Fundraising for SaaS Startups

Rob Woollen, Sigma Computing

7 Years of Zero Revenue to $100M

Rob Woollen is the Co-Founder and CTO of Sigma Computing, whose seven-year search for product-market fit led to building a data analytics platform that lets business users analyze cloud-scale data without writing SQL. Rob Woollen's search for product-market fit is one of the longest in SaaS history. He founded Sigma Computing 11 years ago with a clear problem to solve: business users were stuck with spreadsheets while programmers got powerful cloud data tools. The first seven years were brutal. Rob and his co-founder raised $8M, hired a team of five, and built multiple prototypes - each one a "colossal failure." At one point, two founding engineers quit because they felt the company was "just swirling around." The team shrunk to three people for a year and a half. The breakthrough came in 2017 when their investors suggested meeting with Snowflake. In just 30 days before the meeting, Rob's team rebuilt their entire product to integrate with Snowflake's cloud data warehouse. At lunch, Snowflake's CEO said something they'd never heard before: "I want this. When can I start using this?" This was the first real sign of product-market fit after years of "polite feedback." But even after finding early traction and reaching $1M ARR, Rob made a controversial decision - rebuild the product again. He felt the interface still wasn't right, even though the company was finally making money. Rob Woollen and Sigma Computing used these strategies to achieve product-market fit: 1. Stayed laser-focused on the problem for 7 years while pivoting the solution multiple times 2. Cultivated 10 high-touch champion users within walking distance of their office 3. Rebuilt the product to integrate with Snowflake's cloud data warehouse in 30 days 4. Rebuilt again at $1M ARR because the interface "still wasn't quite right" Today, Sigma Computing has crossed $100M in revenue with 600+ employees and 1,400+ customers.

Jenn Knight, AgentSync

AgentSync: From $5K Customer to SaaS Unicorn in 3 Years

Jenn Knight is the co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, a company modernizing how insurance companies handle agent licensing, compliance, and onboarding. In 2018, Jenn was working at Dropbox while her co-founder (and now husband) Niji was at Zenefits. He saw firsthand how insurance companies were struggling to keep their agents licensed and compliant. No one had figured out a good solution. Niji became so convinced there was an opportunity that he quit his job to work on the idea from their kitchen, while Jenn kept her day job at Dropbox and built the product evenings and weekends. As tech outsiders trying to break into the insurance industry, they got a lot of pushback. People kept telling them this wasn't even a real problem. After months of building the product and talking to potential customers, they finally landed their first customer who paid $5,000 a year for their solution. But everything changed after a product demo when insurance professionals started listing all the ways AgentSync could make their lives easier. Their excitement showed the co-founders they were onto something big. In late 2019, the couple took a huge leap of faith. When they found out Jenn was pregnant, she quit her job at Dropbox. They decided to move to Denver, where they'd both work on AgentSync full-time without any funding lined up. The timing seemed terrible. The pandemic hit just months later, but instead of failing, they thrived. They raised their seed round and grew to 35 employees by the end of 2020, then to over 100 the following year. Today, AgentSync has achieved unicorn status, pulls in eight-figure revenue, has over 250 customers, and employs more than 200 people.

Stephany Lapierre, TealBook

TealBook: Building an Enterprise SaaS Against All Odds

Stephany Lapierre is the founder and CEO of TealBook, a supplier data platform that helps enterprise customers make better procurement decisions. In 2014, Stephany launched TealBook, initially as a service where she sold $5,000 memberships to suppliers selling to enterprise customers. However, she realized this model couldn't scale when a larger customer wanted data on hundreds of thousands of suppliers, rather than just a few hundred. After years of bootstrapping TealBook from her living room while juggling the responsibilities of raising three children, Stephany faced a pivotal moment. She realized she needed to transform TealBook into a software platform. But fundraising was really tough for Stephany, mainly because investors were skeptical about her being a solo founder without a tech background. One investor bluntly told her, "You'll never raise capital on your own. You've got three kids, a funny accent (she's French Canadian), and you've never built a tech company." Despite these challenges and harsh feedback, Stephany rose to the occasion. She knew she needed a strong team to get investors on board, so she found a CTO who shared her vision for TealBook and together they got to work. By 2017, she successfully raised the funds they needed to grow the company. Today, TealBook is a 7-figure SaaS business, with over 100 enterprise customers. The company has raised $72M in funding and grown to a team of 60 people.

Itai Sadan, Duda

Duda: From Frustrations and Doubts to 8-Figure ARR SaaS

Itai Sadan is the co-founder and CEO of Duda, a professional website builder for digital agencies and SaaS companies. In 2009, Itai and Amir, both at SAP, were eager to start their own venture, always on the lookout for a winning business idea. Noticing that many small businesses struggled with mobile website creation, they dedicated their evenings and weekends to developing a solution. Eventually, they shipped basic software for building mobile websites. But they struggled to find customers because they had full-time jobs and not enough time to dedicate to their business. Getting investors on board was tough, too. Nearly every investor they spoke to wanted to see more customers and traction. And many were skeptical about the business idea. The first year was full of frustration and the founders questioned if they were on the right track. But the pair kept going, relentlessly improving their product and looking for customers. Eventually, they caught a lucky break when their product caught the attention of someone at AT&T, who reached out to learn more about what they were building. Three months later, they had signed a significant contract with AT&T. Today, Duda is an 8-figure ARR company used by 22,000 agencies to manage over 1 million websites. The team's grown to 180 and they've raised $96 million in funding.

