Big Break Software Podcast

Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy, talks about mastering interviewing skills, his book, and lessons he has learned from interviewing founders. Listen to the podcast and learn.

Mixergy is a platform where SaaS founders can listen to startup stories and learn from experienced mentors through courses and interviews. Andrew talks to Geordie about the progress he is making with the company. If you are considering venturing into the SaaS industry, this is a must-listen-to podcast. 

• Why chat messages are more effective than email
• Why surveys don't generate sufficient data
• Importance of being focused
• Why techniques are crucial when it comes to interviewing
• Importance of a personal/social touch during interviews
• Why storytelling is crucial during interviews

Andrew's entrepreneurship journey started with an online greeting company which was also an email newsletter company. While the company was successful, he decided to take a break and focus on non-work-related stuff. When he finally went back to entrepreneurship, he started doing interviews, and it has been 14 years and counting now.

The core of Mixergy is the podcast, but Andrew says he integrated an educational component in the form of a master class. Get details of how the educational element works from the podcast. 

Together with his team, they sold the master class on a membership basis. Andrew talks about getting ridiculed during the inaugural part of the master class project with the online community claiming that he could only sell software and not information. Still, the information courses continued to grow amid the challenges.

Andrew learned one big lesson from interacting with and interviewing from the membership space. Learn about it from the podcast. SaaS entrepreneurs can learn numerous lessons about their audience by attempting to sell them something. He supports his sentiments with a detailed explanation.

How does the pricing component work? Andrew says the first step of doing it is; not knowing what you have. Sometimes you may run ads even though you wouldn't know how much income they would bring in. Andrew seeks to understand his audience's worth and maximize value from what he is offering.

At some point, Andrew discovered Fresh Books and sought to learn more about advertising. He says Fresh Books played an integral role in helping him come up with pricing. How can entrepreneurs leverage interviews to grow their businesses?

Andrew starts by giving out an illustration that you can listen to from the podcast. He then mentions that developing a personal connection with the person you are interviewing is critical. It allows you to remain in touch with them regardless of where they are. Andrew illustrates some techniques that interviewers can use to develop closeness with their interviewees.

Anyone can be become a good interviewer, says Andrew. He mentions how being different as he grew up helped him build a strong foundation for what he does today. Do not miss that captivating part of the podcast.

Paying close attention to detail is one of the skills Andrew mastered from the start. From spending thousands of dollars transcribing his interviews to evaluating the transcriptions, figuring out what he said that made a difference, and hiring producers, Andrew has gone over and beyond to give his customers the best. He discusses some of the techniques he uses to understand the other person better during interviews. You can learn about them from the podcast.

Many interviewers want to listen to the successes only without paying much attention to the failures. However, Andrew is always interested in learning about the failures involved. Discussing failure not only eliminates some of the pain of failure but also normalizes failing. By discussing failure, interviewers understand what people who fail have in common with their counterparts who succeed.

Discussing challenges is critical because it enables people to understand that interviewees are human. Listen to Andrew talk about one of the best failure stories he has ever done. What makes a good interviewee? According to Andrew, that would be a relatable person who has done something the team aspires to do themselves. Andrew says he would appreciate it if readers of his book pointed out any issues with it. He mentions that they already made some sales before releasing the book, something which occurred unexpectedly. Listen to the details in the podcast.

Some readers have already started implementing lessons from the book as Andrew narrates and gives examples in the podcast. How can you get people to open up with you? Andrew says he does that by opening up about himself first. That way, he creates an environment where interviewees feel free to open up.

Mixergy

Andrew Warner LinkedIn

Andrew Warner Twitter

Michael Cardamone, CEO of Forum Ventures, talks about what he considers in potential SaaS investments and his lessons from the industry. Get more insights from the podcast.

Form Ventures is a leading B2B SaaS focus accelerator that helps early-stage businesses grow and scale. They have invested 50 million USD in over 250 companies, with their portfolio hitting an approximate valuation of 3 billion USD. Join the podcast and listen to Michael as he tells Geordie about his journey. 

• How the Forum Ventures seed fund works
• How to know a great founder
• What companies need to succeed during the accelerator program
• The framework that Forum Ventures use to help companies track KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
• Why do companies join accelerator programs
• Which is the ideal place to source a SaaS company?

Forum Ventures was recently rebranded from Acceleprise, an accelerator B2B SaaS which has been in existence for close to seven years. Michael says they come in at the early stage of a business and run a four-month associate-based program acting as a continuation of the founding team.

Forum Ventures helps companies devise the right market strategy to identify their ideal customers and edge closer to getting funding. Forum also has a seed fund where they invest in institutional seed rounds. Listen to the podcast to understand how the seed fund works.

