The SaaS Podcast - Real Lessons on Growing Profitable SaaS

ClickFunnels went from zero to $135 million ARR in five years - entirely SaaS without funding. The breakthrough? They stopped selling software and started selling $997 education bundles, giving the self-funded SaaS product away for free. That counterintuitive move generated 10x more upfront revenue to fuel aggressive paid acquisition. Why listen: Learn how building a SaaS without funding requires...

Renat Zubairov spent six months building a product and gave it away for free. Almost nobody wanted it. Then he changed his SaaS pricing and started charging - and better customers showed up, gave better feedback, and helped build a better product. That pricing strategy shift took Elastic.io from zero to $2.5M revenue growing 100% year over year. Why listen: Learn how SaaS pricing acts as a custome...

Jennifer Johnson was a stay-at-home mom spending two hours a night scheduling Facebook posts. Her husband built a tool in four weeks that cut it to 20 minutes. That personal frustration became CinchShare - a niche SaaS for direct sellers now doing $5M+ ARR with zero outside investment. Her competitive differentiation strategy? Ignore Hootsuite and Buffer entirely and build only for one audience. W...

Uri Haramati built Torii's first MVP in two weeks. It took one full year to land his first SaaS customers. But the SaaS growth lessons that mattered most came from Pipedrive - the first deal closed with a company nobody on the team knew personally. Uri explains how he went from building consumer apps like Meerkat and Houseparty to launching a B2B SaaS category creation in SaaS management. He gave...

Amos Schwartzfarb has invested in and worked hands-on with over 50 startups at Techstars. The biggest pattern he sees in failed startup sales? Founders target everyone and close no one. His consultative selling SaaS approach flips that - narrow your ICP until you close 100% of deals. Amos breaks down the W3 SaaS sales framework - Who, What, and Why - the same playbook he teaches pre-Series A compa...

Ryan Bennick and Ward Sandler were enterprise sales reps who bought an HTML book and taught themselves to code. Six years later, a Squarespace forum post with 100,000 views led these SaaS co-founders to build a profitable niche SaaS business. The MemberSpace co-founders reveal how they went from $600 freelance gigs to a multiple six-figure SaaS. As non-technical co-founders, they split learning -...

JD Trask and his co-founder started Raygun with $10,000 each in 2007, and it took 12 years of SaaS content marketing to build a multi-million dollar business. No big launch. No viral moment. Just content, user groups, and podcasts compounding over time. JD reveals how Raygun grew to 200K+ monthly blog visitors through inbound marketing SaaS tactics - writing about everything from broken fridges to...

Two agency founders spent two years building a better-looking form - and it turned into a freemium SaaS engine that hit $1M ARR in its first year. Every form shared was a marketing channel. Every response created a new user. And 80% of Typeform's new business still comes from that product-led growth flywheel today. David Okuniev shares how Typeform grew from a toilet company client project to a $3...

Dennis van der Heijden burned through $400K in VC funding, went through a divorce, and spent nearly a decade in what felt like a failed software startup. His SaaS turnaround came when competitors merged and abandoned small customers - leaving Convert.com as the last affordable option standing. Dennis reveals how he sold 50 customers at $4,000 each during a single conference talk, why he threw out...

Ryan Born had 400 people signed up for his SaaS product. Not a single one would pay. His savings were running out, cold outreach flopped, and paid ads burned cash with nothing to show. Then he built a SaaS sales process that delivered $10 leads - and everything changed. Ryan reveals how Cloud Campaign pivoted from a broad social media tool to a niche agency platform after cold calling SaaS prospec...

Guillaume Moubeche built an "ugly beta" in two weeks and had 100 signups in the first month. Users loved the idea but said the product lacked 90% of competitor features. Then AppSumo came calling - and startup traction was about to get a lot more interesting. Guillaume reveals how Lemlist generated $170,000 in startup traction through an AppSumo launch in just two weeks, hit $250K ARR in its first...

Most founders waste hours sending cold LinkedIn messages that get ignored. Brynne Tillman discovered a method for selling SaaS without sales experience - using social proximity to turn your existing network into a warm referral engine that generates 3 introductions per conversation. Brynne breaks down her complete LinkedIn social selling playbook for startup sales. Filter a client's connections to...

AJ charges $19 a year for Carrd - a one-page website builder competing against Wix and Squarespace. No marketing. No employees. No investors. Just a SaaS subscription billing model starting at $9/year and a product so frictionless you can build a website before signing up. Result: over $30K MRR. AJ reveals how he built an audience of 50,000 through free HTML templates, launched Carrd with a single...

Suresh Sambandam pivoted three times over 10 years, nearly went bankrupt, and downsized from 40 employees to 15. Then a customer paid $50K for his product and $90K for a better UI - and that changed everything. Today Kissflow does close to $10M in recurring revenue, and SaaS SEO drives over 50% of their inbound leads. Suresh breaks down how he built Kissflow's recurring revenue engine through topi...

Mark Thompson built 12 software products. Most failed. But they taught him one lesson - every shopping cart he used was terrible. That frustration became PayKickstart, which reached $1M ARR. Then SaaS churn at 20-30% nearly killed everything. Mark reveals how he bootstrapped PayKickstart using a 100,000-person email list and 50% affiliate commissions, but feature bloat overwhelmed new users and Sa...

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...