14 Minutes of SaaS - founder stories on business, tech and life

Episode 72 – Part 1 of a 4-part mini-series with Jonathan Anguelov, co-founder and COO of Aircall in conversation with Stephen Cummins. Founded in Paris in 2014, it’s the only cloud phone system that has built integrations into 100 different SaaS applications in 2019. Its mission is to unlock the power of voice, specifically the power of telephone calls through integration the Intercoms, Salesforces, Zendesks, gong.io’s and freshdesks of today. It's valuation is already north of 250M USD

Part 2 and concluding episode of Phil Chambers, CEO & Co-founder of employee engagement software leader Peakon chats with Stephen Cummins. We go much deeper into the value that Peakon actually introduces into the world – and how things like contextual learning targets can improve management teams more effectively and how comparatively high Peakon numbers can be used to attract employees to your company

Phil Chambers, CEO & Co-founder of employee engagement software leader Peakon chats with Stephen Cummins. Founded in 2014, it’s raised $68M in investment. Employee numbers have gone from 80 to 230 in 24 months. Phil tells us his story leading up to this startup and how Peakon can detect whether your best staff are thinking of leaving up to 250 days in advance

Harry really underlines the value of finding an amazing co-founder - his talented room-mate in college for 4 years, Tom O'Neil. He started his career in Google in product management and that was a very formative experience for him. Since this interview Harry’s company Periscope was acquired by SiSense and now he’s the General Manager and CMO there.

E68: Mike Molinet, COO and Co-founder of Branch.io

Mike is a former volunteer firefighter, a fan of building and failing fast, and now the co-founder of a hyper-growth B2B SaaS scaleup. He tells the story about how deep linking and mobile growth platform Branch evolved from a consumer app.

In the WebSummit in Lisbon we interview, for the 2nd time, Nicolas Dessaigne, CEO & Co-founder of enterprise search platform Algolia. For Nicolas developers are the new heroes and they have a big influence on the buying decision for Algolia. The company is in the news having raised $110M after the interview we did. He was the 2nd person we’d ever interviewed. Check out episode 2 of 14 Minutes of SaaS if you’re interested in company culture.

E63: Peter Reinhardt, CEO and Co-founder of Segment. Since this interview Peter Reinhardt, CEO and Co-founder of Segment, and his team have raised another 175M USD to bring total funding to to $284 million and a valuation of over 1.5B.

He validated an idea he was trying to kill by publishing a link to a sign up page on Hacker News – pretending they’d built it. The response was massive and Segment built it’s 1st hugely successful product in just 5 days

Peter talks about why building a business where the target customer is developers can to some degree sidestep the question of what company size range you chase after initially. He describes Segment as a customer data infrastructure company – he wants to help customers manage all of their data from different sources. He lets us know whether or not he’s interested in building a marketing automation app on top of that and gives his view on the rise of 100% remote teams. This episode is about how Peter helped lay the foundation for building of a unicorn, by trying to kill the idea before it was brought into existence. If you love classic early validation stories, tune into the next instalment of 14 Minutes of SaaS. He also talks about how selling to developers can bypass the old chestnut of whether you want to go after SMBs or the Enterprise first.

TRANSCRIPT

Peter Reinhardt

The most important thing about a business in the early stages is finding product market fit. After product market fit it becomes go-to-market and distribution, but prior to product market fit nothing else matters. And I think it really requires actually a scepticism. And I think the failure mode for most companies prior to product market fit is that they drink their own kool-ade. They have a vision for the world - of how the world should be. And they build a product to try to make the world like that. But actually the world doesn’t give a shit.=

Stephen Cummins

Welcome to 14 minutes of SaaS, the show where you can listen to the stories and opinions of founders of the world's most remarkable SaaS ScaleUps.

Since this interview Peter Reinhardt, CEO and Co-founder of Segment, and his team have raised another 175M USD to bring total funding to to $284 million and a valuation of over 1.5B. Peter talks about why building a business where the target customer is developers can to some degree sidestep the question of what company size range you chase after initially. He describes Segment as a customer data infrastructure company – he wants to help customers manage all of their data from different sources. He lets us know whether or not he’s interested in building a marketing automation app on top of that and gives his view on the rise of 100% remote teams.

Ok – we’ve got Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Segment here at the WebSummit. Nice to meet you.

Peter Reinhardt

Thanks for having me. Nice to meet you as well.

Stephen Cummins

Tell me a little bit about your life up to Segment

Peter Reinhardt

Sure. I grew up in Seattle and was really into math. Then went to MIT and decided math was a little too abstract. Then studied physics. Decided physics was a little too abstract. Then studied aerospace engineering. I wasn’t going to get my aerospace engineering degree. But anyway I decided aerospace engineering was a little too abstract anyway. And ended up dropping out with my roommates and starting a company. So made the whole transition from math to business. For the last seven eight years have been working on a company that’s now doing reasonably well.

Stephen Cummins

What made you decide to found Segment?

Peter Reinhardt

So originally we … myself and my roommates in MIT … we were just interested in starting a company together. So we were roommates and best friends and just really wanted to spend more and more time together working on cool things. So we actually started as a classroom lecture tool. And the idea was to give students this button to push to say ‘I'm confused’ and the...

Adi Azaria, Workiz CEO & Sisense Co-founder; Growth Hacking in Red Oceans.

Stephen Cummins met Adi for a second time in the Web Summit and it was all change. He had navigated the difficult path of separation from a business intelligence rocketship SiSense, which he’d co-founded, to falling in love with the startup world again, and finding his latest passion in field service scheduling software Workiz. If you’re interested in hearing more about Adi’s formative years, tune into episode 8 of 14 Minutes of SaaS … although recorded early in the life of the podcast, it is one of the episodes that has had the highest listenership.

Polina Montano, Job Today Co-Founder – 3 of 3 – a Tech Star is Born

A Tech Star is Born - Polina goes deeper into Job Today and discusses the changes that have occurred in the company and the reason why it can be a motor for economic growth by empowering companies to hire faster and better and to subsequently succeed better - as well as provide better opportunities for candidates.

TRANSCRIPT

We are the ones that are imposing these limits on ourselves. We have to believe in ourselves a bit more … like … just cut yourself some slack and give yourself some credit and say ‘why not?’ ‘why would I not be able to do that if I really… really want to? If I'm really really motivated. It's our own fears of not being good enough … of not being qualified … of not being able to do that. This is something which prevent us from doing things.

Stephen Cummins

 

Welcome to 14 minutes of SaaS, the show where you can listen to the stories and opinions of founders of the world's most remarkable SaaS ScaleUps.

This the final episode of our three part mini-series with Polina Montano - recorded in the Websummit in Lisbon. She goes into more depth on Job Today and the service they provide. She talks about it from the point of view of both the employer and the employee - and she's also touches upon the future of work issues around inclusivity and gender equality.

Polina Montano

Work is a vital need for most of us. And so, the impact on the economy is tremendous if we make hiring easier – something that might take the hassle out of hiring. We would like the beauty of the platform to be also how it enables new job creation - because as a small business owner if you know, it's going to be very difficult for you to bring someone onboard -  chances are you're just gonna put more pressure on your existing team. And by giving you a solution which is easy and intuitive and fast and inefficient to use … chances are they actually help you maybe hire more people and give opportunities to more candidates out there.

Stephen Cummins

Okay, now a couple of things I love about the philosophy behind the company is that, it allows for example, graduates, who don't have any references really in the workspace you know, to present themselves in a video format - so the employer gets an immediate impression about the individual. From the employer's point of view if they're not just putting bums on seats .. they actually can see the individual and think that my work actually ,…. that person could work in team … but I love the local! The fact that you focused on the local because that's the great irony .. people are down the road from you… you can't… you can't connect with them. Is there any vision to go a little step further where by you make the connection, you're the employee or the employer and whereby you somehow facilitate even the meeting place … is there any plan to build that out … where everything just gets seamless? Where Job Today even facilitates the meeting and everything. Is that too much?

Polina Montano

No it's definitely not too much! The whole idea is to make hiring simple. That's the core mission - just take the friction out of hiring. And absolutely - the scheduling of interviews and making sure it is a better fit and the best match between employer and candidate. It's definitely the direction in which I'm working – it makes perfect sense. As you know, the biggest hiring pain in service industry is no shows - we track which people apply for jobs with which vendor. They don't bother come for the interview. So clearly better communication and better processes can improve that.

Stephen Cummins

And if you were a candidate and you sign up for job today and you do two or three no shows, will that affect your ranking … because I know you're ranking the employers. Are you ranking the job seekers?

Polina Montano

Yes, absolutely. In the future yes – we are working on our ranking system right now – its all about bringi...

Episode 2 of 3 in the mini – series (episode 63 of 14 Minutes of SaaS)

In Luxembourg by now - A multiple prize winning doyenne of Retail leaves her prized fashion store and works in an all conuming hard core retail position for Shell managing 6 petrol stations with accompanying mini-supermarket stores. Then leaves to do a masters in entrepreneurship and tech - and uses that as a springboard to apply her new knowledge and great idea to make the traditional world of hiring much more immediate, more local and much faster for companies and people looking for service and casual positions.

Transcript

Polina Montano

I won Golden retailer - like being the best in the country twice. And after that I decided … ‘okay, what else I can do?’ So while I was still running my petrol station business, I just said well … let's just go and find something about learning about technology, because I was very much in the traditional sector of operations … of retail .. and going back to university was so good for me. It really like made a difference in making the world of technology accessible and exciting … really like opening my eyes on opportunities, on how much technology actually allows you to do nowadays. And already practically instantly I was excited about the possibility. How we can leverage such beautiful technology and innovation to improve the day to day lives of people and businesses maybe in traditional industries. And then the idea actually came along pretty fast.

Stephen Cummins

 

Welcome to 14 minutes of SaaS, the show where you can listen to the stories and opinions of founders of the world's most remarkable SaaS ScaleUps.

In this, the second part of a 3-part mini-series recorded with Polina Montano in the WebSummit in Lisbom, she tells us how she left a very successful career in traditional retail industries to become an almost overnight success in the tech world.

The first notable one was V&J or the Stefanel boutique in Luxembourg? 1. What brought you to Luxembourg?  And 2. What was your interest in Luxemburg? Fashion? ..

Polina Montano

Oh, you make it sound so serious. I mean just for record …  Let's just remember I was like 24. I wasn’t thinking so deeply. I went to Luxembourg for the best reason ever …  I followed my husband who got relocated, for some work .. because he worked in finance .. and I just followed him to the country. I already knew I wanted to do something for myself.

Franchising structures seemed like a great compromise  - you can still get the support of existing brands – the brand also gives you like a few procedures - kind of helps you set the business up - in the same time you experience a great degree of freedom in how exactly you run this location - and fashion obviously – young Russian girl 25 years old. I mean a fashion boutique was like a dream coming through … right? Like all of a sudden you have this beautiful shop – beautiful clothes. I mean what more could you possibly want? But guess what… it didn't last too long?

Small Talk ends

Stephen Cummins

Yeah. It lasted less than four years?

Polina Montano

It lasted about two years - after two years of me running this shop, I got an offer from Shell - you know, the core company for gas stations etc back then - show or revisiting their retail management structures. And they decided to offer franchising as a formula and they decided that it would work very well for the group. And they actually at that moment offered me the opportunity - which once again took me way out of my comfort zone. Like I mentioned me being super happy with my little fashion store - like my little baby. It's like a lifestyle business. Starting all over again. Southern you actually go over the contract or finding a chain of selling points which essentially is much more than just selling gas. It's like having this little 24 hours supermarkets next to it. So it was quite an impressive structure - over more than 50 people staff - six locati...