The SaaS Podcast - Real Lessons on Growing Profitable SaaS

Intel found his open-source code on SourceForge and asked to buy an enterprise version - before one even existed. Onur Alp Soner built Countly as a weekend side project with no validation and no customers. Yet through competitive differentiation rooted in open-source SaaS principles, he grew it to 7-figure ARR serving BMW, Coca-Cola, and AWS without a single outbound sales call. Onur reveals why h...

850 meetings. Sleeping in his car. Flying from Spain to knock on doors without appointments. Oscar Rubio's founder selling journey proves that extreme persistence can validate demand that digital outreach completely misses. Founders will hear how Lodgerin grew from zero to 1.2 million euros in annual revenue through startup sales grit. Oscar reveals why 8 years of manual service delivery was the b...

Andrew Gazdecki bootstrapped his first SaaS to $10M ARR, then discovered that selling a SaaS business was harder than building it. That painful exit inspired Acquire.com, which has now helped over 2,000 startups get acquired with deal volume exceeding $500 million. Founders will hear the exact process for buying and selling SaaS businesses. Andrew reveals how a SaaS acquisition deal schedule broug...

Two non-technical co-founders taught themselves Bubble, built a prototype that barely worked, and convinced 15 companies to pay for it. Paul Holder's journey building customer onboarding software shows that you don't need engineers to prove demand. Founders will hear how OnRamp went from a no-code MVP to nearly 100 customers and 7-figure ARR. Paul reveals how customer onboarding software validated...

Tom Dunlop spent 18 months chasing the wrong SaaS go-to-market strategy. He sold to law firms, in-house teams, companies of every size - riding the dopamine hit of "happy ears" instead of tracking which customer type actually converted. Founders will hear how Summize reached late 7-figure ARR with 100%+ yearly growth after fixing a broken go-to-market strategy. Tom reveals how an unfocused ICP cor...

N.Rich spent a year landing their first 10 customers - then watched most of them churn. Enterprise sales buyers expected instant leads from a product designed for 6-18 months of account-based relationship building. After raising $4M and burning it on 150 unmanaged SDRs, Markus Stahlberg's co-founder was diagnosed with cancer and died a year later. Markus rebuilt alone and invented a 220% commissio...

Sameer Narkar pitched enterprise customers for two years and failed more than 50 times. When he finally broke through, it wasn't through ads or cold outreach - it was through partner-led growth that turned other companies' distribution into his own. Founders will hear how Konnect Insights reached $7M ARR across 30 countries without raising a dollar of outside funding. Sameer reveals how partner-le...

She had never run a sales cycle in her life. Alexa Grabell's background was sales ops - adjacent, but not the real thing. Yet through startup sales persistence and sheer brute force, she took Pocus from a $6,000 first deal to $1 million in ARR in less than a year. Alexa reveals how she learned startup sales on the fly by recording calls and sending them to advisors for feedback, why she abandoned...

He spent two and a half years without a paycheck, nearly sold for $30M, and got to $5M ARR without a single ad. Kyle Hanslovan's SaaS growth strategy at Huntress defied every startup playbook. Founders will hear how education-led marketing, MSP channel partnerships, and a radically minimal MVP built a cybersecurity platform now generating $120M in ARR. Kyle reveals his SaaS growth strategy for sca...

Hiren Hasmukh invested $400,000 of his own savings into a hardware company that COVID killed. He pivoted the backend software into a vertical SaaS that now generates 7-figure ARR with 22 people. In this episode, you'll learn how Teqtivity competes against heavily funded IT asset management competitors on just $2,500/month in ad spend, and why separate code bases per customer became a niche SaaS co...

Nathan Gilmore could only work four hours every Saturday morning on his side project. Those four hours a week turned into a 7-figure organic growth SaaS business with 6,000 customers across 180 countries. In this episode, you'll learn how TeamGantt grew almost entirely through SaaS SEO, why focusing on a single feature beat building a full project management suite, and what happened when they fina...

Jenn Knight and her co-founder had zero insurance experience and a $5K first customer. Three years and multiple rounds of startup funding later, AgentSync hit unicorn status with 8-figure revenue and 250+ customers. In this episode, you'll learn how outsiders broke into a conservative industry, secured SaaS fundraising from seed to Series B, and scaled from 5 to 200+ employees. Jenn reveals how bu...

