Tech-Entrepreneur on a Mission Podcast
About
Available on
Community
214 episodes
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help B2C business spend their money right - to increase profitability. My guest is Tobias Konitzer Ph.D., CEO of Ocurate Tobias Konitzer is an academically trained entrepreneur who has a proven track record of turning research into technology and into a product that addresses ubiquitous pain points. He worked for Facebook Research and completed a Ph.D. in computational social science at Stanford University. In 2017 he co-founded of PredictWise, where he initially acted as Chief Scientist and became their CEO in 2020.PredictWise processed a large array of public opinion data collected from 260M+ Americans on hundreds of data points. During his tenure at PredictWise, Tobias started to understand the value of this database in conjunction with modern machine learning for consumer-facing companies: Companies have a hard time optimizing over and understanding margins (LTV:CAC ratio) that is crucial for both profitability and accurate financial forecasting. On this premise, Tobias founded Ocurate, empowering brands to focus on the right customer by predicting lifetime value, churn, conversion and growth at the individual level, with unprecedented accuracy. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Tobias to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the ability of many B2C companies to grow profitably. Tobias shares his big lessons learned in starting a revolution, and what it took to create solid traction. He touches upon the importance of investing in getting positioning right. Last but not least he shares his advice on what it takes to build a SaaS business that cannot be ignored, and what mindset and habits to develop to not burn out from the many failures you'll have to deal with on your way. Here are some of his quotes "I used to tell my investors, the vision is making a new way to thinking about efficient spending, the organizing principle of b2c companies. And this new way of of efficient spending, we call, folks call, lifetime value. And I want to say one more word here. The idea behind lifetime value is using AI to predict exactly how much profit, not revenue, but profit, every customer will bring to you as a company. And now, the big idea here is, if I would know that with 100% accuracy, all these other things all of a sudden, are very, very easy." During this interview, you will learn four things: How to win more customers by getting on the same wavelength Why valuing slowness can be the key to rapid growth Why too many SaaS businesses don't have a product-market fit issue, but a positioning issue Why you shouldn't found your SaaS business before you deeply understand the real pain point For more information about the guest from this week: Tobias Konitzer, Phd Website Ocurate Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to connect business people in ways that are more engaging and drive more value. My guest is Baptiste Boulard, CEO of Swapcard He's an ex-lawyer who turned entrepreneur and tech enthusiast. This Henry Ford quoted what drives him the most: “Anyone who stops learning is old – at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. Life is about keeping your mind young.” Today, Baptiste is CEO and Co-Founder of Swapcard. He swapped his career in law to launch Swapcard alongside two childhood friends with a vision to change the way people network at events. What's underpinning their vision is the belief in the impact of human-to-human interaction in a digital world. Swapcard is therefore on a mission to bridge the gap between the online and face-to-face world - thereby aiming to unlock meaningful encounters that have, until now, been impossible. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Baptiste to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the space where we make our biggest marketing investments: the world of events. How a lot of things have been solved on the process side - but not what's most valuable: Networking. Baptiste shares the big lessons learned from his entrepreneurial journey. What was required to not only survive the Pandemic crisis but to actually come out stronger. The pivots he's led to move from 'nice to have' into the 'mission critical' domain. And what is required to build a SaaS business that the world talks about? Here are some of his quotes: "When you are an entrepreneur, you're building a future which doesn't exist. So if you're not curious it's very hard to because there is no recipe and no one who can really help you. What you have to do is be very curious in terms of your reflection, the people you meet, and grab ideas from everything you do" During this interview, you will learn four things: What skills to develop when you're building a future that doesn't exist - and there's no recipe. What to do when everything you've done and all the value you build seems to become worthless That even in the densest markets you have ample opportunity to dominate a niche That a strong culture is the foundation to survive any crisis - and how to go about building one. For more information about the guest from this week: Baptiste Boulard Website Swapcard Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to grow the success of every organization by enabling a fluid knowledge flow. My guest is John Hudson, CEO of Luma1 John is a global tech entrepreneur