The core part of the business is to invest $100,000 to each company that joins the accelerator program. While they may not have enough capital to invest in every company that sets up a seed round from the accelerator program, they strive to invest in companies outside the accelerator.

Michael and his team consider various factors when deciding who to recruit in the accelerator program. First, they look for companies that are in the earliest stages of their operations. To understand a company’s product and vision, Forum works closely with the founders whose product may be in the early stages but not fully developed. Some of them may have customers while others may not. Michael defines that stage in detail, and you can learn all about it from the podcast.

Much of what Forum Ventures does is focus on the team and the market opportunity. When looking for a team, Forum considers their founder market fit and tries to understand what they know about the problem they are solving or their target market. They also seek to determine how great the founders are; a term Michael says he detests. Find out his reasons from the podcast.

According to Michael, you do not know a good founder. Instead, he says they determine the characteristics that a great founder and leader would have. Listen to Michael as he gives an in-depth explanation of these traits.

How big or small should a team be to qualify for the Forum Ventures accelerator program? Michael says they do not have complicated rules regarding the team’s size as long as they have an excellent market fit and understand their products extensively. Michael mentions some common traits that make companies successful during the accelerator program in this podcast.

Forum Ventures has a structure that helps companies track their KPIs, which Michael says is different for each company. Get details of how the structure works from the podcast. To acquire the $100,000 funding, companies give up 7.5% equity to Forum Ventures. This arrangement may not make much sense to all companies, but it works for a significant number of companies, according to Michael.

Forum has carved a niche in the industry as a reliable provider capable of acquiring more funding for the companies after the accelerator program. Michael gives some practical examples in the podcast.

Michael says the $100,000 capital that companies joining the accelerator program get should last for the entire four-month program. He also mentions what a company should achieve at the end of the program in terms of performance. Get all the details from the podcast.

The SaaS industry is fast becoming overly competitive. What criteria does Forum Ventures use to determine a company’s potential for success? Michael says they focus on five things: vertical SaaS, the future of work, supply chain logistics, and FinTech, insurance, and tech-based stuff.

Michael explains these concepts in detail, complete with illustrations. He concludes the podcast by mentioning that while angel investing can be great, it’s one industry where being connected to the ecosystem is critical. Investors should also know that some of the companies may not work. If you are new to angel investing, consider doing it in angel groups where you can learn and gain experience before risking your money, he says.

• Forum Ventures
• Michael Cardamone LinkedIn
• Michael Cardamone Twitter

Saroj Ativitavas, CEO of Wisible, talks about funding his MVP, gaining his first customers, and navigating his zero to 30,000 MRR journey. Get more insights from the podcast.

Wisible is a sales intelligence platform that enables B2B firms to reduce sales cycles, increase conversion rates, and enhance sales prediction accuracy. Listen to Saroj as he shares his exciting journey with Geordie.

• The core problem Wisible solves for customers
• Why the Chinese market is not ideal for the Wisible concept
• How Saroj transitioned from the corporate world to a startup job
• How Saroj and his team transitioned from an agency to a SaaS platform
• The impact of content marketing for businesses

According to Saroj, many customers who approach them seeking a tangible solution often have a leaky sales funnel. The team behind Wisible strives to help their customers determine the critical spot and underlying bottlenecks. They work together to provide a robust solution based on their needs.

Wisible focuses on CRM tools while tracking any interactions and data that may have been generated during the sales procedure. The platform also features a dashboard and an analytic report that can display in the sales funnel interface. Customers can also track their conversion rate, determine their average deal amount, and sales cycle. 

Saroj has been in the B2B sales sector for 20 years, during which he encountered a wide range of challenges and learned crucial lessons. He was a salesperson for a mobile telecommunication operator in Thailand before graduating to become a sales director.

During his stint in the sales industry, Saroj tried numerous tools and software but could not identify the ideal option to meet his needs and those of his customers. The quest for an effective solution pushed him into developing a platform they could rely on to solve their problems.

Saroj explains why he left his job at the mobile telecommunication company, and you can learn from the podcast. Currently, there are numerous click funnel options in the market. Why did Saroj feel the need to develop a new one? To answer this question, Saroj begins by defining what B2B businesses do and why they need aggressive salespeople. Get all the details from the podcast.

Saroj reiterates that their system integrates with their customer engagement’s business channel. This feature relieves salespeople from having to feed data into the system manually. He gives an illustration to help listeners understand this concept better.

Nearly 100% of Wisible customers come from the Southern Asia region, but Saroj and his team plan to expand their business to other regions. He explains why they are not yet ready to venture into the Chinese market. 

