saas.unbound

Anna Nadeina
  • 5.0 (1)
  • ENTREPRENEURSHIP
  • UPDATED DAILY

saas.unbound is a podcast where inspiring founders and experts share their stories of founding and scaling their businesses all the way to success and eternal love from their customers. At saas.unbound we have casual chats with entrepreneurs who have already walked from 0 to 1, to 10, and sometimes to a life-changing exit. They share their experiences, actionable insights, and mistakes to avoid. Your host is Anna Nadeina, Head of Growth at saas.group, passionate Growth Marketer, and a big believer in sustainable growth and the power of networking. saas.unbound is brought to you by saas.group

  1. 5 years of 100%+ growth with zero funding | Adnan Malik @ SoftwareFinder

    2 DAYS AGO

    5 years of 100%+ growth with zero funding | Adnan Malik @ SoftwareFinder

    Adnan Malik bootstrapped Software Finder from two people in 2019 to 340 employees with 100%+ growth every year — without ever taking outside funding. The engine: a human matchmaking layer between confused software buyers and overwhelmed vendors. We get into why 70-80% of B2B software buyers end up unhappy, how a 120-person content team drove 300% organic growth while competitors collapsed, and the mid-market sales mistake costing SaaS founders their margin. For SaaS founders, operators, and marketers who want to understand how marketplaces actually scale. In this episode: → Why most B2B software buyers end up dissatisfied → The chicken-and-egg problem and the first-mover edge of starting in health IT → How content scaled to 300% organic growth while competitors dropped → Why 90% sales / 10% marketing is the costly default for mid-size SaaS → AEO in practice — and why Adnan calls it "glorified SEO" → The personal cost of scaling from 100 to 340 employees ----------- Episode's Chapters ----------- 0:05 — Introduction & Guest Welcome 0:49 — What Software Finder Does & How It Started 2:01 — The Business Model: Free for Buyers, Paid by Vendors 5:58 — Solving the Chicken & Egg Problem 9:21 — 5 Years of 100% Growth — What's Driving It 14:43 — SEO Investment & Organic Traffic Wins 17:04 — AEO & How LLMs Are Changing Buyer Search 20:48 — Biggest Mistakes Vendors Make with Buyers 25:22 — Why Brand & Reviews Matter Before the Sale 26:32 — Review Manipulation & How to Build Trust 30:49 — Founder Burnout & Managing Rapid Growth 33:49 — Biggest Win, Biggest Failure & Lessons Learned 36:38 — Advice for Bootstrapped Founders Today Adnan Malik - linkedin.com/in/adnanmalik1 Software Finder - https://softwarefinder.com Subscribe to our channel to be the first to see the interviews that we publish - https://www.youtube.com/@saas-group Stay up to date: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaaS_group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14790796

    39 min
  2. A serial bootstrapped SaaS founder's framework | Aaron Gibson @ Hurree

    27 APR

    A serial bootstrapped SaaS founder's framework | Aaron Gibson @ Hurree

    saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies. In episode #17 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with Aaron Gibson has exited two companies, turned down VC funding, and built Hurree — a data analytics platform — by obsessing over one thing: showing users value before they quit. In this episode: → Why Aaron thinks moats are "a lot slimmer than they used to be" in the AI era → How anonymous pulse surveys exposed a culture problem he didn't know he had → Initiatives that changed team retention → His framework for knowing when to double down on a growth channel — and when to kill it → Why he doesn't expect his team to love their jobs, and what he expects instead → What serial founders actually build toward when they're "not building for acquisition" For bootstrapped founders, operators, and anyone building a team-first SaaS business in a crowded market. ----------- Episode's Chapters ----------- 0:05 — Introduction & What Hurry Solves 3:20 — Aaron's Background & Journey into Tech 4:45 — The Origin Story of Hurry 6:38 — Showing Monster Value Before Users Churn 10:12 — Using AI Internally & in the Product 11:55 — Measuring AI Success 14:04 — AI & Hiring: Is It Changing the Team? 17:20 — Building a Strong Culture as a Startup 29:22 — Growth Strategy: Bootstrapped & Customer-Obsessed 30:37 — Account-Based Marketing & Go-to-Market Strategy 34:30 — Building for an Exit — Lessons from Two Acquisitions 37:50 — Biggest Win, Biggest Failure & Founder Hacks 🎙️ Aaron Gibson - https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaronhurree/ Huree - https://www.hurree.co/ Subscribe to our channel to be the first to see the interviews that we publish - https://www.youtube.com/@saas-group Stay up to date: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaaS_group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14790796