Peter Ord, GUIDEcx

GUIDEcx: From 100+ LinkedIn Conversations to 8-Figure SaaS

Peter Ord is the founder and CEO of GUIDEcx, a client onboarding and implementation platform. In 2017, Peter launched GUIDEcx. He had seen firsthand the problems with customer onboarding at his previous job and wanted to help companies make it better for their clients. He kicked things off by talking to more than 100 people who managed customer onboarding. He wanted to make sure there was a real need for specialized software. Once he was confident that there was, he put together an early version of the product to show to potential customers. In the beginning, Peter made some key decisions that set GUIDEcx on the path to success. For example, he raised his pricing pretty early on, which helped him attract customers who valued what he was offering and were willing to pay for it. But it wasn't all smooth sailing. During the first year, two important team members quit. They were half of his team back then and left because the business was growing too slowly. After losing those two people, Peter had an important decision to make. Was he going to build a lifestyle business and continue to grow slowly? Or was he going to go all-in, raise money, and build a fast-growing startup? He chose the latter. Today, GUIDEcx has hundreds of customers, has hit the $10 million ARR mark, and raised over $40 million.

Alex Yaseen, Parabola

Parabola: The Journey to Discovering Our Ideal SaaS Customer

Alex Yaseen is the founder and CEO of Parabola, a collaborative data automation tool empowering non-technical teams to automate complex data processes. As a consultant, Alex noticed that many non-technical clients often hired analysts to tackle manual data tasks. He envisioned a tool that could help automate this work. In 2017, Alex launched Parabola, but he struggled for years to find product-market fit, even though he attracted initial customers who were enthusiastic about the product. During that time, the business generated little revenue. Alex eventually had a breakthrough years later when he added collaboration features to Parabola. This was when he realized he'd stumbled upon a much bigger opportunity. Focusing on collaboration sounds like a minor pivot. But when Alex repositioned Parabola as a collaborative data automation tool, the business finally got traction, and revenue started growing much faster. Today, Parabola is a 7-figure ARR SaaS business used by thousands of teams. The company has raised over $34 million to date.

Dominik Angerer, Storyblok

Storyblok: Turning a CMS Prototype Into an 8-Figure SaaS

Dominik Angerer is the co-founder and CEO of Storyblok, a headless content management system (CMS) that helps developers and marketers create better content experiences. In 2017, Dominik and Alexander discovered the limitations of trhttps://saasclub.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/tools-and-materials-used-for-fashion-designing-4XD3MX3.jpgional CMS platforms while working at an agency on various client projects. They wanted to find a CMS that could be customized to fit their client's needs. But there didn't seem to be a good solution out there. They developed a simple prototype of a headless CMS to use on client projects while they continued searching for a proper solution. But their prototype grew in popularity, and they started adding more features. Eventually, the duo quit their jobs and started their own company. But it wasn't all smooth sailing. They wasted a lot of time and energy by trying to pursue too many ideas at once instead of being focused on the problem that mattered the most. And they lost a big customer that was very interested in their product once they revealed they were a 2-person company. Today Storyblok is an 8-figure ARR business that serves thousands of customers and has raised $58 million in funding.

Adam Nathan, Almanac

Almanac: Overcoming Horizontal Product Challenges

Adam Nathan is the founder and CEO of Almanac, a collaboration platform for remote teams to write, approve, and organize docs. In 2018, after years of working in product roles and getting frustrated with inefficient work tools and endless meetings, Adam quit his job and set out to start his own company. He spent over a year validating different ideas before picking Almanac. But launching a horizontal product poses huge challenges. And it was no different for Adam. When your product can work for everyone, it's easy to dilute your messaging and end up grabbing no one's attention. So it's no surprise that Adam and his co-founders struggled to find their target customers. However, today Almanac is a 7-figure ARR SaaS with over 50 employees, tens of thousands of customers, and $45 million in VC funding.

Anshu Sharma, Skyflow

Skyflow: Lessons on Launching a New SaaS Product Category

Anshu Sharma is the co-founder and CEO of Skyflow, a privacy API for securing and managing sensitive customer data. Before starting Skyflow, Anshu was a product manager at Salesforce and Oracle, where he saw firsthand the need for better data privacy solutions. After a decade of watching the problem grow, Anshu finally decided to do something about it and launched Skyflow in early 2019. But creating a new product category is very challenging because you first have to educate potential customers on why they need a different solution. Anshu and his co-founder spent over a year building an MVP before they ever talked to any customers. In hindsight, it was the right approach. In just a few years, they've grown Skyflow to a 7-figure ARR business with over 100 employees and raised $70 million.

