Boardable: Product Market Fit After a Dozen Failed Products
Jeb Banner is the co-founder and CEO of Boardable, a board management SaaS product that centralizes communication, document storage, meeting planning, and everything involved with running a board of directors.
In 2016, Jeb was running a creative agency when a client asked if he could build a board management portal for their nonprofit.
He and his team scoped out the project but it was going to take a lot of money to build that solution. And the client wasn't ready to spend that type of money.
But Jeb had already started two nonprofits at that point, so he was well aware of the problem space and so were his partners.
So the three of them huddled and decided that there was an opportunity for them to sell the solution as a product, so decided to run with it.
Today that product is a multiple 7-figure SaaS business with a team of 50 people, and the founders have raised $12M in funding.
It sounds like a great story of someone who was running a services business and successfully transitioned to a SaaS business because they had a great idea.
But the reality of Jeb's story is that he and his co-founders failed 10 times over a period of 12 years with product after product that failed to get any traction.
They learned a lot during that time, but it was also extremely frustrating.
In this interview, we dig into what they did differently with Boardable and how they were able to find product-market fit this time.
I hope you enjoy it.
Book Recommendation
- “Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers” by Geoffrey A. Moore