Omer (00:11.360)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talked to Hannah Chaplin, the co founder and CEO of Receptive IO, a platform that helps SaaS companies to identify the highest impact things that the team should be working on right now.
The platform helps to gather feature requests and feedback from customers, internal teams and the market, and turn that data into clear and actionable insights.
Receptive IO was founded in 2015 and is based in Sheffield, England.
The founders came up with the idea for Receptive when they were running another business and struggling to manage feature requests and feedback from their own customers.
After building an mvp, they joined an accelerator in England and spent about five months just doing customer interviews.
They learned that they were focusing on the wrong customers and needed to think bigger.
But once they built the product, they also had a hard time selling to those big customers because they lacked sales experience and know how.
In this episode we talk about how they overcame those challenges, what they did to grow the business, and what they've learned from making many mistakes along the way.
It's a great interview.
I really enjoyed chatting with Hannah and I hope you'll enjoy this interview too.
Hannah, welcome to the show.
Hannah Chaplin (01:47.620)
Hello.
Thank you very much for having me.
I've been looking forward to this.
So, yeah, thank you.
Omer (01:52.500)
Now, my usual icebreaker question is what gets you out of bed every day?
And so do you have a favorite quote or something in your own words that you can share with us just what drives or motivates you to work on your business every day?
Hannah Chaplin (02:04.340)
So in terms of getting out of bed, it's my bike, so I bike to work.
I'm obsessed with my bike, so that's what gets me out of bed.
Or one of the kids.
It's one of those things.
Motivational quote is GIF Row, which is courtesy of my co founder, Dan Dukeson.
And GIF row stands transfer.
I'll go with the polite version, which is get it flipping rolled out.
Dan and I have founded businesses together for over a decade now and I think I used to be a bit more of a perfectionist, so he instilled the power of GIF Row, which is, you know, get it rolled out, get it tested, otherwise you don't know.
So that's kind of the company policy, I guess.
Omer (02:40.560)
Is that something you guys made up or.
It's.
I've never heard that Before I literally have.
Hannah Chaplin (02:45.920)
I literally have no idea.
I'll ask Dan tomorrow.
I'll email you about that because I literally don't know where it came from other than Dan.
Omer (02:53.100)
Okay, so that's the polite version of it.
Yeah, we'll stick with that one.
Hannah Chaplin (02:55.740)
I think we'll go with that today.
Yes.
Omer (02:58.300)
All right, so tell us a little bit about receptive.
What does the product do and what's the problem that you're trying to solve?
Hannah Chaplin (03:05.020)
So we're a specialist product for B2B SaaS companies.
I think SaaS companies have a huge, huge opportunity when it comes to product feedback.
So all day long you get like feature requests and feedback from.
You've got big customer base, you have internal teams and you've got like the market and the prospects.
Receptive, centralized, all that data, it's all prioritized by users, ongoing.
So you've got a really nice set of information, like fresh information to work with.
And then at the end there's all this business intelligence reporting.
So you can see what are the top things enterprise customers need versus churned users, for example.
So it allows you to like slice and dice all your product feedback and then make really good decisions about what makes it onto your roadmap based on the wider goals of the company.
Omer (03:47.880)
And so this is sort of evolving from somebody using a spreadsheet to manage feature requests and something more sophisticated.
Hannah Chaplin (03:56.570)
Exactly.
So when you, you know, if you're just starting out or if you're smaller company, a spreadsheet or like Trello works really well for this sort of thing.
But at scale, you need to, you know, as your business scales, you need to scale that feedback process.
Because if you don't, like, every team feels it, like product team don't know what to build next.
Customer success and particularly support, end up fielding all of this data which does come into your company.
And customers are frustrated because all that information they give you goes into a black hole.
So the problem scales up and it's at that point you need to think about putting a solution in place that works for everyone.
Omer (04:33.900)
Yeah, And I've been there.
And when I was at Microsoft, we were kind of going through this process of, okay, we're in the middle of shipping a version of a product, let's start collecting requirements.
And sometimes you might end up several months of building up this backlog.
And I remember a point where it was simple as a spreadsheet and you could open it up and There was like 7, 800 feature requests there, and you're just like, oh, my God, where do I start?
Right?
It's like it was almost easier just to say, let me just delete this and ask people again.
Hannah Chaplin (05:08.930)
Exactly.
So you end up with, like, this horrible, scary spreadsheet.
You don't know who that feedback's come from.
You don't understand how important it is, because priorities change all the time.
Like, customers that start using your product today will have very different feedback to people who've used it for a year.
That's just, you know, one tiny example.
And if you don't control that, you know, that data set, like you say, it's really scary, but you can actually harness it because there's brilliant information in there that.
That can really grow your company if you get your hands on it.
