SaaS Open Mic by ChartMogul

Pricing & Jobs to be Done with Matt Lerner of Startup Core Strengths

ed@chartmogul.com (Matt Lerner, Bianca Wilk) — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 12:35:06 +0000

On this episode of SaaS Open Mic:

Two common pricing mistakes founders make
How to apply the Jobs to Be Done framework to pricing strategy
Pricing experiments to test for price sensitivity
90% of growth comes from 10% of the activities

Matt 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.

5 SaaS Metrics That Matter to Investors With Jess Bartos Of Salesforce Ventures

ed@chartmogul.com (Jess Bartos, Bianca Wilk) — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 11:16:13 +0000

On this episode of SaaS Open Mic with Jess Bartos of Salesforce Ventures:

Growth needs to endure at high rates
Net Dollar Retention means you’re delivering on your promise
Turn your gross margin into growth
Rule of 40 is the balance between growth and profitability
Burn multiples measure growth efficiency
Use your SaaS metrics to tell a great story to your investors

Revenue-Based Financing with Miguel Fernández of Capchase

ed@chartmogul.com (Miguel Fernández, Bianca Wilk) — Tue, 6 Sep 2022 15:15:35 +0000

On this episode of the SaaS Open Mic:

How Capchase got started
The different options for raising capital
Drivers and tendencies in funding and fundraising
Revenue-based financing
The metrics that distinguish the fastest-growing companies

B2B SaaS Revenue Attribution with Lars Grønnegaard of Dreamdata

ed@chartmogul.com (Lars Grønnegaard, Bianca Wilk) — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 06:26:40 +0000

On this episode of SaaS Open Mic

The challenges of revenue attribution for B2B SaaS businesses
The do’s and don’ts of revenue attribution
Google Analytics for complex sales cycles
Why you can’t measure everything but you should measure what you can

Hiring Global Talent With Liina Laas of Deel

ed@chartmogul.com (Liina Laas, Bianca Wilk) — Thu, 9 Jun 2022 18:30:18 +0000

On this episode of SaaS Open Mic:

What is the hotbed for technical talent right now?
Creating a plan for hiring and onboarding new employees
The minimum requirements to run a global team
Going above and beyond for your employees

When SaaS Companies Acquire Communities with James Mayes of Mind the Product

ed@chartmogul.com (James Mayes, Bianca Wilk) — Wed, 4 May 2022 15:17:41 +0000

In this episode of SaaS Open Mic:

The story of Mind the Product, the world’s largest community of product managers
How it sold to Pendo
What software companies should consider before acquiring a community
De-Risking acquisitions
What community leaders should contemplate when considering an exit
Building audiences versus building communities
The next steps for the acquirer and acquired after the sale

Rapidly Scaling a Team With Gilles Bertaux of Livestorm

ed@chartmogul.com (Gilles Bertaux, Bianca Wilk) — Fri, 8 Apr 2022 11:51:59 +0000

In this episode of the SaaS Open Mic we discuss:

Rapid growth during a pandemic
How to tailor priorities and keep focus during a growth phase
Establishing clear guidelines and expectations in remote work
Measuring success through outputs (and not inputs)
Hiring with a standardized process in mind
Focus on company values
Automating onboarding
North Star metric for team alignment

Running Pricing Experiments with Marc Boscher of Unito

ed@chartmogul.com (Bianca Wilk, Marc Boscher) — Thu, 17 Mar 2022 14:49:52 +0000

In this episode of the SaaS Open Mic we discuss:

How initial pricing models can be challenging and ultimately need to change
Reaching price to value alignment
Making the final decision to switch to a different pricing model
The three dimensions of pricing experimentation and when to apply A/B testing
The metrics that SaaS businesses need to keep an eye on during pricing experiments

Pricing Migration with Tyler Daley from ChartMogul

ed@chartmogul.com (Olivia Jarvis, Tyler Daley) — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 13:32:12 +0000

We touch on many topics related to pricing migration:

The decision drivers that led ChartMogul to decide on a pricing migration
How to prepare for a pricing migration
Where things could go wrong
Maintaining flexibility and making space for conversation

Don't forget to subscribe to never miss an episode!

