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

June 12, 2025First SaaS Customers: 100% Conversion From Free to Paid
He got his first SaaS customers without spending a dollar on sales or marketing - and converted every single one to paid. Jared Siegal built a consulting business with 30 clients at $2M revenue, then deployed a strategy that made his first SaaS customers completely dependent on his technology before charging them a cent.
Jared reveals how getting first SaaS customers meant giving the product away free for six months while billing for consulting, why 100% of early customers converted to first paying users when he flipped the switch, and how a referral-only customer acquisition engine grew Aditude to $5M ARR with zero sales team.
Jared previously built two companies that sold for massive valuations but walked away with almost nothing. Aditude now serves digital publishers and bootstrapped to $5M ARR with six employees before raising a $15M Series A on his own terms.
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🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Get first SaaS customers by giving your product away free: Jared gave his SaaS away for six months, making 30 clients completely dependent on his tech. When he started charging, 100% converted.
💰 Use consulting revenue to fund your first SaaS customers: Jared used $2M/year in consulting revenue as his own VC fund - no investors, no dilution while building a sticky product.
🛠️ Borrow resources from early customers who benefit: Jared got a client's engineer for free for six weeks by aligning incentives: "If this works, you save money."
🚀 Build a referral engine instead of hiring a sales team: Three free consulting hours per successful referral meant every new customer arrived pre-sold through word of mouth.
📈 Raise capital only when you do not need it: At $5M ARR with six employees, Jared told every VC "I don't need your money" and raised a $15M Series A on his terms.
Chapters
Introduction and The "Luke Bryan" Quote
From Employee to Scrappy Consultant
Three Acquisition Offers in One Month
Borrowing a Client's Engineer to Build the MVP
Converting First SaaS Customers From Free to Paid
Hitting $1M ARR in Four Months
The Pain of Bootstrapping and Personal Financial Risk
Why You Should Be Profitable Before Raising VC
Cold Emailing VCs - 100% Response Rate Strategy
Growing Without Sales or Marketing
The "Disney World" Client Retention Strategy
Lightning Round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/447
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
55 min
June 05, 2025AI Startup to $1M ARR in 90 Days With TikTok Affiliates
Zero followers. Zero ad budget. $1M ARR in 90 days. David Zitoun built an AI startup from nothing by recruiting 50+ TikTok affiliates who posted daily videos for 30% lifetime commissions. Two years later, Submagic hit $8M ARR with just 14 people.
David reveals how he launched his AI startup with a single viral TikTok video from a brand new account, why building with AI means timing matters more than tactics, and how lowering prices - not raising them - broke through a 7-month plateau at $5M ARR. You will also learn the AI-powered SaaS growth playbook of turning early customers into product managers through WhatsApp groups.
Submagic is an AI business that helps creators turn videos into viral-ready shorts. David found his co-founder through YC Co-Founder Match and they made a pact: build and sell an MVP every 15 days for 12 months until something works.
🔑 Key Lessons
🚀 An AI startup can scale fast with creative distribution: David hit $1M ARR in 90 days by recruiting 50-70 TikTok affiliates instead of spending on ads, proving creative go-to-market can outperform paid acquisition.
💰 Be generous with early affiliate commissions: Offering 30% lifetime commissions attracted 50+ creators to post daily content for this AI startup before it had any brand recognition.
📉 Lower prices to break a growth plateau: At $5M ARR, Submagic raised prices per conventional wisdom and growth dropped. Lowering prices below the original point restarted growth after seven stalled months.
🤝 Turn customers into product managers with WhatsApp groups: David added every early paying customer to a group where they tested features, gave feedback, and became word-of-mouth evangelists.
⏱️ Timing amplifies everything - recognize your wave: This AI startup launched when short-form content was rising and AI tools were booming. David admits the same playbook would likely fail under different market conditions.
Chapters
Introduction and the "Opportunity" Quote
What Submagic does and who it helps
Revenue ($8M ARR) and the first million in 90 days
Origin: Solving the "Alex Hormozi caption" problem
Finding a co-founder through YC Co-Founder Match
Building the first ugly MVP (one feature only)
Selling on TikTok with zero followers
Scaling the AI startup with 50-70 TikTok affiliates
Why timing and product-market fit matter more than tactics
Hitting the $5M plateau for 7 months
Breaking through: Lowering prices and launching Magic Clips
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/446
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
52 min
May 29, 2025First SaaS Customers From a Wizard-of-Oz MVP to $2.5M
"This is not a product," one of his first SaaS customers told him. They were right. Cello had no dashboard, no login portal, and no analytics - just shared Notion pages and Python scripts. But those first paying users still paid because the referral program actually worked.