Omer (05:38.550)
So how did you come up with the idea for this business?
Hannah Chaplin (05:41.910)
Classic, like, solving your own problem sort of thing.
So in our last SaaS business, we were selling to SMEs and we were getting feature requests and feedback all day long.
And we also had a free trial.
So we read all this feedback.
It was just a massive lump.
And then we also started landing some, like, bigger accounts.
And we were just very reactive.
We were reacting to customers who were harassing us, not in a bad way, because there was something in the product that wasn't meeting their needs.
So we had a tendency to listen to the loudest voice or go with the last thing we heard on a sales call.
And we also got ourselves in a position where we'd landed our biggest account we were really excited about, and we ended up getting pulled around by them too much.
We were taking their feedback to heart too much, which meant we were neglecting other customers and we weren't charging enough as a whole.
Whole bag of problems.
So we learned very quickly that we had to understand that information to know what to build next.
Omer (06:46.920)
Okay, so you're scratching your own itch.
You've got a pain, but you're already running another business.
Right.
So at what point did you decide that this idea was your new business?
Hannah Chaplin (06:58.840)
Yeah, sure.
It's funny, I can't really remember.
It was quite a while ago now.
It feels like ages ago.
But we essentially got to the point where the other business had hit, like, a kind of nice point.
There was three of us involved in that.
So the kind of third founder took over, and Dan and I, we just felt we were like, oh, this is such a big problem.
We did a little bit of research at that point, talked to other friends who'd started, like, little SaaS businesses here and there.
We were like, right, let's do this.
So we did.
We're a bit mad like that.
Omer (07:32.200)
And are any of you technical, like, who built the product?
Hannah Chaplin (07:36.930)
So Dan built the product.
I'm from quite a technical background as well, but Dan very much kind of led the way on that.
So we did an MVP to start off with to kind of solve our own problem.
And then from there we actually ended up going on like an accelerator program.
And we did like in England.
Yeah, yeah, up in Newcastle, actually, called Ignite.
It was a really, really good program.
But what, what that did is it gave us the time just to validate the need before we jumped into.
We actually didn't build product for about four or five months beyond that little prototype that we'd created.
Omer (08:11.200)
So what were you doing in those four or five months?
Hannah Chaplin (08:14.240)
So when we were on the accelerator program, we basically spent four or five months doing pure customer development and research.
We had like a bit of a hypothesis for who we thought receptive could help.
And then we came out the other end with like a completely different idea and that's when we started building products.
So I think for anyone who's thinking of building anything, like, don't write a line of code until you've gone away and validated your idea and got your hands on as many people as possible, you know, to really understand what problems you're solving and, you know, if there's actually a market for what you think you should be building.
Omer (08:50.619)
So what kind of validation were you doing?
Hannah Chaplin (08:55.259)
A lot of it was interviews.
So we were looking off through the accelerator to have like a lot of sessions where we were introduced to like other SaaS companies or we kind of got to know a small group of people.
That led on to more introductions.
We just met as many people as possible.
We were on the phone loads.
We were going on site and talking to people and just really understanding, you know, what was going on in these SaaS companies when it came to product feedback.
And we never thought of it in terms of feature set either.
We asked very open questions.
A lot of it was around.
Have you heard of the Mom?
So it's American title, the Mom Test.
Have you heard of that book, if you come across that one?
Omer (09:32.560)
I have, yeah.
I came across that a couple of years ago.
Hannah Chaplin (09:35.280)
I think that was really helpful.
It just helps you think about how to frame questions because I think like, the tendency is to, you know, build product, build features rather than, you know, really understanding what you're doing in the first place.
So that was a really huge help to us.
Omer (09:52.220)
Interesting.
Yeah.
I can't remember who was the author of that book.
Hannah Chaplin (09:54.300)
Do you remember Rob Fitzpatrick, I believe.
Oh, is it Fitzpatrick?
I think that's his name.
I shall Google it.
We'll link to at the end or something.
Omer (10:03.870)
Yeah, yeah, we should probably do that.
Hannah Chaplin (10:04.910)
I feel really bad because we did, like, a talk together last year.
I feel really bad.
Omer (10:09.070)
You're right.
Yeah.
Hannah Chaplin (10:09.870)
Rob Fitz.
Rob.
I didn't forget your name.
Omer (10:15.150)
Okay.
So I'm interested to know, like, how did things change over those four or five months?
Like, what were the insights that you gained that were different from where you started out?
Because this is a typical situation that, you know, any entrepreneur gets into is that you've got the idea, you think this is your market, this is the problem that you're solving, and it may or may not be where you end up eventually.
But kind of going through this process, I'm curious to know what you learned and how that shifted the direction for you guys.
