The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to achieve 9+ satisfaction rating with any of your customers. My guest is Roland Hallebeek, CEO of Scotty Technologies. Roland has been in communication all his life. He was the vice president of Telecom and Media at Capgemini (2001-2011), headed up various data driven start-up initiatives between 2013 and 2016, led European AI Customer Engagement Management at IPsoft (2017), and ran the Global Digital & Cognitive AI centre at EPAM systems (2018).  In 2018 he founded both Cognitive affairs and Scotty Technologies two companies centered around the same mission to take Customer Contact Automation to the next level by making it simpler, smoother, more scalable, highly predictable from a cost perspective, and most of all – more human.  This triggered me, hence I invited Roland to be a guest on my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the world of Digital Transformation, why many companies focus on solving the wrong problem, and what could be an alternative way to approach it in order to get far better results for both the customer as well as the business. We also explore Rolands’s approach to building a remarkable software business. Here are some of his quotes: “People are talking about digital transformation, customer journeys, customer experiences. All big words, big projects and initiatives, but very often not very clearly defined in so what does it do for your customers or how do your customers behave? We saw many initiatives where people were focusing on chatbots, so automating chats. What we also saw is that a lot of the voice so people calling was being outsourced to low cost countries or to overflow parties. So basically, moving away from your core processes in your company. But if you look at the numbers in Western Europe, your see that less than 5% of all customer contacts is actually chat, and voice is actually way over 50%.  So, way over 50% you outsource, you giveaway to other parties to handle it for you, and all those efforts on chats is basically solving less than 5% of the complexity and volume….” During this interview, you will learn three things: Why it’s critical to take a big picture view and challenge yourself whether the problem you solve with your software business is the most valuable problem, and not just an interesting problem. Why very often you get exponentially better results if you aim for a symbioses of humans and 60-80% automation, rather than plane 100% automation. That remarkable things happen when you start off with a clear vision, hire a team of linchpins – people that can deliver 10x – and then organize around a framework focused on value and defensible differentiation. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform the way we can mobilize and leverage the power of advocates, and my guest is Mark Organ, Founder and Executive Chairman at Influitive. Mark is an entrepreneurial go-to-market specialist; a CEO with a focus on sales, marketing and business development. His greatest professional passions include creating new billion-dollar categories in technology and developing new leaders. Today he’s helping CEOs achieve their full potential in their businesses and their lives. Mark founded 6 companies, amongst which Eloqua (acquired by Oracle), raised more than 15 rounds of financing, helped a lot of people realize their dreams, and got specialized in creating cultures that are a competitive advantage. He’s also the author of the book “The Messenger is the Message.” In September 2010 he founded Influitive based on the idea that the most successful sales and marketing comes from advocates. That inspired me, and hence I invited Mark to my podcast. We explore the challenge many software businesses have in getting customers to reference them, how that’s driving everyone crazy, and what needs to change approach-wise, to solve that. We also dig deep into Mark’s experience in creating new categories that deliver remarkable impact. Here are some of his quotes: “What I realized, working at Eloqua, was how important it was to have your customers doing more of the work for you, more of the sales and marketing work especially. When you have multiple referrals and references and case studies and all these things, the sales cycle would go down by like +90%. We'd have these deals closing in four days, instead of the usual four months, because there's a ton of advocacy over it. Sales cycle is critical. Where most of the cash flow is tied up in a software company is in ‘people who are not able to make a decision.’ And the best way to get people to make a decision is to surround them with great relevant people who are all saying how great a company is, how great the product is, and how great the people are.” During this interview, you will learn three things: How the best innovation is created if you embrace curiosity and dare to bring in ideas and people from totally different domains Why you should fall in love with your target market, instead of your product, in order to create an impact that turns customers into advocates.  That focusing your time on turning your advocates into superheroes is the secret that will ultimately turn you into a superhero. 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 transforms the way businesses can leverage messaging to make communication with customers more meaningful. My guest is Rebecca Clyde, Co-founder and CEO of Botco.ai Rebecca is an entrepreneur pioneering AI-driven chatbot technology. She’s recognized as "35 Entrepreneurs 35 and Younger"​ by the Arizona Republic and named Most Admired Leader by the Phoenix Business Journal in 2018.  