The SaaS Podcast: How B2B SaaS & AI Founders Get Customers

By Omer KhanBusiness Entrepreneurship Technology

The SaaS Podcast: How B2B SaaS & AI Founders Get Customers episodes

March 24, 2020SaaS Lead Generation: 6 PPC Mistakes Burning Your Budget
Most SaaS companies are wasting money on SaaS PPC. Todd Chambers has spent over 10 years running paid media campaigns for SaaS businesses, and he says 95% of them make the same six SaaS lead generation mistakes with their ad spend.
Why listen: Learn the six most common SaaS lead generation mistakes - from failing to understand unit economics and not tracking offline conversions, to under-investing in CRO and misaligning sales and marketing teams. Todd breaks down each one with practical fixes for your SaaS PPC campaigns.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 Know your unit economics before SaaS lead generation spending: Calculate LTV, CAC cap, and payback period before launching any paid media SaaS campaign - 95% of companies skip this step.
🎯 Track offline conversions through your SaaS PPC funnel: Pass the Google Click ID through CRM stages so you can optimize toward MQLs or closed deals, not just form submissions.
🚀 Build a full-funnel SaaS lead generation strategy: Sequence prospects from awareness videos to mid-funnel content to demo requests - pushing only lower-funnel ads causes quality scores to drop.
🛠️ Invest in CRO proportional to your SaaS advertising spend: Companies spending $100K on ads often allocate just $1K on landing page optimization, leaving conversions on the table.
📉 Activate free trial users or your paid spend leaks: Driving signups without onboarding sequences and email automation is a leaky bucket - fix activation before scaling SaaS lead generation.
Chapters
Introduction
What Upraw Media does for SaaS companies
PPC platforms for B2B SaaS
Todd's background in PPC
Mistake 1: Not understanding SaaS unit economics
How to calculate LTV, CAC, and payback period
Conversion tracking fundamentals
Mistake 2: Not tracking offline conversions
How Google Click ID works through the CRM
Mistake 3: Not taking a full-funnel approach
Why aggressive lower-funnel spend backfires
Building a content-driven PPC funnel
Mistake 4: Not focusing on user activation
Mistake 5: Under-investing in CRO
How to start conversion rate optimization
Mistake 6: Not aligning sales and marketing
Where to start with SaaS PPC on a small budget
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/244
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
38 min
March 18, 2020Self-Serve SaaS: How Shared Notes Replaced a Sales Team
Darren Chait built a mobile app for meeting preparation. It got thousands of users but monetization was painfully slow. Then his team built an internal Slack plugin - and a customer saw it and asked to use it. That pivot unlocked self-serve SaaS growth through product-led growth that changed everything.
Why listen: Learn how Hugo's self-serve SaaS model turns every shared meeting note into a distribution channel, why changing one word in the product description fixed a massive PLG positioning problem, and why tracking daily active users instead of revenue drove better long-term freemium SaaS outcomes.
🔑 Key Lessons
🔄 The best pivots unlock natural self-serve SaaS growth: Hugo's team built a Slack plugin for themselves - customers saw it and wanted it within weeks, proving the internal tool was more valuable.
🎯 One word can fix a positioning problem: Hugo called itself "meeting collaboration software" and got compared to Zoom. Changing to "connected meeting notes" jumped comprehension from 20% to 90%.
🚀 Product-led growth turns users into a distribution channel: Every meeting note shared via Slack exposes Hugo to the entire company - colleagues see the value and request invites without a sales team.
🧠 Track daily active users to measure self-serve SaaS depth: Darren found habit adoption harder than getting payment - Hugo kept the product free for teams under 40 to prioritize engagement depth.
🤝 Tech partnerships amplify PLG distribution: Hugo's integrations with Zoom, Atlassian, and Slack led to co-marketing and marketplace placement that outperformed traditional marketing.
Chapters
Introduction
Darren's background and what drives him
What Hugo does - connected meeting notes for teams
Origin story - frustration with meetings as a corporate lawyer
Building the mobile meeting prep app
The wrong customer development questions
Vitamin vs painkiller and the Sean Ellis test
Building the internal Slack plugin for their own team
The pivot moment - customer asks to use the internal tool
Growing to thousands of daily active users
Why daily active users matter more than revenue
Self-serve model and content marketing
Publishing the 10x Culture book
Tech partnerships with Zoom and Atlassian
Product-led growth and internal virality via Slack
How shared notes create natural team expansion
Positioning and messaging challenges
Changing one word to fix comprehension
Pricing model - free under 40 users, $399/month above
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/243
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
46 min
March 10, 2020SaaS Sales Funnel: Fixing Broken Messaging to Hit $10M
Robin van Lieshout's SaaS sales funnel was broken. He had 40 customers but most were barely using the product. His BDRs could not book a single meeting with B2B SaaS companies. Then he realized the problem was not product-market fit - it was the sales messaging in his SaaS sales strategy.
