The Saas Revolution Show

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined by Harrison Rose, co-founder & CEO at GoodFit.io, who shares why founders get outgrown and what to do about it. "So the obsessive, like, need to get ahead of the company growth in yourself I think is important, but I think it's probably really important you focus on the right areas. I think generally we could all be more reflective just as people, so I encourage people to work with coaches and mentors to be honest with you, and recognising where you're both enjoying where you're spending your time, recognising where you're weak, recognising where you're willing and able to let others do work that maybe out of your week out are not enjoying, regardless of title as well sometimes." Harrison shares: - His journey in tech from the age of 17 (including co-founding Paddle with Christian Owens) - When (and how) he realised he wanted to take a step back from his role at Paddle - His GoodFit journey (including how they're growing 100% ye

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined by Alex Mifsud, co-founder & CEO at Weavr, who shares his lessons in scaling Weavr to 100+ people in 3 years. "Try to imagine what the ideal, sort of, embedded finance equation of skills and capabilities would be for B2B SaaS businesses not to have to worry about all the complexities of financial services. We work backwards from that. We specifically identified skills that we need - it's like building a football team, you can't just have a great goalie, you've got to have the scorer, you've got to have the midfield players, and you're curating a lot of that. And yet, you also have to make them work as a team." Alex shares: - His role setting up the Malta Internet foundation in the early days of the internet - How Ixaris used the €80B grant from EU Horizon Program to build what is now called Embedded Finance - Why Weavr is being frugal with how they deploy their $50 million worth of capital (majority of which is still in the busi

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Jean-Laurent Pelissier, Managing Director; Head of Enterprise Software EMEA at HSBC Innovation Banking, who shares the different sources of financing in the current fundraising environment. "But the whole team basically stayed together. I think if we look at the SVB UK company that was acquired by HSBC, we've had very little employee churn overall, which is fantastic. And I do think that's a testament to the leadership, the ability to retain the employees and also the customer base. I think HSBC was able to bring stability to our customers in a very short order, which was fantastic. And that was kind of the number one priority there." Jean-Laurent shares:

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined by SaaStock Founder Member Jamie Akhtar, co-founder & CEO at CyberSmart, who shares how to build your team and performance as you scale to $5M ARR. "Your challenges just shift - in many ways they become more difficult because you're doing stuff that you've never done before. For me, it's been about being passionate. I literally have a mouse map that says 'I love Mondays, My Favourite Day of the Week.' I'm super passionate about what we do and the people we work with, and I think that's allowed me to move the needle the most." Jamie shares: - His entrepreneurial journey (including never having been employed by another company!) - Going from startup to scaleup - Establishing a communication hierarchy as a company grows - How they cracked a certain part of the market - Sharing regular, consistent updates means building discipline - Raising ~ £20M and having 60 investors on their cap table and more! --- Check out the other ways

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined live from the #SaaStock2023 Podcast Stage by Amir Orad, ex-CEO and now Executive Chairman at Sisense, who shares his lessons in scaling over $150M ARR - twice! "Someone very smart once told me "the last hundred days are as important as the first hundred days". We all talk about the first hundred days when you're joining a company, but the last hundred days - how to manage transition, an exit, when to do it, do it gracefully, professionally - is as important." Amir shares:

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined live from the #SaaStock2023 Podcast Stage by April Dunford, founder & CEO at Ambient Strategy, who shares how to craft a story to stand out and win.  "Part of it is opening up the eyes of the customer, looking at the problem in maybe a different perspective or maybe a different way - introducing some concepts that maybe they never thought about. So most sales pitches do not have a section of that pitch that specifically covers discovery. So if you look at when marketing builds a sales pitch, they literally will have this pitch, and if you look at it, you'd be like "well, where does the discovery happen?" and marketing is like "I don't know, that's some weird sales thing, maybe they do that before". And that's a crazy way to think about discovery - discovery should be something that's woven into the actual narrative of the pitch itself." April shares:

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Thibaut De Lataillade, Global Vice President of Product at Gartner Digital Markets, who shares what software buyer regret is and how to avoid it. "Work on the right things and great results will follow. It sounds very simple, but it means a lot. I mean, it means every day focusing on what matters and being able to say no to low leverage activities." Thibaut shares: ⭐️ The pros and cons of having four brands under the Gartner Digital Markets umbrella ⭐️ Why 60% of software buyers experience regret (and how no industry is exempt from that!) ⭐️ How a misalignment between sales and implementation can lead to over-promising and under-delivering ⭐️ Why validated, credible user reviews are crucial ⭐️ Understanding the regret warning signs ⭐️ Why he recommends The Culture Map by Erin Meyer and more!