Barb Hyman walked into a startup expecting to scale it - then discovered the product didn't work and she had six weeks of runway. She fired the entire team, rebuilt from scratch, and grew Sapia.ai to near 8-figure ARR. In this episode, you'll learn the B2B SaaS sales approach that relies on referrals over marketing, anchor logos over volume, and published research over pitch decks. Barb reveals ho...

Vitaly Veksler spent five years building 10% of what customers actually needed. His second attempt in an even more crowded SaaS market worked - Vista Social hit $1M ARR in under two years against 50+ established competitors. In this episode, you'll learn how competitive differentiation through modern product design, aggressive pricing, and exceptional support wins when the market is saturated. Vit...

Most founders think they know why customers buy their product. They're usually wrong. Bob Moesta, co-creator of the Jobs to be Done framework, discovered that just 10 strategic customer interviews reveal 3-5 buying patterns that cover 90% of any market. In this episode, you'll learn the JTBD framework for customer research that has powered 3,500+ product launches. Bob reveals how Basecamp avoided...

Tony Jamous launched with $4 million and zero product. Two months later, the pandemic created massive demand - and his team had nothing built. Instead of turning customers away, they used a Wizard of Oz MVP where humans did everything manually behind a software front end. That approach validated SaaS product-market fit and became the foundation for scaling SaaS operations across 180 countries. Ton...

Three co-founders. No marketing team. No sales reps. No investors. Philippe Lehoux ran a bootstrapped SaaS for almost a decade with just three people and hit $480K MRR. In this episode, you'll learn how Missive reached nearly $6M ARR while staying 100% founder-owned, using versus pages, a custom affiliate program, and a self-funded SaaS discipline that eliminated all fake work. Philippe reveals wh...

Palash Soni sent thousands of cold emails and got nowhere for 8 months. His founder-led sales approach kept stalling because he dismissed UI feedback as personal preference. In this episode, you'll learn how a 5-week UI rebuild, landing Drift through startup sales persistence, and a bold pivot at $5M ARR grew Goldcast beyond $10M ARR. Palash reveals how split-testing 200 cold emails between two se...

Will Van Der Sanden spent 8 years building products nobody could understand. Then he built a simple tool for his wife's business as a SaaS side project - and it became a seven-figure Chrome extension with 80,000 customers. In this episode, you'll learn how Dux-Soup hit $1M ARR in just two years using a freemium SaaS model, organic influencer marketing, and relentless simplicity. Will reveals how t...

Peter Wang gave away his product to 40 million users without requiring an email address. Then he built an 8-figure business on top of it through open source monetization. In this episode, you'll learn how Anaconda turned Python into the dominant language for data science and monetized the freemium SaaS model by selling to enterprise buyers instead of individual practitioners. Peter reveals how thr...

Erling Linde had no sales experience and a product so ugly a prospect called it terrible. Twelve years later, his niche SaaS generates $5.5M ARR and employs 42 people across five countries. In this episode, you'll learn how focusing on one vertical SaaS pain point and expanding geographically - instead of adding features - built a durable business. Erling reveals how he cut demo times from two hou...

Martha Bitar hit $1M ARR in just 4 months - with zero funding and no sales team. Her viral SaaS growth engine at Flodesk combined a "Made in Flodesk" footer on every email sent with an affiliate program that paid $19 per referral, creating a compounding loop that drove explosive adoption. In this episode, you'll learn how to build SaaS without funding and turn unconventional pricing into a competi...

Colin Nederkoorn spent 18 months reaching $10K MRR - then compounding did the rest. His SaaS content strategy turned an email list of potential customers into a demand engine that powered Customer.io from $50 MRR to $70M ARR over 12 years. In this episode, you'll learn the content-led growth playbook behind one of the most patient SaaS success stories ever told. Colin reveals how a meeting with Ra...

Dan Uyemura spent five years grinding toward PushPress's first million in ARR. He nearly quit to go back to running his gym. But the B2B product-market fit he built - software made by a gym owner, for gym owners - turned into an 8-figure vertical SaaS serving 3,500 clients. Dan reveals how domain expertise gave him 70% accuracy on gut-based product decisions, why five-minute customer support creat...

Todd Dickerson and Russell Brunson launched ClickFunnels expecting 10,000 customers. They got 1,000. Then Russell sold a $997 training course and bundled the SaaS for free - and 45% of the room bought. That SaaS pricing moment changed how they built a $140M ARR business forever. Todd reveals how ClickFunnels bootstrapped from $15K in starting capital to 100,000 customers using a pricing strategy t...