The SaaS Podcast - Real Lessons on Growing Profitable SaaS

Alex Yakubovich and his co-founders had money from a successful exit. They could have started building immediately. Instead, they interviewed 300 procurement professionals before writing a single line of code - and their obsessive approach to B2B product-market fit changed everything. Alex reveals how Scout RFP went from a one-page MVP that made customers say "is that it?" to landing Adobe, Salesf...

Facebook's former CIO Timothy Campos raised $3.5M to build Woven, a new calendar app. He assumed paid acquisition would deliver first SaaS customers - but discovered that SaaS product validation through Facebook ads was great for testing product ideas, terrible for building a user base. Tim reveals why paid ads spread users too thinly for SaaS product validation, how he pivoted to influencer outre...

Reilly Chase got fired from his job one week after setting a goal to grow his bootstrapped SaaS to $100K ARR. As a non-technical founder learning to code, he sold his house and went all-in on HostiFi. Reilly shares how he built a SaaS business as a non-technical founder using WordPress for billing and Python scripts for server provisioning - total MVP investment under $500. He grew from zero to $1...

Geoff Atkinson spent two years building an affiliate website that earned $5 in total commissions. Then he discovered the software tool he built for himself was more valuable than the business it supported - and pivoted into SaaS content strategy through structured data. Geoff reveals how he built Huckabuy from zero to $1.4M ARR by selling SaaS SEO software with no UI, no demo, and no marketing bud...

Brightpearl had 28% annual churn, months of cash left, and a SaaS pricing model that was bleeding the business dry. CEO Derek O'Carroll switched from per-user pricing to GMV-based SaaS pricing - and revenue more than doubled to $13M ARR. Derek reveals the pricing strategy that raised average order value from $4,000 to $32,000, why he deliberately shed 500 customers to save the company, and how the...

Josh Ho had 500 users signed up for his bootstrapped SaaS startup but zero revenue. His bootstrap to profitability moment came when a friend said bluntly: you do not have a real business until you charge. That weekend, Josh added a paid plan - and a week later, his first customer paid $59 a month. In this episode, Josh reveals how he went from a scrappy MVP with no database to $70K MRR with 14 emp...

Shawn Finder booked nearly 1,000 demos on launch day for Autoklose - a sales automation platform entering one of the most crowded markets in SaaS. His secret? LinkedIn lead generation, 8 months of pre-launch buzz, and influencer partnerships. In this episode, Shawn reveals how he built a 2,400-person waitlist, used social selling to connect with 100 prospects per day, and hit $1M ARR in 18 months....

Cedric Savarese spent 13 years on bootstrapped SaaS growth - from a side project earning coffee money to a profitable business with 65 employees and 4,000 customers. Then he raised a $10M Series A because he wanted to go faster, not because he needed the cash. In this episode, Cedric reveals how one customer's suggestion to integrate with the Salesforce ecosystem became the decision that transform...

Most B2B SaaS founders dismiss Facebook ads for SaaS lead generation. Aaron Zakowski's agency has spent millions on them and generated nearly a million signups for clients including InVision and DigitalOcean. In this episode, Aaron breaks down the exact three-pillar framework Zammo Digital uses to test, optimize, and scale Facebook ad campaigns for SaaS growth. Aaron's SaaS lead generation framewo...

Three failed startups. A dating site, projectors, and grills. Tope Awotona spent years chasing money instead of solving real problems. Then he wasted an entire day scheduling a meeting and found what was missing. That problem became Calendly - now serving 4 million users at $30M ARR. In this episode, Tope shares the SaaS product validation lesson that changed everything. Tope's approach to SaaS pr...

Dennis Mortensen counted 1,019 meetings in his calendar from the past year. 672 had to be rescheduled. That pain led him to spend five years building an AI SaaS that most founders would never attempt. In this episode, Dennis reveals why he spent months trying to talk himself out of building x.ai, how he validated the idea by hiring a human assistant for 50 friends, and what building AI products re...

Most SaaS founders think startup funding means choosing between giving up equity to VCs or putting up personal guarantees for a bank loan. There is a third option - and it is a real venture capital SaaS alternative. In this episode, BJ Lackland, CEO of Lighter Capital, explains how revenue-based financing works, why 318 SaaS companies have used it to raise over $155 million, and how founders can c...

