The Saas Revolution Show

Fred Shilmover, CEO of InsightSquared, shares how he has grown the company the past 7 years by staying laser-focused and not expanding globally. It has been there since day -1, back when Fred applied for an MBA to figure out what SaaS company he wanted to create. Fred did a proper research what would be of most value to people. Eventually, he figured that to deliver the best value to customers and not have a bloated product, the focus should be only on revenue. A lucky early sale to a cohort of similar companies showed a pattern that what they were onto made sense. Fred created a prototype putting together loads of spreadsheets and gave that to his co-founders to build a product. In the first year, he made all the sales. Somewhere there Fred made the decision that sales efforts would be focused solely on The North American market. With that geographical focus, InsightSquared now has close to 1000 customers, has banked $27 million in funding and employs 130 people. In that, he is a prime example that to grow,

As is often the case in tech, timing is crucial. It’s hitting the sweet spot of offering a solution when a market is just ready but not overflowing with competitors. Hanno Renner, CEO and co-founder of German HR solution Personio, and the latest guest on the SaaS Revolution Show got his timing just right. He launched the company two and a half years ago in Munich at a time when the HR industry in Europe was ripe for digitization. In fact, it was so ripe in the small and medium businesses segment that to this day Hanno hasn’t had to do a cold call to sell his product. 30% of prospects still come from organic referrals. However, there is more to scaling and success than timing and luck. In Personio’s case, the hardest thing has been growing the organisation that supports the somewhat easier product adoption. Listen on to hear: How to interview candidates for fit How to avoid making hiring decisions out of necessity What guiding principles to use when setting an organisation Why you should seek the advice of bu

Peter Holten Mühlmann, CEO of Trustpilot, an online review community, talks with Alex Theuma on the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show and offers practical wisdom such as when is the right time to go international, how to fundraise and what is the question every CEO needs to be answering as a company scales. Trustpilot’s story began ten years ago in Copenhagen when Peter decided all companies with online presence deserved to show they have happy customers through reviews and ratings. Peter initially had a very naive idea how he was going to build an Internet company and what his business model would be. Get on the front page of every paper in Denmark, become viral and make money from AdWords. After this business model earned €4 to the company, Peter figured he had to find a better way. Hundreds of cold calls and asks for people to review every site they had ever used later, Trustpilot began to gather momentum. Approaching unicorn status today, the company operates from 7 offices around the world, but

On the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show Alex is joined by Chris Hall, CEO at Dutch marketing tech company Bynder. In the conversation they touch on the pillars that define the journey of a CEO - from scaling and growing the company, its culture and its people to the personal transformation a CEO undergoes and how to deal with it. One key lesson he has picked on the way is that the most satisfying thing about being a CEO is seeing every person succeed in the right role. Founded in 2013, Bynder was a spin-off from Label A, a web development agency Chris ran with his co-founders Roland Keijzer and Stefan Pelders. The company bootstrapped its way to $10 million ARR in the following three years. “When you are bootstrapped, your only problem is cash,” Chris says. “Every purchase you make feels like it’s coming from your pocket.” To seize the potential Bynder had for growth, it needed the sort of cash injection that comes with VC funding. By August 2016, Bynder secured a $20 million Series A round. Chris h

Eric Santos, CEO and Co-Founder of Resultados Digitais, the leading marketing automation tool in Brazil and Latin America joins Alex for a conversation about the steps to convincing a market of the value of a product that it doesn’t understand, how to build an audience and develop customer discovery before a single line of code is written, how to create a “Disneyland-like" user conferences. Eric has been a tech entrepreneur for the past 15 years and founded Resultados Digitais in 2011. The idea behind the company dates back to 10 years ago when he first discovered online marketing and its power. What he found frustrating was that to make the most of it, he had to use a number of disconnected tools. By 2011 he decided to build a product a unified product. He ran into a problem, though. Very few marketers in Brazil were familiar with online marketing or its benefits. No one was doing digital. So in order to launch his marketing automation product he first had to educate the entire market about the benefits

On the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show Alex Theuma takes you to sunny Lisbon and Web Summit where he caught up with Ashley Carroll, Partner at Social Capital. Their conversation is about metrics and why user engagement is the most important one in her book. Chatting amidst the Web Summit crowds, they cover lessons she has learned working at SurveyMonkey, Optimizely and DocuSign, what is a big mistake every company should avoid when it comes to product management and what is the one product she has a serious crush on that has transformed how Social Capital works. A business and data-driven person, Ashley narrowed on B2B SaaS early on in her career. She was an early employee at SurveyMonkey where she went through the tumultuous journey from MVP to product/market fit. She then joined Optimizely to lead product management. From then on she jumped to growth at DocuSign where she worked to open the self-service acquisition channel. She is currently a partner in Social Capital. Listen on to hear what metr

