The Remarkable SaaS Podcast

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to answer any question in minutes. My guest is Ahmed Elsamadisi, CEO of Narrator.Ahmed started his career at Cornell’s Autonomous Systems Laboratory, building algorithms for autonomous vehicles and human-robot interaction. He then joined Raytheon to develop AI algorithms for missile defense, focusing on tracking and discrimination.In 2015, Ahmed joined WeWork as the first hire on their data team. He built their data engineering infrastructure and grew the team to forty data engineers and analysts.As WeWork grew, its data became difficult to maintain, and the data team struggled to deliver work to stakeholders. Ahmed realized that a traditional data model designed for dashboards increases in complexity too quickly as a company scales.And that sparked the idea of the founding of Narrator in 2017. It powers self-service analytics across all company data. It's on a mission to enable anyone to get answers in minutes instead of weeks.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ahmed to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of getting answers and how today's technology is holding us back. Ahmed is sharing his vision about the platform that he's creating to ask any question and have it answered in record time. He shares his big lessons in building a product designed to solve a problem that was perceived as impossible to solve. He digs into the messaging challenges he had to overcome to create predictable traction. Lastly, he shares how his drive to create something that's remembered and makes an impact serves everyone well: his customers, his employees, his business, and his investors.Here is one of his quotes:We started with a goal, but we had no idea about the implementation. And the goal was to ask the questions and give answers. And one of the things that I hated about the answers that we gave today was answers that are given in the form of dashboards. Dashboards are, I think, the worst way to communicate anything. So how did we solve this problem before? And the answer was stories. Everyone who reads a story is able to understand. So I knew that whatever Narrative had to output when you are answering questions, we should be pushing people to create stories so people's opinions, people's thoughts, and people's thinking process is shared. Because sharing a chart doesn't mean anything, but sharing a story sharing your thinking, and sharing your process is key.During this interview, you will learn four things:That you're off on building something remarkable when everyone thinks it's impossible … until it's notThat by looking at how we solved problems in ancient times can give you the answers to instantly turn customers into fans todayThat the way to explain your solution most clearly is to have your fans do itThat what makes you a good company is not what makes you a good investment.For more information about the guest from this week:Ahmed ElsamadisiWebsite Narrator AI

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to reduce the distance between customers and businesses to one click, convert 3x more qualified leads and boost sales team results. My guest is Aleks Gollu, CEO of 11Sight.Aleks is a veteran of the Bay-Area venture/angel start-up eco-system with two positive exits working on his third. He's highly experienced in automated highways, telecommunications - especially real-time video, and supply chains. Aleks holds a B.S. degree from MIT and an M.S. and Ph.D. degree from UC Berkeley. He has also been granted 8 patents.Over time, he built a passion for applying bleeding-edge software and system technologies to neglected or unnoticed complex business problems in diverse industries. And in his role as an entrepreneur and lecturer at the UC Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, he uncovered how SaaS companies can shorten sales processes from 10 days to 15 minutes.That became the founding idea behind his latest company: 11Sight. Their motto: "All it should take is 1 click"And this inspired me, and hence I invited Aleks to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the B2B Sales process - especially when buying decisions take less than 30 days. Aleks shares his vision of how to dramatically shorten sales processes while increasing conversation. He elaborates on the principles he follows to build a unicorn business, how to avoid failure, and how to design the business to minimize dilution of ownership.Here is one of his quotes:The pandemic made everybody realize you need to be present online. And today, we are working on educating people that you can't just put unnecessary friction on customers who are trying to call you because they are qualified, especially in b2b. Nobody calls a business just to have a conversation. It's like, I have a problem, I did my homework, and you are a good candidate as a solution. But will you talk to me? And if you don't, then you lose that customer?During this interview, you will learn four things:How optimizing your SaaS for the needs of your customer's customers can take impact to the next levelWhy you should always be looking at the value you're creating for your customers and in particular how they perceive that valueHow to leverage data across your solution to help your customers create a flywheel of value that encourages them to do more and more.The critical filters you have to pass through to set out on your start-up journeyFor more information about the guest from this week:Aleks GolluWebsite: 11sight

