The SaaS Podcast

Interview Flow

Thanks for scheduling your interview. I'm looking forward to our conversation. This page covers everything you need to prepare: who's listening, how the interview flows, and what we'll talk about.

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

One quick ask: send us your headshot

We use your photo for the episode artwork on the website and social. Send the highest-resolution headshot you have. It takes under a minute.

Upload your headshot

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 one of the best pieces of business advice you’ve received?
  2. What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
  3. What’s the best money you’ve ever spent on your business?
  4. What’s your favorite personal productivity habit?
  5. What’s one of your most important passions outside of your work?

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 497+ 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

Frequently Asked Questions

Will you send the questions in advance?

They're already on this page. The 7-part structure is what I follow every time, so you know the shape of the conversation before you join. I don't script the exact wording, because the good bits come from following what you actually say.

What are the headshot requirements?

Upload it at saasclub.io/headshot. No login, takes a few seconds. Send the highest-resolution photo you have, because it becomes the episode artwork and bigger is better. JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC, up to 20MB. You can paste a link instead if you'd rather.

Can someone from my team join the call?

No. I want this to be a conversation between two people, and having an audience on the call is a big distraction for me.

What if I need to reschedule?

I need 2 weeks' notice. To be fair to others who are waiting to schedule an interview, cancelling inside that means going to the back of the queue, which is usually a 3 to 4 month wait. Full policy at saasclub.io/rescheduling.

Can I redo an answer? Is this edited?

Yes to both. I stumble all the time. If you lose your thread or want another run at an answer, say “let me try that again” and keep going. Nobody hears the first take.

Do we get to review the episode before it's published?

I don't do approvals. I've recorded nearly 500 episodes and no guest has ever asked me to take something out. If there's something you'd rather I cut, tell me during the recording and it's gone.

Can I get a copy of the recording?

Happy to share the final MP4 if you want to cut your own clips. Just ask. All I ask back is that you credit the show and link to the episode page where you can.

When will the episode go live?

Usually 3 to 4 weeks after we record, sometimes longer if the schedule is full. Episodes go out every Thursday at 8am ET. I'll email you once the date is locked in.

How do you promote the episode?

A fair amount. The newsletter goes to the list Thursday morning, it runs on LinkedIn and X all week, and shorts go up on YouTube every day. I put real effort into getting it in front of my audience, so please get it in front of yours.