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Interview Flow

🎯 Purpose

Here’s what to expect during the interview and how to prepare. 

The goal is simple: help you tell a clear, compelling story — without overthinking it.

Interview Planner

This doc is your backstage pass to nailing the interview. 

It helps you share your most valuable stories, strategies, and lessons with our audience.

You don’t have to use it — but it’s highly recommended if you want to deliver a smoother, more impactful interview.

👉 Download Interview Planner (Google Doc)

⏱️ 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 we start recording the interview

Structure: 

We’ll loosely follow this 5-part structure — but we’ll adapt as needed:

  1. Introduction
  2. First 10 Customers
  3. From $0 to $1M ARR
  4. Scaling Beyond $1M ARR
  5. Lightning Round

🎤 Interview Structure

1. Introduction

We’ll open with a few questions to help listeners understand who you are and what your company does. What I’ll ask you:
  • A favorite quote or mindset that inspires you
  • 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 explore how you went from idea to your first few paying customers.

We’ll talk about:

  • The biggest early struggles and what you tried to overcome them
  • Specific channels or tactics that helped you land your first 10 customers
  • Any early experiments that failed and what they taught you

3. From 10 Customers to First $1M ARR

We’ll dig into how you grew your business to the first 7-figures in ARR.

We’ll talk about:
  • 2–3 of your biggest challenges at this stage and how you tackled them
  • The most effective customer acquisition strategies that helped you grow
  • A growth experiment that didn’t work, and why

4. Scaling Beyond $1M ARR

We’ll cover how your business evolved as you grew past $1M ARR.

We’ll talk about:

  • What changed (or broke) as you scaled
  • Strategies that helped you reach the next level
  • Lessons from missteps or surprises along the way

5. Lightning Round

We'll wrap up with the these 7 ‘quick-fire' questions:

  1. What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've ever received?
  2. What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
  3. What's one attribute or characteristic of a successful founder?
  4. What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
  5. What's a new/crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had time?
  6. What's an interesting or fun fact about you most people don't know?
  7. What's one of your most important passions outside of work?

đź’ˇ 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, tension, failures, and breakthroughs. That’s what people remember — not perfect outcomes.

Behind every mistake or challenge is a powerful lesson someone else can learn from.

Every great story has lots of obstacles for the hero that create conflict, struggles, challenges, and fears. And often there comes a point where it seems like there is no path to success e.g. running out of money, having 3 failed startups etc.

And within the ‘big story' there are smaller struggles which are sometimes internal (mindset e.g. imposter's syndrome) or external (environment e.g. getting rejected by every investor you pitch to).

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

Source: Shane Hanlon

2. How to Make Your Interview Memorable

After 450+ 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

đźš« 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

đź“· Center your face in the webcam and frame your shot