Building Repeatable Sales Processes with Ross Rich from Accord

ed@chartmogul.com (Olivia Jarvis, Ross Rich) — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 09:14:14 +0000

In this episode of SaaS Open Mic, Ross and I discuss creating repeatable revenue processes and:

Customer journey mapping
Improving the funnel
Positioning and sales/marketing alignment
How to know when to iterate on your processes
Personas and PMF
Revenue generation responsibilities beyond the sales organization
Relationship building

From Service to SaaS with Jeb Banner of Boardable

ed@chartmogul.com (Olivia Jarvis, Jeb Banner) — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 08:50:21 +0000

Our interview covers the following:

The shift from a service business to SaaS
Focusing on the problem and nothing else
Raising money
The balance between confidence and vulnerability in the leadership team
Employee experience

I hope you enjoy the latest episode of SaaS Open Mic!

Flipping the Agency Model on Its Head with John Thornton from Black Propeller

ed@chartmogul.com (Black Propeller, John Thornton, Olivia Jarvis) — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 09:46:47 +0000

John and I sit down to talk about the success he’s seen running his agency like a subscription business, and:

Agency versus subscription model
HIstorical data and billing practices
LTV, ARPA, and other SaaS metrics
Tracking lead source and its contribution to revenue
Churn and customer retention
Tracking custom attributes
Pricing

Resources

Black Propeller

John Thornton on Linkedin

Black Propeller on Twitter

The Future of Product-led Sales with Alexa Grabell from Pocus

ed@chartmogul.com (Olivia Jarvis, Alexa Grabell) — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 12:16:12 +0000

Alexa and I discuss:

The myth of a no sales product-led growth
Repeatable trends, Tests, and Metrics: When this happens, know why it will happen
Marketing-qualified leads versus product-qualified leads
Combine customer firmographic data and product usage to get to closed-won
When to you add a sales team to your self-serve model
Lead scoring and prioritization
How to test and measure the benefits of your product-led sales motion
Community: where to talk and read about product-led sales

Hope you enjoy this SaaS Open Mic episode!

Resources

Alexa Grabell on LinkedIn

Alexa Grabell on Twitter

Pocus

The Secrets of Scaling to Acquisition with Thomas Smale from FE International

ed@chartmogul.com (Olivia Jarvis, Thomas Smale) — Wed, 8 Sep 2021 14:27:37 +0000

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 acquisition
Goal setting and making the right hires
Common distractions to scaling startups
How the team at FE International helps businesses find areas of focus
How to grow an M&A company and market trends

Links and Resources:

Thomas Smale on LinkedIn

FE International

Listen, subscribe, and share wherever you enjoy podcasts.

Replace Your Sales-Led Motions with Product-Led Growth with Userflow's Esben Friis-Jensen

ed@chartmogul.com (Olivia Jarvis, Esben Friis-Jensen) — Thu, 2 Sep 2021 08:47:58 +0000

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 episode

What is product-led growth and what is the difference between product-led and sales-led growth
The SaaS industry maturing into PLG
How too much customization can make it harder to move away from sales-led motions
Examining if PLG is working within a company
How to tackle support questions proactively
The best tools for product-led growth

Links and Resources

Esben Friis-Jensen on LinkedIn

Esben Friis-Jensen on Twitter

Userflow

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!

Creating Thriving Culture While Working Remotely

ed@chartmogul.com (Tatiana Correa, Olivia Jarvis) — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 09:01:22 +0000

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 measured
Methodologies and strategies to cultivate culture
The role of leadership in creating culture
Where remote work goes wrong and what to do about it
Hybrid work models
Creating successful events and off-sites for a remote workforce
The 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**

Increasing net dollar retention to build a compelling enterprise SaaS play

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Thu, 5 Aug 2021 08:41:57 +0000

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 brand
How consumer buying trends impact GMV, and how GMV impacts related-SaaS entrepreneurship
His approach to analyze, research, and acquire SaaS businesses in the ecommerce space
Why acquirers should prioritize relationships and customer alignment over SaaS metrics
The importance of net dollar retention
Strategies to improve net dollar retention

Links and Resources:

Listen to the episode

Building a successful SaaS partnership program with Recurly's Jenna Wyer

ed@chartmogul.com (Jenna Wyer, Olivia Jarvis) — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 07:56:41 +0000

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 materials
How to identify and approach a potential partners
Shared pipeline: collaborating with partners to build pipeline and new business
Why some partnerships fail and others succeed
Where to start for more information, content, and resources in the partnership space

Links and Resources:

Listen to the episode

Building sales at a product-led company with Thinkific's Adam Jones

ed@chartmogul.com (Olivia Jarvis, Adam Jones) — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 08:35:47 +0000