The average SaaS company spends just eight hours in its entire lifetime thinking about SaaS pricing. Kyle Poyar has spent over a decade on it - and the gap shows. In this episode, Kyle breaks down five common SaaS pricing mistakes with real examples from OpenView's portfolio including Expensify, Calendly, and New Relic. Kyle found that 98% of companies that changed their SaaS pricing saw neutral o...

Chris Ronzio racked up $320,000 in credit card debt to fund SaaS customer acquisition for Trainual. It was the best business decision he ever made. In this episode, Chris reveals how he turned a consulting side tool into a SaaS product that went from zero to $2M ARR in 18 months using Facebook ads, LTV math, and a scaling technique most founders never try. Chris knew Trainual's customers were wort...

Max Kolysh dropped out of MIT, got into Y Combinator, raised $400K, and built a product gaining traction - until Amazon sent a cease and desist and killed the business overnight. Finding product-market fit meant starting over. In this episode, Max reveals how a single email from an ex-customer led to the SaaS pivot that changed everything and grew Zinc to over $5M ARR. Each step in finding product...

Tyler Tringas was $50,000 in credit card debt after his venture-backed startup failed. All he had left was a one person SaaS business making $1,000 a month from store locators priced at $5 each. In this episode, Tyler reveals how he grew StoreMapper to over $40,000 MRR, sold it for "level up" money, and used the experience to launch Earnest Capital - a fund for bootstrappers. Tyler built his one p...

Rob Fitzpatrick built his first startup through Y Combinator alongside Dropbox. He had great investors and customers like MTV, Sony, and the BBC. But after four years, the company failed - because his SaaS customer discovery was built on compliments instead of real data. In this episode, Rob reveals the exact framework from The Mom Test that helps founders avoid collecting bad data during customer...

Ahrefs grew their blog from 15,000 to over 250,000 monthly visitors from Google - and turned SaaS content marketing into one of the biggest drivers of new customers. But they did it by breaking almost every rule in the book. In this episode, Tim Soulo, CMO of Ahrefs, reveals how a bootstrapped SaaS startup hit $40M ARR with just 45 people - without using Google Analytics, without capturing leads,...

Rob Kall sold his first SaaS for $80 million after six years. Then he sold his second for $15 million. Now this SaaS serial entrepreneur is building Cien, an AI SaaS startup that uses machine learning to measure what actually drives sales productivity. In this episode, Rob reveals why every success was preceded by problems and breakthroughs, how a right-of-first-refusal clause nearly killed fundra...

Omer Artun saw a massive opportunity in machine learning for B2C marketing, but he had no money and no product. So he chose starting a SaaS through the services route - launching a consulting practice and reinvesting every dollar into building his vision. In this episode, Omer reveals how it took seven years to transition from services to a real self-funded SaaS product, why he had to rebuild the...

John Stojka was losing 8 out of 10 deals competing against DocuSign and Adobe. Then he made a counterintuitive SaaS positioning bet - narrowing his target market from 70,000 prospects to just 300 companies. In this episode, John reveals how that radical focus on niche SaaS took bootstrapped Sertifi from $1M to over $10M ARR, why he spent 12 months visiting trade shows before picking a vertical, an...

Thomas Smale has closed over 140 SaaS exit transactions through FE International - and the biggest mistake he sees is founders underpricing their businesses by 30% or more. In this episode, Thomas breaks down what actually drives SaaS valuations during a SaaS exit, why your pricing strategy matters more than your growth rate, and how to prepare for selling a SaaS business that maximizes what buyer...

Most SaaS founders lead with features and wonder why prospects ghost them. Jimmy Ellis and Chris Rizzo built a performance-based marketing firm and discovered the single biggest reason enterprise SaaS deals stall: a weak offer. In this episode, they break down a three-level framework for crafting irresistible enterprise SaaS offers, from basic risk reduction to power guarantees that increased B2B...

Christian Owens dropped out of school at 16 and made his first million by 18. But when he launched Paddle, nobody wanted it. The marketplace generated just $800 in two months. Then consultative selling SaaS changed everything. Christian threw away 90% of the product and used founder-led sales - personally writing every cold email with company-specific insights - to grow Paddle to $10M+ ARR and 140...

Dave Rogenmoser paid $10,000 on Upwork for his first SaaS product. He had no idea how to handle customer acquisition startup challenges, and the business quickly failed. But that failure set him on a path to $250,000 in monthly recurring revenue. After building an agency and selling info products, Dave and his co-founders built a social proof widget in a single weekend - and the customer acquisiti...