    45 min
  3. The wrong way to bring AI into your company | Leo Goldfarb @ Albato

    20 APR

    The wrong way to bring AI into your company | Leo Goldfarb @ Albato

    saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies. In episode #16 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with Leo Goldfarb, co-founder of Albato — a 100% bootstrapped automation and integration platform with 200,000 users and 80 people — after years at Microsoft, IBM, HP, and Booking.com. This episode gets into what it actually takes to build an AI-first product when you're competing with Zapier and nobody on your team has formal AI experience. In this episode: → Why Albato deliberately pivoted away from competing with Zapier head-on — and what they built instead → The AI copilot that kept crashing, and the API redesign they had to do before it could work → How to spot an AI skeptic on your team before they slow everything down → Why 95% of enterprise AI investments fail — and the metric mistake behind it → The case for decentralizing AI across every team, not siloing it in an innovation lab → What "pump your tires before tuning your car" means for founders bringing AI into legacy products This one's for founders and operators navigating the gap between AI hype and what it actually takes to ship something that works. ----------- Episode's Chapters ----------- 0:05 — Introduction: Meet Leo from Albato 1:35 — From Corporate Life to Co-Founding a Startup 6:30 — What Albato Does & 7 Years Bootstrapped 10:44 — The B2B Pivot: Albato Embedded 18:53 — Building AI Without Dedicated AI Engineers 27:38 — Mistake #1: The AI Skeptic on Your Team 35:54 — How to Actually Measure AI ROI 42:27 — Biggest Win & Biggest Failure at Albato 49:07 — Founder Hack: Trust Your Team, Let Go 54:10 — Fix Your Foundation Before Adding AI Leo Goldfarb - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leo-goldfarb-7b743449/ Albato - albato.com Subscribe to our channel to be the first to see the interviews that we publish - https://www.youtube.com/@saas-group Stay up to date: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaaS_group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14790796

    59 min
  4. From open source side project to bootstrapped solo business | David Boyne @EventCatalog

    13 APR

    From open source side project to bootstrapped solo business | David Boyne @EventCatalog

    saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies. In episode #15 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with David Boyne, founder of EventCatalog, an open-source documentation tool specifically designed for event-driven architectures (EDAs), allowing teams to document, visualize, and discover services, events, schemas, and producers/consumers. Dave Boyne left a senior AWS developer advocate role — the highest salary he'd ever earned — and jumped into bootstrapping with 12 months of runway, a self-hosted documentation tool, and no clear business model. Fourteen months later, Event Catalog has crossed $300K in revenue, and Dave reached personal sustainability in just 8 months. In this episode: → Why Dave chose a self-hosted license key model over SaaS — and why it made procurement 10x easier → How he reached sustainability in 8 months without raising a single dollar → His AI-powered content and coding workflows as a solo founder → The post-sale mistake he almost didn't catch: ignoring renewals while chasing new sales → Why he raised prices twice — and the 20% drop-off rule he uses to know when pricing is right → How he uses LinkedIn to build trust with developers without ever leading with the product ----------- Episode's Chapters ----------- 0:00 — Introduction & Guest Background 1:55 — From AWS to Bootstrapping 5:00 — Marketing on LinkedIn 7:25 — What is Event Catalog? 9:39 — Business Model: Open Core Over SaaS 14:23 — Building with AI as a Solo Founder 38:08 — Biggest Win & Biggest Failure 41:46 — Founder Hacks & Closing Thoughts This one's for solo founders and technical builders who want to see what the zero-to-$300K journey actually looks like. David - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-boyne/ EventCatalog - https://www.eventcatalog.dev/