After leaving his job, Saroj first launched a robust product that focused on giving software developers a healthy platform to exercise their talent. They later quit the market to launch the sales intelligence agency.

Saroj and his co-founder had worked together in the telecommunications company for ten years and were conversant with their customer’s pain points. They also knew there was a ready market for their idea in Thailand. Saroj and his team would spend an entire year developing the Wisible MVP and another year before acquiring their first paying customer.

At first, Saroj says they gave out the system for free and explains how they finally won their first paying customer. Find out the details from the podcast. Promoting a startup can be a difficult task. How did the team reach their target audience? Saroj says they run a blog where they share content about their services before sharing it on different social media platforms.

The journey from zero to 5,000 was easier after winning their first paying customer; Saroj says and explains the phase further in the podcast. Did you know you could make money from customizing customers’ platforms to meet their specific needs? Listen to Saroj as he discusses this concept and explains how it worked for their business.

Apart from content marketing, Saroj and his team engage in teaching as a marketing concept, where they create courses and train their staff. Saroj mentions their go-to content marketing strategy that aspiring entrepreneurs can benefit from. While some online businesses grew tremendously at the peak of Covid, Saroj says they experienced slow growth rates.

What would Saroj do differently if he had an opportunity to go back in time? He would be more focused. He concludes the podcast by explaining why he thinks Wisible is the best in the industry. 

• Wisible
• Saroj Ativitavas LinkedIn

Eugene Kruglov, cofounder and COO of AppFollow, talks about funding the MVP, gaining his first customer, and navigating his 0-30,000 MRR journey. Listen in for more insights.

AppFollow is a platform that enables you to assemble your mobile app data from diverse sources into a centralized place. Join Eugene Kruglov the cofounder in this podcast as he tells Geordie how they navigated various challenges to build this app. He also discusses lessons they have learned along the way.

• The problem that AppFollow solves for its customers
• Three key things that Eugene and his team offer through their service
• Importance of visibility for app developers 
• Why tracking your competitors is crucial
• How did Eugene and his team know that users would appreciate their app?
• Why video marketing can be an ideal concept for increasing visibility
• How did Eugene and his team come up with the pricing model in the early days?
• Why product developers should manage their customer support department
• The importance of search optimization on product visibility

Eugene has been passionate about mobile for a long time. Previously, he was involved in the entrepreneurial space, where he helped launch companies in the mobile industry. He has also worked with mobile operators in the value-added services divisions, where he gained tremendous experience. 

With the launch of App Store, Eugene got excited about the possibility of developing applications. He has been involved in developing products for other companies, which they used to pitch in the beginning. Find out how Eugene met his cofounder and how he (the cofounder) shared an idea with him which they would later bank on to start a company.  

Eugene says they collaborate with teams and help them navigate app stores with ease. The team is committed to offering solutions from the product perspective because they have encountered the same problem before. AppFollow helps developers navigate through customer feedback. It also intensifies the customer’s voice and provides numerous tools to work with reviews and feedback in the app stores.

AppFollow increases your visibility in app stores. Eugene says they understand how the algorithms function and use unique keywords to ensure users are visible in search. Through AppFollow, users can track their competitors with ease. Listen to the podcast for a detailed explanation of these features.

Developing a product that target users will appreciate can be a challenging journey. Eugene discusses what they did to ensure users would love the product. Listen to the podcast for the details. Eugene says they spent between 15 and 20 thousand dollars building the MVP in six months. All that time, Eugene was still running a different business while helping to set up AppFollow. 

The platform was operating under an acceleration program that gave them some visibility. However, they needed to do something to popularize their brand, and this is where word of mouth and video came in. The team started shooting short videos of them navigating the acceleration program and distributed them in various platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They forwarded links to their friends and did everything to make the videos funny, irresistible but still relatable context-wise. 

Determining the ideal pricing for an app can be difficult, especially when you are just getting started. Eugene says they are still trying to come up with the best pricing model. As beginners, they had three basic payment plans, which Eugene admits was relatively low.

Eugene says they needed to accommodate as many users on the platform as possible in terms of the pricing. As a result, they ended up giving out the app for small amounts expecting a high adoption which would translate into a high ROI. That was not to happen, and they had to go back to the drawing board.

What is their pricing currently? Find out from the podcast. Eugene also talks about the features they have added to the app to make it more effective for users. Eugene says the team was committed to handling every operation independently, seeing that they had no money to pay staff.

As a founder, he was tasked with handling customer support and answering user queries round the clock. He adopted this strategy as a way to encourage users to love their product. He was also convinced that doing demos was an effective strategy for promoting their product, mainly because they understood its features better.

