Cristina Vila spent 18 months giving Cledara away for free. She had no SaaS subscription billing system, no pricing plan, and activation was stuck at 50%. Then she started charging - and everything changed.
When Cledara introduced its first paid plans, activation jumped to 80% because paying customers felt compelled to actually use the product. A year later, Cristina raised SaaS pricing again with zero impact on sales. That single decision to add recurring revenue billing unlocked a path to $2.4M ARR and over 710 customers. This is a must-listen for any founder wrestling with the free to paid SaaS transition.
What You Will Learn
- Why introducing SaaS subscription billing increased activation from 50% to 80%
- How Cledara raised prices with zero impact on conversion rates
- Why companies with fewer than 50 employees were not the right ICP
- How outbound email campaigns grew customers from 100 to 710
š Key Lessons
- š° SaaS subscription billing creates activation urgency: Cledara's free users activated at 50%, but paid plans pushed activation to 80% because financial commitment created urgency to onboard.
- š Raising SaaS pricing revealed untapped value: One year after introducing paid plans, Cledara raised prices with zero impact on conversion, proving significant headroom.
- šÆ Target companies where the pain is undeniable: Moving upmarket to 50-500 employees meant every prospect already felt the SaaS subscription billing problem acutely.
- š¤ Use prospect education as a delayed sales tactic: When prospects denied having a problem, Cristina told them to audit their tools - most came back within 3-6 months after discovering 30-40 unknown subscriptions.
- š Create a forcing function to ship faster: Cristina committed to launching at SaaStock Dublin before she had a product, using the pitch competition as a non-negotiable deadline.
Chapters
- Introduction
- Cristina's motivational quote from her mom
- What Cledara does and who it serves
- Revenue, team size, and customer count
- How Cledara differs from Brex, Ramp, and IT tools
- Origin story at a neobank startup
- What pushed Cristina to quit and start Cledara
- Building the MVP in three months for SaaStock Dublin
- How co-founder Brad joined the company
- Hiring a dev agency as a non-technical founder
- Defining the MVP scope with virtual cards
- First customers from the SaaStock pitch competition
- Why Cledara was free for 18 months with no payment system
- Runway and pre-seed funding without revenue
- How charging increased activation from 50% to 80%
- Initial pricing tiers and raising prices with no impact
- Getting to the first 100 customers through founder-led sales
- Self-serve onboarding plus a fintech KYC requirement
- Common objections and the delayed realization tactic
- Fundraising during COVID and adapting to Zoom pitches
- Outbound as the growth engine from 100 to 710 customers
- How Brex and Ramp educated the market for Cledara
- Lightning round
Resources
