The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help let us live the lives we want, without killing our planet. My guest is Terry Swack, CEO of Sustainable Minds. Terry is an Internet and environmental entrepreneur, pioneer in customer experience strategy and thought leader in the product sustainability software industry. Her career has focused on making complex ideas and technologies useful, usable and desirable. She started her first company, TSDesign, in 1994: an Internet strategy and product design firm that lead the industry in user experience design. It was acquired by Razorfish in 1999.  In 2002 she became VP Customer Experience & founding member of StillSecure, a network security software startup where she brought 3 best-in-class products to market in 18 months In 2005 she founded the Beam, a venture-backed Web 2.0 marketplace to power the emerging demand for cleaner & greener products and services Finally, in 2007 she founded Sustainable Minds a company that’s mission is to operationalize environmental performance into mainstream product development and manufacturing in an accessible, empowering and credible way.  Sustainable Minds’ Eco-concept + LCA Software was the 1st cloud tool for product manufacturers to design greener products has been used in industry and higher education in 90+ countries. This resonated with me, and hence I invited Terry to my podcast. We explore the massive challenge we have at hand to make the world more sustainable. We discuss how technology can help accelerate solving this problem and what’s needed to leverage the impact of technology to its max. How we can create growth by consuming less, and what mindset we should obtain to create solutions people will embrace and talk about.   Here are some of her quotes: There is the opportunity for economies and businesses to grow, and there's a different way to do it. Because if growth is still driven by consumption, the way most economies function, and especially first world economies, it's all about consumption and more.  But innovation through improving environmental performance and also now material health is going to mean less consumption due to developing product service systems, using fewer raw materials, circular economy, all the things that people haven't yet waded into in a mainstream way, will become the way. People all over the planet want to live the way people live in a first world economy. For that to happen we’d need 5 plantets to support the carrying capacity of today's population and the rate at which it's growing,. During this interview, you will learn three things: To create meaningful change you have to help people to think differently before they can act differently  How to start and accelerate company growth when the main thing you solve isn’t even ‘cool’ yet Why companies that measure (and not think differently) will only deliver incremental impact Remarkable software is created when you focus on creating something very specific people can use instead of something that everybody can use. For more information about the guest of this week: Terry Swack Sustainable Minds 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 turn "dead air" into actionable intelligence, helping Retailers, Healthcare, and Hospitality facilities improve on-site experiences and the health of their businesses. My guest is Van West, Founder and CEO of Vocalytics. Van is an accomplished strategic business development and marketing executive with 15 years’ experience leading teams in startup to Fortune 500 environments.  He has a product-minded entrepreneurial approach with focus on strategy, growth, and product and is passionate about digital engagement to creatively exploit revenue opportunities.  He co-founded GiftyOne in 2013, was Director of Channel Marketing for Lookout Mobile Security, SVP of Marketing at Oomba, first hire & VP of Global Business Development at VMAXX as well as Chief Strategy Officer at Reality Smash. Besides that, he’s a guest lecturer at the University of California, Irvine. In November 2019 he founded Vocalytics, an enterprise-grade voice and sound analytics platform built for the physical world. It’s on a mission to improve enterprise performance, associate engagement, and customer experience - all through the power of voice and sound. That inspired me, and hence I invited Van to my podcast. We explore why so many enterprises today are unaware of the context and triggers impacting human behavior of their people and customers – and how that is leading to compromise in experience, loyalty and the performance of their business. We address what can be done about that, but also dig into the big lessons learned in bringing such products to market in a time where everything we have become so used to changed. Van shares his insights behind the choices he made to deliberately not enter the obvious, high-growth categories in the market.  Here are some of his quotes: Understanding the best practices of your top performers and deploying that knowledge at scale is really that's ultimately been our play. We've also recognized that in the COVID world that we're living in, there's less in person exchanges occurring and those that do occur are less face to face.  With all the traction and all the momentum that we've built understanding at this point in time, we now have to start building towards what that new normal is and recognizing that.  So my little sister has a highly compromised immune system, severely compromised immune system. And we built a technology to listen in the physical worlds. Coughing is the number one way to COVID spreads. So rather than filtering out the background noise, let's lean into it to differentiate our product beyond COVID towards this new normal, while also we can help and serve the general population, whether it's returned to work, returned to campus, or returned to the physical worlds for in-person interactions.  We want to keep everyone safe.  