Brett Turner, Trovata

Trovata: Navigating SaaS Enterprise Challenges to $10M ARR

Brett Turner is the founder and CEO of Trovata, a fintech SaaS company that automates and simplifies cash management for businesses. In 2016, Brett, already a seasoned entrepreneur with three successful startup exits, launched a new endeavor: Trovata. But this wasn't just another startup for him; it was an idea brewing for 20 years. Launching a SaaS product in the enterprise space can be very challenging. So Brett spent over two years in the discovery phase talking to as many potential customers as he could. It was a long time, but he still felt it was worth it. However, one major obstacle stood in Brett's way. To deliver a successful product, he needed to integrate with banks. However, back then, most didn't have APIs. So he made a huge bet. He was going to start building the product and investing in the business with the hope that banks would start providing APIs soon. If they didn't, he was screwed. The banks eventually introduced APIs, but Brett had to wait over 2 years. And during that time, the pressure was growing as he was burning through cash. However, thanks to that bet paying off, Trovata has grown into a business that's currently doing around $10M ARR and has raised over $58 million.

Thomas Kunjappu, Cleary

Cleary: Transitioning from Custom-Services to SaaS Product Success

Thomas Kunjappu is the co-founder and CEO of Cleary, an employee experience platform or modern intranet for hybrid teams. In 2017, while at Twitter, Thomas and his co-founder Ryan noticed that large tech companies often developed in-house tools to improve the employee experience. They had an idea: Why not create a solution for these companies before they even think about building their own tools? That's how Cleary was born. But instead of building a product, the founders took a different approach. They leveraged their network to pitch the idea to the team at Square, offering to build a solution while keeping ownership of the intellectual property. For the next 2 years, the founders focused on just one customer. This helped them get started, but it also created challenges when they wanted to shift from a service to a product that would meet the needs of lots of customers. Eventually, they had to stop accepting ongoing feature requests from Square and concentrate on building a genuine product they could sell to other customers. Currently, Cleary is doing over $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and has raised $7.5 million in funding. Their customer list includes notable companies like Door Dash, Scale, and of course Square.

Brandon Foo, Paragon

Paragon: From Painful Integrations to Finding Product Market Fit

Brandon Foo is the co-founder and CEO of Paragon, a platform designed to help software companies create integrations with third-party applications. Back in 2015, while working on a previous startup, Brandon and his co-founder Ishmael discovered how painful it was to build and maintain integrations. This experience ultimately inspired them to start Paragon. At first, they had trouble finding customers for their product idea. After many customer interviews, they realized they were building the wrong product. More importantly, those conversations helped them figure out what type of product their prospective customers actually needed. Today, they've grown to several million dollars in annual recurring revenue (ARR), built a team of over 30 people, and have raised just over $16 million in funding.

Neha Sampat, Contentstack

Contentstack: Scaling From Services to Enterprise SaaS

Neha Sampat is the founder and CEO of Contentstack, a headless CMS that empowers businesses to manage and deliver digital content across various channels and devices. In 2018, Neha seized an opportunity to transform a services-focused business into an enterprise SaaS company. Contentstack began as a simple form for editing mobile content without requiring developer involvement. Today, the business has raised $169 million, grown to a team of over 200 people, and is trusted by many of the world's top brands.

Vishal Sunak, LinkSquares

Scaling a SaaS: Lessons from LinkSquares’ $40M ARR Growth

Vishal Sunak is the co-founder and CEO of LinkSquares, a contract management solution that empowers in-house legal teams to draft, store, search, and analyze agreements. I originally interviewed Vishal on episode 281 in early 2021 where he shared how LinkSquares went from an idea to a thriving SaaS company doing $10 million in ARR, raising $21 million, and growing to a team of 70 people. Fast forward two years, LinkSquares has grown to around $40 million in ARR, raised $161 million – including a $100M Series C round in 2022 – and reached an $800M valuation. The company now employs over 400 people. So it seemed like the perfect time to invite Vishal back to the podcast to unpack what's happened in the last 2 years to drive that growth.

Roxanne Petraeus, Ethena

Ethena: Breaking the SaaS Mold – Women in Tech

Roxanne Petraeus is the co-founder and CEO of Ethena, a SaaS startup building modern compliance training software. In 2018, Roxanne started a new job as a McKinsey consultant and was surprised to find that even a company known for its phenomenal training used mediocre compliance training software. It sparked an idea in her mind to create better software. She started to talk to people about her idea, which eventually led to meeting her co-founder and CTO, Anne. The two of them set out to build Ethena in 2019. Roxanne talked with HR folks at over 30 different companies to understand their challenges. And in a few short weeks, the duo created their MVP. Although they didn't charge for it initially, they were able to land the first customer in 4 months. Today, Ethena is a seven-figure SaaS business with around 250 customers, including Netflix, Zendesk, Figma, and Notion. Almost 100,000 employees are using Ethena for their compliance training. And the founders have raised just over $50 million to date.

