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

January 11, 2017SaaS Pricing: A Step-by-Step Framework That Works
Most SaaS founders pick a price, put it on their website, and never touch it again. Patrick Campbell built an entire company around fixing that mistake. His SaaS pricing methodology has been used by Wistia, BigCommerce, Optimizely, Zapier, and hundreds of other companies to optimize their pricing strategy and packaging.
Patrick cashed in his 401k to bootstrap Price Intelligently, spent nine months as a solo founder grinding out deep content on SaaS pricing, and grew to 30 employees charging a minimum of $30,000 per engagement - all without raising a dollar. His four-step framework covers buyer personas, willingness-to-pay surveys, feature preference analysis, and pricing model alignment. Companies that never update their SaaS pricing lose years of revenue because customer value perceptions shift constantly.
Patrick Campbell is the co-founder and CEO of Price Intelligently, a Boston-based startup that helps SaaS businesses figure out the right subscription pricing using data instead of gut feeling. The company also launched ProfitWell, a free SaaS metrics tool. Patrick's background is in economics and math, with experience at the US Intelligence community and Google.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 Use willingness-to-pay surveys instead of guessing your SaaS pricing: Patrick's four-question survey asks at what price a product is too expensive, getting expensive, a good deal, and too cheap to trust - revealing price elasticity for each buyer persona.
🎯 Align SaaS pricing tiers to quantified buyer personas: Instead of guessing which features belong in each tier, survey your personas on feature preference using forced-choice questions, then build packages that match what each segment values.
🔄 Revisit pricing every quarter to capture lost revenue: Companies leaving prices unchanged for years miss enormous growth because product improvements and market changes constantly shift what customers will pay.
📉 Deep content marketing compounds into a growth engine: Price Intelligently's deep blog posts on pricing strategy drove 80-90% of all revenue, even though early posts got just 30 views - proving that content compounds over time.
Chapters
Introduction
What drives Patrick - blue collar work ethic and Teddy Roosevelt's speech
Patrick's nonprofit work and data consulting for grants
How Price Intelligently started - economics background, Google, and a hunch
First steps - building models and pounding the pavement
Customer development using the same pricing methodology
Is Price Intelligently a software product or consulting service?
How the pricing data collection works
Company size - from 14 to 30 employees in nine months
Growth trajectory and the first nine months as a solo founder
Inbound marketing - the HubSpot Playbook and deep content
Blogging as the primary growth engine - 80-90% of revenue
Health challenges - burnout and beating cancer as a founder
Step-by-step SaaS pricing framework overview
Defining and quantifying buyer personas
Survey design - current customers, prospects, and strangers
Feature preference surveys - forced-choice methodology
Pricing surveys - four open-ended willingness-to-pay questions
Analyzing pricing data and setting tiers
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/134
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
59 min
January 05, 2017SaaS Acquisition: Free Tutorials to a $36M Exit
Gregg Pollack moved across the country for a new job - then found out he did not have one. That forced career change led him to Ruby on Rails, blogging, and eventually a $36M SaaS acquisition when Pluralsight bought Code School. The secret was not the product. It was the audience he spent three years building through free developer content.
Code School launched with a single $45 course that cost $20K-$30K to produce and paid for itself within two months. Gregg kept releasing one course per month, growing to $5M ARR without paid advertising. Free courses co-branded with GitHub, jQuery, and Google Angular drove massive signups. The selling a SaaS business decision came when Gregg realized his team lacked sales expertise to scale to $50M.
Gregg Pollack is the founder of Code School, an online learning platform that taught programming and web design to developers worldwide. He bootstrapped the business from consulting revenue at Envy Labs, a 16-person web consultancy. His SaaS exit strategy focused on finding a culture match - and Pluralsight's reference library model solved Code School's biggest weakness.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Build your audience before building the product for a faster SaaS acquisition path: Gregg spent three years creating free developer content before launching Code School, which meant the product was profitable from month one with zero paid acquisition.
💰 Bootstrap from consulting revenue to retain full ownership until the SaaS acquisition: Gregg used Envy Labs consulting income to fund Code School's development, avoiding VC dilution and maintaining control through the $36M exit strategy.
