The SaaS Podcast - AI, Growth & Product-Market Fit for SaaS Founders B2B SaaS Sales: How Firing SMBs Led to 8x Growth
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Sep 18, 2025 Bernard Aceituno, Co-founder and CEO of StackAI, is a former MIT PhD who transformed his research into a no-code enterprise AI platform with over 100 customers and $16M raised. He discusses his pivot from academia to entrepreneurship and the crucial signals that led to a shift from dataset management to workflow automation. A scrappy MVP launch on Hacker News generated instant interest, while focusing on enterprise IT proved vital for growth. Bernard shares the hard lessons learned about scaling sales and navigating customer segments.
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Hacker News Sparked Overnight Demand
- They launched a scrappy MVP on Hacker News and other sites and got massive interest overnight.
- The post generated 20 customer meetings within 48 hours and proved real demand.
Diverse Inbound Can Obscure Your ICP
- Getting diverse inbound from startups, SMBs, and enterprises initially obscured the right ICP.
- Only by testing and failing across segments did they learn which customers derived the most value.
Don't Rely On Resellers Too Early
- Avoid signing reseller or partner channels too early while your product and messaging rapidly change.
- Partners will mis-sell or bring low-quality leads if they don't deeply understand your evolving product.