AppFollow experienced tremendous growth from increased visibility. Listen to the podcast to find out some of the techniques they used to become more visible. Eugene gives a detailed explanation of how they achieved product-market fit, and you cannot afford to miss this section.

The AppFollow platform has evolved over the years, and Eugene explains what they have done to improve it. Eugene concludes the podcast by mentioning the things he would have done differently when starting. Get these crucial lessons from the podcast. 

• AppFollow
• Eugene Kruglov LinkedIn
• Eugene Kruglov Twitter

Co-founder, Ching Goh talks about building Piktostory, navigating challenges to hit a 7 figure ARR, and founding Piktostory later on. Listen to the podcast and learn. 

Piktochart is a web-based communication platform that enables less experienced users to develop professional-level visuals with the help of themed templates. Piktostory is a transcription-based video content creation tool. Ching, the co-founder, strives to help passionate entrepreneurs increase their knowledge in bootstrapping, culture shaping, and talent management. She talks to Geordie about her journey. 

• Why video editing can be complex
• Ching’s entrepreneurial journey
• Ching’s marketing strategy
• Mistakes Ching and her team made that cost them the number one position for infographics on Google
• Why ranking number one on Google is no longer good enough
• Importance of talking to users

Storytelling and videos are two compelling forms of communication that businesses can leverage not only to scale but attract more customers. Piktochart is a renowned infographic creation tool.

Together with her team, Ching realized the rising adoption of infographics in different departments and industries by experts seeking to promote their projects. From their research, they concluded that all those individuals had a story they needed to communicate visually. 

After being in the industry for nearly ten years, the team was confident that storytelling was getting better, bigger, and more popular. They then sought another effective storytelling medium apart from infographics and settled on video due to its portability. They were also hopeful that video would be an excellent medium for conducting and transmitting stories.

While they made all these decisions before the pandemic, many people considered the team opportunistic after the pandemic hit the world. Ching explains what they are doing to make the two platforms valuable for users.

Ching says Piktostory was designed to ease video editing, without which users would need between three and four tools to get their work done. She talks extensively about these tools in the podcast. Do not miss this comprehensive part if you are an aspiring video editor, webinar developer, social media manager, or podcaster. 

Why would entrepreneurs, consultants, and coaches need a video editing tool? In today’s pandemic times, webinars, podcasts, and zoom calls have become the order of the day. It’s worth mentioning that convincing people to watch long videos can be a difficult task. However, shorter videos get more traction, and this is where Piktostory comes in. Ching agrees that they leverage their tool for marketing purposes as well. 

Every entrepreneur has an exciting story. Ching narrates her journey and you cannot afford to miss it. Find out how she transitioned from the UK to Malaysia, her first job, and her passion for organizational development and marketing.

Ching also talks about suffering burnout so much so that she had to undergo surgery. Find out why together with her husband, they settled for infographics and her role in their venture then. How did they navigate the business industry without prior experience? Ching explains in the podcast. 

Ching admits their product was ugly in its initial stages, but that changed after doing demos and pitches, and getting coverage from media and news institutions. They recorded high traffic, which Ching also attributes to the fact that people realized there were more storytelling and video editing tools apart from the common ones. 

A robust marketing strategy is critical for business growth and revenue generation. Ching explains their preferred marketing plan in detail. She mentions that they had retained the number one position in infographics for a long time before some of their competitors overthrew them. She also discusses the mistakes they made that cost them the number one position on Google. Listen to the podcast for more insights. 

The quest to break out in business and move deeper into storytelling pushed Ching and her co-founder into developing Piktostory. She mentions that while they have done little to promote Piktostory, they have seen people opting in. What are their conversion rates? Find out from the podcast. 

In every story, there is a lesson to learn. Ching says she has learned various lessons along the way. She believes in the bias for action concept, which defines that it does not matter how great your plans are. You will only know their potential and what can happen once they hit the market.

Ching supports this approach with a detailed explanation which you can learn about from the podcast. She also says having and maintaining a small team has been valuable. Clarity is another critical lesson, and Ching achieves it by experimenting with different tools available in the market to gauge their position.

Interacting with users is an activity Ching takes seriously. Listen to the podcast to find out how she engages every new user. Getting to profitability can be a difficult task, especially for startups. While the team is yet to achieve profitability on Piktostory, Piktochart gained profits six months after launching.

Find out strategies the team used to market Piktochart and achieve massive growth. Ching concludes the podcast by explaining the workweek approach they adopted to spare staff from burnout.  

Piktochart.com 

Piktostory.com 

Ching Goh LinkedIn

Ching Goh Twitter

Jon MacDonald, CEO of Powered By Change, talks about coming up with his idea, funding the MVP, his first customers, and navigating his 0-30,000 MRR. Listen in for more details.  

