SaaS Open Mic by ChartMogul

On this episode of SaaS Open Mic:Two common pricing mistakes founders makeHow to apply the Jobs to Be Done framework to pricing strategyPricing experiments to test for price sensitivity90% of growth comes from 10% of the activitiesMatt has worked with dozens of startups and scaleups in his time at 500 Startups and Startup Core Strengths. A challenge that every company must face at some point is optimizing pricing or setting a price for a new product or feature. Matt shares his perspective on establishing and optimizing pricing using the Jobs to Be Done framework.  

On this episode of SaaS Open Mic with Jess Bartos of Salesforce Ventures: Growth needs to endure at high ratesNet Dollar Retention means you're delivering on your promiseTurn your gross margin into growthRule of 40 is the balance between growth and profitabilityBurn multiples measure growth efficiencyUse your SaaS metrics to tell a great story to your investors

On this episode of the SaaS Open Mic:How Capchase got startedThe different options for raising capitalDrivers and tendencies in funding and fundraisingRevenue-based financingThe metrics that distinguish the fastest-growing companies

On this episode of SaaS Open MicThe challenges of revenue attribution for B2B SaaS businesses The do's and don'ts of revenue attributionGoogle Analytics for complex sales cycles  Why you can't measure everything but you should measure what you can

On this episode of SaaS Open Mic:What is the hotbed for technical talent right now?Creating a plan for hiring and onboarding new employeesThe minimum requirements to run a global teamGoing above and beyond for your employees

In this episode of SaaS Open Mic:The story of Mind the Product, the world's largest community of product managersHow it sold to PendoWhat software companies should consider before acquiring a community De-Risking acquisitionsWhat community leaders should contemplate when considering an exitBuilding audiences versus building communitiesThe next steps for the acquirer and acquired after the sale

In this episode of the SaaS Open Mic we discuss:Rapid growth during a pandemicHow to tailor priorities and keep focus during a growth phaseEstablishing clear guidelines and expectations in remote workMeasuring success through outputs (and not inputs)Hiring with a standardized process in mindFocus on company valuesAutomating onboardingNorth Star metric for team alignment

In this episode of the SaaS Open Mic we discuss:How initial pricing models can be challenging and ultimately need to changeReaching price to value alignmentMaking the final decision to switch to a different pricing modelThe three dimensions of pricing experimentation and when to apply A/B testingThe metrics that SaaS businesses need to keep an eye on during pricing experiments

We touch on many topics related to pricing migration:The decision drivers that led ChartMogul to decide on a pricing migrationHow to prepare for a pricing migrationWhere things could go wrongMaintaining flexibility and making space for conversationDon't forget to subscribe to never miss an episode!  

In this episode of SaaS Open Mic, Ross and I discuss creating repeatable revenue processes and: Customer journey mappingImproving the funnelPositioning and sales/marketing alignmentHow to know when to iterate on your processesPersonas and PMFRevenue generation responsibilities beyond the sales organizationRelationship building

Our interview covers the following: The shift from a service business to SaaSFocusing on the problem and nothing elseRaising moneyThe balance between confidence and vulnerability in the leadership teamEmployee experienceI hope you enjoy the latest episode of SaaS Open Mic!

John and I sit down to talk about the success he's seen running his agency like a subscription business, and: Agency versus subscription modelHIstorical data and billing practicesLTV, ARPA, and other SaaS metricsTracking lead source and its contribution to revenueChurn and customer retentionTracking custom attributesPricingResources Black PropellerJohn Thornton on LinkedinBlack Propeller on Twitter 

Alexa and I discuss: The myth of a no sales product-led growthRepeatable trends, Tests, and Metrics: When this happens, know why it will happenMarketing-qualified leads versus product-qualified leadsCombine customer firmographic data and product usage to get to closed-wonWhen to you add a sales team to your self-serve modelLead scoring and prioritizationHow to test and measure the benefits of your product-led sales motionCommunity: where to talk and read about product-led salesHope you enjoy this SaaS Open Mic episode!ResourcesAlexa Grabell on LinkedInAlexa Grabell on TwitterPocus

Thomas has sold hundreds of businesses in his 10 years in M&A and understands what it takes to hit your target valuation – but you have to know where you're headed if you want to draw a roadmap to get there. We discuss company benchmarks and how companies can decide on which areas of the business to focus on and when it's best to bring in outside help. In this episode we cover: What founders can do to prepare for an acquisitionGoal setting and making the right hiresCommon distractions to scaling startupsHow the team at FE International helps businesses find areas of focusHow to grow an M&A company and market trendsLinks and Resources:Thomas Smale on LinkedInFE InternationalListen, subscribe, and share wherever you enjoy podcasts.

