SaaS Stories

Joana Inch
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SaaS Stories is my not-so-secret quest to learn what it truly takes to succeed in the world of SaaS—and I’m inviting you along for the ride! I have the pleasure of sitting down with brilliant minds and industry trailblazers to explore their journeys, uncovering the secrets behind their growth, the gaps they spotted in the market, and what really drives them. It’s not all smooth sailing—there are challenges, unexpected turns, and moments of reflection where they share what they’d love to change about their journey. Think of it as a candid, insider’s look into the world of SaaS, with just the right amount of curiosity, empathy, and wit. Join me as I dive deep, selfishly soak up all the insights, and hopefully share a little inspiration with you along the way—one SaaS story at a time.

  1. SaaS as an Orchestra | How to conduct CX, content & AI into one seamless journey

    12/11/2025

    SaaS as an Orchestra | How to conduct CX, content & AI into one seamless journey

    Most founders chase a bigger TAM. We make the case for the opposite: pick the smaller, harder market where pain is acute and the bar to win is high. Joined by Arman Eshraghi | Founder and CEO of Qrvey, we unpack how embedded analytics and AI built for multi‑tenant SaaS can outcompete general dashboards, and why education beats advertising when you’re selling a specialised product. We get specific about designing a customer journey that actually sings. Arman’s orchestra metaphor comes to life as we map how content brings the right audience, trials reduce friction, sales joins at the right moment, and pricing and packaging match real product maturity. He explains why Qrvey staffed CX with the original product builders to speed outcomes for customers, turn field learnings into roadmaps, and bridge gaps while the platform scaled. We also dig into when and how to expand globally, why English‑first regions can accelerate early international wins, and the hiring choices that shape culture: thinkers versus followers, decentralised decisions versus bottlenecks. On AI, Arman is clear‑eyed—LLMs shine for casual analytics, natural language exploration, and agentic workflows, but they aren’t a substitute for enterprise‑grade reasoning yet. Qrvey's approach blends chat, agents, and MCP interoperability in an embeddable stack that delivers value today without overpromising. If you care about building a durable SaaS business, one that compounds trust and revenue, this conversation is a masterclass in focus, orchestration, and pragmatic innovation. Send us a text

    52 min
  2. From one email to a global SaaS: Sam Spencer on product-market fit, team building, and the power of process

    10/14/2025

    From one email to a global SaaS: Sam Spencer on product-market fit, team building, and the power of process

    One urgent email changed everything. When a European health agency asked for a metadata registry no one else could provide, we didn’t spin up a pitch deck—we built. That moment of raw product–market fit set Sam Spencer, CEO of Aristotle Metadata, on a decade-long journey of scaling with focus, process, and a bias for the next achievable step. We talk about the unglamorous truths of SaaS: why your first competitor is almost always Excel; how a scrappy prototype beats a perfect plan; and where AI actually helps (consistency, drafting, complex questionnaires) versus where it falls short (trust, surprise, human connection). Sam shares the hiring philosophy that’s worked for a lean team—consistent interviews, simple work-sample tasks like documenting a cookie recipe—and why early-career talent, coached well, can outperform expensive hires in the long run. The conversation turns practical and vivid when Sam recounts losing 40% of his small engineering team and choosing a Moneyball approach: define the one metric that matters (ship Tuesday security updates), hire to that constraint, and let process carry the weight. We unpack go-to-market fundamentals that still work—clear positioning around pain, a website you own, steady LinkedIn presence, and network-led B2B referrals—and the leadership habits that give teams autonomy: explicit decision rights, written thresholds for on-call fixes, and honest reasons for hybrid rhythms that speed onboarding and incident response. Send us a text

    50 min
  3. Turning AI into Revenue: GTM Lessons from Galileo’s HR Revolution

    10/07/2025

    Turning AI into Revenue: GTM Lessons from Galileo’s HR Revolution

    Start with a sharp truth: AI isn’t taking your job, but someone who knows how to use it will. From there, we unpack a practical playbook for modern HR with Amy Farner—how to align people strategy with business goals, why data makes work more human, and where AI actually delivers outcomes you can defend in the boardroom. Amy traces the evolution from early retention models and conjoint analysis to today’s AI agents that turn trusted research into answers, plans, and work products.  We go deep on Galileo, the AI agent and AI-native learning platform from The Josh Bersin Company. Instead of generic answers, Galileo draws on vetted content and partner data to give HR leaders grounded recommendations, while Galileo Learn personalises how people upskill—turn a course into a podcast, quiz what you already know, or talk it through with an AI tutor. This is research meeting real-world execution: faster decisions, better implementation, and learning that adapts to the person and the organisation.  We also break down go-to-market lessons that transfer to any SaaS team: lead with original research, don’t sleep on the mid-market, and integrate into the tools people already use so your agent is one click away, not one portal too far. Looking ahead, roles will collapse, agility will compound, and careers will accelerate. The winning mix pairs power skills—judgment, communication, adaptability—with enough technical literacy to supervise AI and ship work that stands up to scrutiny. Send us a text

    50 min
  4. Personalisation at Scale: Cold email lessons from billions sent

    09/23/2025

    Personalisation at Scale: Cold email lessons from billions sent

    "The volume game is over." These powerful words from Jeremy Chatelaine, founder and CEO of QuickMail, set the tone for a conversation that challenges everything you thought you knew about cold outreach. After sending billions of emails over the past decade, Jeremy has discovered what truly works—and it's not what most "influencers" are teaching. The secret starts with a fundamental mindset shift: send emails people actually want to receive. This means thinking from your recipient's perspective rather than focusing on yourself as a sender. Too many outreach attempts fail because they're fundamentally selfish, packed with "me-focused" language that recipients immediately recognise and reject. By contrast, emails that demonstrate genuine care and thoughtfulness consistently outperform. Jeremy shares practical wisdom on crafting messages that build trust from the first line. He warns against common mistakes like fake personalisation ("big fan of your podcast") and encourages authentic communication that respects the recipient's time and intelligence. With deliverability becoming increasingly challenging, he reveals QuickMail's innovative approaches—including their "Reword with AI" feature that ensures every email sent is uniquely written without changing the core message. Perhaps most surprisingly, Jeremy challenges the notion that cold outreach requires choosing between personalisation and scale. His solution? Create multiple small, highly targeted campaigns instead of one massive list. This approach yielded him over 20 meetings from fewer than 100 contacts in a recent campaign—results that mass outreach rarely achieves. As AI becomes more prevalent in both sending and receiving messages, Jeremy offers a refreshing perspective on maintaining human connection in your outreach. His advice on balancing brevity with credibility, incorporating authority signals, and being transparent about automation will transform how you approach cold outreach in 2025 and beyond. Send us a text

    38 min
  5. The Call-to-Action that changed everything: Scaling SaaS via Buyer-Led Growth

    09/10/2025

    The Call-to-Action that changed everything: Scaling SaaS via Buyer-Led Growth

    Trust in B2B relationships has reached a critical low point. According to recent research, B2B consumers—particularly millennials and Gen Z decision-makers—have grown increasingly skeptical of traditional marketing and sales approaches. So what happens when prospects no longer believe your case studies, doubt your testimonials, and avoid your demo requests? Braydan Young - SlashExperts, co-founder and CEO of SlashExperts, has pioneered a revolutionary answer: buyer-led growth. After scaling Sendoso to 700+ employees, Young noticed a pattern where prospects would bypass formal sales channels and instead seek validation from peers in industry forums. Rather than fighting this behaviour, he built a solution around it. Slash Experts flips the traditional sales funnel by moving reference calls from the end to the beginning of the buying journey. Their platform allows companies to place a "Talk with a Customer" button directly on their website, connecting prospects with actual users who can provide honest, unfiltered feedback. The key innovation? Giving reference customers complete calendar control so they don't get burned out. The results speak for themselves. Companies implementing this approach see higher conversion rates, more qualified prospects, and valuable first-party conversation data that can inform everything from product development to marketing strategy. Young explains, "We're taking the reference from the end of the sales cycle to the beginning," creating authentic connections that build trust when it matters most. Beyond buyer-led growth, Young shares invaluable insights on scaling teams, maintaining healthy friction between sales and marketing, identifying the right customers, and achieving work-life balance as a founder. His candid advice about managing remote teams, creating meaningful company perks (like their ingenious "vacation bonus"), and evolving your work expectations through different life stages offers a refreshingly honest perspective on startup leadership. Send us a text

    40 min
  6. Weaponized Intelligence: How one marketer stays ahead of AI

    09/03/2025

    Weaponized Intelligence: How one marketer stays ahead of AI

    What happens when everyone becomes an AI-powered "thought leader" overnight? How do you cut through the noise when ChatGPT can generate seemingly expert content on any topic? Tyler Lubben, co-founder of multiple SaaS platforms, offers a provocative solution: weaponized intelligence. Tyler's approach turns conventional wisdom on its head. Rather than competing with AI, he exploits its blind spots by harvesting data from places large language models can't access. By scraping Reddit forums, transcribing YouTube videos, and analyzing language patterns from online communities, he creates content that resonates deeply with audiences while providing insights AI simply cannot generate. "Everyone's trying to be a thought leader and everyone can be a thought leader because they have AI," Tyler explains. "It's just all of this confusion, noise, content overload where people just glaze over." His experiments revealed something surprising - meticulously crafted AI content received minimal engagement, while raw, unfiltered, voice-to-text posts generated significant interaction. The authenticity gap has become painfully obvious to audiences who instantly recognize AI-written content. Perhaps most fascinating is Tyler's work creating "digital clones." For one CEO constantly trapped in meetings, Tyler scraped 80 podcast appearances and analyzed years of emails to build a comprehensive language model that could mimic not just knowledge but writing style and speech patterns. The result was so accurate that the CEO was shocked when his digital twin referenced statements from podcasts recorded a year earlier. As traditional marketing channels become saturated with AI-generated content, Tyler predicts a mass migration to private communities where valuable information remains inaccessible to AI training models. The future belongs not to those with specialized technical skills (which AI can replicate) but to those who excel at distinctly human qualities - empathy, adaptability, pattern recognition across domains, and authentic relationship building. Ready to discover what ChatGPT can't do? Listen now to learn how to find your unique edge in the AI revolution. Send us a text

    47 min
  7. SaaS in Steel Caps: Turning Trade Pain Points into Platform Wins

    08/25/2025

    SaaS in Steel Caps: Turning Trade Pain Points into Platform Wins

    Ever wondered how construction companies manage the chaos of coordinating office teams, on-site workers, and independent tradespeople—all while staying profitable? Jordan Powell did more than wonder. He built a solution. Powell, a builder by trade and CEO of Loop Logics, takes us behind the scenes of his journey from construction manager to tech founder. His mission? Creating software that makes construction companies safer, easier, and more profitable—a tall order in an industry where thousands of businesses collapse annually. The turning point for Loop Logics came during an unexpected stress test. Just as they implemented their MVP in their own construction business, a weather event increased their workload by 60% overnight. Instead of buckling under pressure, the software shined, demonstrating remarkable efficiency gains across departments from admin to finance. Looking ahead, Powell sees enormous potential for AI in construction management. While he doesn't expect robots to start building houses anytime soon, he's already implementing AI to optimise scheduling, improve workforce management, and enhance data analysis—innovations arriving just in time for Australia's infrastructure boom and persistent skilled labour shortage. For aspiring entrepreneurs, Powell offers this gem: seek out experienced mentors who've walked similar paths. "The founder community is absolutely amazing," he shares. "We're more than happy to share the good, the bad and the ugly with the journey." Send us a text

    34 min
  8. Data That Doesn't Lie: Brand Tracking for the AI Era

    08/19/2025

    Data That Doesn't Lie: Brand Tracking for the AI Era

    What happens when you combine traditional market research expertise with cutting-edge technology? Stephanie Clapham, Director of Research at Latana, joins us to reveal how next-generation brand tracking is transforming how SaaS companies measure their brand health. Despite companies investing billions in brand marketing annually, most struggle to accurately measure whether these investments make a difference. Traditional brand tracking methods often deliver unreliable data at premium prices, creating a significant trust gap. Stephanie explains how Latana's innovative approach leverages ad-based sampling, Bayesian statistics, and machine learning to provide more accurate insights into brand perception. We explore common misconceptions marketers have about brand tracking, from the "everything but the kitchen sink" approach that leads to unwieldy surveys, to an unhelpful fixation on sample size rather than data reliability. Stephanie emphasises that even early-stage SaaS companies with limited budgets should measure brand perception, starting with foundational metrics like awareness and perception to benchmark growth over time. The conversation delves into how artificial intelligence is revolutionising brand tracking through predictive modeling, improved data quality assurance, and automated insight generation. Looking ahead, Stephanie identifies emerging trends including growing concerns about fraudulent responses (with up to 40% of market research potentially being fraudulent), decreasing representativity in traditional panels, and increasing demand for instant insights. For marketers tired of flying blind with brand investments or struggling with unreliable data, this episode offers practical guidance on measuring what matters. Listen now to discover how technological innovation is making brand tracking more accessible, reliable, and actionable for SaaS companies of all sizes. Send us a text

    30 min
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About

SaaS Stories is my not-so-secret quest to learn what it truly takes to succeed in the world of SaaS—and I’m inviting you along for the ride! I have the pleasure of sitting down with brilliant minds and industry trailblazers to explore their journeys, uncovering the secrets behind their growth, the gaps they spotted in the market, and what really drives them. It’s not all smooth sailing—there are challenges, unexpected turns, and moments of reflection where they share what they’d love to change about their journey. Think of it as a candid, insider’s look into the world of SaaS, with just the right amount of curiosity, empathy, and wit. Join me as I dive deep, selfishly soak up all the insights, and hopefully share a little inspiration with you along the way—one SaaS story at a time.

Information

  • Creator
    Joana Inch
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2025
  • Episodes
    63
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 SaaS Stories
  • Show Website
    SaaS Stories