Stefan Bader reveals how he landed his first SaaS customers by turning pre-seed investors into design partners, why success-based pricing removed all early adopter friction, and how a "powered by Cello" casual contact loop now drives nearly 1 million widget opens per month for compounding initial traction.
Cello is an all-in-one referral platform powering programs for companies like Miro and Typeform. Stefan bootstrapped from a Wizard-of-Oz MVP to $2.5M ARR and 7 million monthly users.
🔑 Key Lessons
🤝 Turn investors into first SaaS customers: Stefan offered pre-seed round tickets to potential buyers, creating shared financial incentives that converted investors into committed design partners willing to tolerate an unfinished MVP.
🛠️ Ship the Wizard-of-Oz MVP and iterate on what matters: Cello delivered analytics via Notion pages and ran Python scripts behind the scenes. First paying users said "this is not a product" but stayed because results were real.
💰 Use success-based pricing to remove all friction: Cello charges nothing until referrals generate revenue. This eliminated risk for early adopters and created natural alignment.
🚀 Build a casual contact loop for compounding growth: The "powered by Cello" link reaches nearly 1 million opens per month. Each new customer adds users to the loop, making inbound grow exponentially.
📝 Lead with proprietary data to land top content partners: Stefan partnered with Kyle Poyar by providing unique referral benchmarks, getting Cello in front of tens of thousands of subscribers without paid sponsorship.
Chapters
Introduction
What Cello does and the problem it solves
Revenue, team size, and 7 million monthly users
Origin story as CRO at a payment company
Building the MVP with compliance and scalability first
The Wizard-of-Oz MVP with Notion and Python scripts
Freemium success-based pricing for first SaaS customers
Building a compounding growth system with growth loops
The casual contact loop and "powered by Cello"
Content collaborations with Kyle Poyar
Network sales and leveraging investors as first SaaS customers
Lightning round and book recommendations
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/445
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
50 min
May 22, 2025SaaS Go-to-Market: From 3-Month Cycles to 5-Day Closes
Two years building an enterprise product nobody wanted to buy. Jonathan Festejo spent years on a SaaS go-to-market strategy that targeted the wrong buyers. Sales cycles dragged to three months, and enterprise teams kept choosing to "do nothing" rather than switch.
Jonathan reveals how fixing his SaaS go-to-market by pivoting down-market to founders doing $500K-$2M ARR cut sales cycles from 3 months to 5 days. You will learn the go-to-market strategy of targeting buyers who feel the pain personally, how a "Powered By" button became the top GTM SaaS growth channel, and why polite interest from enterprise champions is a dead-end signal.
Before Salesbricks, Jonathan ran RevOps for multiple unicorns. His launch strategy for Salesbricks started with a $250K friends-and-family round raised before any product existed. Today, Salesbricks serves 100+ customers at $1M ARR.
🔑 Key Lessons
🏢 Avoid the enterprise SaaS go-to-market trap early on: Jonathan spent two years selling to enterprise buyers with 3-month sales cycles who kept choosing "do nothing" - startups need buyers who say yes in days.
🎯 Target buyers who feel the pain personally: Founders doing $500K-$2M ARR showed up to calls with written problem lists and closed in 5 days with no committee approval needed.
🚀 Build viral loops for SaaS go-to-market leverage: Salesbricks embedded a "Powered By" button on every contract, generating 4 clicks per 10 contracts and creating high-intent inbound leads.
📉 Watch for "polite interest" as a dead-end signal: Enterprise champions loved the product but could not get finance to approve the switch - enthusiasm without decision-making power wastes time.
🧠 Hire self-sufficient A-players instead of cheap juniors: Salesbricks hired junior engineers to save money, but management overhead turned seniors into full-time trainers, resulting in layoffs 18 months later.
Chapters
Introduction and favorite quote on failure
What Salesbricks does and who it serves
Origin story - the Halloween DocuSign nightmare
Raising $250K without a product
Overbuilding for enterprise - the wrong SaaS go-to-market
The enterprise trap - 3-month sales cycles and "do nothing"
Pivoting down-market to founders doing $500K-$2M ARR
Signals that founders were the right ICP
The "Powered By" viral loop driving inbound leads
Hiring junior engineers - the costly mistake
Lightning round and book recommendation
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/444
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
42 min
May 15, 2025SaaS Content Strategy: Free Demos That Built $1M ARR
Cold outreach failed. Product-led growth stalled. Joseph Lee turned to a SaaS content strategy that was anything but conventional - creating free demos for strangers on Reddit, responding to product update emails with personalized demos, and building ungated tools that now drive 50%+ of traffic.