During this interview, you will learn four things: How to get things off the ground faster, and with more impact by listening to your customers with intent.  The essentials to carve out a space that you cannot only be successful in, but actually dominate Why time is the most important resource for start-ups – and how to utilize that optimally How to create velocity by ensuring every member of the team is committed to the journey ahead and enabling them to shine.  For more information about the guest of this week: Van West Vocalytics 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 gives SMBs a position of advantage by leveraging technology typically only available to the Enterprise. My guest is Matthew Schmidt, Founder and CEO of Peoplelogic.ai Matthew is and experienced entrepreneur and operator with a history of building and launching products and growing businesses. Early in his career he led DZone’s media business unit, responsible for DZone.com, a popular website and publisher for the global software developer community. He was the architect behind its community platform, AnswerHub, and attracted a global audience of millions of technology professionals. Today he’s the CEO of Peoplelogic.ai, a startup that’s on a mission to make growth scalable. Peoplelogic is an AI-augmented mission control for SMB teams. It monitors, alerts, and predicts outcomes around immediate risks and opportunities within a business so they can focus where it counts and get ahead of problems before it sinks them. This resonated with me, and hence I invited Matthew to my podcast. We explore the challenges SMB organizations have due to the lack of information and insight– and how easily the get off track as a consequence (especially when they grow). Many can’t anticipate the big waves that can take them out, let alone take advantage of opportunities before the competition does. We also dig into the key question of what’s required to build a remarkable software business and keep living up to that.  Here are some of his quotes: What I set out to solve originally with Peoplelogic was really: How do we make better managers? How do we use technology and data to be able to augment our managers on their way to better understanding their people and to help them maintain growth and be able to not slip, and fall, or trip over their shoelaces as the company's growing. We come from selling enterprise software, but the businesses that we ran, were high growth startups. And to be successful, a lot of things have to happen correctly along the way. There are so many opportunities for failure. What we saw was that if you can stop even 20% of those from happening, or from having a big impact on your team, or getting you off track, you're going to be that much more successful. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why technology is only a piece of what makes your company successful. How to thrive if you’re launching your new product at the start of the world’s largest pandemic we can remember How to carve out your own blue ocean by democratizing technology typically only available to the enterprise  Why you should avoid comparing your company to others For more information about the guest of this week: Matthew Schmidt Peoplelogic.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 product innovation that has the power to drive growth without having to rely on expensive ad campaigns. My guest is Adam Benzecrit, Co-founder at inflo.Ai. Adam has worked in a number of startups and high growth companies for nearly a decade. In 2013 he co-founded inflo.Ai, a London-based technology company that’s on a mission to help overstretched in-house marketing teams, business owners and SMEs to find their voice and grow online.  When they saw thousands of companies simply didn’t have the resources to create highly effective blog content and therefore had rely on expensive paid ad campaigns and SEO agency retainers, they had to step in and solve it. How? By helping their clients tell great stories with the power of artificial intelligence and making content creation and blogging simple, fast and affordable on at the same time. This inspired me, and hence I invited Adam to my podcast. We explore why producing great content is so tough and why so many businesses continue to underutilize their expertise to drive engagement. We also address what’s required to stand out in your market and become the go-to-player. Last but not least we dig into the things to do as leaders to create a software business customers keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: Our journey started with the creation in 2015, around a sports news app. When we got off the ground, we started to get thousands of users, and then ran into an accelerator, which introduced us to lots of different companies. And they introduced us to brands, a lot of bookmakers. What we were trying to do then, the start of our journey, was we were trying to influence bookmakers to advertise on our product. We learned and realize there was an opportunity much bigger than that. They were more interested in how we got content in our own app, and wanted to do that for themselves to drive digital engagement to their products and services. T that was the big lightbulb moment for us is forget the b2c route. During this interview, you will learn four things: How to carve out your own category and find a playing field where you are can become the go-to player. Why it’s so important to reflect and dig deep on the business you are really in. Only that understanding makes saying ‘no’ easier and give you the resourcefulness to remain making a difference What strategies to put in place to continue to have the cashflow runway to execute and deliver upon the mission. Why you should treat your client like a partner, and a partner like your client.    For more information about the guest of this week: Adam Benzecrit inflo.