Most of her career she’s been in marketing where she drove business growth through creative and innovative communication strategies. Her skills lie in recognizing market trends, multi-cultural nuances and uncovering customer needs. This sparked the idea to co-found Botco.ai. Botco.ai is founded on the idea that brands are leaving money on the table through their inability to avoid significant time delays in answering questions from prospective customers. As businesses we haven’t figured out how to make ourselves accessible through messaging in a way that’s meaningful and that can scale.  This triggered me, and hence I invited Rebecca to my podcast. We discuss the effects of the growing mismatch in what customers have come to expect, and what businesses are able to provide when it comes to the way we communicate. We also discuss the journey Rebecca went through from idea to driving remarkable results – and the lessons she learned along the way.  Here are some of her quotes: We've moved into this on demand economy. Everything has become instant, and 24/7. Unfortunately, businesses have struggled to really keep up with that on-demand experience that customers expect today. If you look at the buyer journey […] you may have questions along the way as you're trying to ask questions. And today, it's very slow to get those answers, you're going to be playing phone tag, you're going to be emailing back and forth to get those answers and probably feeling very frustrated by the time you get all the information you need to make a decision. This is no longer acceptable for customers. 73% of customers require, and this is for business and consumer buyers, instant engagement in order to make a buying decision about your company. And if you can't instantly answer them, they will go to whoever else has the fastest answer. During this interview, you will learn three things: Why true impact is created if, with your solution, you can redefine the tech/human symbiosis i.e. the different role humans can play in the process to create value.  What benefits you’ll get if you thoroughly test the viability of your idea before writing a line of code.  The momentum that sparks once you make bets on being highly specialized and focus on the ‘non-obvious’ (underserved) markets.  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 grow customer trust by bridging the growing gap between the online and offline world. My guest is Gregg Johnson, CEO of Invoca. Gregg is a seasoned SaaS executive with a passion for building and bringing to market products in emerging categories. He led Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s social marketing product line, where he integrated $1 billion of M&A investments into the Salesforce product portfolio. Prior to that he drove product strategy and development for Salesforce Chatter, helping define the category of enterprise social networking. Earlier in his career, Gregg was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group and worked in sales, marketing and product roles at several startups. He graduated from Stanford University and holds a Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. Gregg joined Invoca as CEO in 2017 and under his leadership, the company has experienced multiple X growth. In 2019, The Software Report ranked Gregg to be #3 on the list of Top 25 Growth Leaders. Meanwhile Invoca won multiple industry awards such as “Best Call Tracking Platform Award”, “Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award”, and the “Hot Vendor Award” in conversational intelligence. This triggered me, and hence I invited Gregg to my podcast. (Note: we recorded this podcast in February 2020, just as the Coronavirus pandemic was starting to sweep through Europe and North America.) We explore the growing challenge for many brands to live up to their customers’ expectations and grow trust in a world that’s increasingly digital, but where human interaction is a critical component as well. We also discuss Gregg’s experiences in successfully scaling his company while growing their ability to help their customers make a meaningful difference. Here are some of his quotes: The problem with more complex products and services is oftentimes people start the purchase journey in digital, but they end up getting consultative advice as part of the buying process. The problem for a marketer is: once you escalate out of the digital channel to these human to human conversational channels, typically marketers haven't been able to understand the impact of their marketing investments on that human to human conversation. As I like to say: if you have your best friend, and you tell them all your secrets and the things that you're really worried about in life, and then two weeks later, they show up, and they don't remember any of that information, they're probably not going to be your best friend for very long. So really, what we do from a technology point of view is trying to help bridge that gap between what happens in the digital world and then what happens in the conversational interactions between a consumer and the representatives of a brand. During this interview, you will learn four things: That a critical to way to look at you company is not only how you are solving a meaningful problem for your customers, but also how your customers perceive you as a company. How to accelerate momentum by smartly adjusting make, buy partner decisions based on different market conditions and where you are in your product market fit life-cycle How to use communication as a weapon to grow alignment, motivation and trust inside your business. Mastering this will give you surprising insights and levels of engagement. That the biggest tailwind you can have is with customers that are excited about what you have done for them and their business. 