salesflare

For this thirty-ninth episode, I talked to Max Armbruster, Founder and CEO of Talkpush, a recruitment automation platform that leverages chat interfaces for recruitment. After stints at companies like CNET, Altran, ATKearney and SAP, Max started Talkpush based on in-house software he built in a previous business to streamline their recruitment process. Despite being a US national with German origins, he leads his company from Hong Kong with half of his company being based in Latin America. And he sells his software worldwide. We talk about whether it makes sense to combine software with services, how the big internet giants get rich, and how to build great processes and have effective meetings.

For this thirty-eighth episode, I talked to Alex Theuma, co-founder of SaaStock, the first and leading conference dedicated to SaaS companies in Europe.. After a sales career of about 11 years, mostly selling software, Alex got an itch to start his own business. He started a blog about SaaS companies and invited experts to contribute. Very quickly a podcast followed, he started organizing meetups, and a community was formed. After this community expressed the need for a SaaS conference in Europe and the first sponsor signed up, Alex made the jump and founded SaaStock. We talk about how SaaStock is now going online during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond, how to start a business starting with the audience, and why you should never forget that cash is king.

For this thirty-seventh episode, I talked to Rahul Vohra, co-founder of Superhuman, the company behind the self-proclaimed fastest email client ever made. After Rahul sold his previous company Rapportive to LinkedIn and spent a while there as a product manager, he decided to take on the challenge to rethink one of the most fundamental software programs of today’s knowledge worker: email client. Rahul’s dream as a kid was to be a game developer and he taught himself how to code starting from the age of eight, which he first did alone and then later as a professional game developer at Runescape. It’s this gaming background that he leverages at Superhuman to try create the best possible email experience in the world. We talk about how Superhuman goes about prioritizing growth projects, his career detour starting a PhD in machine learning, how playing Dungeons and Dragons keeps him inspired, and why you need to aim for either growth of users or growth of revenue, but not both.

For this thirty-sixth episode, I talked to Mada Seghete, co-founder of Branch, the leading platform that makes deep linking to specific places in mobile apps easy. After Mada's mom helped her to get a full scholarship to study in the US, she studied computer engineering and got her first job as a software developer. She only did this for a year, after which she consecutively worked as a business consultant, worked as a product manager, went to Stanford Business School, and co-founded her first startup company. It was while working on that start-up company that she and her co-founders launched a referral program and discovered how difficult it was to link to specific places within their app. Branch was born. We talk about good reads and Goodreads (the app), about working 14-16 hours per day and being lucky, Branch’s big vision, and the excitement of building a team and making an impact.

For this thirty-fourth episode, I talked to Darren Chait, co-founder of Hugo, a platform that brings all your meeting notes together in one place and connects them with all the tools you use. Darren and his co-founder started Hugo off as a way to prepare better for meetings, but then found instead that the bigger problem was what happened after the meetings. Today, two years since their pivot, their software is used by great companies like Nike, Dropbox and Twitter. We talk about how having a baby makes you a better founder, the dilemma between raising VC money vs. not, how partnerships can boost your business, and why trusting your team makes all the difference.

For this thirty-fourth episode, I talked to Harrison Rose, co-founder of Paddle, a leading subscription and commerce platform that helps SaaS businesses grow faster. Harrison started Paddle with his co-founder when they were 17, going on 18, right when they were due to join university. They dropped out before it even began. At first they built a marketplace for businesses, much like the App Store, but when it turned out nobody wanted another marketplace, they dropped the customer facing aspect and kept the platform for payments and the like. We talk about how he builds a solid team while hiring 100 employees in a year, why he gets up at 6am, how he keeps his high energy up, and why you need to keep learning faster than your organization.

For this thirty-third episode, I talked to Xenia Muntean, co-founder of Planable, a social media collaboration and approval platform for agencies and bigger companies. Xenia started a social media agency in Moldova when she was in university and built it out to seven people, until she founded Planable to solve one of the collaboration issues they were facing in her agency. Her startup was discovered by an accelerator in Romania, and afterwards by Techstars in London. We talk about why you should hire slowly to build culture, how excited she is about rebranding Planable, getting back to pottery and jewelry, and the long road to product-market fit.