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 teams
How his role has changed since the IPO
What he would have done differently
Thinkific’s guiding sales principles

Links and Resources:

Listen to the episode

You don't need an exit strategy with legaltech entrepreneur Matt Spiegel

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Wed, 9 Jun 2021 15:32:10 +0000

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, Lawmatics

Head 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 startup
Getting out of your comfort zone to try something new and ultimately, coming back to what you love
Weighing the options of taking a break from entrepreneurship vs. the decision to ‘just keep firing’
Reactive vs. proactive startup ideas
What strategies can be used to tackle different market segments
Understanding how customers spend and how to marry that with your product strategy

Links and Resources:

Like, subscribe, and if you’re feeling generous, share your favorite episode(s) with a colleague.

Popmenu secures product market fit pre-COVID, growth soars

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 18 May 2021 13:20:18 +0000

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 offerings
The beloved topic of finding product market fit
Brendan's take on how to design features for your customers
The adoption SaaS and the buying habits of buyers in new and different industries
How to help small businesses take back control from big platforms

Links and Resources:

Listen to the episode

Build a company that people root for with Andrew Gazdecki

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 19:11:39 +0000

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 MicroAcquire
Why you shouldn't go all in on starting a company until it starts to work
Who acquires startups and how that's changed
What is due diligence, how to value a SaaS company, how to negotiate a LOI
Strategies to attract buyers
The 3 stages of SaaS: invention, go-to-market models, and building your brand
Understanding and storytelling with SaaS metrics (Net Cash Flow, Churn, CAC, LTV)

Links and Resources:

Listen to the episode

David Skok on choosing the right metrics for the right growth stage

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 09:28:00 +0000

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.

Scaling customer feedback with Hannah Chaplin of Receptive

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 09:21:00 +0000

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?

In this conversation, we discuss:

How you can balance product vision with feature requests Some common
Common mistakes companies make with feedback
Tools and strategies for
prioritizing input from customers

...and much more!

Christoph Janz on SaaS fundraising in 2018 and how startups should use data

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 18:27:00 +0000

Christoph Janz (@chrija) is managing partner at Point Nine Capital — a venture capital firm that's highly prevalent in the world of SaaS.

After founding several internet businesses in the 90s and early 2000s, Christoph converted to a career in venture capital and made several early investments in companies such as Zendesk, FreeAgent and Geckoboard.

Today, Point Nine invests in early stage companies with a focus on SaaS and marketplaces. If you're not a regular reader, make sure you check out the team's excellent thought leadership content!

In this episode, the pair covered:

What it takes for SaaS startups today to raise venture capital
Whether you should aim to create a moat of defensibility
How startups should be using data today
Whether startups should aim to dominate a niche before expanding to wider market segments
How Point Nine Capital is making fundraising suck less for founders
Whether it's possible for startups to shift from linear to exponential growth

And much more!

How Maxime Berthelot grew PixelMe to $5k MRR and kept his day job at Buffer

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Thu, 17 May 2018 08:09:00 +0000

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!

Improving customer feedback in SaaS with Canny

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Fri, 11 May 2018 03:33:00 +0000

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.

I’m really happy that I could pick their brains on a lot of best practices for making feedback more valuable within a business.

How Ulysses pulled off a controversial pivot to subscription

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 08:06:00 +0000

When Max Seelemann (@macguru17) 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.

"For us as developers, it’s important that we have the freedom to
experiment and try things out. Recurring payments give us planning
security and enable deep thought. We are less rushed to release
features, and we are more inclined to iterate on them, if we do so on
a sound financial basis."

Sitting down with Max at the team's headquarters in Leipzig, Germany, it would be easy for him to look back on the period and say everything went as planned -- there were certainly some surprises -- but it's hard to argue that shifting Ulysses to a subscription-based product wasn't a big success overall.

Topics covered

This chat with Max is a must listen for anyone evaluating the subscription model for their own business. In this conversation, we discuss:

The carefully planned process of announcing subscriptions, and the following media buzz
How Max and his team finally made the decision to go ahead with the move
The economics of perpetual licensing vs. subscriptions
Some unexpected impact from the move
Finding optimal pricing for the subscription plans
How the team plans to measure success in the subscription world

I'd like to extend a huge thanks to Max and the Ulysses team for hosting me at their beautiful office in Leipzig! (and for letting me drool over that 2016 Apple Design Award trophy...)

