The SaaS Podcast

Interview Flow

TL;DR

Audience

  • Mostly early-stage SaaS founders
  • ~80% are under $1M ARR
  • The rest are typically between $1M–$5M or beyond

Format

45-minute video interview (video and audio)

Pre-Interview

15-minute warm-up chat before recording starts

Structure

7-part loosely-followed structure:

  1. Introduction
  2. First 10 Customers
  3. Finding Traction
  4. Getting to $1M ARR
  5. Scaling Beyond $1M ARR
  6. AI
  7. Lightning Round

Interview Structure

1. Introduction

A few quick questions so listeners know who you are and what you're building:

  • What does your product do, who's it for, and what problem does it solve?
  • Metrics you're comfortable sharing (revenue, customers, size of team etc.)

P.S. if you don't share revenue, just say it's a 7-figure, 8-figure or 9-figure SaaS.

2. First 10 Customers

We'll start with the early days. How you went from idea to getting real people to pay you:

  • Where the idea came from and how you validated it
  • What the first version of the product looked like and how you decided what to build
  • How you found and convinced your first customers to pay
  • What you tried that didn't work (these are often the most useful parts for our audience)
  • What those early customers taught you about your product or market

3. Finding Traction

This is the messy middle that most founders struggle with. Going from a handful of customers to real, repeatable growth:

  • The moment you knew you had something. Or the long stretch before that moment came.
  • Any pivots, major changes in direction, or times you almost gave up
  • How you found a repeatable way to acquire customers
  • How the product evolved based on what you learned from users
  • Pricing decisions. What you charged, what you changed, and why.

4. Getting to $1M ARR

We'll talk about what it took to go from early traction to your first million in revenue:

  • The growth channels that moved the needle and how you found them
  • Key hires or team decisions that changed things
  • Things that broke as you grew. Processes, systems, or assumptions that stopped working.
  • Experiments that failed and how they shaped your strategy

5. Scaling Beyond $1M ARR

We'll explore how the game changed once you got past $1M ARR:

  • What worked before that stopped working and how you adapted
  • The strategies that got you there. New channels, new approaches, new hires.
  • Mistakes or surprises that taught you something important about scaling

6. AI

We'll talk about how AI is affecting your business:

  • Where's AI having the biggest impact on your business right now?
  • What's the biggest threat AI poses to your business?

7. Lightning Round

We'll wrap up with 5 quick-fire questions:

  1. What’s a piece of startup advice you disagree with?
  2. What’s the last great book you read?
  3. What’s something you had to learn the hard way?
  4. What’s a tool or habit that saves you the most time?
  5. What do you do for fun when you’re not working?

Interview Tips

1. How to Avoid Telling Boring Stories

Imagine if Luke Skywalker had mastered the Force with no struggle and defeated Darth Vader in 5 minutes. It would have been a very boring story.

Every great founder story has challenges, failures, and breakthroughs. That's what people remember. Not perfect outcomes.

Sometimes the struggles are internal (imposter syndrome, self-doubt). Sometimes they're external (running out of money, getting rejected by every investor). And often there comes a point where it feels like there's no path forward.

Those are the moments our audience wants to hear about. Behind every mistake is a lesson someone else can learn from.

Everyone's got a great story and we need to tell yours in a way that people remember.

2. How to Make Your Interview Memorable

After 500+ interviews, I can tell you that the most memorable episodes are the ones that make listeners want to pull over their car to take notes.

You don't need to share breakthrough secrets. Just be honest about what actually worked, what didn't, and what you wish someone had told you earlier.

Be specific. Be real. General advice like "you have to focus" isn't helpful. But "we cut our roadmap by 80% and doubled conversions by doing XYZ" is.

Tip: Use this framework to shape your answers:

Situation → Challenge & Pain → What you tried → Result → Lesson learned

Example:

  • Situation: We were stuck at $8K MRR for 4 months.
  • Challenge: Every new customer we added was offset by churn. It felt like we were working nonstop and getting nowhere, totally demoralizing.
  • What we tried: Interviewed churned users, rewrote our messaging, narrowed our targeting, and added a trial filter.
  • Result: Churn dropped 40%, and we grew to $15K MRR in two months.
  • Lesson: Growth came from cutting bad-fit users, not adding features.

3. Good Video and GREAT Audio Are Essential

  • Use a decent mic or headphones with a mic
  • Avoid using your laptop mic if possible
  • Find a quiet spot with minimal background noise
  • Sit facing a window or light source, avoid sitting with light behind you
  • Center your face in the webcam and frame your shot