For this thirty-second episode, I talked to Perttu Ojansuu, co-founder of Happeo, a social intranet platform for companies using G Suite. During his studies, Perttu was already selling different products and phones, and then founded an e-learning platform. His interest in entrepreneurship spiked and he started university studies about it to deepen his knowledge. Helping organizations with implementing G Suite, Perttu and his co-founders recognized a need to organize internal knowledge better for these organizations. That’s when Happeo started. We talk about how he spends his time recruiting and scaling the team, why he started being more mindful about sleep, and why he moved from Helsinki to Amsterdam.

For this thirty-first episode, I talked to Omer Molad, co-founder of Vervoe, a leading hiring solution that enables you to hire employees based on their skills instead of their experience. After his military service in Israel, Omer worked at a few startups. After this he moved back to Australia, where he used to live as a kid. He then went to law school and worked at big companies in management positions for many years. It was only after a chat with his co-founder David that they decided to start their own adventure and launch Vervoe. The starting point: a conversation about how the top performers in their teams weren’t the ones with the best resumes. We talk about his pivot from small to big companies, about how to focus on the journey step by step, his chaotic schedule, and how he started trusting his team, stepping away and empowering people.

For this thirtieth episode, I talked to Allan Wille, co-founder of Klipfolio, a leading real-time dashboarding platform for small and mid-sized businesses. Straight out of college, Allan started a web design company with two friends, that turned out to develop one of the smallest Java runtimes in the world, took a lot of funding, and IPO’ed. He then took the learnings from this venture to start Klipfolio. At first, they built a downloadable widget engine that people used to build personal dashboards, but it was hard to monetize it. Then, one day, Lufthansa called because a lot of their employees were tracking soccer scores through their software, and that’s how Klipfolio as we know it now began. We talk about how that all happened exactly, why Allan recently stepped down as CEO to focus on the future of the company, how he was influenced by his dad, and why he’d dream bigger if he was doing it all over again.

For this twenty-eighth episode, I talked to Chris Savage, co-founder of Wistia, a leading video platform for marketers and salespeople. Before starting Wistia, Chris worked as an editor of a documentary that ended up winning an Emmy award. He then launched Wistia with his best friend, with the confidence that a small team could do something impactful. They together saw the potential of video and started a competition website for filmmakers. It finally pivoted into a video platform that helps businesses work effectively with video. We talk about how they grew Wistia from 2 to about 100 people, how they resisted acquisition offers and raised debt funding instead, how Chris’ role evolved over time, and why you shouldn’t do anything if you’re not obsessed by it.

For this twenty-eighth episode, I talked to Ilan Missulawin, co-founder of ClickCease, one of the leading click fraud prevention platforms for Google Ads. Before starting ClickCease, Ilan worked in radio, sold electronics to the defense industry, was a retail consultant, started a photo booth for events company, and did some affiliate marketing. Then his co-founder developed a piece of software for a locksmith who was having competitors systematically clicking his ads, depleting his ad budget. ClickCease was born. We talk about what makes Tel Aviv a big tech hub, why his wife calls him a sociopath, the definition of a brand, coffee culture, and comic books.

For this twenty-seventh episode, I talked to Cody Candee, co-founder of Bounce, who aim to give you place to leave your things anywhere in the city by providing short term bag storage in hotels and shops. Before starting Bounce, Cody worked at Intuit, the makers of the accounting software Quickbooks, and at the venture studio FactoryX. That’s where he learned about the importance of rapid prototyping and how it should be done, so that you can find the right approach with your startup in the fastest way possible. We talk about his long term vision with Bounce, what he learned by starting off as a product manager, Bounce’s weekly planning horizons, how to close investment deals, and why you should take all advice with a grain of salt.

