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

February 24, 2018Influencer Marketing SaaS: When Content Dried Up at $15K MRR
Josh Haynam wrote 100 blog posts before his SaaS content marketing finally worked. Then it stopped working entirely. After a year of failed outbound sales and letting go of four salespeople, he discovered influencer marketing SaaS as the strategy that nearly tripled Interact's MRR from $15K to $40K+.
Josh shares why the first 50 niche articles drove all customers but the next 50 generated zero signups. Outbound sales failed because selling a brand-new category requires too much education. The influencer marketing SaaS breakthrough came from offering marketing bloggers free access to Interact in exchange for writing about their quiz-building experience - modeled after how Adidas sends shoes to influencers.
A two-week vacation to Morocco with no cell reception gave Josh clarity to abandon failed sales. During 2.5-hour screen share sessions, he discovered embarrassing UX flaws his team had missed for years. The right blogger outreach partners were people already reviewing marketing tools - not travel bloggers who needed the same education as cold outbound prospects. SaaS content marketing evolved into influencer outreach SaaS growth.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Niche SaaS content marketing works until the niche is exhausted: Josh's first 50 quiz-specific articles drove all customers, but the next 50 reached zero new audience because nobody else was searching for those topics.
📉 Outbound sales fails when selling a new category: Interact hired and let go four salespeople in a year. Selling a brand-new concept requires multiple calls just to explain how it works.
🤝 Influencer marketing SaaS partnerships replace dried-up content: Modeled on Adidas, Josh offered bloggers free Interact access. Their articles reached audiences who would never search for quiz tools, driving growth to $40K+ MRR.
🧠 Watch real users to find UX flaws your team cannot see: 2.5-hour screen share sessions revealed there was no "next step" button after the first quiz page - something the team missed after building thousands of quizzes.
🔄 Pick the right influencer marketing SaaS partners: Marketing bloggers who already review tools worked. Travel and food bloggers produced the same failed education problem as cold outbound.
Chapters
Introduction
Josh's favorite quote on consistency
What Interact does - quiz-based lead generation
Target customer and core problem
The original SaaS content marketing breakthrough after 100 blog posts
How to keep going when nothing is working
Growth from $15K to $40K+ MRR since last interview
The year of failed outbound sales
Why outbound sales fails for a new product category
Takeaways from failed sales - selling an idea vs a solution
When Josh finally decided to stop outbound sales
Pivoting to influencer marketing SaaS with a new approach
How influencer marketing SaaS partnerships work - the Adidas model
Identifying the right influencer partners
The outreach process and consultative approach
Improving the product through user experience testing
Embarrassing UX flaw - no "next step" button
Competitors copying product screenshots
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/164
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
54 min
February 19, 2018SaaS Monetization: MMA Fighter to $2M Recurring Revenue
Dan Faggella is a 125-pound former MMA fighter who submitted a UFC fighter in 12 seconds. He used that viral moment to build Science of Skill into a recurring revenue business generating over $2M a year - then sold it for seven figures to fund his AI research company. Dan's SaaS monetization playbook works for any subscription business.
Dan shares the SaaS monetization approach that took him from $1,200 in first-week sales to a multimillion-dollar subscription business. He paid affiliates 70-80% of front-end revenue to build his list, modeled his monetization strategy on Sports Illustrated's segmentation approach, and applied revenue model SaaS metrics like customer lifetime value and churn dashboards to cap acquisition costs at half of CLV ($55 on $110 LTV).
Segmented email marketing increased open rates from 18% to 25% and click rates from 15% to 22%. Science of Skill plateaued at $450K/year in the jiu jitsu niche before Dan pivoted to self-defense. He spent two weeks calling random buyers and discovered his real customer was a 41-year-old male - not the young competitors he had assumed. That SaaS monetization insight reshaped everything.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 Pay affiliates generously to build recurring revenue fast: Dan paid 70-80% of front-end sales to affiliates, keeping email addresses and converting subscribers to $37/month memberships with $110 average lifetime value.
🎯 Apply SaaS monetization metrics to any subscription business: Dan capped customer acquisition costs at half of lifetime value, built churn dashboards, and modeled growth - all frameworks borrowed from SaaS founders.
📉 Starting in a niche too small caps your recurring revenue ceiling: Science of Skill plateaued at $450K/year in jiu jitsu. Dan spent 14 months pivoting to self-defense before reaching seven figures.
🧠 Segment email lists like Sports Illustrated segments sports fans: Dan created four to five audience segments and sent targeted messaging, lifting open rates from 18% to 25% and click rates from 15% to 22%.
