Derek Steer, Co-founder and CEO of Mode Analytics . Mode helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses faster through data-driven decision making. The Mode platform combines the best elements of Business Intelligence (ABI), Data Science (DS) and Machine Learning (ML) to empower data teams to answer impactful questions and collaborate on analysis across a range of business functions. In 2019, Mode added a number of premiere enterprise companies to its customer base, which now includes Anheuser Busch,...
Apr 17, 2021•36 min•Ep. 67
Sagi Eliyahu is the CEO & Co-Founder of Tonkean , the no-code, automation platform that helps companies like Salesforce, Microsoft, and TripActions to solve their operational inefficiencies and business problems. Tonkean recently raised their $24M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing the company’s total fundraising to $33M. Prior to Tonkean, Sagi held executive engineering roles at Jive Software. He also served for four years in Unit 8200, the Israeli Defense Force’s elite i...
Feb 26, 2021•57 min•Ep. 66
Nicolas started selling newspapers in the streets of Paris in high school, studied Math at Ecole Polytechnique then Business at Stanford GSB, and started and sold 3 tech companies with up to 65 employees and $11M in revenues. He is now the co-founder and CEO of Chili Piper - the System of Action for revenue teams - and of KosmoTime - the first Focused Productivity Assistant.
Jan 08, 2021•43 min•Ep. 65
Ondrej Sedlacek is the CEO and founder of SatisMeter . SatisMeter helps companies measure and improve customer satisfaction through NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys. If you're in SaaS, then you've heard about the importance of NPS. If this is a topic you've been interested in learning more about, there's no one better to learn about it than Ondrej. We talk about how SatisMeter got started, and how they've grown to help over 400 companies, why everyone should use NPS, and how it reduces churn. En...
Nov 19, 2020•57 min•Ep. 64
Rytis Lauris is the CEO of Omnisend , a marketing automation SaaS that helps e-commerce companies. Omnisend is bootstrapped, employees +70 people, and has grown past +$11M ARR in only 6 years! Rytis talks about his founding story, specific marketing strategies that helped Omnisend gain traction early, understanding monetization strategies, leveraging integration partnerships, how he manages a growing team all over the world, and much much more. Learn how this bootstrapped SaaS is on route to Uni...
Aug 28, 2020•45 min•Ep. 63
Tom Wright is the CEO and co-founder of Cascade , a software that helps teams stay focused on their goals. Very impressively, Cascade serves +25,000 users, have 40+ employees, offices in 3 countries, and are closing in on $10M annual recurring revenue -all while bootstrapped!
Aug 15, 2020•42 min•Ep. 62
This is one of those episodes you might have to listen to more than once. Eugene Levin is the Chief Strategy Officer of SEMrush , an SEO management platform with over 800 employees around the world. Eugene has a very unique mind when it comes to marketing and how to think about growth in business, and it's clear how much he's contributed to the great success of SEMrush. This episode is jam-packed with actionable takeaways and advice from a high-level executive. We touch on several topics, includ...
May 15, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 61
I’m speaking with Josh Pigford, CEO and founder of Baremetrics . If you’re in SaaS, you’ve definitely heard of Josh and Baremetrics. Hundreds of SaaS and subscription businesses use Baremetrics to properly display dashboards and metrics to give a real time breakdown of how their company is performing. This is fundamental for every SaaS company, and Baremetrics has been the staple in that department for quite some time. Recently, Josh caused some waves in the SaaS world when he revealed that he a...
Apr 07, 2020•38 min•Ep. 60
I'm speaking with automation and efficiency guru (or automation geek, as he calls himself), Will Christensen, co-founder of Data Automation . Almost all companies of any size struggle with efficiency and waste countless hours with redundant and manual work. Will specializes in helping SaaS companies save time through automating workflows. We talk about ways Data Automation helps SaaS companies save time through automation, how he's grown his company to +$1M in revenue, specific marketing channel...
Apr 01, 2020•57 min•Ep. 59
In this episode, I’m speaking with Spencer Fry, the CEO and founder of Podia . Podia helps creators sell anything online from courses, downloads, and memberships, without worrying about any tech. Podia is about 5 years old, they’re a fully remote team of 19 people at the time we recorded this (possibly even more now), and they just seem to be picking up a ton of traction in this space. Spencer has a bold vision for the company, in the next 5 years, he wants Podia to be the ONLY platform that a c...