Why listen: Learn why Robin cut six customer segments generating 70% of revenue, how rewriting the sales deck six times in one year finally fixed the SaaS sales funnel, and the shift to 100% inbound lead generation that took Insided to nearly $10M ARR.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Fix SaaS sales funnel messaging before scaling outbound: Insided's BDRs failed because the sales messaging did not resonate with B2B SaaS buyers - Robin rewrote the deck six times before conversion improved.
📉 Cut unprofitable segments even when they generate most revenue: Robin eliminated six of ten customer segments generating 70% of bookings - those customers had 10-20% annual churn and low usage.
🤝 Listen to sales call recordings to diagnose B2B sales process problems: Robin found every call told a different story - no playbook, no consistency - proving messaging was the root cause.
💰 Increase price by $10K per deal to find the ceiling: Robin closed his first customer at $50K, then $60K, then $70K - this simple SaaS sales strategy helped discover willingness to pay.
🚀 100% inbound leads can replace outbound: Insided invested in pillar content and LinkedIn ads targeting customer success leaders, generating all pipeline while the team refined the SaaS sales funnel.
Chapters
Introduction
Robin's favorite quote - keep the main thing the main thing
What Insided does - customer success community platform
Company size and revenue near $10M ARR
Origin story - T-Mobile as launching customer
Growing to 40 customers in the Netherlands
Expanding beyond telcos to banks and energy
Sales process for $100K enterprise deals
Bootstrapping to $2-3M ARR before raising funding
Why outbound sales failed completely
Diagnosing the messaging problem through call recordings
Refocusing on B2B SaaS companies
Hiring a trailblazer salesperson to fix messaging
Speaking to 100 prospective customers
Obviously Awesome and the power of positioning
Transition to inbound content marketing
100% inbound lead generation
Pricing strategy and expansion revenue
Creating pricing tiers without surveys
Reflections on 10 years of building Insided
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/242
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
49 min
March 03, 2020SaaS Monetization: YC Rejected, 20 Paid Users in 48 Hours
Sabba Keynejad flew to San Francisco for his Y Combinator interview. He got rejected. The reason: "Why are you not charging your users?" Forty-eight hours later, Sabba had 20 paying customers and VEED.io was on the path to SaaS monetization and bootstrap to profitability.
Why listen: Learn why doubling SaaS pricing twice with less than one month of runway had zero impact on user growth, how SEO landing pages for long-tail keywords became the primary growth engine, and why watermarks created the simplest SaaS monetization paywall for a freemium to paid transition.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 SaaS monetization starts with charging something: VEED ran for over a year with zero revenue. YC's rejection forced a 48-hour sprint to add payments - twenty customers paid on day one.
📉 Doubling prices twice saved the bootstrap to profitability path: With one month of runway, Sabba raised SaaS pricing from $5 to $10 to $20 - each doubling had zero impact on user growth.
🎯 SEO landing pages accelerate SaaS monetization for tools: Sabba built 20+ pages targeting "add text to video" and similar searches, ranking fast because VEED offered an actual tool instead of a how-to article.
🧠 Five hours of daily user conversations shape product direction: Sabba asked every paid user "why did you choose VEED?" and over 100 responses reshaped the homepage from founder language to customer language.
🔄 Making a good idea complex is worse than keeping it simple: Adding AI and e-commerce features won 50K in prizes but built a product nobody wanted - stripping back created a real business.
Chapters
Introduction
What gets Sabba out of bed every day
What VEED.io does and who it serves
Origin story - frustration with complex video editors
Meeting co-founder Tim online
First failure - making a simple idea too complex
Winning 50K in prizes for a product that did not work
Stripping back to simple editor and launching on Product Hunt
Going back to contract jobs while growing the product
Trying and failing to raise seed funding
Applying to Y Combinator
YC rejection and the 48-hour paywall sprint
Using watermarks as a payment trigger
Signing up first 20 paying customers
Running out of runway in August
Grandfathering pricing changes
Customer feedback strategy and homepage messaging
SEO landing pages for long-tail keywords
Plans for 1.0 and B2B packages
Key lesson from failure - resilience
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/241
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
35 min
February 25, 2020SaaS Customer Acquisition: 2-Week MVP to 8% Demo Rate
Jaleh Rezaei pitched her first customers with no product demo - just an API and a slide deck. Her first customer paid $100 a month. Two weeks into Y Combinator, Mutiny had its MVP live and was closing SaaS customer acquisition deals by embedding directly into customer teams.