🤝 Customer calls reveal who actually buys your product: Dan called random buyers and discovered his real customer was a 41-year-old male who trained once or twice a week - not the young competitors he assumed.
Chapters
Introduction
Dan's motivation - AI, moral purpose, and team camaraderie
What is TechEmergence and how it started
Science of Skill - the sacrificial lamb to fund AI dreams
Why an e-commerce business matters to SaaS founders
Origin story - from MMA fighter to online business
The 12-second UFC fighter submission that went viral
Starting Science of Skill as a blog
First product sales - $1,200 in the first week
Moving to a recurring revenue SaaS monetization model
Customer research - calling random buyers to learn who they are
Marketing automation with Infusionsoft
Building the email list and content strategy
Pricing the membership at $37/month
Traffic generation - guest writing and affiliate partnerships
Segmenting email lists like Sports Illustrated
SaaS metrics applied to subscription business
Building metrics dashboards and churn projection models
Mistakes - starting in a market too small
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/163
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
52 min
February 13, 2018Zero Marketing Budget: How Justuno's SaaS Hit $2M ARR on $0
Erik Christiansen and his co-founder Travis did not take a paycheck for four years. They ran three companies simultaneously and built Justuno to over $2M ARR with a zero marketing budget. On the day of Erik's wedding, the company was bankrupt. This is the story of growing a SaaS with no marketing budget at all.
Erik reveals how Justuno grew from a simple coupon widget to a conversion optimization platform serving 55,000 websites - all with a zero marketing budget. App store integrations across BigCommerce and Shopify drove 60% of signups. Organic SEO on terms like "email pop ups" handled the rest. Even trade shows cost under $100 - Erik flew solo with marketing with no budget for booths, focusing entirely on relationship building.
The aha moment came when BigCommerce added Justuno to their app store and they got 10 signups in a single day. Justuno killed its $9/month pricing tier after discovering sub-$10 customers had the highest support costs and highest churn. Revenue-based financing from Lighter Capital saved the company when Erik had $20,000 in personal credit card debt on his wedding weekend. Free marketing SaaS growth is possible, but it takes years of patience.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 A zero marketing budget forces creative distribution: Erik grew Justuno to $2M ARR by focusing on app store integrations and organic SEO rather than paid acquisition, proving partnerships can replace marketing spend.
📉 Sub-$10 pricing attracts high-churn, high-cost customers: Justuno eliminated its $9/month plan after discovering these customers required the most support while churning the fastest.
🎯 App stores are high-leverage channels with zero marketing budget: BigCommerce's app store generated 10 signups on day one, eventually driving 60% of all signups across platforms without any marketing spend.
🧠 Running multiple companies delays product-market fit: Erik and Travis ran three companies simultaneously for two years before their aha moment. Going all-in would have accelerated growth.
🤝 Trade show ROI comes from relationships, not booths: Erik attended conferences solo, spending under $100 while competitors spent $10,000-$30,000 - generating more partner connections through face-to-face relationship building.
Chapters
Introduction
Erik's favorite quote on facing challenges
What Justuno does - conversion optimization for e-commerce
Traveling the world in his 20s before starting up
Sierra Snowboard - from $0 to $24M in sales
How the idea for Justuno was born from coupon code insights
Building the first widget in under a month
Launching as a freemium product in late 2010
Getting first customers through personal network and BigCommerce
Coming out of beta and asking customers to pay
Why Justuno killed the $9/month pricing tier
Revenue milestones - $100K, $1M, targeting $10M
Growing with a zero marketing budget - SEO and content
App store integration strategy - the 60% growth driver
The partnership strategy shift from shotgun to tiered
What growth strategy did not work - paid lead generation
Four years without a paycheck and near-bankruptcy
Lighter Capital - revenue-based financing that saved the company
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/162
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
49 min
February 02, 2018SaaS Startup Sales: The 4-Step Process to Hit $100K Revenue
Jim Brown helped two companies grow from $1M to over $10M in revenue. Then he raised a million dollars for his own startup and burned through it in 11 months. His hard-won startup sales lessons could save you from making the same mistakes.
Jim walks through a simple but powerful 4-step startup sales process that turns a $100K revenue goal into just 5 daily prospecting actions. At a $5K average contract value, you need 20 closed deals, which requires 40 proposals, 120 discovery calls, and 1,200 prospects - just 5 outreaches per day. This SaaS sales process framework works for any early-stage sales team.