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 product innovation that has the power to help digital marketers prove and improve the impact they can make in content marketing and accelerate revenue on the back of it. My guest is Avishai Sharon, Co-Founder and CEO of Trendemon He has over 15 years of experience in product design and management, UI/UX, web and mobile applications, entrepreneurship and startups. In 2005 he founded a digital marketing agency that helped B2B companies build and execute digital marketing strategies. He is also a Captain in the Israeli Air Force and an avid extreme sports enthusiast.    Today he’s CEO and Co-founder at Trendemon, a revenue acceleration SaaS platform which helps B2B companies close more deals from their content marketing efforts and assets. It does this by empowering marketers to prove and improve their content’s impact.  This resonated with me, and hence I invited Avishai to my podcast. We explore the disconnect in what marketers do and the direct impact that has on business performance. Why it takes a different way of thinking to solve this challenge – as  focusing on increasing traffic is not the answer. And last but not least we discuss what it takes to build a software businesspeople just keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: I was working at a marketing agency. A big challenge that I was running into those days was how do I prove to my customers, companies that were paying substantial amounts, that the work that we were doing, the effort that we were putting in, was actually impacting their bottom line. That disconnect between work that's being done and the inability or the challenge of proving it was what got me started Trendemon The main opportunity that we see here is that most marketers, especially in content, are storytellers. And I think that we're not seeing technology as a way to replace storytelling. Storytelling is a very human and delicate and sophisticated capability. We want to empower them with data that gives them the ability to validate their work with results, and help them show unequivocally how content, blog posts, videos have been created, help the company close more deals. During this interview, you will learn four things: That we often focus optimizing our software products too much on making doing the work easier, rather than to do that work with more impact. How being deliberate about how to stay as independent as possible through your products strategy choices will bring opportunities you might not expect That to spur creativity and curiosity you have to create probing challenges Why you should plan for your inflection points – those momentum building events that you can leverage to get to the next stage.  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 a better understand of what our customers really want. My guest is Frank Schneider, CEO at Speakeasy AI. Frank consulted and led teams providing various SaaS and AI solutions for contact centers and B2B. He’s a former officer and VP of Sales, Marketing and Customer Success at Creative Virtual USA. During his tenure, Creative Virtual USA grew revenue over 300% and became the leader in Fortune 500 enterprise virtual assistant deployments.  Today he’s the CEO at Speakeasy AI. He and his team are on a mission to make it easier for businesses to understand and respond to their customers’ needs in voice with the help of AI. This put them on the pioneers’ path to provide in-the-moment insights into understanding customers'​ intents, needs and outcomes. And this resonated with me, and hence I invited Frank to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in todays chatbot driven economy – and how this leads to more automation, but not to better customer value and relationships. We also address the dilemmas customer have with a ‘rip and replace’ strategy vs one where they can evolve their investments. Last but not least we discuss some critical ingredients to building a remarkable software business. Here are some of his quotes: In any organizational structure, it's servant leadership that allows for success to be possible when you can put the needs of others in front of yourself. The aha moment that we found is that customers, when they come and try to interact with a brand, they want information or help easily. They want it to be sort of done in a way that doesn't take much effort for them. And they want it done quickly and whenever they want it. And those are the issues that have gone on in servicing customers, for long before AI was in place. We want to start with listening to your customers. And the piece of technology that we have a patent pending for is called speech to intent. In order to understand a customer and also leverage your other investments, we need intelligence on the line at the moment you say hello. As soon as you start speaking to us, we're not listening to just transcribe and send somewhere. We're listening to start to derive what that intent is from the beginning, and then send the intent to a place to fulfil the need. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why the essence to turn customers into fans is not so much in listening what they say they need, but understanding intent i.e. what they really want How embracing and leveraging ‘what’s there’ – be the orchestrator - can accelerate your growth and stickiness i.e. enabling your customer to leap without having to reinvent everything How defensible differentiation can be created by not betting on a technology difference, but on a methodology difference. That the trick to getting customers to actually use your solution and increase the ‘love curve’ is in earning their trust, and creating wins 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 empower organizations to deliver remarkable impact by creating game-changing teams and cultures. My guest is Nathan Ott, Co-founder and Chief Polisher at The GC Index Nathan has over 20 years of experience working with business leaders to get the best from their talent. He is the co-author of two studies: The DNA Of A Game Changer and The DNA Of A Game-Changing Team and published ‘Coaching Me, Coaching You’. Today he is the vision and driving force behind The GC Index. He has a fundamental belief that everyone can make an impact in their world and has created a global community of GC Partners and GCologists.  