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 need to clearly define Artificial Intelligence so we can use it to its full potential in our strides to improve the well-being of people. My guest is Prof. Dr. Dagmar Monett, Professor of Computer Science, Berlin School of Economics and Law. Professor Dagmar Monett has more than 30 years of research and teaching experience. She’s the co-Founder of the Artificial General Intelligence Sentinel Initiative, AGISI.org, which is "dedicated to understanding intelligence in order to build beneficial AI and risk/benefit analysis tools to monitor the social and economic consequences of AI to help improve the well-being of all humanity." She’s also the co-Founder of the Competence Center Digitalization at the Berlin School of Economics and Law. At this moment she’s focusing on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Software Engineering methods and techniques, and Computer Science education.  The mission behind AGISI.org is this: ‘To make giant leaps in Artificial Intelligence research in order to change the world for the better.’ That triggered me, and hence I invited Professor Monett to my podcast. We explore why it is so key to have clear definitions for Artificial Intelligence – and how that helps drive the innovation we are hoping for.  Here are some of her quotes: We were seeing that people were concerned about how defining AI is essential for bringing in the field forward, but also why we don't have a definition till now where everybody agrees upon. There is a lot that we unconsciously assume about defining concepts that people don't understand well. So our goal is to bring clarity and understanding in this area and specially in defining artificial intelligence.  We want to understand intelligence better in order to advance humanity … using intelligent algorithms, intelligent systems, intelligence programs better may be dependent on that. By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: Why you should be clear from the start how you’re using AI so that you don’t compromise ethics around security or privacy That trust should be earned and that starts with good products, good behavior, good communication, and good interaction Why it is important to not only have a solid understanding of AI on the development side, but equally important to have it on the business side 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 unlock the potential of people with physical challenges and enable them to be active in society. My guest is David Hojah, President, co-founder and CTO of Loro His background is in medical devices, engineering, and healthcare innovation. He is passionate about empowering people with physical challenges to live independently and making a great social impact. David has invented and developed many medical devices, such as adjustable dental instruments, wheelchairs that convert into a walker, a medical drone for emergencies, and a medical app tracking health for people with chronic diseases. He also built an autonomous personal transporter for wheelchair users that can convert any manual wheelchair into an electric wheelchair. Loro is David's third company. He has received awards, nomination, and news coverage from organizations including MIT, Harvard University, MIT Hacking Medicine, ALSA, Harvard Innovation Lab, Fit4Start in Luxembourg, Microsoft Imagine Cup, and TechCrunch. Loro is an AI-powered smart, personalized companion for wheelchair users to navigate safely and to communicate efficiently. A person with physical challenges can’t interact with the world the same way as the able, but there’s no reason we can’t use tech to close that gap.  That inspired me, and hence I invited David to my podcast. We explore the challenges of creating solutions that are life changing – what mindset do you need, what’s the secret sauce to such approach, how do you make critical decisions, how to make tangible progress and create something remarkable.  Here are some of his quotes: I got inspired by Stephen Hawking. He inspired me both personally and professionally. I do believe there are many people like Stephen Hawking out there. They're just missing accessible technology to be the next Hawking. To be the next engineer, designer, whatever they want to be. They're brilliant, they're intelligent, they're very, very smart, but the only problem: they're stuck in their body, they cannot move their body, they cannot talk. Their mind is like, with the whole universe, they can do many things. The only challenge is; if we unlock their potential, so they can talk, they can communicate first, then they can do many things with their ability. Then we can move on to another level: How to make them more independent. How to make them more engaged and help them to be employed. We want those people to be active in society. To be engaged. To do more, not just for them, but for everyone. During this interview, you will learn three things: That there’s no lack of good ideas – what separates you in doing something remarkable is in turning these ideas into solutions that matter. Why it’s critical to get crystal clear on the real problem and what’s it value proposition. If you don’t get this right you won’t survive for long. How to remove bias – ways to seek the truth – finding out what’s right and what’s wrong. Doing your homework here paves the path for your success. 