Jim also shares the Skeptical Selling Method - instead of leading with features, reveal problems similar companies face and ask if the prospect experiences them. His founder sales experience at Haven taught him that investor checks are not market validation. Jim sent 50 autographed baseballs to ideal prospects, generating 17 discovery calls and 3 closed deals.
🔑 Key Lessons
🧠 Investor money is not startup sales validation: Jim raised $1,025,000 in 57 days for Haven but treated the funding as proof of product-market fit, leading to 11 months of building without real customer feedback.
🎯 Break revenue goals into daily startup sales actions: Jim's 4-step SaaS sales process converts a $100K goal into 5 daily prospecting activities by working backward through conversion rates at each funnel stage.
🤝 Lead with problems, not product features: The Skeptical Selling Method creates conversations by describing problems similar companies face and asking if the prospect experiences them - no hard pitch.
📉 Confirmation bias kills early-stage sales development: Jim's team surveyed nearly 1,000 homeowners but only heard what confirmed their assumptions, missing signals about what the market actually wanted.
💰 Customize prospecting by client tier in your startup sales process: Jim segments prospects into ideal, typical, and acceptable tiers, investing more creative effort in top prospects - like autographed baseballs that yielded a 34% discovery call rate.
🚀 Demos should solve business problems, not show features: Most founders waste demos by clicking buttons. The demo should map to the gap between where the prospect is today and where they want to be.
Chapters
Introduction
Jim Brown's favorite quote on continuous learning
The story of Haven - from $1M funding to zero
What Haven was trying to build
Raising $1M in 57 days with a PowerPoint deck
Lessons from a failed startup sales experience
The simpler business model they discovered too late
The Skeptical Selling Method for startup sales
Overview of the 4-step SaaS sales process
Step zero - setting clear revenue goals
Using conversion rates to identify weak points
Prospecting tactics - cold calls, email, social selling
Running effective discovery calls
Qualifying prospects with BANT and GPCT
The proposal stage - proposed solutions, not documents
Closing deals and following up
Where most SaaS founders get stuck
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/161
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
50 min
January 25, 2018SaaS Sales Strategy: $9 Seats to 6-Figure Enterprise Deals
Steve Benson was named Google Enterprise's top performing salesperson in the world. Then he left to build Badger Maps, a SaaS product for field salespeople priced at just $9 to $35 a month. His SaaS sales strategy of founder-led sales and land-and-expand grew it to 6,000 customers and a 50-person team.
Steve's SaaS sales strategy starts with a $9 individual seat. One salesperson signs up. Their manager notices 20% more meetings and 20% more closed deals. The regional VP rolls it out nationally. That sales playbook turned individual seats into six-figure annual contracts with Fortune 500 companies. One enterprise deal closed in nine days through top-down buying. Another took a full year through bottoms-up adoption. Both worked.
Before building anything, Steve talked to 50+ prospects using founder-led sales conversations. He asked "Would you buy this?" - people who said no revealed real objections that shaped the product. Steve's SaaS selling approach was built on solving a measurable pain point: field salespeople who drove less and sold more after adopting Badger Maps.
🔑 Key Lessons
🤝 The best SaaS sales strategy starts with "Would you buy this?": Steve talked to 50+ prospects and specifically asked if they would pay. People who said no revealed critical objections that shaped the product direction.
💰 Price low to enable land-and-expand in your SaaS sales strategy: Badger Maps kept pricing at $9-$35/month for five years so individual salespeople could buy without approval, creating a bottoms-up path to six-figure enterprise deals.
🎯 Founder-led sales works when you solve a measurable pain point: Badger Maps customers drive 20% less and sell 20% more - making ROI impossible to ignore during sales conversations.
🚀 Land-and-expand turns one seat into a company-wide rollout: One salesperson's success triggered team adoption, then regional rollout, then Fortune 500 contracts - all starting from a $9/month plan.
📉 Hiring impressive resumes instead of startup-ready people costs months: Steve hired talented people from big companies who had never failed at anything, and they could not handle startup uncertainty.