🤝 Partner with platforms that have your audience to drive growth: Code School created free co-branded courses with GitHub, jQuery, and Google Angular, tapping into each partner's developer audience to grow email signups and paid subscriptions.
📉 Know your weakness before pursuing a deal: Code School's low customer lifetime value from single-course subscribers was its biggest weakness, and Pluralsight's reference library model directly solved that problem - making the SaaS acquisition strategic for both sides.
🧠 Use a leadership coach when scaling hits cultural problems: After layoffs damaged team morale, Gregg hired an organizational psychologist who helped rebuild trust - something internal leadership alone could not accomplish.
Chapters
Introduction
What drives Gregg - passion for creating educational content
How Code School started - losing a job and discovering Ruby on Rails
Using blogging and podcasting to drive consulting leads
How long it took to start making money with Code School
Building Envy Labs - from freelance to a 16-person consultancy
Where consulting clients came from - content as warm lead generation
Growing Code School through free content and strategic partnerships
Darkest days - layoffs, morale damage, and hiring a leadership coach
Course success rates and customer lifetime value challenges
Free content strategy - co-branded courses with GitHub, jQuery, Google
Why Gregg decided to pursue a SaaS acquisition at $5M ARR
Personal branding and building an audience for the next venture
Advice for early-stage founders - build audience first, product second
Perfectionism and content paralysis as a founder
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/133
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
55 min
December 01, 2016Startup Product-Market Fit: Replacing a 120-Year-Old Eye Exam
Since 1895, eye exams have worked the same way - lenses in front of your face, "which is better, one or two?" Aaron Dallek and his co-founder found B2B product-market fit by replacing the entire process with a computer screen and a smartphone. Opternative lets you take an eye exam at home, get a prescription reviewed by an ophthalmologist, and buy glasses or contacts anywhere you want.
This vertical SaaS hit 100,000+ signups, maintained a 0.06% refund rate, and raised $9.5 million - all while fighting industry lobbying trying to shut them down. Opternative ran 1,500 side-by-side refractions to prove their industry-specific SaaS was statistically equivalent to traditional in-office testing. That clinical validation was the foundation for their SaaS product-market fit.
Aaron Dallek is a serial entrepreneur who started his first business at 14. His co-founder, Dr. Steven Lee, had performed 20,000 refractions when a patient asked "Why can't we do this at home?" That question became Opternative - proving B2B product-market fit in healthcare takes longer than expected but produces extraordinary results.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 B2B product-market fit requires replacing broken paradigms, not improving them: Opternative did not make eye exams faster - they eliminated the lens-based method entirely with digital screens and smartphones, creating a new category.
🛠️ Validate B2B product-market fit with clinical rigor: Opternative ran 1,500 side-by-side refractions comparing their technology to traditional exams and proved statistical equivalency before scaling.
🤝 Partner with industry insiders for credibility in regulated markets: Aaron partnered with Dr. Steven Lee, an optometrist with 20,000 refractions of experience, giving the product clinical credibility a pure tech team could not achieve.
📉 Expect regulatory pushback when disrupting incumbents: Optometry trade groups lobbied to ban Opternative through state legislation, while ophthalmology groups supported it - requiring the team to fight on legal and political fronts.
💰 Use proof of concept to unlock funding rounds: Aaron self-funded the initial build, used the working prototype to raise a $1M seed round, and each subsequent round was funded by investors who saw clinical validation and customer traction.
Chapters
Introduction
Aaron's entrepreneurial journey from age 14
Previous startups - carbon management, printer cartridges, Inc 5000
How Aaron met Dr. Steven Lee and joined Opternative
How the online eye exam works
Validating the idea with 1,500 refractions
What the first version of the product looked like
Technical challenges of building a digital eye exam
Step-by-step walkthrough of the Opternative experience
Accuracy and reliability - 0.06% refund rate
Getting the first customers and beta testing
Surprises from early user testing
Why it took two and a half years to achieve B2B product-market fit
Industry response - ophthalmology support vs. optometry opposition
Funding journey - from self-funded to $9.5M raised
Company size - 29 employees and 100K+ signups
Patent protection for the digital eye exam technology
Business model - free exam, paid prescriptions
Lessons learned - everything takes longer than expected
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/132
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
33 min
November 18, 2016SaaS Startup Funding: Bootstrapped 7 Years Then Raised $20M
Two university students with a machine learning thesis, no coding skills, and no money wanted to build a SaaS company. Seven years later, their patience with startup funding paid off - they raised $20M in a single round, skipping VC funding entirely. Pini Yakuel turned down $1.5 million in SaaS fundraising in 2012 and kept bootstrapping.