Userflow lets your team build customized in-app tours, checklists and surveys, without code. It's a tool to help drive onboarding and trial conversions. It was a conscious choice of the Userflow team to focus on product-led growth from day one. They try to avoid hiring people to solve problems and look into improving the product instead. “The essence of product-led growth - it's an approach where you think product first instead of people first.”Topics covered in this episodeWhat is product-led growth and what is the difference between product-led and sales-led growthThe SaaS industry maturing into PLGHow too much customization can make it harder to move away from sales-led motionsExamining if PLG is working within a companyHow to tackle support questions proactivelyThe best tools for product-led growthLinks and ResourcesEsben Friis-Jensen on LinkedInEsben Friis-Jensen on TwitterUserflow Listen to the episodeAs always, you can find this episode — along with all previous episodes — in your podcast player of choice. Just search for “SaaS Open Mic”. If you enjoy it, please take a moment to leave us a review, it'd really help us reach a wider audience. Thank you! 

On this weeks episode, Tatiana shares her insights about:When and why Tatiana started Revolv Culture Solutions Before and after: What employee engagement looks like and how it is measuredMethodologies and strategies to cultivate cultureThe role of leadership in creating cultureWhere remote work goes wrong and what to do about itHybrid work modelsCreating successful events and off-sites for a remote workforceThe future of remote work **Links and Resources:**[Tatiana Correa on LinkedIn](https://ca.linkedin.com/in/tatiana-correa-95375594)[Revolv Culture Solutions](https://www.revolvculturesolutions.com/)[ChartMogul](https://chartmogul.com/company/)**Listen to the episode**As always, you can find this episode — along with all previous episodes — in your podcast player of choice. Just search for “SaaS Open Mic”. If you enjoy it, please take a moment to leave us a review, it'd really help us reach a wider audience. Thank you!

What I love about this episode is Adam's willingness to share his thinking and strategy about what it means to succeed as an enterprise solution. We cover:Strategies to diversify and promote your brandHow consumer buying trends impact GMV, and how GMV impacts related-SaaS entrepreneurshipHis approach to analyze, research, and acquire SaaS businesses in the ecommerce spaceWhy acquirers should prioritize relationships and customer alignment over SaaS metricsThe importance of net dollar retentionStrategies to improve net dollar retentionLinks and Resources:Adam Crawshaw on LinkedInAssemblyHow 2 startups scaled to 50M ARR and beyondChartMogulListen to the episodeAs always, you can find this episode — along with all previous episodes — in your podcast player of choice. Just search for “SaaS Open Mic”. If you enjoy it, please take a moment to leave us a review, it'd really help us reach a wider audience. Thank you!

In this episode of SaaS Open Mic, I talk to Jenna Wyer (@Jenna W.), Vice President of Partnerships and Head of Payments at Recurly.Jenna has an impressive background in partnerships and payments from her time with Recurly, Spreedly, and as the founding VP of Sales at Braintree. This means she's no stranger to navigating relationships with payment giants like Stripe and the intricacies of how complex software work together.Topics covered in this episode:What partnership means at Recurly to generate revenue and marketing materialsHow to identify and approach a potential partnersShared pipeline: collaborating with partners to build pipeline and new businessWhy some partnerships fail and others succeedWhere to start for more information, content, and resources in the partnership spaceLinks and Resources:Jenna Wyer on LinkedInRecurlyCrossbeamPartnership LeadersBraintreeChartMogulListen to the episodeAs always, you can find this episode — along with all previous episodes — in your podcast player of choice. Just search for “SaaS Open Mic”. If you enjoy it, please take a moment to leave us a review, it'd really help us reach a wider audience. Thank you!