Joseph shares the SaaS content strategy that took Supademo from $100K to $1M ARR in 12 months with double-digit growth every month. You will learn how programmatic SEO modeled after Zapier drives content-led growth, why ungated free tools convert at 11-12%, and the B2B content planning approach of stacking channels one at a time.
Joseph previously co-founded Freshline, a B2B seafood marketplace that grew to $3M revenue before losing 95% to COVID. Supademo now serves over 1,000 paying companies with a team of just 10.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Lead with free value as SaaS content strategy: Joseph created free demos for strangers on Reddit without expecting anything in return, generating several thousand signups organically.
🛠️ Turn existing features into ungated free tools: Supademo repurposed built-in features like the screenshot editor as standalone SEO pages, driving 50%+ of traffic with content marketing that converts at 11-12%.
📉 Doing outbound poorly is worse than skipping it: Without dedicated resources for deliverability and messaging, lean product-led teams should skip outbound entirely.
🔄 Shift your ICP when early customers churn too fast: Moving from early-stage founders to 50+ employee organizations delivered higher willingness to pay and natural land-and-expand revenue.
🚀 Model your programmatic SEO after proven playbooks: Joseph studied Zapier's SaaS content strategy and adapted it for Supademo, embedding interactive demos in how-to content for high-volume keywords.
Chapters
Introduction and favorite quote
What Supademo does and who it's for
Revenue, team size, and growth metrics
The Freshline story - building a B2B seafood marketplace
Where the Supademo idea came from
Getting first customers through free Reddit demos
Responding to product update emails with Supademos
Programmatic SEO and SaaS content strategy modeled after Zapier
Why "build it and they will come" does not work
Ungated free tools driving 50%+ of traffic
The state of SEO and AI-powered search
Why cold outreach failed
Lightning round and book recommendation
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/443
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
56 min
May 08, 2025SaaS Product-Market Fit in a Category Nobody Asked For
Everyone assumed Prodoscore was just another surveillance tool. Sam Naficy had to find SaaS product-market fit for a product category nobody asked for - while employees and buyers assumed his company was spying on them. He flipped the narrative, narrowed the TAM ruthlessly, and grew to high 7-figure ARR.
Sam reveals how achieving SaaS product-market fit meant repositioning from surveillance to employee empowerment, why narrowing from "anyone with Salesforce" to 100+ seat companies unlocked real PMF, and how staffing became their number one ICP - a vertical nobody on the team predicted through any market validation exercise.
Sam previously built DTT from zero to $55M ARR over 20 years before it was acquired. Prodoscore now serves roughly 150 customers with 135,000 employees on the platform and an AI engine that predicts attrition 90 days in advance.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 SaaS product-market fit requires narrowing your TAM ruthlessly: Prodoscore went from "anyone with Salesforce" to 100+ seat enterprises, then discovered staffing as their top ICP - a vertical nobody predicted.
🛠️ Reposition from surveillance to empowerment: Personal dashboards with AI-driven recommendations instead of mouse tracking overcame the Big Brother stigma that killed competitor products.
💰 Be well capitalized before creating a new category: New categories require years of market education. Sam applies the same 20-year mindset from building DTT to $55M ARR.
📉 Outsized press without infrastructure wastes opportunity: CNBC and Wall Street Journal coverage during COVID reached a 4-person company that lacked sales infrastructure to convert attention.
🔄 SaaS product-market fit is evolution, not revolution: Continuous small tweaks based on customer feedback beat wholesale pivots. Prodoscore's attrition prediction feature came from heavy users, not the roadmap.
Chapters
Introduction and favorite quote
What Prodoscore does and who it's for
Building DTT from scratch to $55M ARR over 20 years
From investor to CEO of a pre-revenue startup
New category creation and the education challenge
Differentiating from surveillance tools
Finding SaaS product-market fit in a new category
Overcoming the Big Brother stigma with employees
Narrowing the ICP from broad TAM to staffing
Predicting employee attrition 90 days early with AI
Biggest lesson from 20 years of building SaaS
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/442
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
39 min
May 01, 2025Sales Pipeline: 18 Months of Zero Deals Then 35 Meetings
Egidijus Pilypas spent 18 months burning cash on outreach and didn't close a single deal. Every cold call, cold email, and RFP response failed because by the time Exacaster entered the buying process, competitors had already built trust. Founders will hear how he transformed a dead sales pipeline into 35 booked meetings at a single conference.
