Thomas Cottereau spent five years building what Oracle's engineers said was technically impossible. When he demoed the B2B SaaS sales platform at Salesforce, a lead engineer tested every feature by midnight and emailed: 'It works as you said. Come to my office tomorrow.'
Learn how weekly office visits earned a strategic partnership for B2B SaaS sales, why HP saved millions using SightCall for remote visual support, and how persistence and a working product beat pitch decks in enterprise sales.
š Key Lessons
- š¢ B2B SaaS sales platforms take years, not months: SightCall's prototype took 4 months, but building a globally scalable enterprise SaaS platform required 5 years of bridging telecom and software.
- š¤ Strategic partnerships unlock B2B SaaS sales you can't reach alone: Thomas showed up at Salesforce every week until he earned a demo, and that partnership delivered HP as the first enterprise sales customer.
- š§ Build technology others believe is impossible for a B2B SaaS sales moat: Oracle said SightCall's cloud-based visual support was not feasible. Proving them wrong created an unreplicable advantage.
- š Post-fundraising is harder than the B2B SaaS sales fundraise itself: Each round brought scaling pressure that introduced silos and political tension, temporarily slowing growth.
- šÆ Validate with a working product, not slides: Salesforce had been faking cloud video at Dreamforce with hidden hardware. Thomas showed a real demo and they requested API access the same day.
Chapters
- Introduction
- Thomas's favorite quote and why it inspired SightCall
- What SightCall does and how visual support works
- How augmented reality guides customers through repairs
- SightCall's 200 enterprise customers including GE Healthcare
- Business size - 8-figure ARR, 100 people, global offices
- Going back to 2008 - bootstrapping and the origin story
- Working at UUNet and the MCI WorldCom cultural shock
- Designing the platform in a basement every night
- Technology-first approach versus lean startup methodology
- Four months for a prototype, five years for enterprise SaaS
- Raising a 1 million euro seed round
- How persistence and a blunt email secured the first investor
- Landing HP through B2B SaaS sales via Salesforce
- How Thomas became a Salesforce partner by showing up every week
- The Wemo trademark dispute and forced rebrand to SightCall
- Series A - raising $8.4 million and the pressure that followed
- Enterprise sales and marketing go to war after the fundraise
- Series B - raising $42 million and scaling challenges
- Lightning round
Resources