Powered By Change (PBC) is a comprehensive, advanced, and robust business growth SaaS platform. It is based on the book powered by change, a Sunday Times Bestselling publication. PBC provides an integrated outlook of an enterprise's product, people, purpose, and process components. Jon McDonald, the founder, talks to Geordie about his journey.  

• The concepts of Powered By Change
• How companies started implementing powered by change as a SaaS way before the introduction of the SaaS platform
• What impact did Covid have on the Powered By Change platform?
• The Powered By Change pricing model. 

Being in the business industry for nearly 30 years is no mean feat. Apart from gaining tremendous experience, Jon says he has interacted with some of the biggest and fastest-growing companies across the globe. During his interactions, he helped the companies increase their turnover from 30 to 40 billion.

Jon says he is delighted and blessed to have had the opportunity to watch how some of the highest-performing organizations operate. As an entrepreneur, Jon has founded nine startups where he has applied much of his lessons. Jon would later become a speaker, an entrepreneur, and an author.

At some point, Jon started journaling all the lessons he had learned along the way into what would become the book; powered by change. He explains how they would convert the book's concept into a SaaS platform. The platform contains practical tips that no one teaches in business school. 

Before writing his book, Jon says the entire business setting was similar to the Chinese proverb: "when the winds of change are blowing, some build a wall, and others build a windmill." During his years as an entrepreneur, Jon has learned that while there are numerous wall builders, few are willing to build a windmill.

Many people, especially startup entrepreneurs, often look at larger businesses and wonder: how did they achieve such growth? What do they do differently? Do they have a big brand or colossal amounts of money in their bank accounts? Such businesses succeed because they focus on constructing a robust and functional windmill. Jon says. In his book, the term powered by change is based on the four different blades of a windmill.

To facilitate change as a sustaining technique, you need four different blades of a windmill, Jon says. This observation is something he has noticed from assisting up to 45% of Fortune 500 companies and his startups. He explains the four concepts/blades of his book; powered by change in this podcast. 

Powered by change includes numerous case studies. Jon and his team distributed the first publications to the people who had been featured in it. All the companies that received the book would then start applying it as a toolkit before a SaaS platform was founded.

Later, those companies chose to utilize the book as a SaaS, which pushed Jon and his team to work hard to get to where they are today. What was the process of converting the powered by change book into a SaaS platform like? Jon says his co-founder played a massive role in developing the product. He gives more details in the podcast. They would later hire a developer, making him the third team member to date. 

While some sections of the book were not applicable as an online platform, Jon says they released the MVP as a beta for people to test. They would then make changes on the go. He admits they have changed approximately 10% of the MVP so far. Even then, they have discovered that clients have a wide range of iterations they did not consider.

Building the self-funded MVP took Jon and his developer approximately one year. Another crucial lesson that Jon has learned along the way is accomplishing your plans will cost more than you had planned for, and you will make half of your expected amount. He recommends running your MVP on half the income where possible. He expounds on this subject in the podcast.

Jon also talks about their plans and expectations when they were starting, the challenges they encountered along the way, and how they countered them. He describes the pricing model that they later had to change. Get more details from the podcast.

It took Powered By Change nine months to hit the 30,000 MRR. Jon explains how the journey was from 0-5,000 MRR and beyond. The team is considering angel investors to accelerate the company's growth. Jon concludes the podcast with the following nuggets of wisdom for aspiring SaaS entrepreneurs.

• Everything you know is wrong. Consider learning on the go
• Launch quicker and lighter (with fewer features)
• Ignore detractors, especially those coming from competitor platforms
• Do not raise capital if you can avoid it

Powered By Change

Jon MacDonald Website

Powered By Change LinkedIn

David Davies of AgUnity tells Geordie how he came up with his idea, and how software and SaaS founders can identify and solve complex problems. Listen to the podcast and learn.

David boasts more than 30 years of experience in innovative applications design. He has served as CEO for SaaS (Software as a Service), Fintech, and mobile companies during his career. In 2016 Davis founded AgUnity, a Blockchain for Good establishment leveraging smartphone and blockchain technology to enhance the lives of small-scale farmer cooperatives in developing countries. The venture has won numerous awards since its inception. 

AgUnity developed the AgriUT utility token built on the Celo blockchain network as an independent charitable entity. It complements the AgUnity smartphone blockchain for smallholder farmers' platform. He talks to Geordie about his journey. 

• Why every solution provider must think big
• Importance of record-keeping
• Why having an identity and proof of income is crucial
• How do organizations determine deserving individuals?
• Why teaching disadvantaged people how to do things better is critical.