Rahul Vohra, Superhuman

Superhuman: The Power of Data-Driven Product Market Fit

Rahul Vohra is the founder and CEO of Superhuman, a blazingly fast email experience that helps you save 3 hours or more every week. In 2014, Rahul set out on a mission to create the fastest email experience. He had sold his previous company Rapportive, a Gmail plugin, to LinkedIn a couple of years earlier, and he'd watched as Gmail continued to become slower and more cluttered over the years. So Rahul decided it was time to change that. But he didn't start building a product right away. Instead, he spent the first year talking to potential customers, doing interviews, writing website copy, and talking to investors. A year later, he put together a team and started building the product. But progress was slow. After two years of coding, the product still wasn't ready. Rahul felt immense pressure to launch. But deep down, he believed the launch would go badly because they didn't have product market fit. Fast forward to today, Superhuman has raised over $125 million in VC funding and is now a team of around 120 people.

Gil Feig, Merge

Merge: How a SaaS API Startup Raised $75 Million

Gil Feig is the co-founder of Merge, a unified API platform that allows you to add hundreds of integrations to your app. After experiencing firsthand the pains of managing integrations at previous companies, Gil and his co-founder, Shensi, decided to build a solution. Before starting their business, they talked to around a hundred companies to research and get feedback. Most conversations were pretty positive, but some feedback was harsh. There were three companies where people told them they would never use the product and that they should probably give up on the idea. The two founders spent 6 months building the first version of the product. And thanks to all those interviews, they landed their first 10 customers. But as they tried selling their product to more companies, they quickly realized that they still had big obstacles to overcome. Most companies were building their own integrations, and many of them weren't convinced they needed help or a product to make it easier. And other companies weren't willing to trust their integrations to an early-stage startup that might not be around tomorrow. Despite those challenges, Gil and Shensi have grown their business to multiple 7-figures in ARR, with a team of around 65 people, and they've raised almost $75 million in funding.

Christian Owens, Paddle

Paddle: From a Failed SaaS Launch to a $1.4+ Billion Valuation

Christian Owens is the founder and CEO of Paddle, a payments infrastructure provider for SaaS companies. Christian started building websites when he was 12 years old. He walked into his local high street stores and asked them if they wanted him to build a website. His first customer was an Indian Restaurant. At 14 years old, inspired by Groupon, Christian persuaded a number of software vendors to participate in selling a discounted software bundle to their email lists and generated over a million dollars in sales. Today, Christian is running a company that employs nearly 400 people, is approaching $100M in ARR, and has raised $300M in VC funding. Paddle also acquired Profitwell earlier this year in a deal worth $200M. I originally interviewed Christian over 3 years ago when Paddle was doing around $10M in ARR.

Cristina Vila, Cledara

Cledara: A First Time Founder’s Guide to Finding Product Market Fit

Cristina Vila is the co-founder and CEO of Cledara, a product that helps companies simplify the way they discover, buy, manage and cancel subscription software. In 2018, Cristina quit her job to start her SaaS business. She was a first-time founder, who didn't know how to code and didn't have any sales experience. But she was driven by a life-long dream to one day start her own business. After raising a pre-seed round, she hired a software development company to build the product which she launched at SaaStock in Dublin three months later. But when she tried to sell her product, she got a lot of objections. Some people said that they didn't have a problem managing software subscriptions, others felt they already had a good solution in place (even if it was just a spreadsheet), and a lot of other people just weren't interested at that time. So for a while, things weren't looking good for Cristina. And even worse, she didn't charge for her product for 18 months. In fact, there wasn't even a way for customers to pay for her product – which many would say was a rookie mistake. Despite those challenges, Cristina and her co-founder Brad, have grown Cledara to $2.4M in ARR so far with over 700 customers. And they've raised $7M and built a team of nearly 50 people.

Thor Olof Philogène, Stravito

Stravito: Lessons in Enterprise Sales for Early Stage SaaS Founders

Thor Olof Philogène is the co-founder and CEO of Stravito, a knowledge management platform that gives organizations a secure and central hub for all their marketing knowledge and insights. Stravito is a Swedish-based startup that was founded in 2017. The company has raised $23M to date, and its customers include brands such as Comcast, Electrolux, and McDonald's.

Jeb Banner, Boardable

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.

Khadim Batti, Whatfix

Whatfix: From a Failed SaaS Startup to a Potential $1B Unicorn

Khadim Batti is the co-founder and CEO of Whatfix, a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) that helps businesses simplify training and support. In 2014, Khadim and his co-founder Vara launched a new SaaS business called Whatfix. In 8 years, they've grown their company to multiple 8-figures in ARR, hired over 600 employees, and they've raised $140 million in VC funding. It sounds like another great Silicon Valley startup story, but it isn't. Both these founders were based in India. Prior to founding Whatfix, they spent 3 years building another product that never really got traction. Both founders came from an engineering background, so they spent too much time trying to build a great product and not enough time talking to customers. During those 3 years, there were many times when they wanted to quit and go back to their corporate jobs. At one point, they realized that there was one feature in their product that their customers seemed to be most interested in. In fact, it wasn't even a product feature, but a tool they'd built to help their customers learn how to use their product. So they decided to shut down the product they'd been working on for 3 years and instead focus on turning that tool into a product. But this time they took a very different approach. They spent most of their time talking to customers and validating their idea. And they didn't start building the product until they'd made their first sale. In this interview, Khadim shares his lessons on the mistakes they made in building their first product. And we dig into how they took a very different approach the second time with Whatfix, and how they've gone from zero to a company valued at over $600 million. I hope you enjoy it.