In this episode of SaaS Open Mic, I talk to Adam Jones (@AdamJones85), Vice President of Sales for Thinkific, a product-led company that helps businesses create, market, and sell customized online courses.What's especially interesting for our listeners is that Thinkific's sales organization and strategy was layered on 6 years into building the business. And just 5 years later, that same sales organization helped them take the company public. Adam discusses his experience with the IPO.Listen in to hear how Adam's sales leadership compliments a product-led business model. You'll hear:The company's decision process to build a sales team (but avoid selling to enterprise)His approach to structuring product-led sales teamsHow his role has changed since the IPOWhat he would have done differentlyThinkific's guiding sales principles Links and Resources:Adam Jones on LinkedInAdam Jones on TwitterThinkificHootsuiteFiverrUberPredictable Revenue Virtual SummitTo Sell Is HumanChartMogulListen to the episodeAs always, you can find this episode — along with all previous episodes — in your podcast player of choice. Just search for “SaaS Open Mic”. If you enjoy it, please take a moment to leave us a review, it'd really help us reach a wider audience. Thank you!

Matt Spiegel is a licensed lawyer and serial entrepreneur. His first tech startup was called MyCase, a SaaS product that, “keeps all of your important case details — documents, contacts, calendars, emails, tasks, invoices — in a single, organized location.”The transition from criminal defense law to SaaS started as a “scratch your own itch” kind of thing. A typical day for Matt meant receiving dozens of calls, texts, and emails every day from nervous clients wanting updates and resolution — often while he was in court. This inspired an initial personal build that transformed into a full-fledged legal practice management platform.Matt's first SaaS success led to more and after some experimentation in B2C, he decided to start another B2B legal tech company, Lawmatics. In this episode of SaaS Open Mic, Matt shares his learnings and approach to building businesses.Can thinking about your exit strategy narrow or diminish your exit strategy? Or at the very least your focus? Matt thinks so:“Build your business as if you're going to build this massive business that's going to buy other businesses one day. Some entrepreneurs build a company to sell it quickly, but I feel like you don't build a great company, necessarily, by doing that. You might cut corners if you are building to sell in a couple of years” Matt Spiegel, LawmaticsHead over to your favorite podcast platform or listen below. We discuss:From criminal defense law to SaaS: how and why Matt started his first legal tech startupGetting out of your comfort zone to try something new and ultimately, coming back to what you loveWeighing the options of taking a break from entrepreneurship vs. the decision to ‘just keep firing'Reactive vs. proactive startup ideasWhat strategies can be used to tackle different market segmentsUnderstanding how customers spend and how to marry that with your product strategyLinks and Resources:LawmaticsMatt Spiegel on LinkedInMyCaseAppFolioLawmatics raises $2.5M to help lawyers market themselvesChartMogulLike, subscribe, and if you're feeling generous, share your favorite episode(s) with a colleague.

In this episode of SaaS Open Mic, I talk to Brendan Sweeney (@popmenu.com), CEO and Co-Founder of Popmenu, a restaurant technology company. He talks about product market fit by sharing the story of Popmenu and finding success in an obvious place: the online experience of restaurants. “We started off with delivering to restaurants a dynamic menu that they control... gave consumers all the criteria they want to make their dining decision - photos, reviews, ratings, social validation, interactivity, all of that.”Brendan details Popmenu’s approach to staying close to the customers, their consumers, and the data. He covers the positive and negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the restaurant and hospitality industry and what to expect from Popmenu in the future. “Delivering that initial product actually opened us up to a whole world of other opportunities for the product. We’re lucky that the beginning of our product market fit journey was something that restaurants responded to, our target market responded to instantly.”Brendan started Popmenu in December 2015 with several leadership roles under his belt. Most recently, he was the Vice President of Product and Marketing at the SaaS Real Estate Marketing and CRM Platform Commissions Inc. and served as the VP of Product Development at CareerBuilder.“Now, I understand how you can use SaaS... to help a small local business kind of take some control back from large technically sophisticated third-party platforms, which is clearly the dynamic in the restaurant space just like it was in real estate.”Brendan has demonstrated success driving product, marketing, and UX innovation scaling high-growth businesses.Topics covered in this episode:Why restaurants need a more compelling tool than PDFs to present offeringsThe beloved topic of finding product market fitBrendan's take on how to design features for your customersThe adoption SaaS and the buying habits of buyers in new and different industriesHow to help small businesses take back control from big platformsLinks and Resources:PopmenuBrendan Sweeney on LinkedInCommissions Inc.CareerBuilderOpenTableInstacartChartMogulListen to the episodeAs always, you can find this episode — along with all previous episodes — in your podcast player of choice. Just search for “SaaS Open Mic”. If you enjoy it, please take a moment to leave us a review, it’d really help us reach a wider audience. Thank you!