Optimove's startup funding strategy was unconventional. Pini used consulting revenue to self-fund the business, grew 100% year over year, and waited until the company had real traction before raising a seed round from a growth fund instead of a traditional VC. That delayed approach to startup funding led to better terms and stronger culture.
Pini Yakuel is co-founder and CEO of Optimove, a platform that predicts customer behavior across the entire lifecycle. The company has 100+ employees and offices in Tel Aviv, New York, and London. Pini shares why startup funding timing matters more than raising itself.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 Startup funding works best from a position of strength: Pini always met VCs as a profitable founder who did not need money, which gave him leverage and allowed Optimove to raise $20M on favorable terms.
🧠 Use consulting revenue to self-fund your SaaS before startup funding: Optimove started as a consulting business, using client revenue to hire developers and build the product - turning real customer data into a stronger product.
📉 Turning down VC funding can protect your company culture: Pini rejected $1.5M because VC pressure to grow faster than the business was ready for would have damaged culture and forced premature decisions.
🎯 Every SaaS founding team needs a founder who can sell: Startups with all-technical co-founders struggle in early sales because hired salespeople only work once the brand is established.
🚀 Reinvest every dollar as an alternative to startup funding: Optimove grew 100% year over year by reinvesting all revenue, never taking dividends, and spending aggressively only on proven bottlenecks.
Chapters
Introduction
What Optimove does - predictive customer modeling
How Pini and his co-founder came up with the idea
Spending 4-6 months meeting companies to find the right problem
Not knowing how to code and outsourcing the first build
Starting a consulting business to fund the SaaS product
Building the first product version with a $30K grant
Reaching product-market fit
Why every founding team needs a salesperson
Competing in the CRM and marketing automation space
Turning down $1.5M in VC startup funding in 2012
Why Pini rejected VC money and waited 7 years
Patience as a strategy - growing 100% year over year
Data-driven decisions vs. gut instinct as a founder
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/131
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
55 min
November 10, 2016Inbound Marketing SaaS: 500 Posts to 7,000 Customers
Garrett Moon wrote a blog post before writing a single line of code. He mocked up screenshots in Photoshop and got 300-400 email signups in 24 hours. That inbound marketing SaaS approach - writing content before building product - became the foundation for CoSchedule's organic growth SaaS story to 7,000 customers and a seven-figure business.
CoSchedule's inbound marketing SaaS strategy was built on SaaS content marketing at scale: 500+ in-depth blog posts, each several thousand words with downloadable resources. The content marketing SaaS playbook used Blue Ocean strategy - creating dramatically better content than competitors were willing to produce. The Headline Analyzer tool, built from 1 million headlines, drove massive traffic.
Garrett Moon is the CEO and co-founder of CoSchedule, a content marketing and social media publishing calendar helping 7,000+ customers in 100+ countries. The company raised around $500,000 and self-funded the rest from consulting revenue.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Write content before code for inbound marketing SaaS validation: CoSchedule's first "MVP" was a blog post and Photoshop mockups that generated 300-400 email signups in 24 hours - proving demand before development.
📉 Don't sell to existing clients when validating inbound marketing SaaS: Garrett deliberately avoided pitching consulting clients because SaaS must sell to strangers - leveraging relationships creates false validation.
🚀 Apply Blue Ocean strategy to SaaS content marketing: CoSchedule published fewer but dramatically better posts - several thousand words, deeply researched, always actionable - because most competitors won't invest that effort.
💰 Build free tools from your data to drive growth: CoSchedule's Headline Analyzer, built from 1 million headlines, drove massive traffic and email signups by giving back insights to the community.
🧠 Being 50% focused on two businesses means 100% focused on nothing: Garrett's hardest lesson transitioning from consulting to SaaS was that split focus dilutes everything.