Benn Stancil, Mode:

Mode: How 3 First-Time Founders Built an 8-Figure SaaS

Benn Stancil is the co-founder and chief analytics officer of Mode, a collaborative data science platform for analysts and data scientists to analyze, visualize, and share data. In 2013, Benn and his co-founders Derek and Josh were working for the same company where they had built an internal tool to help them do their jobs. They discovered that a lot of companies were building similar tools and figured that there might be an opportunity for them to launch a startup. In the last 8 years, they've grown Mode into an 8-figure SaaS business, with over 150 employees, and have raised $81M in funding.

Brian Parks

How Not To Raise Capital for Your SaaS Startup

Brian Parks is the founder and managing partner of Bigfoot Capital, a company that specializes in lending growth capital to B2B software companies. Going out to raise money for your startup can be overwhelming, especially if it's the first time that you're doing it. As a founder, you have a business to run and if you're not careful, fundraising can easily consume all your time. Brian has an interesting background. He was an investment banker for several years. He's raised money as a startup founder himself. And now he's investing in early-stage SaaS companies and recently raised $30M for Bigfoot Capital. So he has a unique perspective on fundraising and I thought it would be helpful to have him share his insights on how founders of SaaS companies that are looking to raise money, can increase their chances of success.

Liam Gerada, Krepling:

Krepling: How Two Teens Co-Founded a Shopify Competitor

Liam Gerada is the co-founder and CEO of Krepling, an e-commerce platform for online stores. In 2018, two teenage brothers in Malta wanted to start an agency. They'd recently sold their Shopify store and decided that they wanted to help others running similar businesses. They spent a few months validating the idea but realized people didn't need an agency, they needed a better platform. So Liam and Travis set out to build a Shopify competitor. Neither of them was a developer, but Travis had taken some courses so knew just enough to start building something. After months of work, they shipped a product with a clunky backend and ugly user interface. But the product was free and they were still able to attract new users. But as soon as they started charging, every user they had churned. The brothers pushed on and tried anything they could think of to find customers e.g. posting on sites like Quora and Reddit, sending cold emails, etc. Eventually, they were able to find a handful of customers. Fast forward to today, Liam is now 21 and Travis is 18. The two brothers have made significant improvements to their product. They now have over 500 customers. And they've raised a pre-seed round from Jason Calacanis' Launch accelerator. They still have a long way to go and a lot more work to do. But I think they've accomplished a lot in the last couple of years. They're both still pretty young, don't have tons of experience, didn't know how to code, and live on a small island in the Mediterranean. But that hasn't stopped them from building their SaaS business and finding customers. I hope you enjoy it.

Vishal Sunak, LinkSquares:

How Vishal Sunak Took His SaaS From Zero to $10 Million ARR

Vishal Sunak is the co-founder and CEO of LinkSquares, a contract management solution for in-house legal teams to draft, store, search, and analyze agreements. In 2015, Vishal was working at Backupify which was about to get acquired. The acquiring company wanted to know what was in their customer agreements. But Backupify had thousands of different customer agreements. No one knew what was in them and there was no easy way to get that information. That first-hand experience of contract management and the pain points in-house legal teams face planted a seed in Vishal's mind of a potential SaaS solution. Eventually, Vishal and his two co-founders (Chris Combs and Steve Travaglini) took the leap and launched their startup to revolutionize contract management. They built a Ruby on Rails MVP with no backend. In other words, it was good enough to use for demos but wasn't a product that customers could use. The founders then spent 9 months interviewing nearly a hundred general counsels. And it took them over a year to land their first few customers. Vishal was worried about building the wrong product and wasting their money. So they wanted to be sure they were solving the right problem. Today, LinkSquares does $10 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), has a team of 70 people, and has raised over $21 million in funding. I hope you enjoy it.

Romain Dardour

Hull: A SaaS Startup That Went from Failure to Successful Pivot

Romain Dardour is the co-founder and CEO of Hull, a SaaS product that collects, unifies, and enriches your product, marketing, and sales data and synchronizes it to all of your tools. In 2011, Romain was running a marketing agency in Paris. He was working with movie studios that wanted him to rebuild online communities from scratch for every new movie launch. He realized that there was a more efficient way to solve that problem and decided to build a product. And for the next 4 years, he and his co-founders struggled to find product-market fit. In 2016, after trying to unsuccessfully bootstrap the business for 4-years, they decided that the market just wasn't there and that it was time to move on. They made the decision to shut down the company. Around the same time, Romain had lunch with a growth marketer friend who wasn't interested in the product but liked how they were collecting and segmenting data. He thought that would be something a lot of companies would be interested in. So in the next 5 days, Romain and his co-founders built a prototype and started getting feedback. And that's how the idea for their new product was born. They went from being a month away from shutting down their company to finding a new opportunity which they pounced on and pivoted the business. Today, they charge at least $1,000 a month for their product and have around 100 customers. They've raised $5M in funding and have found product-market fit. In this interview, we talk about how they struggled in the first few years, how they turned a lunch meeting into a new product idea, and how they've grown their business. I hope you enjoy it.