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 amplify the impact humans can make by a factor 10. My guest is Ajeet Kushwaha, Co-founder and CTO/CPO of Seekify Ajeet is a serial entrepreneur but started his career as a software engineer. In 2010 he co-founded his first company HealthChakra.com, a saas based practice management platform for doctors. In 2011 he cofounded HealthKart, and in 2012 1MG. In 2015 he built ‘Joe Hukum’, a chatbot SaaS platform, that was acquired by Freshworks in 2017 where he then became the Director of Product Management.  In the middle of 2019 he then founded Seekify - a Customer Experience Automation Platform, helps businesses deliver wow customer experience by automating it without losing the human touch.  And this triggered me, hence I invited Ajeet to my podcast. We explore the opportunity we have to enable humans to 10x the impact they can make if we go beyond the notion of just ‘automation’. We also discuss Ajeet’s perspective on what it takes to create a remarkable software business. I personally believe in the compounding effect as to how we can keep getting better incrementally every day. I believe very fundamentally that a healthy competition is always when you compete with yourself and not to the world, because then you have the possibility to the best in the world While working at Freshbooks (a business software company), we realized that how only automation or how only human intervention cannot lead to a better experience. All these things needs to operate in tandem, hand in hand. That thought led to the case: Can we bring something in this in the scene where we empower these customer facing teams to deliver a better customer experience by bringing automation together. Can we create an intersection of these and make sure that automation is enabling, augmenting human in a way, that they can deliver the customer experience, which a customer really is looking for. During this interview, you will learn three things: That too often our solutions are reactive to how people want them to work. But what if we make them much more like a GPS – with self-healing characteristics based on what’s actually happening How momentum is created by being very picky about selecting your customers Why the biggest impact is made when you take the mindset that every problem comes with a solution. It’s that determination that helps us win the biggest battles.  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 big idea behind Cognism, a sales acceleration platform, and the lessons tech-entrepreneur James Isilay learned on his journey of delivering remarkable impact with his business. James Isilay is the co-founder and CEO of Cognism, one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the UK. Last year, Cognism grew from $2.5M to $7M in ARR and was voted by LinkedIn as one of the UK’s Top 25 Startups. He’s an inspirational and enterprising businessman, who approaches work with unrivalled technical and organisational skills, perseverance, precision and total dedication.   Before founding Cognism, James was employed as an Algorithmic Trader at Axpo Group and as a Quantitative/Technical Analyst at EGL Trading. James has a Masters in Engineering in Information Systems Engineering from Imperial College London.   He is an expert in lead generation, sales management and alpha discovery using algorithmic technologies, natural language processing and machine learning. What triggered me to invite James to my podcast is their story to accelerate sales by enriching prospect data with critical event data. We explore what’s broken in B2B sales and the new ways to solve the problem. We explore the lessons learned by James starting and scaling his tech-start-up, and what decisions helped him to realize the impact they’re creating today.  Here are some of his quotes: The biggest thing that causes failure in a lot of companies is just poor sales process and bad sales process. Sales is actually your first problem as a CEO that you need to address and get right. And then, when you got that right, then you've got time to get your other bits right. But if you get sales wrong, you don't really have much of a chance. People waste a lot of people time pulling leads off LinkedIn, putting them through several tools to build a data set that then is not very highly responsive to outreach. So you waste, you burn time across the whole process. Whereas, if you can just get that list built correctly and efficiently and then engage that list in an effective sales cadence and get a high response, then you're saving time across every aspect and you're getting a better outcome on the actual new business that you're generating. That's pretty much the majority of the battle. During this interview, you will learn three things: Why it’s important to not only solve a highly valuable problem, but also pay attention to how urgent/critical this is to your ideal customer.  Why, the moment you have success, you need to continuously keep thinking about how you upgrade ‘the system’ – nothing is static How to go about collecting feedback – and why it’s key to get that from real customers, those who are completely neutral and honest to tell you what works…and what sucks. 