Chapters
Introduction
Meet Garrett Moon and CoSchedule
The problem CoSchedule solves
Four failed products before CoSchedule
Self-funding from consulting revenue
The hardest part of transitioning from services to SaaS
Writing a blog post before writing code
Your MVP is a blog post and 10 slides
Why you shouldn't sell to consulting clients
Inbound marketing SaaS as the primary growth engine
How long it took to see content marketing traction
Standing out with Blue Ocean strategy
Product development mistakes
Building an editorial calendar for consistency
How to brainstorm content ideas
Social media promotion and the re-queue feature
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/130
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
57 min
November 03, 2016Overwhelmed SaaS Founder? 7 Hacks to Get Unstuck Fast
If you are an overwhelmed entrepreneur running on all cylinders with a to-do list that grows longer every day, this episode is for you. Omer Khan shares seven mental hacks backed by Harvard research and Stanford studies to help any overwhelmed entrepreneur clear founder overwhelm, reduce entrepreneur stress, and start making real progress.
This is not about productivity apps or time management tricks. These are strategies for changing how your brain responds to stress and founder burnout - from diaphragmatic breathing to micro actions that build unstoppable momentum. Whether you are an early-stage founder or a scaling founder drowning in decisions, these seven hacks give you a practical toolkit.
Host Omer Khan presents seven science-backed mental hacks for the overwhelmed entrepreneur: diaphragmatic breathing, writing tasks down to clear mental RAM, top-down goal planning for the next 90 days, focusing on process over outcome, single-tasking, learning to do less, and starting with micro actions.
🔑 Key Lessons
🧠 Diaphragmatic breathing resets an overwhelmed entrepreneur's stress response: Harvard's relaxation response technique reduces heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension - and you can do it anywhere in under three minutes.
📉 Write negative thoughts on paper and throw them away: A 2012 Psychological Science study proved that physically discarding written negative thoughts clears the mind.
🎯 Top-down planning prevents busy work for the overwhelmed entrepreneur: Define 3-5 goals for the next 90 days with 3 activities each, creating 9-15 high-impact tasks for 80% of your time.
🔄 Focus on process, not outcome, to beat overwhelm: Thomas Sterner's Practicing Mind teaches that filling your mind with outcomes while doing daily work creates paralysis.
⚡ Single-tasking is more productive than multitasking: Stanford's 2009 study showed habitual multitaskers perform worse at attention, memory, and task-switching.
🚀 Start with micro actions to build unstoppable momentum: Set a ridiculously small goal like writing 100 words or working for 5 minutes - eliminating resistance to starting is the key.
Chapters
Introduction
Do you ever feel like an overwhelmed entrepreneur?
Hack 1 - Take a deep breath (diaphragmatic breathing)
Hack 2 - Start writing (brain dump and negative thoughts)
Hack 3 - Reset your mental compass (top-down planning)
Hack 4 - Focus on process, not outcome
Hack 5 - Build a single-tasking habit
Hack 6 - Learn to do less
Hack 7 - Start with micro actions
Recap of all 7 mental hacks
Closing thoughts
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/129
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
24 min
October 27, 2016Bootstrapped SaaS Growth: $9/Month to $1M in 2 Years
Ryan O'Donnell built a tool to solve his own prospecting problem. He shared it with a few friends. Someone posted it to Reddit and Product Hunt. It went viral. Ten days later, SellHack was charging $9 a month and his bootstrapped SaaS growth journey had begun - profitable from day one with $500 in first-day revenue.
SellHack hit $1 million in revenue within two years through bootstrap growth powered by disciplined customer research. Ryan manually analyzed all 50 initial paying customers by title, company size, and location, then identified three distinct buyer segments. That bootstrapped startup growth approach - growing without funding - meant every feature had to be tied to committed revenue.
Ryan O'Donnell is the co-founder of SellHack, a platform that helps salespeople find targeted prospects, build email lists, and verify email addresses. He started his career on Wall Street making 500 calls a day prospecting for new clients.
🔑 Key Lessons
🚀 Solve your own problem for bootstrapped SaaS growth: Ryan failed at group gifting where he had no expertise but succeeded with SellHack because he was solving his own daily prospecting pain.