Hannah Chaplin (10:48.360)
Sure.
So the word think that you used is key there.
I think you think you've got, you know, a handle on who your customer is and what you're doing, but until you have those conversations, you haven't really.
So things that we really opened up to during those four or five months was like, who that target customer is in terms of company size.
So we thought receptive might be for, like, small companies and startups and that sort of thing.
And we very quickly realized when we started talking to scaling SaaS companies and enterprise SaaS companies that the problem scaled like crazy.
So we got really excited about that and quickly realized that that was where the opportunity was.
Like I said earlier, when you're a small company, you can actually get by on a spreadsheet or whatever.
In a large company, this problem affects everybody and everything.
So that was a really big lesson.
Omer (11:39.910)
So I think that's a really good insight there, that a solution like receptive could work for a small company to replace a spreadsheet.
But I think what you're telling me here is that with larger businesses, the pain was a lot higher.
So the motivation for someone in a larger company to use a solution like receptive is much higher.
Hannah Chaplin (12:04.270)
Exactly.
Yes.
And there's a lot more at stake in some ways as well, with a larger company, like the sheer volume of time and effort that you can waste, like building the wrong things and the implications of that at a large scale.
When you've got to make sure your valuation's going up, you've got to make sure you're satisfying your shareholders, you've got to make sure you customers are happy, the stakes just get higher.
The cost of making bad product decisions is just a lot worse, I think, on a bigger scale and a lot harder to recover from than when you were kind of agile, nimble little startup.
Omer (12:38.890)
Okay, so you've got these insights.
You have the MVP that Dan built four or five months earlier.
What did you do next?
Did you kind of then say, okay, now we're going to kind of get heads down and, and start building the product that we think these customers need?
Hannah Chaplin (12:55.390)
Yes, that's the point.
We were like, okay, we've learned enough, we know enough.
We're like, right, we're going for this.
That was the turning point.
And it was also around that time, Kevin Beals, who's been really influential in this business, he ended up being our lead angel investor and he's the CEO of a company called Refract.
And together with him, we put like an angel round of investment together.
So we were kind of building version one of the product, raised a bit of money to get us going and to be able to allow us to make our first hire or two, and then went from there.
Then we were on the race to start selling and getting customers on board.
Omer (13:32.620)
So how long did it take you to kind of improve the product to a point where you could start going out and selling it?
Hannah Chaplin (13:40.220)
It was quite light to start with, I guess, as all products are.
We were just trying to solve the problem, the core issue or pain point of giving people a separate channel for feedback to go into.
Because as I said earlier, a lot of feedback before all of that goes into the support team or customer success.
So we built like a really easy way to integrate with, receptive with your product so customers can make suggestions and prioritize and add a bit transparency in there.
So it's basically about getting the feedback in, getting people to prioritize and kicking some reporting out.
So it really quite, quite simple to start with.
But it was, you know, it was enough.
Omer (14:17.180)
I think that's really smart.
Rather than saying, okay, let's, let's kind of ship this product and with all the bells and whistles and everything and potentially take, you know, a year before we're sort of done with it.
I'm curious why you decided that that feedback slash, sort of transparency scenario was like the most important thing for you to work on.
Hannah Chaplin (14:41.830)
That came from all that customer development we did over those months.
Basically, that's what it all boiled down to.
It's like, where can we add the most value?
What's the biggest pain for today?
Because now customers, like I said, scaling enterprise, end of the SaaS market and the way the product has evolved, we didn't wake up one day and go, right, we're selling to the enterprise.
Let's build all this stuff.
We've used our own product, obviously, to help us make those good decisions.
And, you know, each time we've bought, like a stretchy deal in or a bit of a bigger customer, that's when we've had to adjust not only the product, actually, the product's almost been like an aside.
The.
The biggest way the company's changed is in understanding how receptive, like, transforms the processes within a company.
And with that kind of thing of working with bigger companies is all like, legals and this, that and the other, and insurances.
That was a real big learning curve.
Actually, one of our bigger customers we onboarded last year, I think we spent about two or three months just getting the legals right.
And that was like, oh, okay.
It was a bit of a surprise, I think.
Omer (15:49.050)
Wow.
Okay.
All right.
So you've got the product, you've got a very specific scenario that you're focusing on building, and you've got good feedback from the kind of the customer development interviews that you were doing to know that that's the one thing that you should focus on.
What happened when you went out and started trying to sell the product?
Were people as receptive as they were when they gave you suggestions?
Hannah Chaplin (16:18.070)
Well, those early days were like, we were just making it up.
We kind of didn't know what to like.
The companies have run before have been quite a different shape.
So this, like, I guess this leads nicely onto, like, the thinking about the growth lessons.
And I just started writing content.
That's how we started acquiring our first customers.
Just because I was really interested in the space in SaaS, in feedback in general, and through writing.
That's where a lot of the ideas developed about how we market the product.
But, gosh, the first few months, we didn't know what we were doing.
We were offered free trials and we don't do that anymore.
That didn't work out.
We've tried outbound sales.
We've tried.
We've done all sorts.
I think it takes you a little while to get into that rhythm, or at least it did with us as well, because we just didn't know which channels were going to work.
Omer (17:07.590)
I'm curious why you decided to start writing content.
Like, I would have thought that, or maybe you did this, that going back to the people that you had interviewed would be maybe your first Potential customer.
Hannah Chaplin (17:19.390)
Yes.
So we absolutely did that as well and kept them in the loop.
Along the way we found ourselves in a bit of a tricky situation with, with quite a few of them actually, because they met us as you know.
This is Hannah and Dan, they're just starting out, they're on an accelerator program and I think that first impression seemed to really matter.
And a lot of larger companies don't want to buy from a little startup that doesn't know what they're doing.
And that's a real hurdle.
I think you've got to.
It takes a little while to get over that.
And a lot of the connections we had as well were, were kind of UK based and we ended up finding our real market and traction was coming from America.
So that, yeah, that was interesting.
Again, you don't know until you get started.
You don't know any of this till you just get stuck in.
It goes back to gift row, you know, like I said, you've just got to go for it and you learn and kind of make your way step at a time.
Omer (18:14.710)
So these companies were kind of happy to get involved in interviews and give you feedback, but when it came back to okay, here's the product, they were like, well, I'm not really sure because we're a pretty big company and we have a lot of, you know, things going on and I'm not sure we can rely on you guys to do that because you're just starting out.
Was that kind of the gist of it?
Hannah Chaplin (18:35.610)
Yeah, I honestly think that had an impact like through the customer development did like I guess luckily in a sort of way we talked to a lot of people that would never buy receptive now because of how we've evolved and what the product is today.
But that was part of the learning process, like interviewing lots of what we'd consider like bad fit customers or people that couldn't use receptive today.
So there was a lot of those.
But out of the, I guess the people who would have been a better fit, we certainly got that pushback and I think it was because like I said, they'd met us as just two people and that was it.
Just two people on an accelerator with a half baked product.
So that's tricky, I think.
I'm not sure really how to get, how to get around that.
Omer (19:18.460)
So you started writing content.
But you know, we often hear that content is the slow road to getting traction because you have to do it regularly.
You have to invest months and months before you're going to start to get noticed.
What was your experience and how long did it take for you to start getting customers through sort of content marketing?
Hannah Chaplin (19:42.860)
I think a good channel, like one kind of good channel we used first was just going out and seeing what was out there already.
So Quora has paid off again and again.
So that's a, like Q and A website and there were just a few people knocking around on there, you know, asking questions about how to manage feature requests, how to say no to feature requests, that sort of thing.
I think that's a really good place to start.
But I think, you know, looking back three, four years ago, when receptive was, you know, just a.
A baby, the whole market was a lot less mature.
This whole product feedback idea was so, so new that most people didn't know what to do with it.
So I think the writing was almost quite therapeutic.
It's where a lot of ideas came out and a lot of our learnings came out when we started like writing about it and that, like I said earlier, that all fed back into the product and into the marketing as well.
So, yeah, just.
It just kind of started from there and we started seeing leads come in from the content and we were like, okay, let's just, let's keep going with this because something's working.
Omer (20:47.760)
You mentioned that you tried outbound sales and that didn't work.
Can you tell me a little bit about kind of what happened there?
Hannah Chaplin (20:56.160)
Yeah, I love having Kevin, the famous Kevin Beals.
We always have quite good discussions around this because interestingly, his business in fact is built around an outbound sales model.
We've gone for more inbound.
I think it's purely like, what can you do with the people and the team that you've got?
And writing and content was like our go to thing.
And then when we started trying outbound, I'm not sure we did it in the right way.
I'm not sure if it's the best approach for us anyway.
I don't know if the market we sell to, which is other SaaS companies, I don't know if they're just really wise to outbound techniques and whether it's a good method for us.
But I've, you know, I've not ruled it out at all.
And it's something we're gonna definitely come back to.
I think it's like, it's just another channel, isn't it?
There's lots of different ways to get traction and leads in.
And for the time, like we tried outbound proper maybe about 18 months, two years ago, so it was a while ago but yeah, we just had to double down on our efforts because we weren't seeing the same ROI with the outbound activity we were doing.
Omer (21:59.600)
And so you switched to content marketing and you talked about Quora.
Were you kind of just going in there and answering questions or was it a combination of also starting to blog and create content and maybe kind of cross promote that in your answers or how were you doing that?
Hannah Chaplin (22:17.920)
It's like anything you kind of gradually built up and we learned as we went along.
So we started answering posts on Quora.
We had the blog on the.
The website was like the first thing we got up and running on the kind of marketing site.
So there was the blog going, there was Quora.
We were looking at places that, you know, the people who would be interested in receptive, like hangouts, so like LinkedIn groups, if there are any slack communities we could like be helpful in and that sort of thing.
And today it's evolved to.
We've got like an industry podcast.
We've got Churn it up, which is our director of customer success.
She heads that up.
It's really good, practical customer success advice.
We run webinars for, you know, just generally useful content for people.
Webinars just for our customers as well.
So all sorts different.
We've got books, white papers, research.
It's like over the years, it's just evolved.
But I think a lot of that is because it's just, it's such an interesting problem to tackle.
It's really fun to write about, it's really fun to talk about.
And we work with our customers really closely as well.
You are sorry I said it might
Omer (23:23.990)
be for you, but you know, feature.
Managing feature requests and prioritizing that stuff.
Fun is not the first word that comes to me.
Hannah Chaplin (23:33.670)
Okay, maybe, maybe not fun for some people.
Okay, okay.
Omer (23:40.470)
So content marketing was kind of one way that you started finding customers.
What else were you doing to get customers?
Hannah Chaplin (23:49.180)
It's mainly like it's been inbound, basically.
But I think I quickly realized as we started to grow.
I remember having a meltdown to Dan about 10 o' clock one night about.
I had this realization that we started getting customers on board but we weren't helping them enough.
Like we weren't doing a good enough job of.
I didn't know what, like, this is a bit embarrassing.
I didn't know what customer success was.
Always being very, very customer focused and worked in that side of other businesses we've had.
But this term customer success was quite new back then.
But we've invested really heavily in that from day one.
So after this big meltdown, I was like, we need someone to look after customers properly.
That's when we hired Ali, who's now the director of customer success here.
And that has been absolutely fundamental in growth.
I don't know what we'd do without Ali and the team.
That was a smart decision.
Omer (24:43.080)
So give me an example of what was happening before you were focusing on customer success and how things changed after you started to put some focus into that area.
Hannah Chaplin (24:58.520)
Sure.
So we're talking like, you know, very early days.
This is like just me and Dan, like I don't think we even had an office.
So we're going back three, four years.
And it was just, I was trying to do everything.
So I was trying to run, like when we had demos in, I was doing like the demos, I was doing the content, I was doing the marketing.
And then as customers were coming in, I realized what a big task it was in hand to get people set up successfully and to make sure that we were meeting their needs as well.
Obviously had the feedback part covered, but it goes a lot beyond that.
It's the whole process.
So luckily that, like I say, because we've had always a very customer focused mindset, that realization that we needed this person to cover that function happened very, very quickly.
We're talking in the first couple of months.
So since then it's.
It's just like evolved and, and grown to being like a function of business, like we're really proud of.
Omer (25:50.570)
Is there like an example that you can give me of a particular, like, customer situation that, like, what was happening before, like, people would sign up and they would get onto using the product, but something was happening there that kind of caused that frustration for you and that kind of meltdown that you talked about with Dan.
Hannah Chaplin (26:09.100)
Yeah, like I said, it was so early.
We literally, we probably had two or three customers.
It was like that early.
But the frustration just bubbled over from just realizing how much of the organization receptive helped and then being frustrated that, okay, I don't have time to like onboard people properly.
I don't have time to help people if they've got an issue.
So I've seen some companies, like grow to quite a big size before they start focusing on customer success.
And I can say luckily it happened so early.
There wasn't too much of a before and after.
Omer (26:43.290)
I guess that's quite unusual to have only two or three customers and kind of start to feel like customer success is such a.
Have such a sense of urgency behind that.
I think it's great.
Hannah Chaplin (26:55.780)
It's a bit odd though.
I know what you're saying.
Other people have said that to us.
It was like just normal, just completely normal.
It was just.
It was just.
That's what the business needed.
So that's what we did.
It didn't feel like we did anything special or unusual.
But the more I've talked to other people and we know the customer success space quite well now and I realized it is a little bit odd, but it's good, so I recommend that.
Omer (27:17.860)
And so content marketing, customer success, was there anything else behind the growth for the business?
Hannah Chaplin (27:28.010)
A couple of other big things that sprang to mind were like just getting yourself in that testing mindset.
I think it's very easy not to test things.
So an example will help.
Like as we've changed the marketing, messaging and that sort of thing.
We test everything.
We use Optimize.
It's like a Google tool so you can serve up different versions of your homepage.
So we've done that quite recently with a redesign.
So we're testing messaging, all the different messages.
We obviously run tests through all the paid ads.
Then when it comes to customer onboarding as well, we're very reflective.
And again, that goes back to getting customer success in early.
Like our customer success function is unrecognizable even from 12 months ago because that's evolving all the time.
It's okay.
What works well, what resources do people need?
What could we have done better?
So being in that mindset of, you know, thinking we need to evolve and learn all the time and test things out and that we don't have all the answers to everything, we found that a really healthy way of thinking when it comes to growing as well.
Omer (28:31.840)
So you mentioned is it optimized or optimizedly?
Hannah Chaplin (28:35.120)
Optimize.
Let me type it.
Optimize Google.
Oh, the Google is what we've been using.
So that's worked really nicely.
Running the split test and things got it.
Omer (28:45.440)
So that was kind of on the marketing side.
And were you doing like similar kind of testing within the product or was it just about kind of acquisition?
Hannah Chaplin (28:56.120)
I think the biggest evolution we've seen has been through like the customer success process through the marketing.
The sales process has changed loads as well.
That was really, really tough to learn, like how to sell effectively, basically.
So we ended, we had a free trial.
We got rid of a free trial.
When we got big companies in, we didn't know what to do with them for a while.
So we had to learn how to do all that because obviously when you're selling a solution like receptive, it doesn't just impact one person or one team.
So that's been quite tricky, learning how to get to decision makers in large companies and how to make sure that we're giving people the right information.
So again, a lot of that has come from testing, like trying different approaches, like what if we give people a demo account, what if we don't let people have a demo account?
We've just been trying to find what works best for people who want to buy.
So that approach has extended to everything.
The product side is a bit, a bit different because we're, I say because we're using receptive and because all of our customers in there like prioritizing, you know, where they're finding pain in the product and what we can improve.
We work with customers so closely on that stuff that we don't.
We do test, but I think it's in a different way.
We know the problem we need to solve and then we work with customers to kind of make sure we're putting the best solutions in place.
Omer (30:16.490)
So I'm curious, why do you think the free trials didn't work for you?
Hannah Chaplin (30:21.690)
So we messed up at first with them because we didn't like this is really quite basic.
Don't laugh.
When people signed up for a free trial, we weren't even getting their phone number so we couldn't get hold of people.
I just feel like an idiot now even saying that, just basic things like that to start with, that shows how much we didn't understand what we were doing.
But some SaaS products are like that.
Some SaaS products are very self serve and we've had to kind of learn about what the best sales process is for people who want to buy and how we can help them the most.
So with free trials, I think the issues were like not getting a phone number and not engaging in a conversation.
I think the more conversations you can have with prospects, the better.
That's where you do all your learning.
You learn why people buy, why people don't buy, how you can help them, what you can and can't help with all sorts of stuff.
So for us it was just not being able to get hold of people, people disappearing.
It's just the type of customer we sell to, they want the service, they want the demos and you know, that's where we actually add the most value and can help the most anyway.
So it's kind of worked out well, I think.
Omer (31:25.310)
So what does a typical sales cycle look like for you?
Because you're saying most of your leads are currently inbound.
And so where does that start?
With some kind of request for a demo?
Hannah Chaplin (31:39.660)
Yeah, so very often people like doing the research online.
They'll find receptive and then they have we run like a short discovery call which is just 10 minutes long and we just basically find out if we can help.
If we can't, we'll tell people, make suggestions and try and be useful.
And if we can help, then we schedule a demo which includes like a stakeholder demo as we call it.
So it gets all the people on board that are involved in, in that decision and in seeing if they want to go ahead.
And then from there it's order form, legals, all that sort of procurement process depending on the size of the business we're dealing with.
Omer (32:15.970)
Okay, I'm very glad that you said a stakeholder demo and I think I know what the thoughts are behind that.
But yeah, I mean just for maybe people who are not thinking about that.
Why?
I mean if somebody kind of calls you from a random company and says hey, I'm interested in this, you could give them a demo.
But a stakeholder demo means getting more people into the room.
And there are probably reasons, a number of reasons around that in terms of making the buying decision easier as well as better understanding what they're trying to do as well as helping them onboard.
I don't know what those things are, but there's a reason why you try to get all those people together for the demo, right?
Hannah Chaplin (32:53.580)
Yeah, absolutely.
And this totally just like, I guess a little disclaimer.
This totally depends on like the product you're selling, who you're selling to and what market you're going after.
Like every time it's been different in different businesses, but in our case we have to have the stakeholder demo.
We just have to have the, you know, some from support, customer success from product.
It just creates so much buy in and you can address everyone's questions directly and kind of go from there.
It just, it just makes the process much nicer for it, gives everyone time to get all the questions and concerns out, ask about the process.
It just works really well getting more people involved.
Omer (33:34.960)
Okay.
And then so once you've done the stakeholder demo, what happens next is how much of it kind of is self service or is there still a sort of an onboarding component that you and your team have to help with?
Hannah Chaplin (33:48.320)
Yeah, absolutely.
So once if all looks good, it's order form legals.
Like I say, if it's a big company that can actually that can take quite a while, actually.
That was definitely a big learning for us, like I mentioned earlier.
And then we go into customer success onboarding and actually we don't have sales people as such.
Sales is done by customer success.
We think that.
Well, we call it.
Don't know if we call it prospect success all of the time, but to us, customer success is everything.
From the first time someone contacts us, we treat them as a customer and help them to the best of our ability.
And we found that works really, really nicely.
You know, there's no salesperson ramming stuff down your throat that you.
That you don't need.
It's just customer success who have got all those stories of what works well and what doesn't.
They know how to help you.
And that's been really, really valuable actually, as well.
Okay, cool.
Omer (34:41.430)
So I'm kind of curious in terms of the best practices that I think that maybe people can take away from here about how to think about prioritizing what they're doing.
Let's say somebody's listening to this and maybe they're not right now at a stage where using receptive makes sense for them.
Is there any advice or best practices that you can offer people in terms of how they can get a better handle on their own, collecting of their sort of feedback and feature requests, and improving transparency with customers, etc.
Hannah Chaplin (35:23.330)
There's a couple of things.
The first one, both can be done by anyone, any product, without receptive.
The first one is just get all of your product feedback in one place.
Just agree with your product team.
I don't know what team you'll be on, but if you've got a product team or if you're on the product team, just make sure all this feedback's going into one place because it can end up in spreadsheets and emails all over the place.
If you've got a system of record for all of this information, everyone knows where to put it and your product team know where to go and get it.
It's amazing how many companies just struggle with that and it makes a big difference.
So just get your feedback in one place.
The second thing, actually, we launched earlier this year and doing a bit of an initiative around it because we didn't expect it to be so successful.
So it's been really nice.
And it's what we call the product feedback policy.
I said to you that sounds really dull, but it has.
I can send you some examples that SAS companies have done, but the way we kind of explain it is like, imagine running a support team without an SLA in place.
Or imagine employing hundreds of people without an employment contract.
The product feedback policy just out outlines your approach to customer feedback, where customer feedback should go.
So that goes back to a separate channel thing.
It might be something as simple as a dedicated email address or a customer facing like Trello board, and then how the product team handle your feedback.
And it's really simple.
We've got a template, actually, which I can send over to you if you like to kind of pop in the notes.
Omer (37:02.430)
Sure, yeah.
Hannah Chaplin (37:03.540)
But yes, it's just really simple.
It makes a huge difference because everybody knows what to expect.
They know how often you review feedback, they know how your company values and uses it.
And it just doesn't.
Just stops customers feeling like anything they tell you just disappears.
Yeah, it just works really, really nicely.
And as I say, we're doing a bit an initiative around that soon.
So that's two top tips right there.
Omer (37:30.160)
Yeah, definitely.
It'd be great if you could share that and if we can give people access to the product feedback policy and we'll put a disclaimer.
It's more exciting than it sounds.
Hannah Chaplin (37:43.280)
I need a fancy name for it, but that works nice.
It says what it does.
Omer (37:50.000)
So one thing I didn't ask you was, when it comes to Receptive, what is your secret sauce?
What do you think helps you to provide those insights that these businesses need?
Hannah Chaplin (38:03.220)
I think it's just.
We've just completely focused on helping B2B SaaS companies.
And because we're really narrow in that sense, we've been able to develop a really specialist product that tackles this pain point that is basically, you know, it's done badly on spreadsheets at the moment.
So I think the secret sauce is like making a real difference in that area and making a big difference to these companies.
It's kind of growing from there.
Omer (38:31.010)
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Can you give us a sense of the size of the business?
I know you're under some constraints on how much you could disclose around investment and stuff like revenue and things like that, but give us a sense of the size of the business or the team or customers or anything else that you can share with us.
So we can help us understand where receptive is right now.
Hannah Chaplin (38:53.010)
Sure.
So all the companies are scaling, enterprise B2B SaaS companies.
So we're into the hundreds at the customer count.
And then with end users, I think we're just over a million users now, which is a really nice milestone to hit.
And the team's growing.
We've just done Some hiring really recently on the product side, we've been looking at opening an office like over in Boston, because a lot of our customer base is over in the States.
So we did a bit of an exploratory trip at the end of last year.
So that's pretty exciting.
And in terms of when it comes to investment, at the moment, we're growing really nicely from revenues, which is a really nice position to be in.
I'm not keen on vc.
That's probably a discussion for another day.
So we basically took on like four angel investors in the early days to get us started and we bought them on board just for their expertise.
They're all proper business people who've done this over and over again and they've just been fantastic to work with.
Some.
I'm really pleased with the kind of route we chose to go down when it came to funding.
Omer (39:58.470)
Awesome.
Now, before we get into the lightning round, I want to ask you just one question.
If you could go back 2015, give yourself some advice on what you do differently, what would that one thing be?
Hannah Chaplin (40:10.710)
I wish I'd known more about sales, honestly.
So me and Dan are very strong on product, we're very strong on technical side, on writing, on marketing.
But sales has been a steep, steep old learning curve.
Luckily, Kevin has been amazing.
He's in enterprise sales, he's fantastic.
But I think recognizing that earlier as a gap in the business would have certainly helped and gone a long way.
Omer (40:40.550)
So was it about becoming better at or learning to sell or was it becoming more comfortable with doing sales?
Hannah Chaplin (40:49.460)
Yeah, I think it was all of that.
I think it was all of those things.
It's like being a real journey, just the whole process around sales and, you know, it's just a completely different way to selling that I'd never done before.
So, yeah, I wish I'd been better at that earlier on.
Omer (41:09.010)
All right, well, let's get onto the lightning round then.
So I'm going to ask you seven questions.
Just try to answer them as quickly as you can.
Hannah Chaplin (41:14.210)
Are you timing this?
Is this a test?
Omer (41:16.570)
I am, yeah.
Hannah Chaplin (41:17.210)
Oh, no.
Omer (41:20.130)
All right, what's the best piece of business advice that you've ever received?
Hannah Chaplin (41:24.850)
Don't think too much.
Omer (41:27.010)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Hannah Chaplin (41:30.930)
Nothing work related.
Because it's important to read.
That's not business stuff.
So I think reading is really good for relaxing.
So anything that's not to do with work.
If I had to pick a workbook, I recently read Play Bigger, which is about category design.
Really good read that One.
Omer (41:46.310)
What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Hannah Chaplin (41:52.150)
I really respect people that are just hard working and down to earth.
I don't like any of these swaggering types.
Omer (41:59.510)
Is that swaggering types?
Hannah Chaplin (42:00.950)
I love that.
Omer (42:04.010)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Hannah Chaplin (42:09.050)
Biking to work.
Honestly, if you run a bike to work, you just so hyper the rest of the day.
That would be it.
Omer (42:18.410)
That's good advice.
What's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the extra time?
Hannah Chaplin (42:23.970)
Don't thought about.
This isn't very quick fire now is it?
I thought about this earlier and I've written down Everlasting Gobstoppers.
Something to do with sustainability or the environment and a farm.
So take your pick.
Oh dear.
Omer (42:42.010)
The Everlasting Gobstoppers sounds pretty good.
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Hannah Chaplin (42:49.610)
I am involved in local politics, so I'm a parish councillor in the area I live in, so I really like politics.
I also play the trombone.
It's a bit random.
Omer (42:58.340)
Trombone and you play guitar?
You didn't mention that.
And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Hannah Chaplin (43:07.140)
There's a few.
Is that okay?
Omer (43:08.820)
Absolutely.
Hannah Chaplin (43:12.180)
Local politics and like community stuff.
Mountain biking, karate and my kids.
In that order.
I'm only joking.
We might put the kids at the top list.
My kids and family as well.
Omer (43:24.780)
Love it.
You sound too nice to be into politics.
Hannah Chaplin (43:28.620)
What?
Omer (43:29.580)
Yeah.
You know, maybe you're just being a little bit chilled out here.
Hannah Chaplin (43:36.140)
I find it really difficult to be horrible most of the time, so I like to think I'm a nice, approachable counsellor for Outerbridge.
Omer (43:45.980)
Love it.
Cool.
Hannah, thanks for joining me.
It's been really fun chatting with you and learning about Receptive.
Now if people want to find out more about Receptive, they can go to Receptive IO you can schedule a demo there as well.
If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Hannah Chaplin (44:05.580)
Feel free to drop me an email hannahceptive IO and I'm on Twitter as well, which is Hanchapolino.
Omer (44:14.780)
Okay, great.
I'll include that in the show notes as well.
Hannah Chaplin (44:18.930)
Perfect.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I've really enjoyed it.
Thanks ever so much.
Omer (44:22.690)
Yeah, me too.
It was fun and I wish you all the best and we'll look forward to seeing what you guys are up to at Receptive over the coming year.
Cool.
Likewise.
Hannah Chaplin (44:32.850)
Thank you very much.
Omer (44:34.050)
Cheers.