Why listen: Learn how doing unscalable things was the fastest path to SaaS customer acquisition and product-market fit, how watching early adopters struggle revealed what to productize, and how combining LinkedIn and cold email produced an 8% demo rate from completely cold outreach.
🔑 Key Lessons
🚀 Ship your MVP before customers expect polish: Mutiny launched an API and pitch deck in two weeks with no demo - early adopters care about solving their problem more than seeing a polished interface.
🤝 Become an extension of first SaaS customers' teams for better acquisition: Instead of waiting for customers to figure out the product, Mutiny embedded with early adopters to create content, launch campaigns, and measure results.
💰 Charge something from day one to validate SaaS customer acquisition: Jaleh priced the first customer at $100/month because waiting without real usage was more expensive than underpricing.
🎯 Watch customers struggle to find what to productize: Mutiny discovered marketers spent weeks in spreadsheets choosing segments, so they built analytics directly into the UI.
📉 Multi-channel ABM outreach drives higher demo rates: Neither email nor LinkedIn alone worked well, but combining both with personalized landing pages delivered an 8% cold-to-demo conversion rate.
Chapters
Introduction
Jaleh's immigration story and Eleanor Roosevelt quote
What Mutiny does and the personalization problem
How website personalization works technically
Origin story - VMware and Gusto experiences
Building the MVP in 2.5 weeks at YC
First version - an API with no demo
Finding and closing the first customer
Doing unscalable things to find product-market fit
Account-based marketing strategy
Achieving 8% cold demo rate
Multi-channel ABM with ads, email, and LinkedIn
Targeting the right people within accounts
Personalized one-on-one ABM landing pages
Pricing and ACV evolution
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/240
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
41 min
February 18, 2020SaaS Customer Discovery: Free App to 1,000 Paid Users
Sam Dolbel's co-founder taught himself to code inside a tent in Tanzania. That scrappy beginning turned into SINC, a workforce management app that grew to 1,000 paying customers through SaaS customer discovery and organic word of mouth - with zero outbound sales.
Why listen: Learn the hard lessons of SaaS customer discovery through a free product, why feedback from non-paying users nearly led them astray, how job costing features became the key differentiator from free competitors, and why they relocated their first SaaS customers operation to Bahrain.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Free users give misleading SaaS customer discovery signals: Sam spent hours daily on calls with free users, but their feature requests did not align with what paying customers actually needed.
💰 Differentiation unlocks willingness to pay: Time tracking was commoditized in app stores. Job costing - tracking labor costs per project - became the feature that separated SINC from free alternatives.
🚀 First SaaS customers often come from organic word of mouth: SINC reached nearly 1,000 paying customers with zero outbound sales through app store discovery and peer recommendations.
🧠 Be your own first customer for better customer validation: Sam built SINC to solve his own payroll problem in his 10-person company, ensuring the product solved genuine problems from day one.
📉 Hiring developers too fast slows product velocity: Sam hired four or five developers at once, forcing his technical co-founder into management instead of coding - output dropped dramatically.
Chapters
Introduction
Sam's favorite quote - Steve Blank on customer discovery
What SINC does and who it serves
Building the business across nine countries
Co-founder learning to code in a tent in Tanzania
Product overview and customer count
Launching as a free product in 2017
Validating with real business use
Problems with optimizing for free users
Focusing on construction industry
Differentiating with job costing features
Getting first paying customers
Pricing evolution from free to freemium
Figuring out which features to build
Growing from zero to 1,000 customers
Organic growth and word of mouth
Paying vs free customer feedback quality
Relocating the business to Bahrain
Hiring local talent in Bahrain
Hiring too fast and slowing down
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/239
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
38 min
February 04, 2020Non-Technical Founder Built a $240K Startup Without Code
Ben Tossell generated over $240,000 in revenue in less than a year - as a non-technical founder who never wrote a single line of code. He built Makerpad entirely with no-code SaaS tools like Webflow, Airtable, and Zapier. And for most of that time, it was just a side project while he worked at Earnest Capital.