and investor. While he's worked in tech including retail, e-commerce, and real estate, the main focus has been based on his belief that training is the fastest way to move the needle in any organization and the right technology can make it move faster and be even more impactful. This became the founding principle behind founding LUMA1 in 2017. The company is on a mission to enable people and organizations to drive tangible improvements to training and communications by creating and delivering video experiences that today’s workers want. And this inspired me, and hence I invited John to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's business world when it comes to transparent communication and sharing knowledge. We discuss how it holds organizations back when it comes to accelerating change, and what's missing to fix the problem. We discuss his big lessons learned in his attempt to embrace product-led growth and how he's steering product development to focus on what matters. Last but not least John shares his views on what it takes to build a B2B SaaS product that makes people say "I need to have that!" Here are some of his quotes "The fastest way to move the needle in any business is knowledge flow. And that can be done through communications, or it can be done through formal learning, coaching, whatever it might be. A lot of organizations just don't do it. I've visited a billion-dollar company that actually does no formal training. It's all done ad hoc, But it's got nothing to do with time, money and knowledge to do it. Oftentimes in businesses, there's this sort of black box, things are sort of cloaked in this mysterious thing." During this interview, you will learn four things: That people need to feel cared about - and how to embrace that as a product concept What we can learn from mistakes made in the eLearning space when it comes to getting users engaged and committed. Why a critical design criteria in development needs to be how your product helps organizations move as fast as they need to move - without dependence What it takes to spark arousal amongst users and customers For more information about the guest from this week: John Hudson Website LumaOne Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give us back the energy and power to do the things where human intelligence and imagination shine. My guest is Ilia Zelenkin, CEO Bitskout. Ilia spent close to 15 years of his career at Nokia, ultimately as head of product & service innovation, Global Services. He then co-founded SafeRoom, a control center for Encrypted Data. In 2020 he co-founded Bitskout which he's heading up as the CEO. He's passionate about technology changing the world, excited to build Star Trek alike futures, and solving problems that matter. What gets him out of bed every morning is his passion to help people become happier doing their work. The thought that 83% of people who go to work today are disengaged makes him triple his efforts. Bitskout was founded to free people up to do creative and meaningful work and with that bring back passion and satisfaction to the job. Their mission is to give us the affordable tools to make it happen NOW. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ilia to my podcast. We explore what's broken in managing projects within small companies - and why we should not accept the waste that goes on with that. Ilia shares his vision about how to make the most advanced technology affordable and the journey he's on to turn his intelligence platform into an expert platform that could not only forecast your work but check it later on as well. We also dig into his first principles to create solutions that create a pull from users i.e. a desire for more. Here are some of his quotes "what I did, I wrote every any crazy, stupid ideas that I had in my head for six months, five ideas per day, anything crazy. Anything that comes to mind. And eventually, what happened, you start noticing patterns, and you start noticing things, how they're connected. They came up with the problem, and it was a combination, a sequence of problems. So number one was building solutions to help deliver teams' projects faster. And I noticed that we couldn't breach a certain kind of project waste percentage. So we always were losing around 30% of the project times on some stupid things." During this interview, you will learn four things: That the ability to invent something is a skill - a muscle that you can train That the best roadmap choices start with minimum viable experiments How to optimize your pricing strategy so it incentivizes desired behavior That it takes the same amount of effort to do something great - so why settle for something mediocre For more information about the guest from this week: Ilia Zelenkin Website Bitskout Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that gives B2B SaaS businesses the opportunity to increase their value by making their product multiplayer. My guest is Nimrod Priell, CEO of Cord. Nimrod has been a software pioneer from the very first start. He's got over 20 years of experience in development, data science, and product management and decided in 2019 it was time to make the jump to take on the entrepreneur role. He loves thinking about how we work and how we can make that experience better. This is exactly why he started Cord. With a team of designers, engineers, and product craftspeople that have collected some secrets from their tenures at leading tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Adobe - they are on a mission to leverage those secrets to make collaboration at work more effective. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Nimrod to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way SMEs can create true value from their ever-growing SaaS stack. We discuss the underlying problem and what needs to change in the mindset of the SaaS Vendor community to cross the chasm that will bring more value for all. Lastly, Nimrod shares his views on what it takes to build a SaaS business that cannot be ignored. Here are some of his quotes "The average SME today, Okta says, has over 90 different SaaS tools. So I saw how these companies work internally, with a lot of tools that are bought, not built-in, and don't have this 'connective tissue.' The tools are built single player and all the communication around them gets stuffed into Slack and inbox. I saw this as a problem because these are b2b SaaS vendors, and this is a problem for their clients." During this interview, you will learn four things: Why the winners in the next decade in SaaS will be the one's building collaboration in their tools Why complacency in SaaS is the biggest risk of becoming irrelevant - and what to do about it. How turning away a lot of business can be a very solid way to grow fast A secret to creating a viral effect with the products you build For more information about the guest from this week: Nimrod Priell Website Cord Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to finally prevent us from relying on anecdotes that lead to biased decisions and with that build products customers love. My guest is Daniel Erickson, Founder, and CEO of Viable. Daniel has been active in software development since 2006. He took an untraditional path from most. Together with his co-founder he skipped college altogether and straight out of high school created a consulting firm in Portland to help early-stage companies build their very first products, create MVPs, get their first users, and/or get their first investment. After doing the same thing over and over again for clients as a consultant, he really wanted to dig into a longer-term problem. And being an early member of the Node.js community where he helped organize a lot of conferences, got him an early engineering job at Yammer. From there he moved to Getable where he was the CTO, and to Eaze where he was VP of Engineering. Today, he's the founder and CEO of Viable. Viable is on a mission is to help us better and more quickly understand what customers are telling us, so we can immediately find the most important things we should be working on. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Daniel to my podcast. We explore the challenges many SaaS businesses face in finding product-market fit. Daniel shares his experiences, and what's required to do / not to do in order achieve this - whether you build a product from the ground up, or evolve an existing product. He also shares his experiences that not every product is fit for a product-led growth approach, and what it takes to spark adoption and to grow meaningful traction. Last but not least he leaves his views on what it takes to build a software business the world talks about. Here are some of his quotes * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to grow our happiness and connectivity at work - especially when we're part of a distributed team. My guest is Scott Markovits, CEO Spontaneousli. Over the past 8 years, Scott has worked with over 1000 early-stage founders and startups, helping them build the foundations of successful products, companies, and teams. He's passionate about building awesome new products and creating amazing employee experiences. Another aspect he's fascinated about is: Remote work So much that he's hosting a podcast, Leading from afar https://www.leadingfromafar.com/, that's all about remote leadership ad sharing experiences, wisdom, and tools to make remote successful at companies all around the world. And this inspired him to start his own Startup, Spontaneousli - A company that's on a mission to make remote work more awesome. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Scott to my podcast. We explore how switching to a remote-first world has created a range of new challenges - some very valuable to solve. Just think about the Great Resignation. We discuss the innovation opportunity ahead - and how big impact can be created with seemingly very simple solutions. Scott shares how complacency and comfort in sticking to traditional thinking can put the best companies in harmful situations. Last but not least he shares his views on creating a remarkable software business and why bootstrapping should be considered by more SaaS companies. Here are some of his quotes: During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to enable desk-less workers to perform at their highest potential, with minimal intervention to their workday. My guest is Rami Darwish, Founder, and CEO of Arrow Labs Rami is a founder and entrepreneur in digital technology for the enterprise and b2b segment. He has a deep understanding of business growth and scale strategy. He's an expert in workforce management and digitalization of the field operation and beyond that, he has a deep understanding of mobility in the enterprise. In 2011 he founded Arrow Labs a company that's on a mission to provide companies pioneering and reliable workforce management solutions that impact their people and operations in a meaningful way. It envisions a world where employees can connect, collaborate and perform at their highest potential, with minimal intervention to their workday. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Rami to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of the desk-less worker and how this negatively impacts efficiency, accuracy, customer service, and safety. Rami shares the approach they've taken to enable field workers to deliver their best work in the toughest conditions. He also details what they did to not only survive the pandemic but come out stronger altogether. Last but not least he shares his experiences in creating momentum, especially in a market that hasn't got a change or growth mindset. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to relieve salespeople from having to use CRM, so they can focus on what they're best at: In the moment selling. My guest is Adam Honig, CEO of Spiro AI Adam has worked my entire career in the technology industry. His specialty is building companies and organizations that sell and deliver enterprise software and solutions in the B2B space. All of the companies that he helped found were focused on dramatically improving their operations. Two of these companies went public, and two of them were successfully sold at favorable valuations. Although much has changed in the technology business since he started his career he believes a few things always remain the same: it's all about the business outcomes and not the technology itself. And you can never go wrong telling the truth. It's never worth it working with a jerk. And being the category king should always be your goal. After watching the movie 'Her' which shares a vision of artificial intelligence, played by the voice of Scarlett Johansson guiding sales reps to larger commission checks, he knew it was time to transform CRM and deliver the outcomes the world had been waiting for. Today he's the CEO of Spiro, a proactive relationship management platform. Spiro is on a mission to end an era where companies waste millions of dollars on CRM. How? By creating a platform that works for Salespeople, instead of the other way around. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Adam to my podcast. We explore what's broken in CRM and how the things CRM demands its users to do is fundamentally flawed. Adam shares why the problem won't be solved by making existing solutions look nicer, but that the solution is in doing things completely differently. We dig into the journey Spiro has been through to get traction and how it overcame the tough battle to get people to adopt new technologies. He also shares the big lessons learned in deeply understanding the real outcomes customers want to solve and what it requires to build a software business that stands out in a dense market. Here are some of his quotes: * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to end the era of being inundated with media every single day. And my guest is Gregory Lim, Co-founder, and CEO of Persosa. Greg was the former CMO of Lifelock, and the founder of Qual & Quant, a full-service strategy, finance, and marketing agency. He combines his background in finance and marketing and believes that great marketing is the perfect combination of math and magic. He likes to challenge the status quo - and for one the market believes that a 3% conversion rate is normal in digital marketing. This is why he co-founded Persosa in 2016, a startup that's on a mission to solve the challenge of creating media experiences consumers love without them feeling interrupted by the information they’re not interested in, and doing this all while continuing to bring in needed revenue and keeping advertisers happy. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Gregory to my podcast. We explore what's broken in digital marketing and how the disconnect with what's normal in the real world is leading to many inconvenient and often creepy experiences. He shares the big idea behind his company and how this will help brands to have more organic, natural conversations with their clients - leading to higher, and faster conversion. He also shares the big lessons learned in building his company, what's been instrumental to where Persosa is right now, and what he'd do differently next time. Here are some of his quotes: During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to the personal development and aging challenge for all of us. My guest is mil Jimenez, Founder, and CEO of Mind Bank AI Emil Jimenez is a marketing expert with over 18 years working on global campaigns. He started working in the communications industry as a web designer in NYC. In 2009 he opened Passion Communications in Prague with the vision of building a brand empire for himself and his clients. Since 2020 Emil has set out to produce the most transformational idea of his life. This was the birth of Mind Bank AI - a company that's on a mission to allow humanity to go beyond their limits and live forever through data. What started as daddy’s quest for immortality has expanded into something bigger for humanity because the next personal computer is you. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Emil to my podcast. We explore how observing his little daughter sparked an idea that turned into a vision that could potentially solve some of the world's biggest problems. Preventing Mental health issues by increasing mental strength, providing education and access to expert knowledge for those that need it most, new ways of knowledge monetization, and even immortality. Emil shares the insights from the journey he's been on to bring this from idea to reality. Last but not least he explains his secrets to creating a software business that we'd miss if were gone. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help companies to build trust towards their customers and close deals faster by putting their privacy compliance on autopilot. My guest is Stine Mangor Tornmark, Co-founder and CEO of Openli. Stine has 10+ years of experience as a lawyer from Plesner law firm and Trustpilot. At Trustpilot, she built up Trustpilot’s Legal and Compliance teams and processes from when the company had one office with 70 employees to 850 employees across the globe. She believes that privacy is a fundamental right every individual has and should have. She realized the struggle she had at Trustpilot to comply around privacy - and that's a large company with deep pockets and a large legal team. Imagine then how small and medium-sized businesses struggle. It's almost an impossible task. And that's why she co-founded Openli in 2018, a Legal Tech startup that's on a mission to help companies become better data citizens. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Stine to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of proving compliance around privacy data as a business. We dig into why this is the case, and why it's so hard to solve. Stine then shares the approach they've taken to solve the problem - and the hurdles she had to overcome in doing so. We discuss what it took to create momentum and end up with a customers base that's close to 100% referenceable and how that required them to think differently about what their product needed to be all about. Here are some of her quotes: * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that gives each of us the power to fulfill our potential without sacrificing all the other good things in life. My guest is Manuel Bruschi, Founder, and CEO of Timeular. Manuel is a former web developer that has been recognized as a Forbes 30 under 30, a Ted speaker, and also a former Austrian National Champion in Rugby 7’s! He's passionate about the most important resource for a life worth living: Time. That's why he co-founded Timeular in 2015. Timeular is a B2B SaaS business that empowers people to track their job routines to then analyze and design better ones. It's on a mission to help 10M+ people to live a more healthy and rewarding work-life And this inspired me, and hence I invited Manuel to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the current market for timesheet applications. Why no matter how simple we make these apps, people still won't use them. He then shares how's found the simplest possible solution to the problem: A handshake with your time. We then drill into the journey to take this from an idea into reality and what hurdles he had to overcome to create momentum (and keep the momentum). Last but not least he shares how he's shaped his organization to be customer-obsessed in everything they do in order to build products their customers cannot live without. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help ambitious people become more focused and productive. My guest is Jonas Vossler, Founder, and CEO of Flow Lab. Jonas is fascinated by everything that happens at the intersection of new technologies, business, and society. He's convinced that in today’s world, innovation is the primary driver for economic growth and for change in our society. It is due to the progress induced by a variety of innovations and inventions, especially in health and technology, that the population of Western industrialized countries enjoys a high standard of living. Still, we all experience a variety of mental distractions and emotional distress in our workdays that prevent us from finding the motivation, focus, and energy to perform at our best and use our time productively. And that's exactly the problem Jonas wants to solve - and hence he founded Flow Lab, a company that's on a mission to help people find more flow in their lives. And that inspired me - and hence I invited Jonas to my podcast. We explore why with all the technology around it's still so hard to be productive and deliver peak performance in our work. We also discuss the journey Jonas has been on to solve this massive problem. He shares examples about the strategic decisions he had to take, the challenges he's faced in gaining traction in the market, funding his business, and what was required to be ready for that in the first place. Lastly, we discuss his big lessons learned to create a software business that's resilient and what it takes to build something that people just keep talking about. Here are some of his quotes: * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Welcome to episode 200 of the Tech-entrepreneur on a mission podcast. Because this is a big milestone on the journey I didn't want to devote this podcast to one guest - instead I got 22. A big element of every single episode of the podcast is the advice from tech-entrepreneurs to other tech-entrepreneurs about the most valuable lessons learned in building a remarkable SaaS