Egidijus reveals how a niche podcast for just 1,300 potential customers became his most powerful tool for building a pipeline, why co-authoring an industry book with 30+ non-client contributors established authority that B2B SaaS sales cold outreach never could, and the shift from 1-2 person pitches to 20-person teams that turned losing every RFP into winning consistently.
Exacaster is a bootstrapped $7M+ ARR SaaS company helping subscription-based businesses grow revenue through machine learning. They serve customers in nearly 20 countries with close to 100 team members - all built through trust-first sales pipeline development.
🔑 Key Lessons
📉 Cold outreach fails in complex sales pipeline building: Exacaster burned cash for 18 months on cold calls and reactive RFPs without closing a single deal, proving enterprise buyers need trust before they engage.
🎯 Find your ICP's emotional pain, not just business pain: Customer value managers felt lonely and unrecognized. Exacaster built a podcast and community around that need, creating genuine connections that drove SaaS pipeline growth.
🤝 Build trust before the RFP arrives: By the time an enterprise buyer sends an RFP, they've already shortlisted vendors. Exacaster's ABM approach ensured they were trusted before any formal sales pipeline process began.
🛠️ Over-invest in the enterprise pitch: Switching from 1-2 person pitches to 20-person teams transformed Exacaster's win rate. Building a pipeline requires showing the depth of expertise behind the proposal.
🚀 Turn niche content into a B2B SaaS sales engine: A podcast, benchmark tool, and co-authored book gave Exacaster authority in a market of just 1,300 telcos - growing conference meetings from 2-3 to 35.
Chapters
Introduction
What Exacaster does and who it serves
Revenue, team size, and global reach
Origin story from statistics student to telecom
Landing the first paying customer with no product
The enterprise delivery trap
18-month sales pipeline failure with zero deals
Realizing they sell trust, not software
Building the CVM Stories podcast for 1,300 telcos
Writing the CVM Body of Knowledge book
Results: from zero to 35 meetings at one conference
Over-investing in enterprise pitches with 20-person teams
Internal investment process for cross-functional sales
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/441
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
56 min
April 24, 2025Enterprise SaaS: Why Excited Customers Still Said No
A prospective customer wanted to hug Rami Tamir after his pitch. Six months later, she rejected the product. That early lesson in misleading enterprise SaaS validation shaped how Salto grew from a self-funded idea to 8-figure ARR with $69M in funding. Founders will hear why building enterprise software in a new category is harder than it looks.
Rami reveals why he refuses design partners after a previous startup overfitted to one customer's $500K use case, how targeting discretionary budgets let director-level buyers approve enterprise SaaS deals without procurement, and what forced the team to reprice and move upmarket when the 2023 downturn wiped out their entire enterprise go-to-market strategy.
Salto helps teams manage and automate configuration of tools like Salesforce, NetSuite, and Okta. Rami previously built and sold three startups to Cisco, Red Hat, and Oracle - but selling to large companies in a brand-new category brought challenges even serial entrepreneurship couldn't shortcut.
🔑 Key Lessons
🎯 Early enthusiasm is not enterprise SaaS validation: A prospect wanted to hug Rami after his pitch but rejected the product six months later. Vague pitches let customers fill gaps with imagination that never matches reality.
📉 Design partners can overfit your enterprise go-to-market: Rami turned down a $500K design partnership because it led nowhere. At another startup, a $1M first customer couldn't be replicated for a year.
💰 Price for discretionary budgets to shorten sales cycles: Salto priced so a director-level buyer could approve enterprise SaaS deals without procurement, enabling fast land-and-expand across teams.
🔄 Reprice and move upmarket during downturns: When the 2023 downturn eliminated discretionary budgets, Salto raised prices and shifted ICP to larger companies - recognizing that selling to large companies requires higher deal values.
🏢 Build a two-layer qualification process for events: Salto filters visitors first for persona and ICP fit, then engages qualified prospects deeper. Medium-sized industry events outperform flashy conferences.
Chapters
Introduction
What Salto does and who it's for
Rami's background and three previous exits
Revenue, traction, and funding
Where the enterprise SaaS idea came from
The "can I hug you" moment and misleading feedback
Getting the first 10 customers
The dangers of design partners
Growth channels - events that work
Why Salto offers a free tier for enterprise software
Targeting discretionary budgets in a new category
How the 2023 downturn forced a pricing shift
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/440
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
51 min
April 17, 2025Self-Serve SaaS: A Buried CTA Beat a Full Sales Team
A buried CTA deep in the admin panel generated close to six figures in ARR - with zero salespeople, no support, and no marketing. Sameer Al-Sakran spent four years building Metabase without charging a dollar. When he finally monetized through self-serve SaaS, strangers started paying $300/month just to remove a logo. Then he followed expert advice, built enterprise sales, and nearly stalled the business.