SaaS Funding: A Different Way to Finance Your Startup

BJ Lackland is CEO of Lighter Capital, a Seattle based company that specializes in providing financial capital to early-stage SaaS companies. Let's say your SaaS company is generating revenue… Your business is still in the early stages and you want to raise money to help you grow faster. But you know that raising angel or VC funding is going to take a lot of time and effort. You're already busy enough working on your business, product, and marketing. You know you need to raise money, but how are you also going to find the time to do fundraising? Well, there's another way to finance your startup that you might not have considered. It's called revenue-based financing and it allows you to quickly and easily raise funding without giving up equity or providing personal guarantees.

Elizabeth Yin

SaaS Fundraising 101 for Early Stage Startups

Elizabeth Yin is the co-founder and general partner at Hustle Fund – the seed fund for hilariously early hustlers. She's also the co-founder of Hustle Con, a conference for non technical startup entrepreneurs. Previously, Elizabeth founded LaunchBit, which was acquired in 2014. She was also a partner at 500 Startups where she led the accelerator program. In this interview we cover SaaS fundraising 101 for early stage startups. So if you are thinking of fundraising but don't know where to start, this episode will help you figure that out. We talk about the fundraising landscape in 2018 and the differences between pre-seed, seed and post-seed stages. Elizabeth shares some awesome advice on how to approach investors, how to set up meetings, the do's and don'ts of pitching to an investor, how to think about valuation of your startup and a lot more. It's an awesome episode, jam packed with actionable insights. I hope you enjoy it.

Startup Lessons from a First Time SaaS Founder

Kelsey Recht the founder and CEO of VenueBook, a booking platform that connects event planners with venue managers. VenueBook helps venues to manage their leads and bookings, and market their space. And it helps event planners to easily find and book the right venue for their event. VenueBook was founded in 2010 and is based in New York. The company has raised over $9 million in funding. Kelsey is a first time SaaS founder who came up with the idea for this business after experiencing the pain of finding venues and booking events herself. And one of the smart things that she did in the early days wasn't to start building a software product right away, but going and talking to prospective customers and talking about their pains. In fact, that's how she found her first few customers and her first developer. We also talk about SaaS fundraising. Although Kelsey's raised over $9 million, it hasn't been as easy as it may sound. She started with a small family and friends round to get the business started, but raising a seed round was seriously hard work. In fact, she had to go out and talk to over 100 investors before she was able to get her seed round. So we talk about the lessons she's learned there, as a SaaS entrepreneur, as a first-time founder, and as a female entrepreneur. So I hope you enjoy the interview…

Mike Muhney

Failing to Succeed: Lessons from a Failed Software Startup

Mike Muhney is the founder and CEO of VIP Orbit, a software company focused on building great contact management products. He launched their flagship product VIP Orbit in 2010 and they raised $6.5 million. Recently Mike had to shut down the business because he ran out of money and wasn't getting the traction that he'd hoped for.

Grant Miller

How Replicated is Making It Easier to Sell SaaS to Enterprise Businesses

Grant Miller is the co-founder of Replicated, a service that solves the problem for companies who want to install and deploy a SaaS application behind their own firewall in a corporate data center or private cloud. Previously, he was the co-founder of Look IO, a mobile live-chat problem that was acquired by LivePerson just 9 months after launch for several million dollars. He and his co-founder, Marc Campbell, have already raised $6.5 million dollars for Replicated. And they're been making solid progress in growing this new business.

Aaron Dallek

How a SaaS Startup is Disrupting the Eye Care Industry

Aaron Dallek is a serial entrepreneur who started his first business at the age of 14. He's currently the co-founder and CEO of Opternative, an online service that gives you a convenient way to get a prescription for glasses or contacts. With Opternative you complete an eye exam on your computer or tablet and get a prescription signed by a doctor without ever having to go to a doctor's office. The company was founded in 2012 and to date has raised $9.5 million in funding.

Pini Yakuel

SaaS Fundraising: How to Raise $20 Million for Your SaaS Startup

Pini Yakuel is the co-founder and CEO of Optimove, a SaaS product that uses its predictive customer modeling technology to help marketers understand customers and create personalized marketing campaigns. The company was founded in 2009. It initially started out as a consulting business. And the co-founders used the consulting revenue to fund the SaaS business. In 2012, they were offered $1.5 million in VC funding and turned it down. They continued self-funding the business until this year, when they raised $20 million in their first round. Optimove is based in Tel Aviv and has offices in New York and London.