Mar 21, 2020•44 min•Ep. 58
I’m speaking with serial entrepreneur, Josh MacDonald in this episode. Josh is a fellow software entrepreneur from the greater Toronto area (as am I), so it was really great to connect with him and hear his story - and what a story it is! Josh is only 24 years old (at the time of recording this of course), and he has a tremendous wealth of knowledge and insights that are very impressive. Josh got into the internet game at a very young age, he was making tens of thousands of dollars when he was o...
Feb 19, 2020•50 min•Ep. 57
I’m speaking with Amar Ghose in this episode. Amar is the CEO of ZenMaid , a scheduling management software that helps cleaning and maid services be more efficient and organized. Amar has done an amazing job of building himself a very nice, high margin company. ZenMaid is fully remote, bootstrapped, and are set to cross over $1.5M in annual recurring revenue this year. I’m pretty envious of Amar’s lifestyle, as he’s pretty much a full-time traveler, along with his wife. We dive into how Amar gre...
Jan 29, 2020•56 min•Ep. 56
I’m speaking with Colin Nederkoorn, CEO and co-founder of customer.io . Colin was an absolute pleasure to speak with. He built customer.io in 2012 with his co-founder John, and have been exploding ever since. For those who don’t know, customer.io is a SaaS company that gives companies one place to manage all of their their emails, push notifications, SMS’s and other messages that come from their product to their customers. Customer.io is now doing over $10M in annual recurring revenue, they’re f...
Jan 22, 2020•58 min•Ep. 55
I'm speaking with Luca Micheli, CEO and founder of Customerly.io . Customerly helps companies create better relationships with their customers with effective communication. He launched Customerly about 4 years ago, they have over 17,000 customers around the world. This is a fascinating story, Luca is competing in a very hot market, where it was once pretty much a monopoly with Intercom as the main provider in the space. The communication marketing space has now opened up which is evident through...
Jan 13, 2020•51 min•Ep. 54
I’m speaking with Braden Urquhart, a fellow Canadian and CEO of RecTimes , a scheduling software that helps ice rinks manage their bookings. This was such a valuable episode to listen to if you’re focused on building a profitable, lean and high-margin business. RecTimes is a small remote team of three people. But because they’re playing in such a tightly defined niche market, they’re able to find customers and penetrate their market a lot easier than most companies, which is such an advantage. T...
Dec 22, 2019•31 min•Ep. 53
Recently, I did a talk at the GrowthMentor Summit , which was a virtual summit, that included 50 of some of the world’s best growth leaders. This was such an amazing event. There were thousands of attendees from all over the world, that had free access to some incredible insights from some very talented people. My talk was on outbound sales. It was called "How to get your first 500 paying clients on a bootstrapped budget". I spoke about how I single-handedly got my first 500 paying clients throu...
Dec 11, 2019•26 min•Ep. 52
Competition is a great thing. When I see an industry with many different competitors, and many companies offering similar services to customers, my mouth starts to water. This tells me that there’s a healthy market of customers spending a lot of money on services that solve their problems. There are several advantages to playing in a competitive market: A small piece of a big pie = $$ My first SaaS company was in one of the most competitive markets there are – real estate! There were literally h...
Dec 09, 2019•3 min•Ep. 51
I’m speaking with Mark Thompson in this episode. Mark is the founder and CEO of PayKickStart , a subscription management, and affiliate solution that helps entrepreneurs and SaaS companies sell more and manage the payments side of their business with ease. PayKickStart recently surpassed $1M in ARR, and has really been picking up steam. Aside from PayKickStart, Mark runs Digital KickStart , a sister company that houses a couple dozen other SaaS companies and apps. This was such a great episode, ...
Nov 25, 2019•41 min•Ep. 50
I was super excited about this episode, I’m speaking with Renat Zubairov, the co-founder and CEO of elastic.io, a B2B SaaS that helps enterprises connect and process different applications. They were founded in 2013, and have been seeing triple digit revenue growth year after year, which is extremely difficult for a company this size. They’re currently doing well over $2M in annual recurring revenue. elastic.io was acquired in 2017 by mVISE, a publicly traded company in Germany. They acquired a ...
Nov 12, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 49
This was an episode I was really excited about. I met Nim in Boston back in January 2019. He told me about what he was building, and I was instantly pumped about it. He founded CloudTax , which is a tax filing service that helps Canadians easily file their taxes online for free. The reason i was excited to speak to Nim is because tax and accounting have always been close to me. I got my BCom in accounting and finance, and one of my side hustles back in the day was filing taxes for my classmates,...