On this week’s episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, Alex takes you to the SaaStock17 Scale stage where Christoph Janz, Managing Partner of Point Nine Capital sat down with Des Traynor, Co-Founder, Chief Strategy Officer and VP of Marketing of Intercom. They talk building and managing product and the importance of saying "No", as well as marketing and the channels that have been most beneficial to Intercom. You can read a short write up of the episode - https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/high-and-lows-in-product-and-marketing-with-des-traynor

Patrick Barnes, CEO and co-founder of Advocately, an advocate marketing platform for B2B companies, shares with Alex the GTM strategy that got him to $7K MRR. He answers key questions such as how he figured out who his perfect customers are, what MarTech tools he uses throughout the buying journey and why he isn't too hung up on pricing at this stage. You can read a short post from the episode - https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/inside-a-7k-mrr-saas-business-getting-traction-in-a-new-category

Ronan Perceval, CEO and founder of Phorest, a SaaS company providing solutions to salons, shares with Alex Theuma how he sells to the SMB market, keeps customers happy and successful, and maintains low churn rates. Check out the accompanying blog post to find all the links mentioned during the podcast including a 20% discount code for SaaStock 17 https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/the-no-bs-guide-to-achieving-45k-ltv-and-sub-5-churn-with-ronan-perceval Ronan Perceval is one of 120 speakers coming to SaaStock 2017, which takes place in Dublin, Septemeber 18-20.

In the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, Alex plays back a panel discussion held at SaaStock 16 on the fuzzy subject of hiring during growth. Probably among the toughest things for any founder and CEO to figure out, finding the right people at the right time and keeping them happy and engaged is the make or break for many companies. The panel includes Michelle Williamson, CEO and co-founder of Kommol, Michelle Coventry, talent advisor at Spring Partners, Ryan Burke, SVP Sales at InVisionApp, Rob Long, VP of Product Marketing at Workable. Hiring is one of many tough subjects we will cover at SaaStock 17. Get your ticket now before they run out - https://ti.to/saastock/saastock-2017 Listeners get a special 20% discount by using the code saasrevolution

Scott Heimes, CMO of SendGrid shares with Alex Theuma data insights and customer examples to reveal the 5 rules for building a strong and effective email program. Check out the accompanying blog post to find all the links mentioned during the podcast including a 20% discount code for SaaStock 17 https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/5-keys-for-driving-growth-engagement-via-email Scott Heimes is one of 120 speakers coming to SaaStock 2017, which takes place in Dublin, Septemeber 18-20.

Tope Awotona, CEO of Calendly talks with Alex Theuma about positioning your SaaS and figuring out the messaging, ideal customers, and company structure that come with it. Check out the accompanying blog post to find all the links mentioned during the podcast including a 20% discount code for SaaStock 17 https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/how-to-position-your-saas-with-tope-awotona

Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel, talks with Alex Theuma about the art of going international, why the world is the market every SaaS company should be after, and how to go about it. Check out the accompanying blog post to find all the links mentioned during the podcast including a 20% discount code for SaaStock 17 https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/the-accel-playbook-for-internationalisation

Hannah Chaplin, CEO, and co-founder of Receptive, a product demand intelligence SaaS solution, talks with Alex Theuma in the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show about selling to the Enterprise at the early stages of a startup. Read the accompanying article to find the articles and people Hannah mentions - https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/selling-to-the-enterprise-at-the-early-stages

Jacco van der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design, a consultancy helping SaaS companies design, build and scale their sales efforts, talks with Alex Theuma about why SaaS as we know it is dead and what to do to stay alive. Check out the accompanying blog post to find the links + Jacco's research article "Principles of rapid growth sales as used by Silicon Valley startups" https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/saas-is-dead

Peter Coppinger, the CEO and founder of Teamwork.com talks with Alex Theuma about the things the Cork-based project management suite of tools for professionals did right and the mistakes it made on the bootstrapped way to $100 million ARR, taking over the world. Check out the accompanying blog post to read Peter's story and some of the lessons learned - https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/building-a-100-million-arr-saas-business-without-vc

Guillaume Cabane, VP Growth @ Segment.com talks with Alex Theuma about the top 5 things that have helped Segment achieve incredible growth through using the two best tools for collecting data, focusing on the 5% of visitors that matter and initiating onboarding programs and dynamic content that are individually tailored. *Check out the blog post accompanying the podcast for links of the books and tools Guillaume mentions - https://www.saastock.com/blog/view/podcast-5-things-every-saas-growth-marketer-needs-to-be-doing-today

In this brand new episode of the SaaS revolution show Alex Theuma is joined by the co-founder and Head of Product of Pipedrive, Martin Henk. Martin talks all things product, from building it and growing the product management team, to finding the best candidates and learning what is the single most important thing for product growth before a single line of code is written.

In this brand new episode of the SaaS revolution show Alex Theuma is joined the General Manager of Gainsight EMEA, Dan Steinman a Customer Success veteran who discusses when and how you build out a customer success team.

In this brand new episode of The SaaS Revolution Show Alex Theuma is joined by Liz Cain, VP Go To Market at OpenView Partners. In this episode Liz talks to Alex about scaling lead gen at Netsuite and the recipe to building a great company.