In this week's episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined by Itamar Novick, Founder & General Partner at Recursive Ventures, who his insights and advice on how to raise your first round. "I think that your odds of success building a startup are much higher if at least one person on the founding team has some orientation to do sales, right? If everybody's technical and everybody's introverted, who's going to talk with customers? Who's going to succeed in doing that?" Itamar shares: ⚡️ Why he doesn't want to make Recursive Ventures a multi-partner fund ⚡️ His decision to intentionally not take board seats ⚡️ Demystifying pre-seed investment rounds ⚡️ His advice on not raising money from VCs unless a founder *wants* to build a VC backable company - that means showing a path to $500k - $1B in revenue for seven to ten years from now ⚡️ Why fundraising is a sales effort - as well as high quality collateral, founders need to be able pitch very well and very quickly ⚡️ Why he encourage

In this week's episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined live from the #SaaStock2023 Podcast Stage by Lucie Buisson, Chief Product Officer at unicorn SaaS Contentsquare, who shares her lessons in product. "My job is not to create the product anymore - my job is to create the team that is going to create the product. So you need to be ready to be less focussed on the product and more focussed on building the teams that build the product." Lucie shares:

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Mike Tessler, Managing Partner at True North Advisory and founding CEO at BroadSoft, who shares his lessons in building BroadSoft to a $2 billion exit. I had to reserve more time in my pie for internal communications, culture, employees, so on. As a leader, you've got shareholder stakeholders, you have employee stakeholders, you have customer stakeholders, and you've got to figure out how you split your time. Mike shares: ⚡️ BroadSoft's journey from their 1998 founding, to going public in 2010 on Nasdaq, and being acquired by Cisco in 2018 for upwards of $1.8B ⚡️ The decision making process behind selling BroadSoft to Cisco ⚡️ Three key lessons from scaling the business to $500M+ ARR ⚡️ Building realistic execution plan and holding teams accountable ⚡️ Why the senior team have to act as ambassadors as a company grows ⚡️ BroadSoft's secret to success with go to market partners ⚡️ The biggest partner technology challenge the indus

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel and #SaaStock2023 speaker, who shares insights into the Cloud Euroscape 2023 on Generative AI. "An IPO is primarily a financing event, right? These companies don't need the cash right now because they have a lot of cash on their balance sheet, so there is no need to go public. What is important for me, is for a company to continue to perform, to become really enduring and a category defining company, and I think, to me, that's what is the most important. Then at the right time, they're going to go public... but that's just going to be a milestone in their journey. I think the journey is the most important and making sure that all these companies are going to continue to grow and be category defining." Filmed the week prior to SaaStock 2023, Philippe shared: ☁️ Accel's take on the slow in growth stage investments this year ☁️ How the European cloud ecosystem has shown its resilience and strength

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Jonny White, founder & CEO at Ticket Tailor, who discusses their move from a lifestyle business to a growth business. "Who are you afraid of failing in front of? Confidence has definitely held me back over the years, and this question really put it into perspective of, well, why I'm afraid of failing. And it's usually to do with someone else's perspective. And when you ask that question, you can really break it down and think, actually, do you know what? I'm not afraid of failing in front of anyone." Jonny shares:

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Alex David, co-founder & COO of Corrily, to share their YC story and how they won the SaaStock USA Global Pitch Competition earlier this year. "There’s a lot of survivor bias in the startup world - like you don’t really hear about the founders who have failed, you hear about the ones who are successful so you compare yourself to them and you’re like “well I’m not that”. And so I think, that I hesitated to go into that space for a long time because of it, but you know, maybe that was fine because I learned a lot in my career and by having held off I bring a lot more experience to the table than I otherwise would have. Part of why we are having the success that we have is that none of us are college dropouts or first few years in our careers - all of us have had careers, and we’re kind of bringing that weight to the table of you know 10ish+ years of work experience and really bringing that to the forefront of what we’re doing."