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to bring presence to things that can't be present. My guest is Maarten Tobias, Founder and CEO of Dimenco.Maarten is an experienced Strategy and Business Development manager with extensive knowledge and interest in entrepreneurial high-tech environments. He received his Master's in Strategic Management in 2006 and worked at several business development and strategic leadership positions within Philips. In 2010, He founded Dimenco, where he acts as CEO and successfully exited the company in 2015 and led their management buy-in again in 2019. Dimenco has been leading the spatial visualization market since 2010. Their mission is to push the boundaries to achieve the dream of simulated reality. They unite hardware, software, and technology to deliver fast, rich, and natural three-dimensional experiences – no wearables required. Simulated Reality brings presence to what can't be present.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Maarten to my podcast. We explore the transformation in how we prefer to interact with technology, and what's standing in the way of meeting that need. Maarten shares his vision about creating experiences we cannot distinguish from reality. He talks about the lessons learned in creating scale and standardization to achieve his ambitious goals. Last but not least, he shares what it takes in mindset and style, to create a business the world talks about.This is one of his quotes:"We have to avoid that we're becoming a gadget. If you are becoming a gadget, make sure that you earn money for two years, sell the company and go sit on the island. That's not sustainable. You have to overcome the fact that you're not a gadget, but you really add something to the value proposition of the user. That's something that we continuously work on every day. Because if we are not able to prove that, then you have a very short life as a technology company."During this interview, you will learn four things:Why more is not always better - and how doing less can create unexpected breakthroughsWhy a design goal for your SaaS product should be to become 'normal' That it's good for your customers to love your product when they see it - but that's really about the question: what's beyond loving it?Why you should stop believing that you're the next unicornFor more information about the guest from this week:Maarten TobiasWebsite Dimenco

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation to power a new generation of production. My guest is Sunny Han, CEO of Fulcrum.Sunny is a serial entrepreneur. He founded Imperis in 2010 and co-founded Terran Logistics in 2012. He's a prototype of a tech entrepreneur on a mission. He founded Fulcrum in 2015, which he leads as their CEO to build a manufacturing platform for forward-thinking manufacturers.Its mission: To deliver a connected future where frictionless manufacturing production and supply chains lead to faster and better product innovations.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Sunny to my podcast. We explore what supply chain should be about. Sunny shares his vision about the future of manufacturing, and how he's planning to make that a reality. He shares his big lessons learned in creating something that's 10x better and what that requires in terms of leadership, mindset, and structure. Lastly, he talks about what it means to create a generationally valuable software business.Here is one of his quotes:"The grandiose vision is that there are problems that are getting more and more complicated as we advance as a civilization. We're going to start yearning over time for higher and higher quality objects and things that we use. And that's naturally going to drive a difference in how quickly we need to be able to react to those changes in the production lifecycle."During this interview, you will learn four things:How to create breakthroughs in design and approach by taking a big-picture perspective of an industry.How to convince yourself that you have to do the hard work when looking for the easy answers is the path of least resistance.The power of creating an existential desire inside your business to build something that's still useful to people when we're dead.What happens when you make your sales process more exclusiveFor more information about the guest from this week:Sunny HanWebsite Fulcrum

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help B2B SaaS companies make faster, bigger, better sales- increasing win rate by +19%, deal size by +42%, and increasing the average selling price by +35%. My guest is MG Gurbaxani, Co-founder and CEO of Cuvama.MG has been obsessed with customer value for nearly 2 decades. Over the last 17 years, he's helped over 80 global B2B customers across manufacturing, distribution, high-tech, and software realize their monetization potential. In 2012, MG joined PROS, where he led the team in the development of customer value quantification tools and methodologies in response to the company's shift to a SaaS strategy. MG focused on increasing win rate, deal size, the average selling price of solutions, and maximizing customer retention rate.As the software industry moved to SaaS, he recognized that the shift of power to the customer was inevitable.This inflection point became the founding idea behind Cuvama, which MG co-founded in 2017, and leads as their CEO. The belief: Successful relationships start with doing discovery right, by focusing on customer success outcomes. But this is easy to say, much harder to do. As such, Cuvama is on a mission to help B2B software companies sell outcomes, not products.And this inspired me, and hence I invited MG to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we deal with selling and buying enterprise software. MG digs into the big lessons learned from his years in value engineering on the sales side, and how he found his breakthrough by flipping the focus to the buy side. Lastly, he shares his advice on creating a software business that the world will talk about - and his key takeaways on the do's & don'ts to make fundraising more effective and motivating.Here's one of his quotes:Before you think about b2b software sales cycles, it's hard. It's hard to sell, and it's hard to buy. And we want to make it easy. Now if you double-click on that, our belief is that majority of sales reps struggle to ask their prospects about value. When they do, we see that it dramatically reduces sales cycle lengths. By getting the multiple stakeholders aligned on the value we see deal sizes increasing, and win rates increasing, but the bigger impact would be: It's not just about landing that first deal. But how can you grow, expand, and retain that customer? So ultimately, all this would point to an uptick in your NDR or NRR, Net Dollar Retention, and Net revenue retention.During this interview, you will learn four things:How to discover and demonstrate value for your SaaS suite 24/7 That we're often optimizing our product roadmap for the wrong things - and how to go around thatThat you can create defensible differentiation by not only focusing on your customers but on your customers' customersThat a solid way to differentiate yourself is in your ability to commit to the value you deliver, and engineer for that.For more information about the guest from this week:MG GurbaxaniMG’s Musings blogWebsite Cuvama

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that enables organizations to know their enterprise data and take action for privacy, protection, and perspective. My guest is Dimitri Sirota, CEO, and Co-founder of BigIDDimitri has over a decade of experience as a privacy expert and identity veteran and is an established serial entrepreneur, investor, mentor, and strategist. He is also recognized as one of the leading authorities in startups and company team building, receiving numerous recognitions, including being named an Entrepreneur of the Year finalist by Ernst & Young in 2021 (New York) and 2022 (Florida).Dimitri holds an M.Sc. in Engineering Physics from The University of British Columbia and a B.Sc. Honors in Physics from McGill University.Today, he's the CEO and co-founder of BigID, a modern data intelligence platform that helps customers solve data protection, privacy, and governance challenges. Their thinking: Data drives business. Data is a critical factor for all businesses – not just to persevere, but to continue to innovate. As such, BigID is on a mission to help every type of organization know their data, take action on their data, and unleash their data's value to do that.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Dmitri to my podcast. We explore the challenges companies face in rethinking their approach to data where they essentially have become the custodian, as opposed to the owner. Dmitri explains the novel approach they've taken to solve this. He shares his route towards product-market fit and carving out a business model that could fuel exponential growth. He tells about their approach to creating defensible differentiation, and an ability to expand their story ahead of the competition catching up. Last but not least, he shares his advice on creating a business software business that creates products that customers fall in love with. Here's one of his quotes:So early on, once we did our straw man strategy, we doubled down on one particular area. Once we found kind of a pressure point, we said, Okay, let's just focus on this and do a good job here. And so that's what got us through the first two years, I sometimes described that as a swim lane. We needed a clear definable swim lane that we could own, that was differentiated from other technology players. And we went down that path and invested in it, and it actually worked out for us. We were able to do the classic 5x revenue in year one. 3x revenue in year two.During this interview, you will learn four things:How to create your own blue ocean within a large red oceanThe single most important answer to look for when defining product strategyWhen's the right moment to move on and expand your story The things you should avoid doing as an early-stage B2B SaaS founderFor more information about the guest from this week:Dimitri SirotaWebsite BigID

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to provide researchers, medical practitioners, and software developers the underlying foundation to interpret, analyze and build brain activity products and services. My guest is Yair Levy, CEO of Brain.Space.Yair is a tech entrepreneur with extensive experience in the international business development of technology-oriented companies. His tenure at Mul-T-Lock, where he was responsible for the development and introduction of their ENTR product, provided him with experience in corporate management, upstream and downstream marketing, product management & innovation & execution. The product was revolutionary in its category.In May 2018, he co-founded Brain.Space, a startup that's literally opening the doors to the secrets of our brain. It's on a mission to overcome humanity's biggest health, societal and commercial challenges through Data-Driven Brain InsightsTM.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Yair to my podcast. We explore the opportunity to leverage brain insightsTM as a source of innovation. Yair explains his vision and defines the vision that has enabled them to achieve the unimaginable. He shares his big lessons learned in building his organization and what it took to establish a culture that's about support, critical feedback, and working together to move mountains. Last but not least, he provides his advice on building a technology business that the world talks about.Here's a quote from him:"To analyze people, you need to have diversity, you need to have big data, you need to have a lot of people. I'm not talking about hundreds or 1000s, you need to have millions of samples in order to really understand what's happening in the brain. Let me give you an example of what happened in the heart rate industry: when in the past, you had to have a special tool to stick to the chest, nowadays, you have a watch that is monitoring your wrist, and you have a heart rate analysis out of the cloud. So eventually, this is what we're going to do in the brain."During this interview, you will learn four things:That achieving amazing achievements is about three things: Strong belief. Big Dream. And never look back.What is the secret sauce of creating a good entrepreneurial ventureWhere to find the best playground for your team of engineers to learn and what to aim for to achieve the goalsHow to create the balance in your team to keep thinking out of the box, stabilize thoughts and create successful innovationFor more information about the guest from this week:Yair LevyWebsite Brain.Space

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help us spot, hire & develop the right team for our performance culture … by amplifying the people characteristics that make our business remarkable. My guest is Dr. Patrick Oehler, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Retorio.Patrick Oehler was born in Munich, Germany. After graduating from high school, he studied information-oriented business administration at the University of Augsburg and Management & Strategy at the London School of Economics (LSE). Subsequently, he completed his doctorate in Organizational Research at the Technical University of Munich, where he researched behavioral patterns in organizations. This is where he and his co-founder and co-CEO, Christoph Hohenberger, stumbled upon a big idea that would spark the birth of Retorio.Retorio is on a mission to create a world where people feel accepted, satisfied, and fulfilled in their work, relationships, and company culture. How? By spotting success patterns in teams, hiring matching talents, and developing them into top performers.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Patrick to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we do recruitment today, particularly in large organizations. Patrick shares how 'simply' changing the order of doing creates a revolution - one that creates unbeatable organizations. He digs into how he created traction by niching down and homing in on the most valuable and critical use case. He shares a fascinating story about how he ignored advice from investors on who to target/ not to target - and with that, found a market that's prepared to pay a premium and now represents 80% of the revenue. Last but not least, he shares his experience on what it takes to create a software business that cannot be ignored.Here's one of his quotes"Our investor told us 'don't sell to these clients because they're way too big, they're way too complicated - don't do enterprise sales. You don't know how to do that. You must go for the small ones, this way you can scale way more quickly.' And we always tried to do that, but then once again, the enterprise clients signed up and they were like, 'We're gonna pay more, and we're gonna pay more.' And they offered us big amounts of money to use the technology. And at some point, we said, okay, maybe we should stop resisting.'During this interview, you will learn four things:How flipping the process can be the key to creating a product that creates a revolutionary impact How a compelling vision can attract critical resources to your startup that are even prepared to work for freeHow to break the barriers to getting customers to sign up for demosWhy your go-to-market should be ultra specific, even though your platform can support 100s of use casesFor more information about the guest from this week:Dr. Patrick OehlerWebsite Retorio

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to Software companies over 70% more trial conversions with personalized sales and onboarding videos. My guest is Matt Barnett, Founder and CEO of Bonjoro.Matt is the founder and CEO of Bonjoro. He is a Britisch designer by trade and loves two things: building great products and building a great culture. He started as a designer, worked as a consultant, did his MBA in 2012, and then co-founded not-for-profit group XTech Sydney in 2013 and Verbate, a video insight agency in 2014. That's where he stumbled upon a problem with reaching overseas customers in a simple and impactful way. What started as a sales hack for the Agency he was running, Bonjoro went from hack to side hustle to global business in 18 months, and now has a team across 5 continents. Bonjoro is on a mission to create a world free of spamming - a world where we build trust and love amongst customers by sending something meaningful that converts them for life. It's driven by its ethos of “Automate processes, but never relationships.”And this inspired me, and hence I invited Matt to my podcast. We explore the art of spotting when a business idea has potential and which does not. Matt explains the journey of how Bonjoro was born - and how he took it from an idea to a business that grows through word of mouth and virality. He shares some of his big lessons learned on how to fill his product roadmap with smart investments that create both scale and customer value. Last but not least, he articulates the importance of creating a brand from the start - and how that increases your chances of success.Here are some of his quotes:"If every customer brings you two users, then you're like, 'Right - if we make them love us even more, and we activate them, then they'll bring us five."But how do we do that? How do you get the funnel growing faster? And that's not product. It tends to be time and relationships and the loyalty part. If you're passive with a great product, that's awesome, but people's chances of inviting others in is much, much lower. When you're a small business, you have to be active. You can't passively expect this to happen."During this interview, you will learn four things:How to push your R&D department to focus on the desired outcome, not the obvious outputWhy you should look at your customer funnel with a loyalty lens on, i.e., which customers can become a superfan - a micro-influencerSometimes your smallest customers can drive the biggest revenue impact for you - indirectly.Why everyone on your team should feel the customer's pain - and how to go about that. For more information about the guest from this week:Matt BarnettWebsite Bonjoro

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to empower GTM teams to understand their prospects and supercharge their processes. My guest is Gorish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO of Sybill.Gorish is a self-made tech entrepreneur obsessed with solving hard problems. Throughout his career, he worked as a senior software engineer in the healthcare research team of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT). He's an electrical engineering graduate from IIT Delhi and specializes in the field of ML and Signal Processing for neural and biomedical applications.He loves working on projects which can address the real-world challenges of today and have the potential to create a meaningful impact in the lives of people. Today, he's the Co-founder and CEO of Sybill. The big idea behind Sybill stems from his time lecturing at Stanford in the summer of 2020. Gorish firsthand faced the problem of gauging student engagement and sentiment in video calls. He decided to solve this problem for us and the world. Sybill is on a mission to introduce a new era in meeting intelligence, going beyond transcription and keyword searches and surfacing the aha! moments and buying intent of your prospects.And this inspired me, and hence I invited Gorish to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we leverage the value of video calls. Gorish shares his vision of how we can give Sales a competitive advantage by augmenting them with insights about the invisible behavior their customers showcase when meeting online. We dig into the big learnings and tough decisions that needed to be made in the development process and how that has panned out in stickiness and viral effects. Last but not least, he shares his advice on what it takes to build a software business that cannot be ignored.Here's one of his quotes"If we can quantify and track these behaviors, humans can actually level up their conversation. If they can get signals about their audience's mental state during the call, they can improve their presentation and their pitch to effectively take the audience from that point A to point B, which is the objective of most conversations.For instance, if sales reps could understand that the prospect is disengaged during the most important section about the core offering, they could actually disqualify that prospect far earlier."During this interview, you will learn four things:Why niching down is essential to creating predictable tractionThat 'cool' is not often valuable - and how that hurts adoptionHow to go to market even faster - and gather critical information to gain an advantage.How adding one simple feature can become the ice-breaker in every conversation - and drive word of mouth.