Sameer reveals why the self-serve SaaS signal was hiding in plain sight, how expert advice to hire AEs nearly killed product-led growth momentum, and the two-year pricing battle before accepting the per-user model customers actually wanted. His PLG playbook shows why self-serve growth beats fighting your company's DNA.
Metabase is an open-source BI tool used by 70,000+ companies. Sameer grew it to 8-figure ARR by returning to three principles: win the taste test against Tableau, let the product sell itself, and build for self-serve growth over enterprise sales cycles.
🔑 Key Lessons
🚀 Self-serve SaaS beats fighting your DNA: Metabase's team was wired for product-led growth, not enterprise sales. Leaning into self-serve SaaS made the cloud option dwarf direct sales and drive 8-figure ARR.
📉 Expert advice can derail self-serve SaaS momentum: Advisors told Sameer self-serve was naive and pushed the enterprise playbook. He hired AEs, ran sales calls, and nearly stalled the business for years.
🎯 Win the taste test instead of the feature war: Metabase focused on being the tool users wanted to keep after trying it alongside Tableau and Looker back to back. No paid acquisition needed.
💰 Let customers dictate your pricing model: Metabase spent two years trying installation and per-server pricing while customers kept asking for per-user. Accepting their preferred model simplified negotiations and grew PLG revenue.
🛠️ Build something you love before asking strangers to pay: Metabase's team used the product daily and refused to ship until they enjoyed it. If builders don't love it, the self-serve growth motion won't work.
Chapters
Introduction and favorite quote
What Metabase does and who it's for
Revenue, team size, and 70,000 companies
Origin story at Expa startup incubator
Why Metabase waited 4 years to charge
The buried CTA that generated self-serve SaaS revenue
Following expert advice into enterprise sales
Why the enterprise detour stalled growth
Cloud self-service takes off
Competing against Tableau and winning the taste test
Two years of pricing mistakes before per-user pricing
Scaling from 7 figures to 8 figures through PLG
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/439
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
53 min
April 10, 2025Bootstrapped Exit: From Foosball Tables to $82M Sale
Callum Mckeefery was broke in 2012 when he pitched a mobile phone company two startup ideas. Both got rejected. But one last question on the way out the door sparked a bootstrapped exit worth $82 million. Founders will hear how Reviews.io grew from a scrappy MVP to 8-figure ARR using guerrilla marketing and a logo flywheel - all without raising a cent.
Callum reveals how positioning as the friendly alternative to Trustpilot drove the bootstrapped exit, why he hired his best salespeople from restaurants and cafes instead of competitors, and the SaaS exit decision driven by his son's rare genetic diagnosis. His exit strategy shows how reinvesting revenue instead of raising VC gave him full control over timing and terms.
Reviews.io grew to 8-figure ARR targeting underserved SMBs doing $5M in revenue who were overcharged by Trustpilot. Callum used vinyl-wrapped buses, pressure-cleaned sidewalk logos, and expo foosball tables to build brand awareness on a shoestring budget.
🔑 Key Lessons
💰 Position as the friendly alternative to set up a bootstrapped exit: Callum studied everything Trustpilot did wrong - high-pressure sales, unfair terms, overcharging - and did the opposite, winning underserved SMBs.
🚀 Build a logo flywheel to grow without outbound sales: Every time Reviews.io placed its badge on a customer's site, competitors noticed and reached out. Each new logo attracted more inbound leads, compounding growth organically.
🤝 Hire for spark, not SaaS experience, when building toward a bootstrapped exit: Callum recruited from restaurants and cafes instead of competitors, avoiding VC-inflated salaries and training raw talent who became industry leaders.
📉 Use guerrilla marketing to compete with funded competitors: From vinyl-wrapped buses to pressure-cleaned sidewalk logos, Callum found ways to get the Reviews.io brand seen without expensive booth space.
🧠 Reinvest revenue to stay in control of your SaaS exit timeline: Reviews.io put all revenue back into product and team. Growing slower meant fewer growing pains and full control over selling a SaaS business.
Chapters
Introduction and favorite quote
The origin story of Reviews.io
Why the review space needed disruption
Building an MVP in one week
First customers from an expo with a foosball table
Differentiating from Trustpilot
Targeting underserved SMBs as the ICP
Guerrilla marketing on a shoestring budget
Hiring salespeople from restaurants and cafes
The $82M bootstrapped exit decision
Launching Partner.io in 2025
The power of journaling and idea collection
Lightning round
Resources
Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/438
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
58 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.