While agriculture is a vast global industry, some farmers live in overly remote areas and below the poverty level. AgUnity is a specially designed platform that aims at providing cost-friendly strategies for supporting and connecting people living in remote areas.

The company recently launched the only Smartphone operating system for the people that technological advancements have bypassed. David grew up in a massive sheep and wheat farm in Australia, where he gained his farming experience. However, he has spent all his working life in technology. 

Working for UNESCO in West Africa allowed David to interact with low-income earners and discover their challenges. Together with other founders, David had established a company specializing in Blockchain for Good technology for the market data scope in banking.

At some point, they received an invitation to attend a hackathon in London, but David could not attend, so he sent one of his co-founders. In the process, John, the co-founder, discovered there was a prize to be won as part of the conference. David and his team worked hard to develop a winning product, and win they did to the amazement of many people in attendance. Listen to the podcast for more details. 

Record keeping is critical in David's niche market. He mentions that recording every transaction creates clarity, promotes trust, and eases the payment process. How did David and his team come up with the AgUnity idea? Find out from the podcast.

David says they understood the importance of smartphones in transforming various processes. Further, working for UNESCO exposed him to low-income farmers who, while they had smartphones, were not using them to do valuable stuff. 

According to David, they source their smartphones from China and customize them to meet the farmer's needs. The phones, he says, come with the applets only, which you can learn about from the podcast. Before David started working with the farmers, many of them had nothing to show as proof of income. Apart from lacking an identity, they had no record of their land ownership. Lack of proper records denied them the opportunity to get credit from any financial institution. 

David admits that penetrating the blockchain for agriculture industry can be a difficult task. He says they usually collaborate with various organizations such as NGOs to ease the process. Doing so facilitates a smooth provision of blockchain for the last mile communities. David says one of their key goals is collaborating with authentic and ethical companies who then introduce them to corporative societies and farmers.

Collaborating with corporatives allows them to convert it (the cooperative) into a financial venture capable of scaling faster and larger. Often, David and his team start off working with smaller groups who later grow in their hundreds. According to David, once farmers have more money the entire community benefits.

What does it take to create a new cooperative? David says the initial investment can be quite costly, even though big organizations pay for the pilot program. He explains that concept extensively in the podcast. He also discusses the stack and explains things farmers are capable of doing with their smartphones. 

AgUnity has experienced tremendous growth over the years, with David saying they solve unique problems farmers face. Currently, the team deals with 17,000 farmers in remote areas. Together with his team, David is considering launching a project to reward farmers who do extraordinary things like planting trees to help with climate change. He also talks about other projects they have in the pipeline.

The team focuses on creating an opportunity for people in a developed market to connect with their counterparts in developing markets and create something positive. 

AgriUT Foundation

Farmer Reward Platform

Marketing, Business Development, and Token Gateway

AgriUT Discord Server

David Davies LinkedIn

David Davies Twitter

Santi Bibiloni, co-founder and CEO of COR, talks about his entrepreneurship journey, building the MVP, and navigating his 0-30,000 MRR journey. Listen, learn, and share.

COR is a SaaS platform that provides effective solutions for professional service organizations. It also helps the firms determine how to run their projects, resources, and finances in a single platform. Apart from being an entrepreneur, Santi Bibiloni, the CEO, is also a mentor specializing in startups. He talks to Geordie about his journey.

• How COR operates
• What is profitability?
• How did Santi come up with the COR idea?
• What strategy did Santi and his team adopt to scale his MRR?
• Why do entrepreneurs need a mentor
• How COR acquired its first customers
• How effective is the COR platform in terms of ROI?
• Challenges that affected COR's growth
• What are Santi and his team doing to improve COR in the future?

Many businesses today struggle to earn profits from their projects, and this is where COR comes in. Santi says COR is an end-to-end solution targeting the billable hour's industry. The platform encourages time tracking, allowing project managers to understand, and predict their profitability per client, per project, and in real-time.

Santi says a big percentage of his customers have switched from other project management platforms to COR. What differentiates COR from other project management platforms? Santi explains in the podcast.

Running a project comes with numerous challenges like collaboration, but Santi says the biggest of them all is spending money on the project. He supports his argument with an eye-opening illustration that you cannot afford to miss.

COR is a robust platform that collaborators can use for their collaboration, project, and task management needs. It can determine where people are spending most of their time and matches every task with the suitable project and client.

COR multiplies the time spent on a project with an individual's hourly rate and subtracts all expenses from the client's budget. It calculates profitability in real-time. Service providers can leverage the COR platform to renegotiate fees, forecast, and send accurate proposals. Santi gives more details about the platform and how it works in the podcast.

Profitability, Santi says, is more than earning dividends. It is what entrepreneurs require to be able to compensate their employees better. Listen to the podcast to get a more extensive explanation of the term profitability.