Nov 07, 2019•40 min•Ep. 48
In this episode, I’m speaking with Baptiste Debever, the CEO and founder of Feedier . Feedier is an app that helps companies get feedback from their employees in a fun, seamless and engaging way. He launched the company in early 2018, they have over 8000 users on the platform and over 50 paying clients. They’re a team of 8 people based in France. Baptiste breaks down what they did to get their first thousand users by using AppSumo shortly after they launched. We talk about how Feedier is using c...
Nov 05, 2019•49 min•Ep. 47
In this episode I’m speaking with Robert Zalaudek, founder and CEO of Pomodus . This episode is a little bit different than what you might be used to - Robert is just starting out in the SaaS space. He’s developing an app called Pomodus, which integrates with Slack and helps you stay productive and focused. I wanted to get Robert on the podcast, because a lot of my listeners are early stage SaaS founders, just like Robert. So i thought it would be helpful for other folks in similar positions to ...
Nov 01, 2019•58 min•Ep. 46
In this episode, i’m speaking with Devid Henzel, the CEO of TaskDrive . TaskDrive helps companies improve their outbound sales efforts by providing qualified leads to your sales team through personal outreach, among other services. David actually acquired TaskDrive about a year and a half ago, and has been scaling up the company ever since. He also has other portfolio companies he runs, aside from TaskDrive. We’re talking about many different topics in this episode, including the benefits of out...
Oct 31, 2019•41 min•Ep. 45
In this episode, I’m speaking with Darren Gallop, a fellow Canadian SaaS CEO. Darren runs Securicy , they help guide companies through creating, implementing, and managing Information Security Programs. Securicy has raised a total $1.8M from investors. Before starting Securicy, Darren founded Marcato, another SaaS product for music festivals, which recently got acquired. This was such a great episode, Darren is one of the brightest CEO’s i’ve spoken with. We talk about quite a few topics, includ...
Oct 25, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 44
I’m speaking with Xenia Muntean, the CEO and co-founder of Planable.io . Planable helps brands and agencies better manage their social media content. Xenia has been running Planable for about 3 years and has seen incredible growth in such a short time. They made their mark at the famous TechStars accelerator in London. They recently closed a seed round to help ramp up their growth, which we talk about in the episode. Xenia was recently named in Forbes 30 under 30 for 2019 , which is incredible. ...
Oct 24, 2019•46 min•Ep. 43
In this episode, I’m speaking with Mubashar (Mubs) Iqbal. I stumbled across Mubs on Twitter , and immediately wanted to talk to him on my podcast. Mubs was Product Hunt’s maker of the year in 2016, and has been the runner up a bunch of other times. He is what you can only describe as a MAKER. He’s built and developed a countless number of websites and apps , which we’re talking about in this episode. Most recently, he developed an app called PodHunt , that allows people to submit and find new an...
Oct 22, 2019•44 min•Ep. 42
Mature businesses with firm roots in the ground can buy a lot of time when going through slow growth periods or rough patches, compared to newer startups. The value of time is a true luxury and could be a major advantage for bigger companies if utilized properly. Established companies can afford to go through sluggish stages where there’s either stagnant sales, slow growth, or even misalignment amongst the team. Mature companies can go through several months or even years before there’s even a h...
Sep 26, 2019•4 min•Ep. 41
I’m speaking with Jake Stainer, the former Head of Growth at Typeform. Jake is currently the Head of Growth at Travelperk, a company that helps businesses manage and book their travel. He founded an online language learning app Papora , and he also consults companies to accelerate their growth. Most notably, Jake was the Head of Growth at Typeform. He started with Typeform very early on, when they were only doing $1M ARR, and had about 20 employees. He stayed on board with them for just over 4 y...
Sep 10, 2019•47 min•Ep. 40
In this episode, I’m speaking with Liam Martin, co-founder of TimeDoctor , a company that helps remote teams stay focused, efficient and productive. In 8 years, Liam has helped bring Time Doctor to a comfortable 7-figures in recurring revenue. They’re a team of over 100 employees in 32 countries around the world. Most impressively, they’ve done this all while being bootstrapped! Liam also helped start the conference called Running Remote . It’s a conference where remote companies can get togethe...
Aug 30, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 39
There are a growing number of tech companies that are choosing to be fully transparent with their financial metrics. Some of the bigger names like Convertkit, Buffer and Hubspot, are all publicly disclosing every financial detail for the world to see. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of other companies following this open data movement. From an observer’s perspective, it’s pretty awesome to be able to see how private companies are performing, compare numbers, and analyze data. It’s also gre...
Aug 14, 2019•7 min•Ep. 38