    46 min
  5. Why building inside your competitor is a better strategy | Pieter Boon @ImpactPilotv

    6 APR

    Why building inside your competitor is a better strategy | Pieter Boon @ImpactPilotv

    saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies. In episode #14 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with Pieter Boon, co-founder of ImpactPilot, a Customer Success (CS) platform designed specifically as an add-on for HubSpot. Pieter spent his career in post-sale roles — from Google's ads team to a SaaS startup he helped sell to a unicorn. Now he's building Impact Pilot, a customer success tool that lives inside HubSpot, not next to it. Three months after launch, HubSpot announced a competing feature. Here's what happened next. In this episode: → Why standalone CS platforms create "ghost towns" of stale data → The difference between customer support and customer success (and why it matters for retention) → The classic first-hire mistake that sets CS teams up to fail → How to use AI in customer success without damaging real customer relationships → Why Pieter raised only $500K — and what he used it for → The one tactic that keeps customers renewing: celebrate their wins with them This episode is for B2B SaaS founders and revenue leaders thinking seriously about post-sale growth, churn, and when (and how) to build a CS function. ----------- Episode's Chapters ----------- 0:00 — Introduction & Welcome 0:34 — Pieter's Background: From Google to SaaS Startup Founder 2:04 — Customer Support vs. Customer Success Explained 3:11 — Do All SaaS Companies Need a CS Team? 5:05 — Why Impact Pilot is Built Inside HubSpot (Not Standalone) 10:09 — Why HubSpot Over Salesforce? Narrowing the ICP 12:21 — Bootstrapping to Angel Round: The Fundraising Mindset Shift 15:04 — How to Start Customer Success as a SaaS Founder 19:07 — Using AI in Customer Success: Use Cases & Guardrails 31:02 — What "Being Active on LinkedIn" Actually Means 34:42 — Building Your First CS Team the Right Way 39:51 — Biggest Win, Biggest Challenge & One Founder Hack Pieter - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pieter-boon/ ImpactPilot - https://impactpilot.io/ Subscribe to our channel to be the first to see the interviews that we publish - https://www.youtube.com/@saas-group Stay up to date: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaaS_group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14790796

    46 min
  6. The anti-hypergrowth SaaS: build a business you want to run | Joel Griffith @browserless

    30 MAR

    The anti-hypergrowth SaaS: build a business you want to run | Joel Griffith @browserless

    •saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies. In episode #13 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with Joel Griffith, founder of browserless, a cloud-based headless browser-as-a-service platform that allows developers to run automated browser tasks. Joel Griffith didn’t start in tech, he was a professional jazz musician. Today, he runs browserless, a browser automation infrastructure powering AI agents, bots, scraping systems, and developer tools worldwide. In this episode, we cover: • What “headless browser” actually means (without jargon) • Why Joel chose to bootstrap instead of raising VC • Growing to $1M ARR without a marketer • Open source as a growth engine • Rewriting the entire product to eliminate technical debt • AI, automation, and whether bots are good or bad • The emotional reality of hiring, firing, and founder life If you're building a devtool, infra SaaS, or considering rewriting your codebase - this one’s for you. Joel Griffith - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-griffith-93933332/ Browserless - https://www.browserless.io Subscribe to our channel to be the first to see the interviews that we publish - https://www.youtube.com/@saas-group Stay up to date: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaaS_group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14790796

    59 min
  7. Reputation management in SaaS: how to build trust | Pius Binder @ subsig

    23 MAR

    Reputation management in SaaS: how to build trust | Pius Binder @ subsig

    saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies. In episode #12 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with Pius Binder, co-founder of subsig, a B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that helps companies manage their reputation and monitor brand mentions across social media, review sites, and AI-driven platforms. We break down what’s fundamentally broken in SaaS reputation management and why it matters even more now that LLMs shape software discovery. Pius shares: Why first wow (landing page + onboarding) is non-negotiable in 2026 PLG vs enterprise: how much product you should show before charging Why “unbiased reviews” are complicated—and how to design better research + incentives The new reputation stack: G2/Capterra + Reddit/X/LinkedIn + your own content How smaller SaaS teams can exploit the current AI search chaos faster than incumbents If you’re building a SaaS and want to win discovery, trust, and conversions, this is the playbook. ----------- Episode's Chapters ----------- 0:05 — Introduction & Guest Background 3:06 — From Facebook to Canva: Career Journey 5:07 — Building Subscribed FYI 7:31 — First Impressions & Onboarding Philosophy 10:09 — Pricing & Monetization Strategy 16:29 — Getting Unbiased Reviews & User Research 20:48 — Cultural Nuances in Review Ratings 27:56 — AI-Powered Discovery & Content Strategy 32:21 — How Subscribed FYI Grows 40:23 — Biggest Wins & Failures 48:22 — Founder Advice & Reputation Hacks Pius Binder - https://www.linkedin.com/in/piusb/ Subscribed - https://www.subsig.com Subscribe to our channel to be the first to see the interviews that we publish - https://www.youtube.com/@saas-group Stay up to date: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaaS_group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14790796

    51 min
  8. How to keep churn under 4% while multiplying revenue with Marko Saric @Plausible Analytics

    16 MAR

    How to keep churn under 4% while multiplying revenue with Marko Saric @Plausible Analytics

    saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies. In episode #11 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with Marko from Plausible Analytics. He joins the podcast for a refreshingly honest conversation about what seven years of bootstrapped growth actually looks like. Plausible started with one visitor from Google in an entire day. Today it has 16,000 paying customers, a team of 10, and a churn rate that's stayed below 4% for four years running. And it was all built on what Marko calls "boring marketing." In this episode: → The single blog post that drove more traffic in 4 hours than the previous year combined → Why going open source almost became their biggest threat → What ChatGPT traffic actually converts like vs. Google → How word of mouth becomes a growth engine you don't have to manage → Why Plausible ignores every acquisition and investor email ----------- Episode's Chapters ----------- 0:05 — Intro & Plausible Overview 4:49 — Going Open Source: Lessons & Pitfalls 8:58 — SEO, Content Marketing & AI Discovery 17:04 — Building Brand & Trust Over Time 20:24 — The Early Plateau & How Marko Joined 22:18 — Spotting & Solving Growth Plateaus 29:33 — The Boring Marketing Strategy & Growth Loop 32:36 — Metrics, Churn & Support as a Marketing Tool 38:56 — What Worries a Bootstrapped Founder 42:13 — Biggest Win & Biggest Failure 45:01 — Founder Hack: Async, Autonomous Team Culture Marko - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markosaric/ Plausible Analytics - https://plausible.io Subscribe to our channel to be the first to see the interviews that we publish - https://www.youtube.com/@saas-group Stay up to date: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SaaS_group LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/14790796

    50 min
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About

saas.unbound is a podcast where inspiring founders and experts share their stories of founding and scaling their businesses all the way to success and eternal love from their customers. At saas.unbound we have casual chats with entrepreneurs who have already walked from 0 to 1, to 10, and sometimes to a life-changing exit. They share their experiences, actionable insights, and mistakes to avoid. Your host is Anna Nadeina, Head of Growth at saas.group, passionate Growth Marketer, and a big believer in sustainable growth and the power of networking. saas.unbound is brought to you by saas.group

Information

  • Creator
    Anna Nadeina
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    284
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Anna Nadeina 2023
  • Show Website
    saas.unbound

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