Founding Livestorm as a University Project

Livestorm went from $2M to $9M ARR in one year during COVID - then lost SaaS product-market fit. Gilles Bertaux expanded into meetings and sales demos, turning Livestorm into a smaller Zoom. After a failed Series C, he rebuilt SaaS product-market fit by narrowing to enterprise webinars for European marketers in banking and pharma.

You will learn why explosive growth can mask fragile SaaS product-market fit, how to rebuild PMF by narrowing positioning instead of expanding features, and why shifting from PLG to enterprise sales required replacing almost the entire sales team.

Gilles Bertaux is the co-founder and CEO of Livestorm, a webinar platform for enterprise marketers. The company generates nearly $20M ARR with 3,500 customers and has raised $35M. Gilles built Livestorm as a university project in 2016, grew it through SEO and Quora, then navigated the product-market alignment challenge of post-COVID market validation.

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🔑 Key Lessons

• 🎯 SaaS product-market fit can be lost by expanding too broadly: Livestorm added meetings and sales demos after COVID, becoming a smaller Zoom with no clear differentiator and declining conversion rates.
• 📉 Explosive growth can mask fragile PMF: Going from $2M to $9M ARR felt like traction, but 85% of customers were on monthly plans - one click away from churning overnight.
• 🏢 Narrow positioning wins against giants: Livestorm stopped competing feature-for-feature with Zoom and differentiated on three dimensions - European company for security, marketers only, and specific industries.
• 🔄 Enterprise sales requires rebuilding, not retraining: Reps who closed inbound leads could not cold-call 10,000-person companies. Gilles replaced almost the entire sales team with enterprise outbound specialists.
• 💰 A failed fundraise can force the right strategic shift: When Series C investors said no, Livestorm had to become profitable - pushing toward enterprise customers on annual contracts who pay more and stay longer.

Chapters

• Introduction
• What Livestorm does and revenue milestones
• Building Livestorm as a university project
• The disastrous first webinar launch
• SEO, Quora, and co-marketing as early growth engines
• How SaaS product-market fit shifted after COVID
• Going from $2M to $9M ARR in one year
• Post-COVID churn and the virtual event collapse
• Losing SaaS product-market fit by becoming a smaller Zoom
• Rebuilding positioning around Europe, marketers, and industries
• The painful shift from PLG to enterprise sales
• Lightning round

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/470
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email