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Lloyed Lobo, co-founder at Boast AI, who shares how he bootstrapped to $10M ARR and then exited through private equity. "I know it’s an overused term “your network is your net worth”, but trust me, it’s the best way to engineer privilege. You may not have a network or you may not have influence, but if you create influence - just the compound interest on creating that influence - giving, giving, helping, bringing people together over time is you’re going to have everything you want." Lloyed shares: ⚡️ His childhood in Kuwait and the positive impact the community had on him ⚡️ Why risk and companionship are part of his DNA ⚡️ Getting to eight figures in revenue with no marketing spend ⚡️ Why ignoring the influence of luck is a mistake ⚡️ The impact financial freedom had on his mental health and more! --- Check out the other ways SaaStock is serving SaaS founders - SaaStock Dublin 2023: The largest concentration of SaaS deci

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined by Carl Fritjofsson, General Partner at Creandum, who discusses what's required to raise VC in this changing world. "Put the work that you do, both internally in how you build your own processes, but also the end product experience - put that through a lens of generative AI to see where things can be improve, where efficiency can be gained or where new value can be created. I think the next generation of companies will certainly have some kind of AI capabilities deeply ingrained in their DNA." Carl shares:

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined by Angeley Mullins, Chief Commercial Officer at Resourcify, who shares if branding in B2B SaaS has taken a back seat. "So every founder and CEO has a voice, they founded their company for a reason, most people that founder their companies, you know, are overcoming a ton of adversity to found their companies and to raise capital. So use your voice, and whichever medium that works for you, if it’s giving panel sessions, if it’s being on the news, if it’s writing articles, doing a content blog, like you said it depends on the type of company and what they’re selling. You have a voice, and use it. That’s the most important thing." Angeley shares:

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Eynat Guez, Co-founder & CEO at SaaS unicorn Papaya Global, who discusses how she scaled the company beyond $100 million ARR. "So, thinking on scale and thinking of really, really good processes and infrastructures is very important at this stage because otherwise you're just going to find yourself in an endless loop when you are trying to catch up people; we are trying to understand what they need. And obviously, I mean, this will impact their ability to grow, this will impact their ability to meet their targets. And then you're going to find yourself in the second loop, which you're constantly replacing people and training new people, but then you are not changing the narrative or changing the problem that you have." Eynat shares:

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Isaiah Studivent, CEO Evron, and Chalique Seabron, COO Evron, who discuss what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Isaiah and Chalique share:

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined by Godard Abel, Co-founder and CEO of G2, who shares the importance of applying AI to reimagine your product and your company to make a quantum leap forward in tough times. It'll be easier to get from hundred to a billion than it was to get from, frankly, zero to one, you know, or even zero to a thousand dollars is the hardest right? And then I think each order of magnitude gets a bit easier if you stay with it. But it's, I'd say years of grinding. And then eventually we figured out the flywheel and it started spinning. Godard shares: ⭐️ G2 becoming the buffet of SaaS and software ⭐️ Their 2-3 year journey to get to $1M ARR ⭐️ The AI alphabet - from LLMs to vector databases ⭐️ Launching Monty - G2’s first ever AI virtual assistant ⭐️ Having to seize technology faster than the big industry leaders ⭐️ His 15+ years of working with conscious leadership coaches and more!

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, our host Alex Theuma is joined by Zandra Moore, Co-founder and CEO of Panintelligence, who shares the six secrets of SaaS success. "That ideal customer profile. So we have ten characteristics on what looks like a good customer - if they don't fit those, they don't go into the funnel. Constantly making sure that we're looking. And whilst that isn't a measure, it's actually something that we use to measure the quality of our pipeline." Zandra shares: • Her journey from employment into self employment • Solving a problem: drawing data out of cloud based systems • The story of their management buyout (including carrying the server across a car park!) • Raising $4.5M in 2019 through private equity and VC • The importance of getting product market fit right • Why there's a fundamental pipeline issue in the (low) amount of females in tech, and ways to improve that and more!