🎯 Research every paying customer to build personas: Ryan manually analyzed all 50 initial customers by title, company size, and location, then identified three distinct buyer segments to target.
💰 Tie every feature request to revenue before building: SellHack spent a month building Company Miner because a few customers asked - only 5% ever used it. Now nothing gets built without committed revenue attached.
📉 Missing onboarding kills bootstrapped SaaS growth fast: Users who weren't onboarded properly churned within weeks. Adding behavior-triggered emails within 30-45 days significantly improved retention.
🧠 Price against the alternative, not the competition: SellHack charged 20 cents per contact versus the $2-$5 cost of manual prospecting time, framing value as time savings.
Chapters
Introduction
Meet Ryan O'Donnell and SellHack
Embrace the fear - act like a hero
How SellHack started as an internal tool
When an internal tool becomes a business
Going viral on Reddit and Product Hunt
From crashed servers to $9/month subscriptions
$1 million in bootstrapped SaaS growth in two years
Why solving your own problem matters
Mistakes and lessons from early bootstrapped SaaS growth
Customer segmentation that drove targeting
The onboarding mistake that hurt retention
Building features nobody wanted
Why every feature must be tied to revenue
Pricing strategy from $9 to $249/month
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/128
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
44 min
October 20, 2016SaaS Product-Led Growth: Chrome Store to $10M ARR at Yesware
Matthew Bellows launched Yesware at $5 a month. Investors told him "software for salespeople" wasn't even a category. Then the Chrome Store became his SaaS distribution channel for product-led growth - driving 100% of early users for free, hundreds per day, without spending a dollar on marketing. PLG through a self-serve growth channel changed everything.
Yesware CEO Matthew Bellows grew to $10M+ ARR and 750,000 users through product-led growth powered by the Chrome Store as a free distribution channel. He pivoted from email templates to one-to-one email tracking as the breakthrough feature. The company has raised over $35 million in funding.
Matthew Bellows is the co-founder and CEO of Yesware, a sales platform that helps salespeople connect with prospects, track engagement, and close more deals. Yesware serves 750,000+ salespeople at companies like Adroll, Groupon, Salesforce, Twilio, and Yelp.
🔑 Key Lessons
🚀 Your product-led growth channel can outweigh your product: Yesware's Chrome Store listing drove 100% of early users for free - Matthew says distribution is at least as important as what you build.
🎯 Pick a smaller market with better product-led growth access: Yesware chose Google Apps (5-6% of market) over Outlook (90%) because it had early adopters and the Chrome Store for organic distribution.
🛠️ Your breakthrough feature may not be your first idea: Yesware launched with email templates that got modest adoption, then added one-to-one email tracking that transformed engagement.
💰 Low pricing works if you nail self-serve growth volume: Yesware grew to $10M+ ARR charging just $15/month by acquiring massive free user volume through organic channels.
📉 Free users can become a liability if they don't convert: After five years of freemium, Yesware ended the free plan because analysis showed free users weren't contributing enough value.
🤝 Stop being both CEO and VP of Sales: Matthew tried both and the sales team suffered. Hiring a dedicated VP of Sales who worked in the trenches was the turning point.
Chapters
Introduction
Meet Matthew Bellows and Yesware
What Yesware does for salespeople
The pipeline slide that inspired a startup
How the idea for Yesware began
Meeting co-founder Cashman and early validation
From bootstrapping to raising a seed round
Why focusing on Google Apps was the key product-led growth decision
First 20 users and the Chrome Store discovery
How the Chrome Store became a growth engine
Email tracking as the breakthrough feature
Raising funding when investors said it's not a category
Sales challenges converting free to enterprise
What the new VP of Sales changed
From $5/month to $10M ARR pricing journey
Why Yesware killed the free plan
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/127
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
50 min
October 13, 2016Finding SaaS Product-Market Fit: 9 Doctors Signed Before Code
Luke Kervin walked into a doctor's office with a business card for a company that didn't exist and a product he hadn't built. He walked out with a signed contract for $500 a month. He did that nine times before writing a single line of code. That SaaS product validation approach was Luke's method for finding product-market fit - and it launched PatientPop.