We're back with a new season of SaaS Open Mic. To kick things off, I talk to Andrew Gazdecki (@agazdecki), former CEO of Bizness Apps & Altcoin (both acquired). His most recent venture is MicroAquire, a marketplace designed to help startups get acquired. Andrew shares his goal to make a thousand millionaires by helping entrepreneurs exit.“The genesis of the idea was, I looked at the market, I saw a lot of options for startups looking to sell.”Tune in for advice about building, selling, and still loving your SaaS businesses.Also, Andrew pushes a competition with the Hustle to give away a SaaS business up to $25,000.Topics covered in this episode include:How Andrew got the idea to start MicroAcquireWhy you shouldn't go all in on starting a company until it starts to workWho acquires startups and how that's changedWhat is due diligence, how to value a SaaS company, how to negotiate a LOIStrategies to attract buyersThe 3 stages of SaaS: invention, go-to-market models, and building your brandUnderstanding and storytelling with SaaS metrics (Net Cash Flow, Churn, CAC, LTV)Links and Resources: Win a SaaS Business Valued At Up To $25k From MicroAcquireHow to Prepare Your Startup for Acquisition - blog post by AndrewIt's F***ing ChartMogul - blog post about viral marketingDriftCopy.aiListen to the episodeAs always, you can find this episode — along with all previous episodes — in your podcast player of choice. Just search for “SaaS Open Mic”. If you enjoy it, please take a moment to leave us a review, it’d really help us reach a wider audience. Thank you!

This interview is with one of my most-requested guests and someone who’s had an outsized influence on my thinking about SaaS metrics and the wider SaaS industry. David Skok is a former entrepreneur turned VC, who founded four companies before he turned his focus to investing. He’s now General Partner at Matrix Partners. David was thinking about SaaS metrics before I was even starting out on my career. His industry-defining post, SaaS Metrics 2.0 is the go-to reference for entrepreneurs and VCs alike, and serves as a guiding light for anyone who has a need to understand the principles and measurements behind a SaaS business. This conversation was recorded at this year’s SaaStock conference in Dublin, where I was super excited to sit down with David in the SaaStock podcasting studio. There’s so much in here for anyone building or growing a SaaS business, we dive deep on certain metrics and measurements, we talk about why some metrics are only useful at specific stages of growth, and what’s relevant for businesses in 2019.

Receptive is a SaaS company helping businesses build better products by collecting and acting on customer feedback more effectively. Hannah Chaplin founded the company, along with her co-founder Dan, back in 2015. Like many other B2B SaaS products, Receptive began its life as a project inside of an existing organization that was eventually spun out into a full-scale business. Hannah and Dan found that they'd struck a chord with businesses that were really struggling with capturing, prioritising and acting on customer feedback to try and answer a critical question: What should we build?

This week's episode of SaaS Open Mic was recorded live at the Berlin edition of Mogul I/O, our event series bringing industry leaders together around the topic of sustainable growth.