For this twenty-sixth episode, I talked to Laura Roeder, co-founder of MeetEdgar, a social media tool that automatically keeps your content in front of your customers. Before MeetEdgar, Laura was a junior designer at an agency, a freelance web designer and then a social media marketing consultant. She built a spreadsheet system to organize the resharing of existing content and figured “why is this a spreadsheet and not an actual tool?”. That’s when MeetEdgar was conceived. Recently, Laura appointed a President for MeetEdgar and left the daily operations in her capable hands. We talk about why she did that, the challenges of building on top of social networks, how she keeps the pressure off her team, and how “people don’t fail, but systems do”.

For this twenty-fifth episode, I talked to Paul Katsen, co-founder of Blockspring, an automation tool that pulls data from different APIs to automate reports, lists and landing pages. Blockspring actually started off as a data visualization tool, which pivoted into a serverless platform right after joining YCombinator and talking to its co-founder Paul Graham. And about a year later, after Amazon had entered this exact space, they had to pivot again. After lots of iterations, they ended up with the Blockspring platform we know today. Finally, a few months ago, Blockspring got acquired by Coinbase. We talk about that, about their stint in the restaurant business while pivoting, how it is to be working for a big company now, and why games may be better than reality.

For this twenty-fourth episode, I talked to Matthieu Vaxelaire, co-founder of Mention, a leading social media monitoring application. Matthieu started off his entrepreneurship journey by launching a shoe brand, spending four months in Brazil to get it produced, and then started a marketplace for experiences. After that he joined eFounders as a Junior Partner, the Belgian B2B SaaS startup studio that ended up launching Mention. Last year, Mention got acquired by Mynewsdesk and Matthieu is now working on a new chapter in the growth of the company and the product. We talk about the model behind eFounders, how he found the balance between business results and caring for his team, the startup scene in Brussels and Paris, and his future plans after the acquisition.

For this twenty-third episode, I talked to Hampus Jakobsson, co-founder of Brisk.io and The Astonishing Tribe, and now Partner at BlueYard. Hampus started with a group of friends in a dorm room and quickly embarked on an epic journey, sailing where the wind would blow. He made user interfaces for the big phone manufacturers, sold his company to BlackBerry for $150 million, worked there in mergers and acquisitions, started angel investing (in now 90+ companies), launched a new software startup to get more experience at raising money and is now at the other side of the table, investing in tech startups that are about to change the world. We theorize about how the world works, about the two different stages of a startup, the state of venture capital, work-life balance, and why you should not build someone else’s company.

For this twenty-second episode, I talked to Rick Perreault of Unbounce, one of the leading drag and drop landing page builders out there. Rick used to be a creative director at an agency. He then started off with a vision of a platform to build landing pages that would be as easy to use as, say, PowerPoint. Now he’s leading a company of 175 people that is largely bootstrapped. We talk about Rick’s childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, where he gets his inspiration for how to run his business, and why building the right company culture is everything.

For this twenty-first episode, I talked to Rob Walling of Drip, one of the leading marketing automation platforms out there. Drip started as a simple opt-in pop-up with an autoresponder. It then evolved into an email service provider, to finally become a marketing automation platform. That’s when it hit real product-market fit and churn immediately started plummeting. Rob sold Drip to Leadpages almost 3 years ago. Recently, he started TinySeed, an early stage VC fund and remote accelerator that aims to fill a gap in the market by providing funding to SaaS companies who don’t aim for the 100 million dollar goal. We talk about Rob’s passion for building, how he invested in WP Engine early on, the lack of marketing focus in SaaS companies, and why he works 35 hour weeks.

For this twentieth episode, I talk to Mikita Mikado, one of the leading proposals and quotes solution for sales people. Mikita pursued the American Dream and moved from Belarus to the US to start a company. At first he flipped burgers, worked in moving, in cleaning, … He took every job he could get. Then he started a web design business, got into extensions for content management systems, and then into documents solutions for sales people. In a period of only four years, Mikita built a company of about 160 employees focusing on learning, making an impact and having fun. We talk about how he grows the culture that makes PandaDoc special, why he spends most of his time communicating and strategizing, and his favorite hobby, surfing.