They are working globally with a diverse range of commercial and non-profit organisations, and help their clients understand how their employees can make an impact and helps leaders create game-changing teams and cultures. The GC Index framework is disrupting the way people manage talent. It’s not only being used to help individuals be the very best they can be but it is liberating organisations to embed their diversity and innovation initiatives to impact tangible business outcomes. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Nathan to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the world of managing talent. Too often we look for someone’s personality and academic background, rather than connecting people to business outcomes, and in particular, what type of outcomes people can have maximum impact. We also dive into ways how we can fix this challenge and deliver remarkable impact by blending people and technology in the right way. Here are some of his quotes: A lot of organizations would come to us and say: “We need some people to make a change.” We would sit down with them and use their traditional frameworks for assessing these people. And then they would say to us, these senior leaders: “Just get me some people that ‘get it’.” That started me thinking of what is this thing that everyone can recognize, but can't explain? The things that the business leaders were describing to us was something different. They wanted people that were different to what they were getting. And so, we termed those individuals game changers. The GC index got formed as a language and a framework for impact. So it’s a piece of software that aligns people's impacts to business outcomes and roles. And that's when the magic really started to happen. During this interview, you will learn three things: That too often we focus our software solutions on optimizing the impact of an individual doing a specific task, without looking at the exponential leverage they can create in a setting with the right people around them.  Why it’s key to make the distinction between innovation and invention – as a software business you need to find the right balance in order to stay relevant in your category. Why alignment and collaboration are key to create breakthroughs – and how to orchestrate that by addressing the tensions in the boundaries How one solution can be marketed through multiple business models concurrently  For more information about the guest of this week: Nathan Ott The Game Changing Index 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 power to make field engineers far more productive, and give the companies they work for new ways to retain and grow their competitive edge. My guest is Sam Waicberg, Co-founder and CEO CareAr. Sam Waicberg is an entrepreneurial business leader passionate about building brands that scale. His expertise: driving and inspiring high performing teams, game changing solutions, positioning strategies, innovative partnerships, ecosystems, and communities that create network effects and growth. Throughout his career he’s held senior roles in sales at Oracle, Blue Martini, Aspect Software, Ascendent Systems, Envox, Fluency Voice Technology, Genband, and Vidyo.    He’s recognized for strategic out-of-the-box approaches for developing and executing corporate and go-to-market plans, thought leadership, and creating long-term meaningful relationships. In December or 2018 he co-founded CareAR, an Augmented Reality platform for smart services. Their mission: Making expertise accessible anywhere and instantly.  This triggered me, and hence I invited Sam to my podcast. We explore the challenges faced in the field services market and how technology can help transform productivity, quality of work, and overall profitability. Beyond that we dig into a much larger problem that the services industry is facing as a whole: the rapidly decreasing workforce, and what challenges that gives entrepreneurs to retain tribal knowledge and their competitive edge. Here are some of his quotes: Innovation is something that constantly drives us. We think about the art of what's possible all the time. And we don't think too much about limitations and barriers. We saw a gap in the market and the other is a is something that evolved The simplest issue was applying what we see in telehealth when we see a long-distance learning to field service, getting a remote expert to assist the field tech on site to do a visual consult to solve the problem while they're out there. The big problem permeated as we started getting in there and talking to more C level people. 70% of their organization's most valuable assets, employees, are leaving over the next 5 to 10 years. All the knowledge goes out the door with that. So, the C-levels really are thinking, this is what keeps them up at night, about ‘What can I do to retain this tribal knowledge? What can I do to transfer this knowledge to other new individuals coming into the organizations in a way where I can accelerate the pace of that and retain my competitive edge?’ During this interview, you will learn four things: How you can drive transformative value by bridging the gap between consumer applications and the enterprise workflow That instead of constantly worrying about the catching up you have to do, focus your roadmap on the question: “How do you want to be the favourite?” That the opportunity to create unique value is often hidden in developing an eye for rapidly developing issues that can become a catalyst for transformation How to take friction for adoption out by not only focusing on the user experience, but also on the business model 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 to create expert networks which promote thought leadership, increase revenue, and build engagement and trust. My guest is Charles Thiede, Co-founder and CEO Zapnito Charles who was born in the USA, studied at the San Francisco State University and achieved a Bachelor of Arts degree in Design and Industry. His previous roles have included the Interim Chief Product Officer and Digital Systems Director at Nature Publishing Group, Chief Technology Officer and Group Operations Director at Informa and Product Manager at Blue Shield of California. He has also acted as a Mentor for Women Who Tech. Today he is the CEO and Co-Founder of London-based, Zapnito, a Software as a Service (SaaS) knowledge-sharing and expert community platform. Zapnito helps event organizers, expert networks, membership and subscription businesses to deliver expertise on‐demand and to build sustainable communities. And this resonated with me, and hence I invited Charles to my podcast. We explore the growing challenge that the noise on the internet is just getting louder and louder. It’s harder to have a voice. It’s harder to create and share collective knowledge and intelligence. And it’s harder to create trusted places. We discuss why it’s so key to bring that original premise of the internet back in order to solve the new challenges ahead of us, deliver remarkable value, and create sustainable advantage on the back of that. Here are some of his quotes: I was very much impacted by a talk, I heard from a guy named Gerd Leonhard who’s futurist. And I was seeing social media creating a lot of noise out there. This is back in 2010/2011. And it was bothering me. The noise was getting heavier and heavier. And so, one of the things that was bothering me in that model is this idea of trusted collective intelligence being lost in that noise.  And actually, at that time, I was working for a trusted business information company. And they were really struggling with this new paradigm. And I thought, well, in the heart of what they’re doing is about trust collective intelligence, but the way they’re delivering it is totally old school and archaic. So, the big idea was to help return the internet back to its original premise, which was around collective intelligence from experts sharing with each other. During this interview, you will learn four things: How the power of communities can help to push boundaries and avoid the risk of so-called echo chambers. Why trust, quality and diversity are essential ingredients for success in creating expert communities that have staying power How switching your approach from being a vitamin to being a painkiller can become the tipping point for your software business How  having a sense of humour and fun helps you get through tough times in a much easier way. 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 our society from being very transactional into very empathetic. My guest is Rana Gujral, CEO Behavioral Signals Rana Gujral is an entrepreneur, speaker, and investor. He founded TiZE, a cloud software for specialty chemicals in 2014. He was recruited to be a part of the core turnaround team for Cricut Inc. where he built a first of its kind product for the DIY community and helped turn bankruptcy to profitability within a span of 2 years. Rana also held leadership positions at Logitech S.A. and Kronos Inc., where he was responsible for the development of best-in-class products generating billions in revenue and contributed towards several award-winning engineering innovations. He has been awarded the ‘Entrepreneur of the Month’ by CIO Magazine and the ‘US China Pioneer’ Award by IEIE. He has been listed among 8 A.I. Entrepreneurs to Watch in 2019 by INC Magazine and Top 10 Entrepreneurs to follow in 2017 by Huffington Post.  Today he is the CEO of Behavioral Signals, an enterprise software company that delivers a robust and fast evolving emotion AI engine that introduces emotional intelligence into speech recognition technology. And this triggered me, and hence I invited him to my podcast. We explore the challenge with today’s voice technology and what has kept it from reaching its true potential. We discuss a variety of use cases that will create transformative experiences and impact when some of the limitations are taken away. Not only for us individuals, but also the level of business and society at large.  Here are some of his quotes: Behavioral Signals was really driven from this sort of really intrinsic desire to improve voice communications and take it to the next level, whether it's communication happening between two humans or whether it's communication happening between a machine or a human. This is the best utopian experience that matches our human interests. And that's led to the whole voice first design movement. The whole promise was that we are going to take this to the next level, which means we're going to talk to our devices and devices are going to communicate back to us, as humans do. We could use those experiences to replace some of those elements in our livelihoods, and use those as companions. But that hasn't happened. That is why we are actually very rude to voice assistance in general, because we feel that they're beneath us, not because it's a machine, we know it's a machine, of course, it's not a human. But we also feel that, hey, it doesn't have the basic capability to understand how I feel. So, our mission is to really take that interaction to the next level. During this interview, you will learn four things: That solving critical problems is often not about following the right process, but connecting people that are on the same wavelength Why the secret behind growing momentum behind the adaption of your application is in making it human and empathetic How you can exponential grow the impact your solution can create for your customers by capturing intent, rather than the transaction How imagination and your ability to connect the dots into a vision are essential skills to create a remarkable software business See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices