The SaaS Podcast: Founder Interviews - Page 7

Nik Mijic, Matik

From Zero Sales Skills to Founder-Led Sales Machine

Nik Mijic is the co-founder and CEO of Matik, a SaaS product that automates data-driven presentations in PowerPoint and Google Slides. Before starting Matik, Nik worked as a program manager at LinkedIn, where he built internal tools that helped sales and customer success teams create data-heavy decks. In 2018, Nik realized that many B2B companies were wasting hours manually pulling data from Salesforce, Tableau, and other sources just to build quarterly business reviews and ROI decks. He saw an opportunity to automate the entire process. But he wasn't ready to quit his job just yet. Nik met his co-founder Zach through a mutual friend. Zach was an early engineer at Box who had stayed through the IPO. The two spent five to six months researching the idea, validating the problem with potential customers, and making sure they were a good fit for each other before committing. When Nik finally decided to leave LinkedIn, the hardest part was telling his parents. As refugees from the Bosnian civil war, they had sacrificed everything to give their children opportunities in the US. But instead of pushing back, they told him to go for it - even offering to sell their house if he needed support. The co-founders started working out of Nik's apartment in early 2019. Building the product came together quickly, but selling it was a different story. Neither Nik nor Zach had any sales background. Nik's founder-led sales approach started at a dinner party, where a woman introduced him to her company's enablement team. They loved the prototype, asked where to sign, and Nik realized he didn't even have a purchase order or legal terms. He made up a price of $2,500 on the spot, and that became Matik's first paying customer. From there, Nik leaned heavily on his LinkedIn network and a clever tactic: reaching out to former LinkedIn employees who had moved to new companies and missed the internal tools Nik had built. That approach got Matik to its first 15 to 20 customers. When it came time to build a sales team, Nik learned a key lesson: hire in twos. Bringing on two account executives or two SDRs at the same time lets you benchmark performance and figure out whether issues are with the person or the process. He also discovered that founders never fully step away from selling - even after hiring a head of sales, Nik stayed involved in deals to keep a pulse on the market. Today, Matik's customers include B2B tech companies like Asana, Glassdoor, Greenhouse, and SalesLoft. The founders have raised $23 million, including a $20 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz.

Zak Holdsworth, Hint Health

From 80 Doctors to 1,000 Customers in Vertical SaaS

Zak Holdsworth is the co-founder and CEO of Hint Health, a membership management, billing, and payment platform for direct primary care practices. In 2014, Zak and his co-founder Graham set out to transform the US healthcare system. They were frustrated with a system that spends a trillion dollars a year in waste - roughly NASA's entire budget since inception - while delivering half the quality of other modern economies. They decided to build vertical SaaS for a community of doctors stepping outside the insurance system to offer care directly to patients and employers. The problem: this niche had roughly 80 doctors in it. Despite zero healthcare experience, Zak and Graham moved fast. Within 30 days of committing to the idea, they attended their first industry conference, started cold calling, began building a product, and closed their first paying customer. A few months later, they had their first 10 customers. But speed came with a cost. Zak says if he could go back, he would spend more time researching customer problems before building. By moving too fast, they accumulated product debt that set them back an estimated two years. The bigger challenge was trust. These doctors depended on their billing system to make payroll. If Hint failed, their practices would shut down. Zak overcame this by personally guaranteeing to cover any missed payments out of his own pocket - putting roughly $20,000 on the line for a single customer. From there, Hint Health grew through community events, partner referrals, and word of mouth. Zak launched an annual industry conference that grew from 120 attendees to over 450. He built integrations with complementary vertical SaaS vendors and created a free accelerator program for customers. Today, Hint Health has nearly 1,000 customers representing 750,000 lives, processes over half a billion dollars in payments, and has raised $64 million across four rounds. But the path was far from typical - Zak pitched over 1,000 investors because venture capital firms struggled with the small total addressable market of a vertical SaaS business in a niche healthcare segment.