Zvi Band, Contactually

How an Idea in Evernote Grew Into a Multi-Million Dollar SaaS Business

Zvi Band is the co-founder and CEO of Contactually, a CRM tool which helps you turn relationships into results. He's a software developer and entrepreneur who founded Contactually in 2011. And he's grown it into a multi-million dollar business with over 70 employees. The company is based in Washington DC and to date has raised over $12 million in funding. It all started in 2010 when Zvi fired up Evernote and wrote down an idea for a new product. He had no plan on what he was going to do with that idea. What he didn't realize at the time was that he had just planted a seed for a new business that he was going to build. For the next few months, he played with the idea, hacked together a prototype over a weekend, but didn't see it any more than a side project. Today, after 5 years that idea in Evernote has grown into a business that's generating several million dollars in revenue with over 70 employees. It's a great story and we'll share what Zvi did to turn that idea into product and business. We talk about the ONE thing that he wished he'd done differently — which is great advice for anyone in the early days of building their product. And we talk about what he still struggles with today (despite the success that he's had).

Kreg Peeler, SpinGo

The Surprising Website Metric That Gave This Founder His Startup Idea

Kreg Peeler is the founder and CEO of SpinGo, an integrated solution that helps event makers list, manage and promote events. SpinGo's event platform combines content from 100,000 sources to produce a robust local event search engine. Its API powers 5,500 entertainment apps, delivering event content to almost 200 million viewers per month. And it's Event Management product helps customers manage all aspects of event planning. In 2012, Kreg had a media website which included a local events section. His wife was curating the web, finding events and then manually entering this information into the website. One day, they discovered a surprising website metric that gave Kreg the idea for a new startup. It turned out to be a pretty good idea. Since then, they've grown SpinGo into a community of 200,000 event organizers and raised over $7 million in funding.

Daniel Ha, Disqus

How 2 Students Grew Their Startup Idea Into an 8-Figure Business

Daniel Ha is the co-founder and CEO of the blog commenting platform Disqus. He and his co-founder founded the company in 2007 while they were undergraduates at the University of California, and then shortly after dropping out to work on the business full-time. Not only was Disqus my guest's first business, it was also his first job. 9 years later, Disqus is used by millions of websites. It reaches over a billion unique visitors and handles over 50 million comments a day. The company generates 8-figures in annual revenue. It has raised over $20 million in funding and is based in San Francisco. We talk about how they came up with the idea, what they did to get early traction and how they've successfully grown the business to where it is today.

Judy Robinett, JudyRobinett.com

How to Pitch Your Startup and Get Funding (Even if You’re an Introvert)

Judy Robinett is the author of the book How to Be a Power Connector: The 5+50+100 Rule for Turning Your Business Network into Profits. In her 30 years of experience as an entrepreneur and corporate leader, she served as the CEO of both public and private companies. She's been on the advisory board of several venture capital firms and she was the managing director of Golden Seeds Angel Network (one of the largest angel investment groups in the US). She's been profiled in Fast Company, Forbes, Venture Beat, Huffington Post and Bloomberg Business Week as an example of a new breed of power connectors.

Alexandra Keating, DWNLD

How This Female Startup Founder Raised $14 Million

Alexandra Keating is the co-founder and CEO of DWNLD, a mobile app platform that enables media companies, brands, and influencers to easily and affordably create beautiful, native mobile apps. The platform can transform any website or web medium (social media channels, photos, GIFs, videos, etc.) into a fully-functional app in a matter of minutes. The company has raised $14M to date and is based in New York. Previously, Alexandra sold her first tech company, a charity platform that she started in Australia at the age of 19. And if that wasn't impressive enough, she's also the daughter of former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating.

B Byrne, Clef

Surprising Lessons from a 24-Year Old Startup CEO

B Byrne is the co-founder and CEO of Clef, a service that provides secure two-factor authentication without passwords or tokens. You just hold up your phone in front of any computer in the world and Clef will instantly log you in. The company is based in Oakland, California. It was founded in 2013 and to date has raised over $2M in funding.

Tom Leung, Anthology

How a Failing 2-Year Old Startup Achieved Product-Market Fit in 1 Week

Tom Leung is the co-founder and CEO of Anthology, a Seattle-based startup that was formerly known as Poachable. Anthology enables employed tech professionals to explore new career opportunities anonymously. Tom and his co-founder originally launched a startup called Yabbly, a consumer-to-consumer advice site. When that business didn't get traction, the team pivoted 8 times to launch Poachable which was later renamed to Anthology. The company has raised around $1.8 million to date and its investors include Vulcan Ventures. And companies recruiting through Anthology include Amazon, Microsoft, Netflix, Dropbox, Facebook and around 100 venture-backed startups.

Diego Oppenheimer, Algorithmia

Meet the Startup Founder Building a Marketplace for Algorithms

Diego Oppenheimer is the co-founder and CEO of Algorithmia, a Seattle-based startup that created an online marketplace that connects academics building powerful algorithms with app developers who can put them to use. The company was founded in 2013 and to date has raised almost $2.5 million in funding.

Aaron Epstein, Creative Market

7 Proven Strategies for Launching an Online Marketplace

Aaron Epstein is the co-founder of Creative Market, an online platform that lets you sell and buy handcrafted, mouse-made design content such as fonts and graphics. He launched his first software product called Color Schemer when he was still in college and went on to grow that into a 6-figures a year business. A few years later he met his co-founders and combined forces to work on an online creative community called COLOURlovers and eventually went through Y-Combinator. COLOURlovers grew into a community with over a million users. In 2012, they launched Creative Market and raised $2.3M dollars in funding, and 3 years later, sold Creative Market to Autodesk for an undisclosed amount.

Aaron Epstein, Creative Market

What Happens When You Stop Second Guessing & Trust Your Instincts

Aaron Epstein is the co-founder of Creative Market, an online platform that lets you sell and buy handcrafted, mouse-made design content such as fonts and graphics. He launched his first software product called ColorSchemer when he was still in college and went on to grow that into a 6-figures a year business. A few years later he met his co-founders and combined forces to work on an online creative community called COLOURlovers and eventually went through Y-Combinator. COLOURlovers grew into a community with over a million users. In 2012, they launched Creative Market and raised $2.3M dollars in funding, and about 16 months later, sold Creative Market to Autodesk for an undisclosed amount.

Robi Ganguly, Apptentive

How App Store Frustration Helped Make Over $100,000 a Month

Robi Ganguly is the co-founder and CEO of Apptentive, a SaaS platform that provides tools for mobile app makers to engage with customers for positive ratings, feedback and customer research. Apptentive's customers include UrbanSpoon, Overstock and RealNetworks. The company was founded in 2011 and to date has raised $6.5M in funding.

Walter Chen, iDoneThis

How a Blog Post Led to Zappos’s CEO Investing in This Startup

Walter Chen is the co-founder and CEO of IDoneThis, an email-based productivity tool that allows people to track their productivity with a daily email reminder. You reply to an evening email reminder with what you did that day. The next day, you get a digest with what everyone on the team got done. The company was founded in 2011 and its investors include folks such as the CEOs of Zappos, Shopify & Wistia. Walter is a software engineer and former big law firm lawyer.

Katherine Sears, Booktrope

How YC-Backed Startup Booktrope is Reinventing Book Publishing

Katherine Sears is the co-founder and chief marketing officer of Booktrope, a web platform that allows authors, editors, marketers and designers to form a team and work together to create and market a new book.

Pete Koomen, Optimizely

How the Co-Founders of Optimizely Went from Idea to First Customer in 1 Day

Pete Koomen is the co-founder and CTO of Optimizely – a leading website optimization and A/B testing platform. The company was founded in 2010 and to date has raised over $88 million in funding. Optimizely has over 8000 customers, including major brands such as Salesforce, Disney, and Starbucks. Prior to launching Optimizely, Pete worked at Google for 3 years.

Rand Fishkin, Moz

How Rand Fishkin Built an 8-Figure SaaS Business

Rand Fishkin is the Co-Founder of Moz, a Seattle-based SaaS company that sells inbound marketing & marketing analytics software. The company was founded in 2004 as a consulting firm and shifted to software development in 2008. The Moz website has an online community of more than one million digital marketers. To date, the company has raised just under $20M in funding.

Liz Pearce, LiquidPlanner

How Project Management Uncertainty Helped Build a 7-Figure SaaS Business

Liz Pearce is the CEO of Seattle-based LiquidPlanner, the industry’s only priority-based, predictive online project management solution. LiquidPlanner was founded in 2006 and although Liz isn’t a founder, she joined the company before the product launched and so has been involved since the very early days. To date, Liquid Planner has raised over $11 million in funding.

Adam Schoenfeld, Simply Measured

How a Failed Startup Helped Build an 8-Figure SaaS Business

Adam Schoenfeld is the co-founder & CEO of Simply Measured, a leading social media analytics and measurement platform used by brands such as Samsung, Microsoft, American Express and Pepsi to name a few. Adam founded Simply Measured in 2010 along with his co-founders Aviel Ginzburg and Damon Cortesi. The company now has over 150 employees and to date has raised $29 million in venture capital funding.

Kirk Simpson, Wave

How Wave Is Making Over a Million Small Business Owners Happier

Kirk Simpson is the co-founder and CEO of Wave, an integrated online solution designed for small businesses to manage their financial life. Wave has signed up well over 1,000,0000 users and currently serves customers in more than 200 countries around the world. And to date, Wave has raised over $25 million in VC funding.

Melanie Perkins, Canva

How Canva is Making Graphic Design Amazingly Simple for Everyone

Melanie Perkins is the 27-year-old co-founder and CEO of Canva, an online design platform which makes graphic design amazingly simple for everyone, by bringing together a drag-and-drop design tool with a library of more than a million stock photographs, graphic elements and fonts. Melanie founded Canva in 2012 and to date has raised over $6M in VC funding.

Andrew Filev, Wrike

How to Raise $11 Million by Making Project Management Social

Andrew Filev is the founder and CEO of Wrike, a provider of social project management and collaboration software that helps co-located and distributed teams to get things done together in real-time. Andrew founded the company in 2006 and to date has raised more than $11M in funding.

Sahil, Gumroad

How to Build a SaaS Product in a Weekend and Raise $8 Million

Sahil is the founder and CEO of Gumroad, a startup which enables creatives (such as writers, designers and musicians) to sell their products directly to their audience. Sahil founded Gumroad in 2011 and to date has raised more $8 million in funding.