Santi talks about strategies different entrepreneurs use to increase profitability. He says every new project comes with unique demands. For example, some projects call for more employees, but some entrepreneurs choose not to hire more workers to evade extra expenses. In that case, your employees will need to work extra hours to deliver the project on time.

Such a scenario not only results in burnout but also triggers a high employee turnover rate. Santi explains this concept in depth. He also mentions that their agency struggled to make profits in the beginning. What did they do to manage the problem and pay their employees better?

Research is critical in any industry. Santi and his team sought to determine what big companies were doing to deal with non-profitability, and to their surprise, there was no solution. They would then embark on developing an internal minimum viable product before proceeding to Silicon Valley.

It took Santi and his team nine months to develop the MVP. They would later try it for their agency first before introducing it to some of their family members and friends in Argentina. Their first consumers thought the product was ugly even though it was functional.

That feedback is all Santi, and his team needed to hear. However, he agrees the product's UX and UI needed lots of improvement. COR's first customers were small and medium-sized businesses. What was their payment model in the beginning? Santi explains in the podcast.

Acquiring the first customer for a new business can be challenging. Santi says they started by understanding the critical pain potential customers were facing and the specific people that were directly affected. They would later send cold emails or give them cold, and discovery calls before scheduling a demo to show how their product worked. Listen to Santi as he explains the challenges they faced while negotiating contracts.

Many companies today would pay anything to manage their time well. According to Santi, time management and its impact on profitability are the key points they are currently using to approach new customers.

The team plans to invest more in time estimation and time span; that is, determining where people are spending most of their time and how long a task takes. If Santi were to turn back the hands of time, he would not second guess thinking big. To aspiring entrepreneurs, he says, think big, practice resilience, and think longer term.

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Dennis Kelly, the CEO and founder of Postalytics, talks about building his MVP, attracting customers, and navigating his 0-30,000 MRR journey. Get more details from the podcast.

Dennis Kelly has tremendous experience in sales, marketing, HR, and finance. He started his career journey as a sales representative and spent time running data centers, developing products, and being the CEO of venture and angel sponsored startups. During his career, Dennis has developed numerous self-financed businesses. He talks to Geordie about his journey.

• What triggered the creation of Postalytics?
• How the Postalytics concept works
• Importance of research before venturing into a similar project
• How Dennis and his team handled technology-agnostic challenges
• Marketing avenues that Dennis and his team are currently focusing on
• What is it that Dennis would have done differently when starting?

Technology has evolved tremendously over the last few years. With more advanced communication options available, no one would ever think direct mail would become relevant again. While traditional direct mail is no longer effective, the automated version is what many marketers are reaping huge benefits from.

Dennis says their direct mail automation software solution solves three crucial problems with traditional direct mail marketing. These problems are production speed, integration, and analytics. Listen to the podcast for his detailed explanation of these solutions.

Starting a business can be challenging. Dennis gives a brief explanation of how he started his Postalytics journey out of chance. He says he has been developing software companies for the past 30 years. At some point, he collaborated successfully with a young architect, but they would soon lose touch.

When they later reconnected, they discovered they were close neighbors. The architect introduced Dennis to some technology he had developed as a side project to help direct mail marketers digitize their marketing channels.

Dennis and his team saw potential in the project and pitched it. Listen to the podcast and learn how they developed the software together and the struggles they faced along the way. However, the project did not work according to their expectations. Find out how some customer’s problems came as a wake-up call to the team.

Postalytics offers a cloud-based SaaS solution where marketers can log in and create a letter or postcard. It allows users to import data from lists directly in their marketing automation tool, spreadsheets, files, and CRM (customer relationship management) platform. Dennis says they have incorporated a model to accommodate direct mail. Listen to the podcast for his extensive explanation of how that system works.

More people today are using email marketing than direct mail. Dennis says they leveraged email marketing as a model for their project. The team came up with a concept to develop an email experience that people would use to send direct mail. They were armed with email marketing software for their first product and knew what people wanted in an email marketing experience. How did they execute the business model? Find out from the podcast.

As Dennis and his team pivoted their product, they focused on developing their website and producing marketing materials. Upon launching the product, they realized their ideal customer profile overlapped with the Hubspot customer profile. Still, they went ahead with the launch while targeting the Hubspot customer setup.

Dennis mentions one unique thing that helped them get off the ground, and you can learn about it from the podcast. He also explains further about the Hubspot platform and customer profile.

Should you want to venture into a project similar to the Postalytics platform, Dennis says, you need to research and focus on one platform at a time. Did they use the same approach when starting? Dennis says their first product gave them an advantage. Find out how from the podcast.

