#399 – How Louis Hoch rejected the obvious customers—and grew when rivals collapsed

A story about choosing who not to serve—and building competitive advantage no crisis can touch.

This episode is for sales-led SaaS founders who've never tested whether their revenue would survive a major market shock — and aren't sure they want to know the answer.

Most software companies are built to serve as many customers as possible. Louis Hoch, CEO of Usio, chose differently.

Louis has been building in payments since 1998. He raised $50 million while competitors raised $200 million—and won. He built a company that processes enough direct bank payment volume to rank as the 50th largest bank in the United States. When COVID hit and rivals saw revenue drop by as much as 80%, Usio grew. That outcome wasn't luck. It was a customer decision made years earlier that most CEOs would never make.

What Louis did—deliberately, by design—was say no to entire industries. Not because he couldn't serve them. Because serving them would have cost him everything else.

And this inspired me to invite Louis to my podcast. We explore how deliberate customer rejection builds a resilience that no market crisis can touch. Louis shares insights about turning regulatory hurdles into early competitive positioning, building payment channel diversity while staying ruthlessly focused on vertical, and why the companies that fail are often the ones who stayed truest to their original idea. You'll discover what happens to your revenue when a crisis hits — and you made the right customer choices years earlier.

We also zoom in on two of the 10 traits that define remarkable software companies:

• Acknowledge you cannot please everyone
• Aim to be different, not just better

Louis's story proves that remarkable companies don't just pick their market—they pick what they will never serve, and build their advantage from that constraint.

Here's one of Louis's quotes that captures his philosophy on what it takes to survive as a founder:

"What you think you're going to be when you start a software company and what you end up being are often different. The companies that are successful understand that. The companies that fail try to maintain their focus on what their original product or service is."

By listening to this episode, you'll learn:

• Why going public before your first customer can be your strongest sales move
• Why giving customers the conditions to choose beats telling them what they need
• Why your original business plan may be the biggest threat to your survival
• Why operating leverage has to be designed in from the start — not stumbled into later

Guest: Louis Hoch, CEO and Chairman of Usio

Website: usio.com