Chapters
Introduction
Meet Steve Benson and the Badger Maps story
What Badger Maps does for field salespeople
How the idea came from selling Google Maps API
Scratching your own itch as Google's top salesperson
Funding the startup with personal savings and friends-and-family
Building the first version in six months
Charging $35/month from day one
6,000 customers and the SaaS sales strategy behind pricing
Land-and-expand SaaS sales strategy from individual seats to enterprise
How to start founder-led sales with outbound prospecting
Finding your perfect customer and talking to 50+ prospects
Shifting from feedback conversations to selling the product
Biggest mistakes - hiring the wrong people for startup life
Team of 50 people and getting the train out of the station
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/160
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
50 min
January 19, 2018SaaS Branding: How Help Scout Won 8,000 Teams in 140 Countries
Nick Francis spent two years searching for a help desk that did not feel like a help desk. Every tool he tried put a system between the company and the customer - ticket numbers, support portals, robotic emails. So he built Help Scout, and SaaS branding through invisible UX became the foundation of everything.
Nick reveals how Help Scout grew to 8,000 support teams in 140 countries through SaaS branding that competitors could not replicate. He survived four years on an $800K seed round before raising a $12M Series A, and content marketing drove 400,000 monthly visitors by investing only in things competitors could not buy with a check. His startup branding strategy was built on competitive differentiation through craft, not spending.
Nick interviewed hundreds of support professionals before launch, spending nine months asking about workflows without mentioning Help Scout. He kept interviewing until he could finish their sentences. Help Scout's brand building SaaS approach meant shipping keyboard shortcuts the same day customers asked - betting that obsessive attention to small details would outweigh missing big features competitors already had.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 SaaS branding means investing only in what competitors cannot buy: Nick focused on content marketing and product craft because well-funded competitors could outspend on ads but could not write a check for brand trust.
🤝 Interview customers until you can finish their sentences: Nick spent nine months talking to hundreds of support professionals, ensuring deep competitive differentiation through genuine customer understanding.
🛠️ Execute on tiny product details to build SaaS branding against bigger players: Help Scout shipped keyboard shortcuts the same day customers requested them, betting on obsessive attention to small details.
💰 Treat funding as rocket fuel you only use when aimed right: Help Scout survived four years on an $800K seed round, then raised a $12M Series A as growth acceleration rather than survival funding.
📉 Freemium attracts the wrong segment for mid-market products: Help Scout's free plan attracted three-person startups that rarely converted, while their best customers were 10-25 person teams already willing to pay.
Chapters
Introduction
Meet Nick Francis and Help Scout overview
From career entrepreneur to founding a consulting company
What Help Scout does and the invisible SaaS branding concept
Why Nick refused to call Help Scout a help desk
The origin story - Feed My Inbox and 200,000 users
Two parts of Help Scout - backend and customer experience
Why traditional help desks degrade the customer experience
Two years thinking about the ideal solution
Going all in and building Help Scout in six months
Three co-founders building the first version
Applying to Techstars after reading Do More Faster
Getting first customers through deep customer research
Focusing on the ideal customer segment
Product-driven growth through obsessive detail
Content marketing as a competitive differentiation bet
Guest posting 25 times per topic to build SEO authority
Hiring mistakes and work-based assessments
Why freemium failed for Help Scout
Funding as rocket fuel - waiting 4 years for Series A
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/159
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
53 min
December 12, 2017SaaS Free Trial Conversion: Cut From 30 to 7 Days, Doubled
Janna Bastow and her co-founder built ProdPad for themselves as product managers who could not find the right tool. After two years of using it internally, they quit their jobs with zero customers. Growth was steady until they hit the "plateau of doom" at $30K MRR and had to fix their free trial conversion to survive.
Janna explains how cutting free trial conversion time from 30 days to 7 and gamifying onboarding doubled their trial to paid conversion rate. A single "that was weird" email sent 10 minutes after signup recovered 25-30% of lost signups. Focusing the entire team on improving trial conversion for three months broke through a six-month revenue plateau.
ProdPad's co-founder Simon Cast identified with 85% certainty by day 9 which free trial conversion users would become paying customers. That insight drove the decision to shorten trial time and focus on SaaS free trial optimization through early engagement. ProdPad's customers include Disney, Automattic, and eBay.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Shorter trial times increase free trial conversion by creating urgency: ProdPad cut their trial from 30 to 14 days and immediately doubled conversions because users engaged faster with less time to procrastinate.
🛠️ Gamify onboarding to teach your product and improve free trial conversion: ProdPad let users earn extra trial days by completing key actions like adding ideas and setting up integrations - replacing product tours with incentive-driven education.
📉 The "plateau of doom" at $30K MRR comes from losing focus: ProdPad's growth flatlined when the team experimented with AdWords and events instead of continuing the content strategy that built their customer base.
🧠 Focus your entire team on one metric for three months: Janna stopped everything and had every team member work on free trial conversion - no new features, no marketing experiments, just one number.