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 a key aspect to drive product innovation and that is mastering human centered design. My guest is Brian T. O’Neill, founder and principal of Designing for Analytics. Brian T. O'Neill is a designer, advisor, and founder of Designing for Analytics, an independent consultancy which helps organizations design innovate innovative products powered by data science and analytics. For over 20 years, he has worked with companies including DellEMC, Global Strategy Group, Tripadvisor, Fidelity, JP Morgan Chase, ETrade and several SAAS startups. He has spoken internationally, giving talks at O'Reilly Strata, Enterprise Data World, the International Institute for Analytics Symposium, Predictive Analytics World, and Boston College. Brian also hosts the 5-star podcast, Experiencing Data, where he reveals the strategies and activities that product, data science and analytics leaders are using to deliver valuable experiences around data. In addition to consulting, Brian is also a professional percussionist and has performed at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center.  What triggered me to invite Brian to my podcast was one of his quotes about the fact that 85% of AI, analytics, and big data projects fail. That’s why we explore why this is the case, and what needs to be done different in order to be successful – creating software products that people find worth making a remark about.  Here are some of his quotes: I started to see really, really bad survey results over 10 plus years. What I'm specifically talking about here is the success rate for delivering data projects. The theme here is the success rate on launching successful data initiatives hovered around 10 to 25%. So that means there’s failure rates up in the 75% plus. My general feeling was: There's a lack of a focus on the human aspect of analytics and data science projects and products right now. We're trying to use the data science and analytics hammer, and we're looking for stuff to hit. But no one's really aware why do we need holes? Who needs a hole? And where do they need the hole? Instead, it's just hit nails wherever we can and hope that someone maybe needs a hole there. During this interview, you will learn three things: That a first step in succeeding data projects is to stop forgetting about the value of fun and engaging with people. Why it is key to define the owner of value creation in your team – i.e. someone that owns the problem and the accountability for analytics and data science solutions to product value. That we have lost the humanity aspect in solution design – and a way to fix that and get some real wins is to spend time developing soft skills 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 change the way life-science companies run clinical trials and thereby save both lives and billions of dollars. My guest is Kim Walpole, Co-founder and CEO of Trials.ai. Kim is an organizational development and management consultant, skilled in helping individuals; groups and organizations increase their effectiveness. Her work with companies like Pfizer, Merck, Wyeth Ayerst, Orbital Sciences and Homeland Security gives her a unique perspective on leadership development, strategy and organizational growth. Throughout her career she founded multiple companies: Optimum Training & Consulting in 2004, Wembli in September of 2011, and in 2016 her 3rd company, Trials.ai, after her best friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died waiting for a promising treatment.  What began as a passion project has turned into a mission-driven, venture-backed startup that is turning the clinical trials ecosystem on its head. Kim is on a mission to build AI enabled technology to help research organizations optimize clinical trial protocols for speed and success – because patients don’t have time to wait. And that inspired me, hence I invited her to my podcast. We explore the big problem around planning and executing clinical trials and how, by blending technology and people in the right way, major breakthroughs can be created. During our conversation we uncover a number of important lessons to accelerate innovation at large. Here are some of her quotes: We are on a mission to get treatments to patients faster.  We do that by leveraging artificial intelligence to optimize clinical trial protocols. What we're doing is essentially developing technology that really brilliant research teams can use to construct their protocols from the ground up. A major problem for life science companies, is that almost 50% of their clinical trials are failing because of poorly designed protocols. What ends up happening is that billions of dollars get squandered in preventable mistakes. I had spent over 12 years consulting and pharma biotech companies, and loved my work. And then, about four years ago, my best friend Paul was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. That was that wake-up moment for me where I realized: ‘Okay, why are we continuing to approach this process in such a traditional, manual way? Why are we not using technologies to make this smarter, faster, easier?’ By listening to this interview, you will learn three things: That it’s helpful to make a broken process more efficient, but even more valuable if you fix the root cause. That falling in love with the big idea can grow blind spots and bias inside your organization. That’s dangerous. As such it’s critical to build your secret weapon: a culture of insatiable curiosity. Don’t get married to the way you are thinking about things today. Why instead of asking yourself: ‘Are we doing this the right way’, you’re better of asking ‘Are we doing things the best way’ – and then look 5 years down the line, trying to predict where your industry is going. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices