B2B SaaS Podcast

In this episode, I talk to Adele Theobald, founder of a HR platform called IDriveHR.  We deep-dive into IDriveHR's journey so far with focus on their 0 to 1 journey, current lead generation strategies & conversion. 

Talking points,

• what IDriveHR is all about
• how they have hit 5K MRR with around 18 paying customers
• how the founders used their credibility in the HR management consultancy space to get the first few customers
• how are they effectively using Linkedin & other closed communities to drive top-of-funnel leads
• how they innovatively use physical mail as part of the multi-channel outreach for warm leads
• conversion funnel & sales cycle
• why they are priced so low on a per-seat basis

You can also watch this episode on youtube here.

I talked to Shehroze Bhatti, who's building a SaaS company called MarketingCopy. We talk about how his decision to pick a relevant domain name for his product ended up driving a lot of relevant organic traffic without writing any SEO-optimised content.

 Talking points, 

• what MarketingCopy is all about
• how he managed to raise 100K $ by doing LTD deals on three platforms ( not app sumo )
• how he hit 30K ARR with around 80 paying customers on a recurring paying plan
• how choosing a smart domain name helped him get around 50% of new customers organically
• his growth plans & how he is still experimenting to figure out the winning acquisition channel
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I talked to John Wright, the founder of a SaaS company called StatsDrone, which helps affiliate businesses track their various affiliate programs. John has scaled his company to around 20K MRR with around 100 customers, primarily using an innovative outreach process. He uses a personlised 2-minute video within his cold outreach process & he is seeing extra ordinary conversion rates. 

Talking points,

• what StatsDrone is all about
• hits 20K MRR with around 100 customers
• going from 0 to 1 using by convincing a few affiliate managers within his network that he built over 20 years 
• using personalised 2-minute video within his cold outreach process
• prefers other outreach channels like linkedIn, facebook, reddit etc. over email
• conversion metrics using personalised video ( around 25% video watched to demo booked )
• self-serve model vs. getting people to book a demo
• plans to go upmarket & increase ACV going forward with new VP of Sales hire
• positioning the product as a business intelligence tool to help him increase the deal sizes
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I talk to Akash Agarwal, founder of a supply chain management SaaS called Conmitto. He used a strategic partnership with a logistics company to pitch their software & sell it to their partner’s customers.

Talking points, 

• what conmitto is all about
• how they have unbundled a whole warehouse management suite to focus on selling just one module, “dock optimiser.”
• how they hit 10K MRR serving 12 customers & managing around 45 warehouses across these within just six months
• how they used a strategic partnership with a logistics company to pitch their software & sell it to their partner’s customers
• how word of mouth with the logistics ecosystem is driving top-of-funnel lead generation for them after landing initial deals
• how does their conversion look like & how do they manage to close deals with 4-5 calls post the initial lead interest
• how they sidestep requests for pilots by onboarding them onto a lower-tier monthly pricing plan
• why are they focusing on expansion revenue by feature upsells
• why do they think expansion revenue is better than focusing on new growth at this stage of their company
• how they are growing with some funding raised & with seven employees ( 2 in GTM ) as of today
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I talk to Suraj Gadage, co-founder of a video recording SaaS called BerryCast. He uses product-led growth to absolutely nail his top-of-funnel lead generation, with 0$ spent on marketing channels.

Talking points,

• what Berrycast is all about
• how he hit 10k MRR with around 500 paying customers
• how his app sumo launch a couple of years ago is still driving his leads, using "powered by" branding 
• how converting users on a lower plan to a higher plan with customized branding, might affect their product led growth
• how they are managing conversions 
• how they plan to go upmarket by focusing on select use cases 
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Adrian Balcan hits 170K ARR with his SaaS company Feedcheck, which helps big brands monitor & manage customer reviews. He writes amazing content & organic traffic driven to this content is his top of funnel.

Talking points,

• what feedcheck is all about
• how he built the product by iterating with one of his first customers
• how he hit 170K ARR with around 20 customers, closing deals of around 10K ACV
• how almost all of this top of funnel lead generation is around writing content & ranking for SEO
• what it takes to convert an inbound interest to a paying customer with deal sizes into 10s of thousands of dollars
• what other acquisition channels has he experimented with & results he found 
• how he is thinking of listing a micro product on appsumo to generate more brand awareness & improve top of funnel
• funding status & future plans
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Aksel Cakmak is building a shopify app for better post purchase upsells. Gets first 10 odd customers primarily using hyper-personalised cold email campaigns, spending up to 40 minutes per prospect for personalised intros.

Talking points,

• what axe commerce is all about
• how he got first 10 odd customers using hyper-personalised cold email campaigns
• deep dive into his best performing email sequence
• how he experimented & figured out that selling with social proof using case studies works better than anything else
• why he doesn't want to scale cold email campaigns already
• future growth plans & shopify app store optimisations 
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Julien Nahum of NotionForms hits 150K ARR with 700 paying customers & 25K users. He's building Notionforms which is a form builder for Notion, a popular workspace tool. 

Talking points, 

• What Notionforms is all about 
• Total users, paying customers, MRR & growth rate
• How he absolutely nailed his top of funnel with "powered by notionforms" phrase.
• How conversion looks like & how does he plan to improve it.  
• Risks of building on a popular platform
• How his product is almost 4-5X times costly wrt the main notion tool
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Founder has around 10 customers on his HR platform. He's focusing on building brand to improve their credibility.  

In this episode, I interview Austin Kerr who is the founder of Humanagement.

We talk about,

• what humanagement does
• how he ended up getting couple of enterprise clients with his lifetime deal
• why he's focusing on selling to both enterprise & SMB customers at the same time
• why he is focusing more on conversion rather than lead acquisition
• why he believes investing in PR like podcasts etc. is going to improve his lead conversion
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Founder grows to 25K ARR with 20 SaaS customers on his affiliate platform & marketplace, which has 1500 listed affiliates. Primarily grows using cold outreach on LinkedIn, which has around 5% connection request to meeting book rate. 

In this episode, I interview Joran Hoffman who is the founder of Reditus. 

We talk about, 

• what Reditus is all about.
• why he ended up cutting short their lifetime deal on Appsumo.
• how he uses LinkedIn taking help of a VA to book meetings with 5% connection request sent to meeting book rate.
• how he built the other side ( affiliates ) of the marketplace.
• how he plans to grow using SEO in the long run.
• why he might consider revenue based financing (RBF ).
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