🔄 Behavior-based emails outperform generic onboarding sequences: ProdPad's "that was weird" email sent 10 minutes after signup recovered 25-30% of inactive users - far better than standard welcome messages.
Chapters
Introduction
Meet Janna Bastow and ProdPad overview
How two product managers built ProdPad for themselves
Using ProdPad internally for two years before launching
Quitting jobs with zero customers
Tipping points that led to going full time
Building a landing page with a buy button that went nowhere
Getting the first paying customer through organic search
From first customer to first 10 through iteration and feedback
Content strategy that was really just teaching and educating
Hiring first team members after a year of bootstrapping
Growing through reinvesting monthly recurring revenue
Hitting the plateau of doom at $30K MRR
The year of faffing about - losing focus in 2015
Why free trial conversion was the right metric to fix
Cutting trial from 30 to 14 days doubled free trial conversion
Gamifying onboarding - earn trial days by completing key actions
Behavior-based emails that recovered 25-30% of inactive signups
The "that was weird" email with amazing response rates
Results - reaching 10% free trial conversion rate
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/158
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
51 min
December 05, 2017Building Multiple Businesses: $1,000 SaaS to 100K Users
Greg Mercer was a civil engineer building multiple businesses when he spent $1,000 hiring a developer to build a Chrome extension. That side project grew into Jungle Scout - 100,000+ customers and multi-seven-figure revenue in under three years. Greg reveals how he went from a one-page WordPress site with a PayPal button to a fully remote 35-person company.
Greg was already building multiple businesses as an Amazon FBA seller when he realized the research process was broken. He automated his own spreadsheets into a Chrome extension, posted a two-minute screen recording in Facebook groups, and collected 100 emails. An influencer shared the tool and generated $5,000 in early sales, proving demand for starting a SaaS in this space.
Within six months of building multiple businesses, Greg invested $30,000-$40,000 to add a web-based SaaS app with recurring revenue. The serial entrepreneur mistake he made was trying every marketing channel at once instead of doubling down on influencer webinars that were already working. The Million Dollar Case Study - publicly building an Amazon business to $1M - became the content marketing strategy that scaled growth.
🔑 Key Lessons
🚀 Building multiple businesses starts with $1,000 and a simple product: Greg built Jungle Scout's first Chrome extension for $1,000 by automating a single task he already did manually with spreadsheets.
💰 Collect cash upfront when starting a SaaS to fund early growth: Greg charged $67 one-time instead of a monthly subscription because he needed immediate cash to fix bugs and improve the product.
🎯 Double down on the marketing channel that already works: Greg wasted time trying blog posts, YouTube, and Facebook ads when influencer webinars were already driving sales. Focusing beats spreading thin.
🛠️ Build detailed wireframes even without technical skills: Greg's first software project failed because he only sent a vague email. For Jungle Scout, thorough wireframes dramatically improved developer output.
🤝 Validate demand in communities before building multiple businesses: Greg posted a screen recording in Amazon seller Facebook groups and collected 100 emails before building anything.
Chapters
Introduction
Meet Greg Mercer and Jungle Scout overview
What Jungle Scout does for Amazon sellers
From civil engineer to building multiple businesses
Starting a SaaS with $1,000 and no external funding
How the Chrome extension worked
Pricing the Chrome extension at $67
Selling with a one-page WordPress site and PayPal button
Three weeks from idea to first sale
Getting first customers through Facebook groups
When the side project became a real business
The mistake of trying every marketing channel at once
Why doubling down on working channels matters
Lessons on hiring and managing developers without coding skills
Evolving from Chrome extension to SaaS application
Investing $30-40K to build the web app
Growth channels and content marketing strategy
Dealing with higher-than-average churn
Managing a 35-person fully remote team
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/157
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
51 min
November 28, 2017SaaS Customer Development: 3 Pivots, 80 Interviews, $1M
Tukan Das and his co-founders spent three years and $1.8 million trying to sell social media data to Fortune 500 brands. After two failed pivots and dwindling runway, they finally committed to real SaaS customer development - and everything changed. Tukan reveals how LeadSift went from five customers in year one to 105 customers and nearly $1M ARR.
The breakthrough came from proper SaaS customer development: 80+ customer interviews with a rule that 80% had to confirm the pain point before writing any code. Three customers signed contracts and paid before any product existed. Leads were delivered manually via spreadsheet for months while the team automated through customer discovery insights.