Luke's PMF journey started with failure. His original healthcare idea flopped, but asking doctors what kept them up at night revealed a much bigger opportunity. Validating product-market fit took under two weeks with nothing but business cards and a brochure. Then he proved the model by manually driving 21 new patients per practice in the first 30 days.
Luke Kervin is the co-CEO of PatientPop, an all-in-one practice growth platform for healthcare providers. The company was founded in 2014, raised $24 million, and scaled to 142 employees in just two years with a field sales team closing at 30%+ rates.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Finding product-market fit doesn't require code: Luke signed 9 paying doctors using only business cards, a brochure, and a landing page - proving demand in under two weeks.
📉 A failed idea can lead to finding product-market fit gold: Luke's original idea flopped, but asking doctors what kept them up at night revealed a much bigger opportunity worth $24 million in funding.
🤝 Hire two sales reps to avoid false conclusions: One rep crushed it while the other struggled - hiring only one could have led to the wrong conclusion about product viability.
🚀 Manual delivery proves product-market fit faster than code: By manually building directory profiles and websites, PatientPop drove 21 new patients per practice in 30 days - validating before automating.
🏢 Moving upmarket requires a different playbook: PatientPop jumped into mid-market sales too early and discovered larger practices had different needs, longer sales cycles, and required a different selling process.
Chapters
Introduction
Meet Luke Kervin and PatientPop
What PatientPop does for healthcare providers
How the idea started in a doctor's office
The pivot from failed idea to finding product-market fit
Validating demand without a product
All nine doctors signed up
Proving product-market fit with a manual MVP
Tactics that drove 21 new patients per practice
Growing the sales team and early mistakes
Criteria for choosing what business to build
Why hiring two sales reps matters
Building the executive team
Mistakes moving to mid-market too fast
Pricing model and expansion opportunities
Fundraising strategy across angel, seed, and Series A
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/126
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
44 min
October 06, 2016SaaS Pricing: From $50 to $1,000/Month at Socedo
Aseem Badshah started selling Socedo for $50 a month. Today, the average customer pays $1,000 a month. The path to better SaaS pricing started with casual hallway conversations after failed sales pitches. The right pricing strategy transformed SaaS customer lifetime value by 20x.
Aseem grew Socedo's SaaS pricing from $50/mo to $1,000/mo by asking prospects what they would pay before building features, pivoting from B2C to B2B after Techstars revealed the wrong target audience, and treating revenue as the single metric driving every decision. Building integrations with Marketo, HubSpot, and Salesforce doubled subscription pricing per customer.
Aseem Badshah is the co-founder of Socedo, a B2B social lead generation platform. Before Socedo, he ran a digital marketing agency for Fortune 500 brands. The company has raised $1.5 million and continues moving upstream into higher SaaS pricing tiers.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 Ask for money to validate SaaS pricing early: Aseem wishes he had stopped the freemium approach sooner. When prospects say "that's cool," ask them to sign an SOW. Real commitment reveals whether you're solving a top-three pain point.
🎯 Listen in hallway conversations to find higher SaaS pricing opportunities: Aseem's biggest pricing jumps came from casual post-meeting exchanges where prospects revealed real priorities and budgets.
🤝 Do founder-led sales before hiring reps: Aseem sold Socedo himself for 18 months, learning the sales process. Founders close better because prospects listen to CEOs, and you learn which features drive larger deals.
📉 Pivot when customer development shows low willingness to pay: B2C social media managers would pay $10-20/mo. B2B prospects with revenue pressure leaned in at $1,000/mo. The right audience can 20x your SaaS customer lifetime value.
🛠️ Build integrations to multiply customer lifetime value: Connecting Socedo to Marketo, HubSpot, and Salesforce made leads more actionable and doubled or tripled average revenue per customer.
Chapters
Introduction - building a product to scratch his own itch
What Socedo does - B2B social lead generation
Origin story - managing Microsoft's social media presence
The fog of war - building for yourself instead of the market
Techstars and forced customer development
Distinguishing real interest from polite excitement
Finding the first 10 customers
SaaS pricing evolution from $50 to $1,000 per month
Marketing channels - using Socedo to sell Socedo
Founder-led sales for the first year and a half
Key lesson - revenue is the one metric that matters
Raising $1.5 million
Expanding customer lifetime value through hallway conversations
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/125
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
43 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.