Banzai: Pivoting from a Near Collapse to 8 Figure ARR SaaS

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Joe Davy is the co-founder and CEO of Banzai, a SaaS company providing data-driven tools for businesses to run webinars and virtual events.

In 2013, Joe bootstrapped a small startup from his basement, determined to solve a problem that had irritated him for years.

In his past jobs, Joe often had a tough time getting the sales folks to help with one-off requests. Because things like following up with event leads didn't help salespeople hit their quotas.

Joe realized he wasn't alone. Lots of marketers also faced the same roadblocks.

So he and his co-founder built a barebones solution to help solve that problem. But, they still faced a key challenge: finding a specific use case for their solution. The early days were all about testing ideas and discovering what customers would actually pay for.

After tons of cold calls and emails, they found traction with a concept people seemed to care most about, i.e., getting more folks to show up at events. That's when Banzai came to life.

Over the next few years, they used outbound sales as the primary growth channel to hit seven figures in ARR and raise a Series A round. Things were looking good for the founders.

But a couple of months later, the pandemic struck. Just like that, over 90% of their business vanished. They had been all-in on field marketing, a segment that was hit hard and never fully recovered after the pandemic.

Faced with tough decisions and a murky future, Joe had to act fast. Were they going to wait it out, hoping the market would bounce back? Contemplate a major pivot, and to what exactly? Or, worst-case scenario, shut down the business?

Fast-forward to today and Banzai is an 8-figure SaaS company that's about to go public.

This episode is part of our Product-Market Fit series.

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