LeadSift raised $1.8 million including a Salesforce investment, but wasted the first two years selling to the wrong market. Year one ended with only 5 customers. The ad-targeting pivot grew revenue but produced no recurring income. Only when Tukan committed to SaaS customer development with structured customer interviews did the product and business model finally click.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 SaaS customer development requires talking to 80+ prospects before building: LeadSift set a rule that 80% of interviewees had to confirm the pain point before writing any code, preventing a third failed pivot.
📉 Hiring a salesperson before product-market fit wastes money: LeadSift hired a senior salesperson to sell a glorified MVP to Fortune 500 companies, but even the best salesperson cannot sell an unvalidated product.
🔄 Pivoting without SaaS customer development just repeats mistakes: LeadSift's first pivot grew revenue but created a services business with no recurring income because they skipped validating the use case.
🛠️ Manual delivery before automation reveals how customers use your product: LeadSift's engineers manually delivered leads via spreadsheet for months, learning usage patterns before automating.
🤝 Founder-led outbound beats content marketing in early-stage SaaS: Tukan became the sole salesperson, using LeadSift's own product to generate daily lead lists and closing deals in three to four weeks.
💰 Get customers to pay before you build: LeadSift signed three paying customers on contracts before writing a single line of code, ensuring the team only built what people would actually buy.
Chapters
Introduction
Meet Tukan Das and the LeadSift vision
What is unstructured data and why it matters
How the idea for LeadSift started
Building a product from Twitter and Foursquare APIs
Going to market and hiring a salesperson too early
First year results - only 5 customers
Why hiring a salesperson before SaaS customer development failed
From local businesses to Fortune 500 brands
Pivoting to ad targeting and audience data
Why campaign-driven revenue is not recurring
One year of runway left - three options
Doing SaaS customer development the manual way
How the B2B product differed from the consumer version
Three years of learning to build the right way
Using LeadSift to sell LeadSift
Business results - 105 customers approaching $1M ARR
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/156
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
56 min
November 21, 2017SaaS Content Strategy: How Outgrow Hit 3,000 Customers
Nobody was searching for Outgrow's product. Interactive calculators and quizzes for SaaS lead generation was not a category that existed. Randy Rayess had to invent a SaaS content strategy to sell a tool to customers who did not know they needed one.
In this episode, Randy reveals how a services business question - "how much does it cost to build an app?" - turned into a bootstrapped SaaS content strategy platform with 3,000 paying customers and 40 employees. One customer generated 90,000 leads from a single book recommendation quiz. Another saw 7x engagement improvement over paid social posts.
Randy and his co-founder were running VenturePact, a marketplace for software development services. They built an interactive calculator to answer their most common sales question and it became their biggest lead source. That content strategy SaaS insight became Outgrow - a no-code platform for interactive calculators, quizzes, and assessments that turns B2B content planning into qualified SaaS lead generation.
🔑 Key Lessons
🛠️ Engineering as SaaS content strategy creates products from internal tools: Randy built an interactive calculator to answer a repetitive sales question. That internal tool became Outgrow's entire product.
🎯 When nobody searches for your product, educate through events: Outgrow could not rely on SEO because the category did not exist. Mid-market digital marketing events let Randy teach the SaaS content strategy concept before selling the tool.
📉 Trying to serve every customer segment kills focus: Outgrow initially targeted freelancers through enterprise across all industries. Focusing outbound on mid-market in specific verticals gave the entire team clarity.
💰 Seed your first customers from an existing business: Outgrow's first paying users came from VenturePact's client base. A $45-$600/month tool was an obvious upgrade from custom software projects.
🚀 Use your own product as your SaaS content strategy engine: Outgrow builds calculators and quizzes on its own platform to generate leads with 4-8 data points per prospect, improving scoring and conversion rates.
Chapters
Introduction - marketing a product nobody is searching for
Randy's motivation - helping marketers shift from advertising to value
What Outgrow does - interactive calculators and quizzes for lead gen
Origin story - the VenturePact cost SaaS content strategy calculator
Recognizing the SaaS opportunity from a services tool
Charging VenturePact customers first
Early pushback and customer feedback surprises
Unexpected use cases - VR, sports brands, co-branded content
Timeline - from internal tool to public launch
Growth strategies - events, own product, and viral loops
Event strategy - mid-market events with presentations
Educating the market when no one searches for your category
Using Outgrow to generate leads for Outgrow
Customer case studies - 90K leads, 7x engagement
Tips for coming up with interactive content ideas
Hiring challenges - intelligence vs cultural fit
Lack of focus - trying to serve every segment
Pricing structure - freelancer to enterprise
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/155
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
55 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.