Dennis mentions their response rate has doubled recently and attributes the growth to reduced competition in mailbox currently, unlike in the past. He adds that there is better targeting today, which leads to better technology, data, and reduced competition.

Dennis explains another use case that you can learn about from the podcast. You will understand how to leverage direct mail to target people who often ignore email and convert them to increase ROI. Dennis talks about leads and outlines strategies they use to attract leads.

While competitors have emerged in the market; Dennis reiterates they have maintained a targeted approach towards the technology-enabled small and medium-sized businesses as their primary audience. He discusses some of the things they do that their competitors don’t.

Get all the details from the podcast. Having a unique business model has been instrumental in helping Polystatics remain ahead of its competitors, Dennis says. He concludes the podcast with some wise words to people considering introducing a SaaS tool in the market. He says: you cannot be all things to all people. Focus on building something that a specific audience will find value in.

Postalytics

David Kelly LinkedIn

David Kelly Twitter

CEO and founder of Lemonpie and Hatch talks to Geordie about how he built the two MVPs and navigated his zero to 30,000 MRR journey. Listen in for valuable podcasting tips.

Erik Jacobson is a firm believer that podcasting is a fast-growing industry. In a bid to help brands get in front of a wide audience of podcast listeners per month, he built Lemonpie and Hatch. The former is a podcast production and PR agency that helps brands achieve growth via podcasting.

Through Hatch, Erik creates original podcasts for companies seeking to connect with potential customers directly, develop authority in their industry, and ensure their team understands the company’s mission. He talks to Geordie about his journey.

• How Erik ventured into the podcasting world
• Importance of research before venturing into the podcasting world
• What is the value of a podcast
• How to best track the performance of your podcast
• How do Lemonpie and Hatch work for SaaS customers?
• Importance of sharing expertise in a non-salesy way
• Why a podcast can be a saleable asset to a company
• Erik’s outbound strategy
• What the five-minute favor rule entails
• Hatch’s onboarding process

Currently, having a podcasting channel is fast becoming a must-have for companies that want to reach a wider audience and scale their businesses. Erik says Lemonpie is a comprehensive podcast agency that helps companies considering starting a podcast to attract customers. It also enables them to develop an audience, brand awareness, and a deep connection that triggers higher conversions.

The team at Lemonpie helps your brand create a podcast from scratch, produces it, and promotes it continuously. Listen to the podcast for more details on how Lemonpie helps you along your podcasting journey. Hatch is a platform that provides an entry point into podcasting for teams who plan to DIY lots of podcast pieces but require someone to edit them.

Through Hatch, interested parties enjoy unlimited podcast editing services for an affordable flat rate. The team works on one podcast at a time with a turnaround time of two working days. Get more details on how the Hatch platform works from the podcast. Erik says they discovered an opportunity in the market during Covid, which indicated that 100,000 new podcasts were being created monthly.

According to Erik, both Lemonpie and Hatch are equal. He says there is considerable potential for both enterprises to solve a wide range of pain points. None of the two ventures is superior to the other. Erik discusses the pricing model for both platforms in this podcast. He says they believe in not charging more for something customers can get for less as a company. They also live by the mantra that creating the wrong podcast is one of the most costly things you can do.

The team has developed a strategy to ensure they create the ideal show that helps customers achieve their goals and strike key performance indicators. If you want to venture into the podcasting world, Erik and his team will help you develop the right strategy that works best for your audience. He gives a comprehensive explanation of how they go about it, and you can get all the details in this podcast. 

For many people, the success of a podcast depends on the number of people that watch it, something that Erik disputes. Find out his reasons from the podcast. A podcast, Erik says, comes with numerous benefits. He highlights some of the ways businesses can benefit from having a podcast. Brands can leverage podcasts to market their brands. However, podcasters should be skilled, and possess excellent storytelling skills to succeed, and stay ahead of competitors.

Erik and his team believe that expertise can be the reason why one person would choose your SaaS platform over your competitor. One of the methods of displaying expertise is through a podcast and not a blog, Erik says. Listen in to find out why they hold that belief.

When you start a podcast, focus on creating a podcast that listeners are compelled to listen to. Your podcast should be irresistible enough to convince listeners to listen to the entire session, subscribe to your channel, and keep coming back for more.

Erik mentions that they opt to invest more time in podcast creation to increase their chances of achieving success. Hatch, Erik says, is founded on a company structure, but it’s fulfilled through SaaS. He concludes the podcast by explaining how they pair the platform with expertise. Listen to the podcast for more valuable insights. 

• Erik Jacobson LinkedIn
• Erik Jackobson Twitter
• Lemonpie
• Hatch