freemium model is not about giving away your software, but about creating software that users love How to convince even the most stubborn C-level decision makers about the value of your product even if they’d never use it Why to succeed in SaaS is about constantly evolving the interplay between a big vision and what people can actually achieve on a stretched goal. For more information about the guest from this week: Rick Hall Aginity 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 what product innovation should be really all about and how complacency can kick-in silently and give you a slap in the face. My guest is Mike Seidle, Co-founder and CTO at PivotCX Mike Seidle is an technology entrepreneur based in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is a man of many talents with an entrepreneurial mindset. In his past, he founded White River Technology Group, Indy Associates, Professional Blog Services, and Virtual Payment Systems.  Today he’s the CTO at PivotCX – a company that’s on a mission to help companies respond to every job candidate in seconds. The result: Recruitment teams will be able to handle 4-6x current candidate volume, improve hire quality and most importantly, deliver an award-winning candidate experiences This inspired me, and hence I invited Mike to my podcast. We explore the journey they’ve been through and how Covid became their wake-up moment. We discuss the big lessons learned in bringing their solution to market and what it means and requires creating solutions that customers not only need – but also want – a solution that grows in value as things get tough. Here are some of his quotes: The hardest thing in all of this was that we held on to what we were doing originally for too long. We did our first little foray into doing chat, in 2018. And had we been paying attention to that, we could have made the pivot that we ended up making because we got an extreme slap in the face from the market with COVID. If we had been listening, I almost hate to say this, and I hope none of my investors are listening. But if we had heard that from the market two, three years ago, it's almost frightening to think about how successful this would already be. What I did learn from all this is probably the best way to be prepared, is to really focus on making sure what you're doing is business critical.  If you're doing something that's valuable, it will become more valuable. If you're doing something that's extra, it will be extra when things are lean and probably get cut. During this interview, you will learn four things: The importance to start paying attention to the early signals from customers that you are on the wrong track instead of listening to your own stories How shifting focus from selling “cost savings” to “giving your customers a position of advantage in the eyes of their customers” can be the difference from having no traction to winning 8 out 10 deals  Why we often think we are smarter than everybody else – and why that doesn’t help at all How small ideas can mean the difference between having 10 users and 10000 – and how to find them. For more information about the guest from this week: Mike Seidle Website PivotCX  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 every brand a wealth of opportunities to grow trust with their customers. My guest is Boaz Grinvald, CEO of Revuze Boaz is a serial entrepreneur, and this is the 5th company he’s managing. He loves building businesses and solving real-world problems. His background is in computer science, started his career in building out technology products but was always drawn to the business side. Today he’s the CEO of Revuze. They realized many analytical solutions on the market focus on what/when/how much consumers buy. However, 97% of consumers will walk away from a purchase to buy something else, and brands don’t know why. So this is Revuze’s mission to solve.  This inspired me, and hence I invited Boaz to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the world of understanding customer and consumer buying behaviour. We also talk about how to grow momentum by taking a counter intuitive approach to your Go-to-Market. And beyond that we discuss Boaz secrets to building a remarkable software business – and the lessons that he learned doing so. Here are some of his quotes: I once had a boss that said: ‘One man with conviction can make a difference’ Until you get to hundreds of people, one man with conviction is the core of everything. I love the fact that you can create a business out of no business. And suddenly there's dozens of families that make a living off the business. To me, I think that's a big part of the magic. And obviously, the other part is changing the lives of the customers. When you hear customers that tell you that they get the job done within days that before took them maybe six months. That's like music. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why your SaaS solution shouldn’t give insights to users on ‘What’ happened, but that it’s in the ‘Why it happened’ where real value unlocks That your value should not be about making business more efficient – but to provide them with a position of advantage Why so many SaaS businesses undermine their potential by hanging on to business principles that are serve them more than their customers.  Why we’re often too late in making the right personnel decisions – leaving the wrong people in the wrong place for too long and how no one wins doing so For more information about the guest from this week: Boaz Grinvald Website Revuze See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices