Subscription Heroes Scott Hurff

In this episode, Jay Nathan (COO, Churnkey) and Baird Hall (Co-Founder, Churnkey) have a candid conversation with Todd Olson, Founder & CEO of Pendo, a comprehensive product experience platform. 
Todd founded the company in 2013. The Raleigh, N.C.-based company has since raised $356 million in venture capital, landed more than 2500 customers, and now employs 750 people across eight offices globally. Pendo has appeared on the Forbes Cloud 100 and Inc. Best Workplaces lists for the last six years.
In this episode we explore the intricate dynamics of pricing strategies and the balance between product-led and sales-led growth. Todd shares insights on the significance of pricing elasticity, customer commitment, and aligning pricing with value perception. Additionally, the discussion delves into the evolution of Pendo's go-to-market strategy, the challenges of product installation, and the nuanced approach to balancing product-led expansion with sales-led acquisition.
 
How to listen to Subscription Heroes

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
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About Todd Olson:
 
Todd Olson is the CEO and co-founder of pendo.io, a widely recognized platform focused on improving digital product experiences. His expertise lies in product management and entrepreneurship, with a strong emphasis on user-centric design and product development methodologies. Through his leadership at Pendo, Todd has played a pivotal role in helping companies understand and enhance their digital product experiences.
Here is what we cover:

Todd's experience with pricing strategies and the importance of understanding elasticity.
Significance of increasing prices to filter out less committed customers.
Importance of charging enough to ensure customer commitment and responsiveness.
Considerations for pricing based on customer value perception rather than solely on costs.
Todd's perspective on balancing product-led and sales-led growth strategies.
Challenges of product installation in B2B markets and its impact on the product-led approach.
Importance of aligning go-to-market strategies with customer needs and market dynamics.

Now that the days of cheap money and spending your way out of problems is over, SaaS companies are in a sudden search for newfound efficiencies. But how do you pull that off while maintaining and creating deep customer relationships? 
Jay Nathan has the answers.


Jay's one of the foremost customer success experts in the world, and he knows how to lead and scale SaaS customer success teams in a world where there's no more free money. On top of that, he's one of the foremost thought leaders in the CS space—having co-founded Gain Grow Retain, one of the alrgest and most vibrant Customer Success Leadership communities in the world—and through his leadership as EVP & CCO at Higher Logic. 


In this episode, we dive into the specifics of building scalable customer success programs, the customer-centric companies he admires, and drop some breaking news: Jay is joining us at Churnkey as our first strategic advisor as we cross the $1 billion mark of protected subscription revenue. 
How to listen

Apple Podcasts
Spotify
️ Google Podcasts

Here's what we cover

How Jay uses his prolific writing to solve problems in his own life and career
The market correction's impact on SaaS companies
Scaling customer success teams and operations
The power of online communities in customer success
Customer-centricity: Amazon and Southwest Airlines case studies
✨ Jay’s recent appointment to Churnkey's Board of Advisors
How he decides which companies to invest his time and money in
Importance of being customer-centric in the SaaS industry

Resources

Jay Nathan on LinkedIn
Jay's email list 
Gain Grow Retain, Jay's Customer Success community 
Higher Logic

This episode is sponsored by Churnkey, the world's most powerful customer-centric retention platform. 

We're taking a little break from our usual lineup of guests to peel back the curtain on our story. For our first interlude, I sit down with my business partner and co-founder, Nick Fogle. 
He's a lawyer-turned-SaaS-founder who also happens to be an engineer, and while working together to build Churnkey, I've seen him morph into a sales leader, as well. We cover all this and more, including some breaking news about a TOP SECRET product release we're making public for the first time!
Here's what we cover 

A wild eight months: how we went from nearly out of cash to reaching profitability and 300% revenue growth
How we knew we reached product-market fit 
Managing sales, along with everything else, as a CEO 
Avoiding burnout!
Scaling the way we build product as we grow the team beyond the founders
How to grow with capital efficiency 

Learn more about us at churnkey.co

Designing accessibility into software is both a huge business opportunity and a passion that Cat Noone, founder and CEO of Stark, has embraced. I've known Cat for nearly ten years (I interviewed her for my book, Designing Products People Love, back in 2015), and her devotion to building products that materially improve people's lives is stronger than ever.
Stark began as a humble Sketch plugin and is now a key player in organizations like FedEx, Apple, Google, NASA, Salesforce, and many others for integrating accessibility into the product development process. In the end, making products more accessible and usable is both good business and a societal good.
We talk Stark's community-driven distribution strategy, the shift from founder-led sales to a sales team, and the valuable lessons learned from early pricing mistakes. We also explore the challenges and strategies involved in the large-scale adoption of design tools, the art of identifying the perfect product launch window, and so much more.
What we discuss

Cat’s journey with Stark, from a Sketch plugin to a software design giant
Community-driven distribution strategy
Transition from founder-led sales to a sales team
Lessons learned from early pricing blunders in Stark's journey
Large-scale adoption of design tools and strategies to overcome challenges
Understanding different personas in the purchasing process
Viewing the learning curve of sales as an opportunity
Scaling a product and empowering account executives
Investing in strengths rather than improving weaknesses
Cat’s love of reading and her wish for a vacation
Stark's mission of making software accessible to the world
Obstacles and adaptation in enterprise adoption
Founder-led sales and hiring account executives
The importance of being present and supportive as a leader

Resources
Cat's LinkedIn
Stark
Brought to you by Churnkey
Boost your subscription revenue, lower churn, and make customers happier with Churnkey, the only platform that handles every type of retention for you.

In this episode, I sit down with Claire Suellentrop, co-founder of Forget the Funnel.  Forget the Funnel is a fresh marketing approach for SaaS companies, a book, an agency, and a series of courses. Claire co-created Forget the Funnel with Georgiana Laudi after her experience leading marketing at Calendly.
What we discuss

How to apply customer-led growth in SaaS businesses
Understanding the 'Forget the Funnel' approach
Importance of customer feedback in business development
How customer journey mapping can transform your business
Rethinking Pirate Metrics
Creating order out of chaos in workload management
Imagining impactful urban development in SaaS business
Breaking down large projects into manageable parts
Customer feedback can uncover business blind spots
Ideas for developing a plot of land for the neighborhood
Stockpiling research and data for later in life

Resources
Claire Suellentrop LinkedIn
Forget the Funnel
Forget the Funnel Media Kit
Book: Forget the Funnel
Brought to you by Churnkey
Boost your subscription revenue, lower churn, and make customers happier with Churnkey, the only platform that handles every type of retention for you.

In this episode, I sit down with Amit Gupta, co-founder of Sudowrite. Sudowrite is  an AI-assisted creative writing tool for fiction writers. In addition to co-running Sudowrite, Amit is a sci-fi writer and sold his previous company, Photojojo, in 2014.
About Amit
Amit is one of the most optimistic people I've ever met, and he's creating some incredible things over at Sudowrite. We chat about the challenges of building on top of other people's platforms and what it takes to stay on top of ever-changing language models, what the future of AI-assisted storytelling looks like, how to create intuitive interfaces that makes AI tools accessible to all.


What we discuss

How Sudowrite works
Generating ideas and streamlining the writing process
Challenges of building on ever-changing ChatGPT language models
Importance of crafting AI interfaces for different writer styles
Future of AI-assisted storytelling and copyright implications
Mixed opinions within the sci-fi community on AI writing
Power of storytelling and current books being read
Dealing with platform risk and new language models
Reimagining AI interfaces for human interaction and learning
Potential for one-to-one AI instruction in various fields

Resources
Amit's LinkedIn
Sudowrite
Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Kinesis Ergonomic Keyboards