The SaaS Podcast - AI, Growth & Product-Market Fit for SaaS Founders

SaaS Positioning: From Nice to Have to 4,000 Customers

Aug 17, 2023

Jonathan Fields, co-founder and CEO of Assembly, shares his journey of growing from a struggling recognition and rewards product to a successful company. He discusses scaling strategies, starting with a simple product and expanding into a comprehensive engagement suite, and growth strategies including Google AdWords and affiliate marketing. They also explore biased recommendations and marketing strategies, referrals and partnerships, and their obsession with automation, disrupting the real estate industry, and rolling burritos.

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Episode notes

Introduction

00:00 • 2min

Scaling from Struggle to Success

01:53 • 4min

Starting with a Simple Product and Expanding into a Comprehensive Engagement Suite

05:55 • 21min

Growth Strategies and Marketing Hacks for SaaS Product

27:18 • 4min

Biased Recommendations and Marketing Strategies

31:30 • 6min

Referrals and Partnerships

37:23 • 13min

Automation, Real Estate Disruption, and Burrito Rolling

50:39 • 3min

Jonathan Fields and three co-founders built Assembly nights and weekends for over three years. Their SaaS positioning challenge was clear from day one: they launched a nice-to-have SaaS recognition tool, had no idea what an ICP was, and struggled to find their first paying customer.

Learn how Assembly's SaaS positioning evolved from a nice-to-have engagement tool into a must-have employee intranet serving 4,000+ customers at multi-million dollar ARR. Jonathan shares the SaaS repositioning moment when customers started calling Assembly their intranet after no-code forms doubled platform usage every 12 months. He also reveals the affiliate listicle marketing hack he learned from a mattress company CEO.

Assembly has 35 employees and $14.5M raised. This episode is a SaaS positioning masterclass on moving from a budget-cutting target to an essential line item.

Key Lessons

🎯 SaaS positioning determines survival during downturns: Assembly survived budget cuts by repositioning from a nice-to-have SaaS engagement tool to a must-have intranet, moving up the priority stack.
🛠️ No-code forms beat feature-by-feature competition: Instead of competing with Survey Monkey or Lattice individually, Assembly created a flexible form builder for hundreds of use cases.
💰 Paid listicles outperform organic rankings for lead generation: "Top 10" lists are paid placements. Assembly paid to appear on engagement platform listicles at strong LTV-to-CAC ratios.
🤝 Charge your first customer to get real feedback: Free users lack commitment. Assembly charged full price from customer one, getting harsher but more actionable feedback.
🔄 SaaS positioning can emerge from customer behavior: Assembly didn't plan to become an intranet. Customers called it one after adopting multiple workflows, and the founders leaned in.

Chapters

Introduction
Jonathan's favorite quote and background
What Assembly does and the problem it solves
Business metrics: revenue, customers, team size
The ZipRecruiter origin story
Taking the first step and building nights and weekends
Validating the recognition and rewards market
The brutal reality of finding the first 10 customers
Why charging from day one beats free trials
Navigating a nice-to-have SaaS market pre-pandemic
Building the no-code form builder pivot
Templates vs custom forms for engagement
The buyer vs user challenge in HR SaaS
Making the buyer a hero by listening to users
Growth channels: SEM, SEO, and early traction
The affiliate listicle marketing hack
LTV-to-CAC math for paid marketing channels
Building a referral engine organically
HRIS marketplace partnerships
Competing in a crowded market with SaaS positioning
Using AI to complete the intranet vision
Lightning round

Resources

Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/365
Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email