If you’ve ever thought about bootstrapping your own side project to meaningful revenue and scale, this episode is for you. Today I’m talking to Maxime Berthelot of Buffer and PixelMe. PixelMe was conceived next to a pool in Bali, but this is not a digital nomad story — both founders are based in France. In fact, Maxime didn’t even quit his day job as Product Manager of Growth at Buffer. Yet the pair have managed to validate their concept and reach $5K in monthly recurring revenue. I spoke with Max about: Validating the product without writing code Hacking his way to those first few paying customers The radical transparency at both Buffer and PixelMe Balancing time on his side project with his primary job …and much, much more!

we all know that SaaS companies should be collecting customer feedback. But how you should actually manage, process, quantify, categorize and action that feedback data is far from simple. Especially when you’re operating at scale. Canny Co-Founders Sarah and Andrew left their jobs at Facebook to bootstrap Canny as a SaaS business, because they believe there was a better way to handle customer feedback and feature requests.

When Max Seelemann and his team at Ulyssess announced their pivot to a subscription model in August 2017, they knew it would cause some controversy among users and the wider tech industry. In fact, Max wanted to create a wave in the industry and the operation was poised to make the most of any resulting publicity.

One of the biggest barriers to SaaS businesses going truly global from day one is localization. That is, the process of adapting your product to meet the language and cultural requirements of a specific target market. Vasco Pedro is Founder and CEO of Unbabel, a company helping businesses go global from day one through both AI and human-powered translation as a service.

Welcome back to this new season of SaaS Open Mic! In this first episode I'm talking to Claire Suellentrop and Georgiana Laudi of Forget The Funnel -- both strong proponents of a more holistic approach to modern SaaS marketing.

David Cancel, CEO of Drift is a product person through and through. He’s no stranger to growing a SaaS business, formerly working as CPO at HubSpot after his startup Performable was acquired by the Marketing giant. David firmly believes that the experience of buying business software is lagging far behind the experience we’ve all come to expect from consumer shopping. David and I chatted about his vision of the future of Sales and Marketing software - and how Drift fits into this. (hint: it involves chat bots).

Feedback culture doesn't just happen. In startups feedback is rarely given focus from day one. So how can an established team nurture processes and attitudes towards feedback that make the difference between a desirable company and one you shouldn't touch with a bargepole? Feedback, and the culture surrounding it, is one of the biggest contributors to a company’s desirability, from a recruiting standpoint. But after some quick research, it occurred to me that the act of developing good feedback processes is almost always under-invested in, especially with early stage startups. Per Fragemann has made it his mission to improve feedback and feedback culture in business, with a business he started called Small Improvements.

For most SaaS startups, there comes a point when expansion to new markets seems like the logical path to faster growth. Arun Mani is Managing Director for Freshdesk's efforts in Europe, and his approach and philosophy towards this (and career growth in general) is something we should all pay attention to.

Whether by design or by chance, Zapier has found itself at the center of the unbundling of SaaS and rise of API-based solutions. Enabling code-free integrations between over 800 apps (including ChartMogul), it's clear why this is the case -- Zapier empowers employees across the world to scale their output and effectiveness to new levels. I spoke to Co-Founder and CEO Wade Foster to understand what made him pursue this way back in 2011.

From blog post, to Kickstarter, to sustainable SaaS business: We spoke to globe trotter founder John O’Nolan to understand what’s behind his mission for open source blogging platform Ghost.

Mikita Mikado started out on his entrepreneurial career, selling berries he’d picked in his home Belarus, and now runs PandaDoc, a Series-A funded SaaS business in San Francisco. Clearly there’s a LOT that happened between those two points of Mikita’s life. I joined him to try and understand some of the things he’s learned along the way. In our discussion, we cover: - How activities from his youth translate to his business today - How his long-term business relationship with co-founder Serge works successfully, and how the complement each other - Why he’s so passionate about making business transactions and contracts less painful - What metrics are important to the team at PandaDoc, and how they’re actionable - The books he’s learned the most from (which you can find on blog.chartmogul.com)

As a consumer, an increasing proportion of my digital life can be attributed to subscriptions. Photo editing, movie watching, music listening, ebook reading, blog hosting… and plenty more. But what about subscriptions for physical products? This is the realm of Berlin-based Grover. I paid a visit to their HQ, to chat to Thom Cummings (CMO) and Michael Cassau (CEO) and dig a little deeper.