Check out Ulysses at https://ulyssesapp.com/

Going global from day one with Vasco Pedro, CEO of Unbabel

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Thu, 5 Apr 2018 13:19:04 +0000

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.

The Problem With SaaS Marketing ft. Gia & Claire of Forget The Funnel

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 27 Feb 2018 11:31:43 +0000

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 on chatbots, metrics & mentorship

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 25 Jul 2017 13:12:17 +0000

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).

Fostering feedback culture, with Small Improvements Founder & CEO Per Fragemann

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 6 Jun 2017 09:58:00 +0000

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.

Freshdesk's Arun Mani on European SaaS expansion, self-reinvention and diversity

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Thu, 11 May 2017 11:13:03 +0000

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.

Zapier CEO Wade Foster on the future of API SaaS

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 4 Apr 2017 09:55:44 +0000

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.

Ghost CEO John O’Nolan: How we built the non-profit, distributed SaaS company of our dreams

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 09:05:12 +0000

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.

From selling berries to selling SaaS with Mikita Mikado of PandaDoc

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Mon, 27 Feb 2017 14:25:13 +0000

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)

Grover: Gadgets as a service

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 10:00:03 +0000

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.

SaaS pricing mastery with Sharon Savariego, CEO of Mobilize

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 7 Feb 2017 09:45:25 +0000

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.

Jukely: Solving live music discovery with subscriptions

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 09:11:58 +0000

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: SaaS, consolidated? With Co-founder Bryant Chou

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Wed, 4 Jan 2017 10:33:32 +0000

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.

Freemium as a catalyst for growth with Tope Awotona, Founder of Calendly

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Thu, 8 Sep 2016 10:18:58 +0000

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.

Thinking beyond UX with David Okuniev, Founder of Typeform

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Mon, 8 Aug 2016 13:54:03 +0000

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.

The key qualities of a founder, with Pietro Bezza of Connect Ventures

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 15:06:24 +0000

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.

Building a community from scratch with Alex Theuma

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 12:33:02 +0000

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?

Creating a subscription box empire with Jameson Morris

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 7 Jun 2016 15:40:08 +0000

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 Delivet on single-handedly founding the B2B Rocks conference

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Mon, 30 May 2016 09:48:52 +0000

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 Ernoult, CEO of Agorapulse on taming social media

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Fri, 27 May 2016 09:56:28 +0000

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!

The Grapevine of B2B: how word of mouth actually works

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 10 May 2016 12:28:19 +0000

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

SaaS Open Mic 07: Szymon Klimczak, CMO of LiveChat

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Mon, 25 Apr 2016 09:53:50 +0000

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".

SaaS Open Mic 06: Alex MacCaw - CEO, Clearbit

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:13:15 +0000

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.

SaaS Open Mic 05: Holger Seim - CEO, Blinkist

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Tue, 2 Feb 2016 12:25:08 +0000

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.

SaaS Open Mic 04: Murat Mutlu - Founder, Marvel

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 15:29:28 +0000

This week I sat down for a chat with Murat, who left a career in design to grow his app prototyping platform, Marvel. Marvel began as a side project, but gained enough traction since launch to rapidly grow into a full-scale business.

SaaS Open Mic 03: Bjoern Zinssmeister - Founder, Ivyleads

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 11:04:02 +0000

This week I spoke to Bjoern - Founder of Ivyleads, a simple solution for managing and nurturing sales leads. We chatted about his early YCombinator experience, constant involvement in side projects and focus on design.

SaaS Open Mic 02: Vinay Seshadri - Director Product, ChartMogul

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Wed, 4 Nov 2015 14:41:16 +0000

SaaS Open Mic 02: Vinay Seshadri - Director Product, ChartMogul by ChartMogul

SaaS Open Mic 01: Nikos Moraitakis - CEO, Workable

ed@chartmogul.com (ChartMogul) — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 14:34:06 +0000

I grabbed a 20-minute chat with Nikos (@moraitakis), to discuss a range of SaaS-related topics: - How Workable was started (in Greece) and eventually moved to Boston - SaaS Metrics and measurement in a high-growth environment - Customer Churn characteristics – Dealing with a high amount of “sleeper” accounts that eventually reactivate - Pausing vs. cancelling subscriptions, and the perceived difference for customers - The economics of a SaaS business past initial traction stage, and the difficulty of capturing/balancing other business costs - LTV, Payback Period and how to make them useful