Why listen: Learn how a non-technical founder used Twitter demos and GIFs as a bootstrapped SaaS acquisition engine, why shutting down a scattered first project led to radical simplicity, and how annual pricing filtered for better customers who churned less.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Radical simplicity helps a non-technical founder grow faster: Ben shut down a scattered first project and relaunched Makerpad with a single focus on no-code tutorials - doing less attracted more customers.
💰 Annual pricing filters for better customers: By skipping cheap monthly plans and charging $169+ upfront, Ben attracted committed learners who churned less and gave higher-quality feedback.
🚀 Twitter as a bootstrapped SaaS acquisition engine: Ben posted build demos and GIFs instead of running paid ads - one Airbnb clone tweet got 30,000 views and drove significant organic signups.
🛠️ No-code stacks power real businesses for non-technical founders: Makerpad runs on Webflow, Airtable, Zapier, and MemberStack, handling thousands of users without any custom code.
🧠 Side project pressure removal fuels creativity: Working part-time at Earnest Capital removed financial pressure, letting Ben experiment freely and grow from $7K to $30K monthly in three months.
Chapters
Introduction
Ben's favorite quote and background
From Product Hunt to discovering no-code tools
The failed first project and losing focus
Relaunching as Makerpad with a simpler approach
Reading Company of One and doing less
Building with Webflow and no-code tools
Growing Makerpad's revenue
Twitter as the primary growth channel
Free vs paid content decisions
Pricing strategy and lifetime memberships
Switching to annual subscriptions
B2B offerings and team training packages
The no-code movement and building MVPs
Favorite no-code tools and tech stack
Webflow vs Bubble comparison
Scaling a no-code platform
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/238
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
54 min
January 28, 2020SaaS Without Funding: ClickFunnels' Path to $135M ARR
ClickFunnels went from zero to $135 million ARR in five years - entirely SaaS without funding. The breakthrough? They stopped selling software and started selling $997 education bundles, giving the self-funded SaaS product away for free. That counterintuitive move generated 10x more upfront revenue to fuel aggressive paid acquisition.
Why listen: Learn how building a SaaS without funding requires flipping traditional economics, why the Dream 100 influencer strategy took up to 10 years per relationship, and how the "funnel hacker" identity turned customers into a bootstrapped SaaS movement that drives retention and word-of-mouth.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 Sell education and give SaaS without funding away free: ClickFunnels charged $997 for training and included the software at no cost, collecting 10x more revenue upfront to fund aggressive customer acquisition.
🤝 Build Dream 100 relationships before asking for anything: ClickFunnels invested 2-10 years in influencer relationships - building free funnels, sending books, attending events - before requesting any promotion.
🚀 Webinars as primary growth engine for SaaS without funding: Russell Brunson ran up to three webinars daily using the Perfect Webinar framework, converting tens of thousands of customers.
🧠 Create an identity that builds community beyond product: The "funnel hacker" identity with free T-shirts and annual events turned customers into advocates who wear the brand in airports worldwide.
📉 Outspend competitors by collecting more revenue upfront: The $997 bundle versus $97/month gave ClickFunnels a 10x acquisition budget advantage over no VC competitors.
Chapters
Introduction - the $135M self-funded SaaS story
What ClickFunnels does and who it serves
How Dave got involved with Russell Brunson
Where the idea for ClickFunnels came from
Todd Dickerson rebuilding funnels over and over
Revenue - $135M in 2019, up from $100M in 2018
Why they never took VC money
The anti-VC philosophy behind SaaS without funding
Initial struggles selling ClickFunnels
The breakthrough - selling $997 education with free software
Unit economics of bundles vs monthly subscriptions
Why affiliates were skeptical of SaaS
The Dream 100 influencer strategy explained
Timelines - 2 weeks to 10+ years per relationship
Building the funnel hacker community identity
Free T-shirts and Funnel Hacking Live events
The scariest day - servers crashing and rebuilding on AWS
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/237
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
39 min
January 21, 2020SaaS Pricing: How Charging More Got Better Customers
Renat Zubairov spent six months building a product and gave it away for free. Almost nobody wanted it. Then he changed his SaaS pricing and started charging - and better customers showed up, gave better feedback, and helped build a better product. That pricing strategy shift took Elastic.io from zero to $2.5M revenue growing 100% year over year.
Why listen: Learn how SaaS pricing acts as a customer quality filter, why free users gave misleading feedback, and how moving upmarket from Zapier-like use cases to complex enterprise integrations justified 10x higher pricing and transformed the business.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 Charging is a better SaaS pricing strategy than free: Elastic.io got no traction with a free product - when they started charging, better customers appeared who gave actionable feedback and drove growth.
🎯 Use SaaS pricing as a filter for customer quality: EUR 200-5,000/month plans filtered out casual browsers and attracted companies with real integration pain who engaged deeply and retained longer.
📉 Six months of coding without customers is wasted: Renat admits they should have talked to buyers sooner - passing unit tests created a false sense of progress that delayed real market validation.
🚀 Moving upmarket unlocks pricing model leverage: Shifting from basic automation to complex enterprise integrations between SAP and CRM systems justified 10x higher deal sizes.
🤝 OEM partnerships create a second revenue channel: Elastic.io embedded its platform inside other SaaS applications, helping vendors answer integration questions instantly and making customer apps stickier.
Chapters
Introduction
Favorite quote on timing and perseverance
The Rovio and Angry Birds analogy
What Elastic.io does - integration platform
Why the IO in the name matters
Target customer and problem solved
How Elastic.io differs from Zapier
Complex enterprise integration use cases
SaaS pricing from EUR 200 to EUR 5,000/month
Revenue growth - $500K to $1.2M to $2.3M EUR
Company profitability and cash-flow positive
Founding story - leaving integration jobs
Self-funded first year and seed investment
Building without customers for six months
Finding first customers through events
Quora answers and Hacker News front page
Why giving the product away free failed
Moving from freemium to enterprise pricing
Inbound marketing as the most reliable channel
Cold email and cold calling results declining
Why paid ads were a waste of money
OEM model - embedding in other SaaS products
Regret of not thinking big enough
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/236
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
46 min
January 14, 2020SaaS Competitive Differentiation: $5M ARR Serving One Niche
Jennifer Johnson was a stay-at-home mom spending two hours a night scheduling Facebook posts. Her husband built a tool in four weeks that cut it to 20 minutes. That personal frustration became CinchShare - a niche SaaS for direct sellers now doing $5M+ ARR with zero outside investment. Her competitive differentiation strategy? Ignore Hootsuite and Buffer entirely and build only for one audience.
Why listen: Learn how competitive differentiation through niche market focus took CinchShare from 600 Facebook group signups to 10,000 paying customers in two years, why a catastrophic v2.0 launch nearly killed the business, and how weekly Facebook classes turned education into the most powerful sales channel.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Competitive differentiation beats broad competition: CinchShare targeted direct sellers exclusively while Hootsuite served everyone - the narrow focus created a product that perfectly matched one audience's workflow.
🛠️ Build for your own pain to find real differentiation: Jennifer spent two hours nightly scheduling posts. Her husband built a personal tool in four weeks - a $5M business born from genuine frustration.
🚀 Community-driven growth scales a niche SaaS without paid ads: Jennifer grew to 10,000 customers in two years through Facebook groups and word-of-mouth from direct sales teams.
🤝 Educate your market before selling: Weekly Facebook classes taught social media best practices, building trust that converted into long-term paying customers.
📉 Transparent crisis communication saves your community: When a v2.0 update broke everything, Jennifer communicated in real-time through their Facebook group and loyal members rallied to calm others.
Chapters
Introduction and CinchShare overview
Jennifer's favorite quote from Gary Vaynerchuk
What CinchShare does for direct sellers
Defining direct sellers and network marketing
Revenue overview - $5M ARR bootstrapped
How the product idea started from personal frustration
Husband as self-taught developer
Building the first version in four weeks
How CinchShare saves time with fewer clicks
Realizing the business opportunity in Facebook groups
Building a 600-person Facebook interest group
Launch day and first signups
Going from personal tool to public product
Launching with minimal changes to the MVP
Early bugs and communicating through Facebook
The catastrophic version 2.0 incident
Getting first 1,000 customers through Facebook
Pricing at $10/month from day one
Growing from 1,000 to 10,000 customers in year two
Facebook classes as a growth strategy
How education converts to long-term customers
Word-of-mouth and community-driven growth
Minimal paid advertising approach
Evolving the product and hiring challenges
Failed agency experience and finding a CTO
Platform dependency as biggest business challenge
Balancing business and family with four kids
Lightning round
Where to find CinchShare
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/235
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
46 min

About The SaaS Podcast: How B2B SaaS & AI Founders Get Customers

From the publisher's feed

Building software got easier. Getting customers didn't. Every week, a founder building B2B SaaS or an AI product tells you how they got their first customers, and how they kept them: what worked, what didn't, and what they'd do differently.