Looking back at Sharon’s experience, it’s clear that nurturing communication in communities, groups and movements is the underlying theme of her career. This conversation goes deep on the pricing strategy for Mobilize. Sharon and her team have a very clear vision for how the subscription pricing should be structured, with each plan targeting a specific company profile, with a very clear understanding of their set of needs.

Introducing: Jukely Founder, Bora Celik. Jukely is a subscription for going to concerts. For a monthly fee you can go to unlimited live concerts — even every night of the week, if you can handle such a schedule. The music events scene is a tough segment to crack — many startups have tried and failed along the way, trying to use technology to change the way people consume live music. So why is Jukely equipped to succeed where others haven’t? I took away a lot from this conversation that can be applied to any subscription business — SaaS included. Bora has a thirst for constantly experimenting and adapting the product — which he sees as a constant work-in-progress.

Webflow is a fascinating product in the SaaS space, partly because it’s commonly associated to a current trend in the industry towards consolidation. I wanted to probe a bit more on this topic, and also understand Bryant’s approach to building, marketing and selling a product that targets multiple user personas.

Tope Awotona, Founder and CEO of Calendly is big on Focus, and it’s clear that this has played a big part in launching his product to the world. Tope moved from a background of Enterprise Sales in businesses like IBM, Perceptive Software and EMC to solve a problem that was close to his heart in those roles: Scheduling. I Spoke to Tope about why the freemium SaaS model has been key to the product’s success so far, how the most important acquisition channel for Calendly is the product itself, and how he manages feedback from customers, among other things.

Typeform is one of europe’s hottest SaaS businesses, after raising a $15M Series A in 2015. And moving into a beautiful, expansive new office space this year. I wanted to get some insights from David into his thinking around user experience (UX) as a concept, and how the team at Typeform are pushing beyond this into what is referred to as Human Experience. HX spans much wider than UX, and goes at least some of the way towards capturing the complete experience a person encounters when interacting with a brand or company. The Typeform team have published some excellent content around this, showing that they're really pushing the boundaries of current product thinking.

Go to the website of London-based Connect Ventures and the first thing you’ll see is three statements: They invest early. They are product focused. They are hands on. But what drives this approach to investing in young startups? I spoke to Managing Partner Pietro Bezza to find out.

Alex Theuma is the man behind the online community SaaScribe, as well as a new B2B SaaS-focused conference called SaaStock, which will take place for the first time this September. So why did Alex move from the world of B2B sales to growing a community — starting from nothing?

Jameson, now a subscription box pioneer, set out to build his first subscription box business (Conscious Box) purely out of interest and product potential. Yet some years later, he's crafted a formula for subscription box success, and reaps the benefits of a recurring-revenue-based lifestyle business.

Alex is a driving force of the Paris startup scene, having founded several startups himself and worked at the capital's startup builder eFounders before moving onto new projects. I wanted to really understand why he decided to create B2B rocks, as well as his vision for the future of the conference.

Emeric of Agorapulse dives deep on measuring social media performance and interaction for businesses and his experience with the problems in the space. If you want to understand the performance of your social media efforts, start here!

Word of mouth is one of the oldest forms of marketing there is. It’s also the most effective. But in today’s world, when customers are other companies, what is it really worth? And how are B2B businesses making the most of it? Read this full article and many more at http://blog.chartmogul.com. Narrated by Annie Musgrove Produced by Ed Shelley & Annie Musgrove Music by Podington Bear

I sat down with Szymon Klimczak, CMO of LiveChat - A SaaS-based live chat and helpdesk product for businesses. LiveChat was founded in 2002 and has a somewhat remarkable story of pivots, organic growth and selling SaaS before SaaS was really a "thing".

Since launching in 2015, Clearbit has gone from strength-to-strength in their quest to be the definitive Business Intelligence infrastructure for businesses. In this chat, co-founder and CEO Alex MacCaw talks about his career in tech and engineering, including working for Stripe in the "early" days and travelling the world whilst writing his book on Javascript.

In this episode of SaaS Open Mic, I visited the headquarters of Blinkist - a consumer-focused SaaS business in Berlin, who have recently raised Series A investment and are pioneering in the learning app space.