business. So I've made a hand-picked selection of quotes from the 200 episodes that have featured between the 1st of January 2018 and today. And in doing so I've uncovered 7 different themes. __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview shares the big lessons learned from the failed attempts and required pivots running a startup that was on a mission to take down Facebook. My guest is Arnaud Henneville-Wedholm, author of "How Hard Can It Be" Arnaud Henneville-Wedholm is a consultant, lecturer, and head of sales and business development at GLOBHE. He is also the founder of multiple startups, including internalDesk, a SaaS platform for enterprise collaboration, where he served as COO. He's passionate about entrepreneurship, neuroscience, resilience and making the world a better place. He works on projects he believes in and with people who 'go for it'; He finishes everything he starts; He trains like if there was no tomorrow; He enjoys the 'now' and looks forward to the journey. He goes by the mantra of "Get comfortable being uncomfortable." And that's no understatement. In his book 'How hard can it be' he explains his personal journey in building a startup that got founded around the big idea to 'take down Facebook'. The book is a jet-setting parable of the European startup scene that takes on the most elusive business topic of them all: failure. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Arnaud to my podcast. We explore the journey Arnaud and his team went through with their startup, the pivots that were required, and the commercial, financial and emotional challenges this brought along. We pinpoint the critical ingredients to getting right from a solution perspective to create virality - stickiness - and growth that's sustainable. Last but not least he addresses what to be prepared for as a founder and how (and why) to embrace failure as a hidden gem. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to make change to the effectiveness and fairness of our justice system. My guest is Jacqueline Schafer, Founder, and CEO of ClearBrief. Jacqueline began her career as a litigation associate at the New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison, and spent the majority of her career as an Assistant Attorney General in the Washington and Alaska Attorney General’s Offices, where she specialized in appellate practice and complex litigation. Before joining the startup world, Jacqueline also served as in-house counsel for the national nonprofit Casey Family Programs, where she negotiated agreements with state courts across the country and managed impact litigation. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and cum laude from Boston University School of Law. Today she's the Founder and CEO of Clearbrief, a legal tech startup that's on a mission to transform the legal writing process and create a fairer justice system. And that inspired me - and hence I invited Jacqueline to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the legal tech market. That the focus is too much on the process, and not on the outcome - a more just legal system. Jacqueline shares her vision for the Justice system and how she's carefully architecting a product that's both sticky for its users, has strong network effects, and an ability to create a fairer justice system for all of us. She talks about the biggest hurdles she had to overcome - and what's been critical in her eyes to create a remarkable software business that has staying power. Here are some of her quotes: During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ SUBSCRIBE TO VALUE INSPIRATION ON FRIDAY’S A weekly musing on how to shape the B2B SaaS business your customers just keep talking about. Learn from the most inspiring ideas I've encountered or explored this week that could help you find new ways to stand out, eliminate the need to compete on price, and make tangible progress in creating a SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Subscribe here https://valueinspiration.com/musing/ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to build the best content, connect people across the world and create happy customers. My guest is Volker Smid, CEO of Acrolinx Volker has more than 25 years of management experience in the software, internet, technology, and media industry around the globe. Throughout his career, he served as CEO of Searchmetrics and EVP Digital & Technologies at the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. He was CEO of Hewlett-Packard Germany, Vice Chairman of BITKOM, President EMEA and Asia/PAC at Novell Inc., SVP Sales Midmarket at Parametric Technology Boston, and SVP at POET Inc. in San Mateo, California. Today he's the CEO of Acrolinx, a company that's built around the vision to create a world connected by amazing content. Its mission is to supercharge the billions of enterprise content touchpoints that power the global customer experience. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Volker to my podcast. We explore what's broken when it comes to managing content in the enterprise world. We drill into the negative effects and the cost of content that frustrates people, and this multiplies as the scale, consumption, and complexity grow. Volker then talks about how he's steering his organization to be a fully aligned organization - and how having a strong and clear vision and mission that are focused on transformational change are critical to achieving this. Last but not least he shares his lessons learned in leading his company through the crisis, and what was required to become a stronger company altogether. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to bridge the best of both worlds to create remarkable results in an increasingly remote workplace. My guest is Matt Compton, Co-founder, and CEO of Filo. Matt is a two-time founder and former IBM, ExactTarget, and Salesforce. He spent his entire career solving complex problems within product development, sales, marketing, and business strategy. Through a unique skill set combining engineering and business, he specializes in building and leading cross-functional teams to solve organizations' largest problems. Today he's the CEO of Filo, a company that's on a mission to build a future where online meeting fatigue is replaced with meaningful engagement and increased productivity. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Matt to my podcast. We explore how his company emerged from an attempt to prevent a hackathon event from being canceled. It's a story about what's humanly possible to achieve in a matter of weeks when the problem is highly valuable to solve and timing is critical. Matt shares the challenges he had to overcome in finding a repeatable business model and making the business sustainable. Last but not least he shares his experiences on what it takes to shape a remarkable software business. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on the art of product innovation - and how people, not technology, often play a fundamental role in creating success. My guest is Derek Mendonça, Co-Founder Singular Aircraft Derek is a highly accomplished business leader with a passion for people & results; specifically, for empowering people to get the best results, aligned around an ambitious vision. He believes people perform at their best when they are challenged. When they are allowed to explore, encouraged to push their boundaries, and inspired to compete against their own prior achievements. Derek excels at creating the engagement, excitement, and professional challenge that leads to positive organizational change and encourages innovation. And exactly this skill caused him to co-found Singular Aircraft. It's a company that produces the largest and most versatile unmanned civilian aircraft. The company is on a mission to solve some meaningful and growing problems such as fighting the massive wildfires around the globe, poaching, and delivering goods to operations in dangerous or remote areas. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Derek to my podcast. We explore how making big progress is so often not about introducing new technology, but changing the mindset of people. Derek shares many anecdotes about his fascinating journey (and opportunity) with Singular Aircraft. How small thinking literally stopped countries that need it most to make a big impact. He talks about the big lessons learned to overcome seemingly impossible hurdles - and what helped him to stay sane in that process. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help us maximize the impact behind all our creative decisions, and my guest is Anastasia Leng, Founder, and CEO of CreativeX. Early in her career, Anastasia gained experience in brand strategy at Interbrand, spent 5+ years at Google, where she worked on every ad tech and analytics product, led entrepreneurship efforts in EMEA, and was responsible for early-stage partnerships for Google Voice, Chrome, and Wallet. In 2012 she co-founded Hatch, one of Time Magazine’s Top 10 Startups to Watch in New York and one of four most innovative retail companies. Today, she’s the Founder & CEO of CreativeX, an automated creative excellence platform used by the world’s most loved brands. The company is on a mission to advance creative expression through the clarity of data. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Anastasia to my podcast. We explore what’s holding companies back in their growth because they’re guessing what works/what doesn’t work in relation to their creative efforts. Anastasia shares how she solved this problem internally first, and how investors then made them aware of the size of this problem globally. She explains how this triggered a major pivot and the effort and determination it took to get to Product-Market-Fit. Finally, she shares some of the secrets she learned in turning her company into a remarkable growth story. Here are some of her quotes: * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to enable people on the manufacturing floor to boost continuous improvements and focus on that matters. My guest is Martin Cloake, CEO of Raven AI Martin is an experienced executive and award-winning technology entrepreneur with a background in Manufacturing, Data Science, IP, and Operations Management. He holds multiple patents and is a Mechanical Engineering graduate from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. He's a problem-solver, relentless resourceful, and always assumes something can be done. When he saw the massive investments in Industry 4.0 increase, but most companies failing to get the benefits they'd aspired for he decided to found Raven AI. Raven is on a mission to help manufacturers accelerate Continuous Improvement, improve the service to their customers and increase profits. How? By spotting opportunities and providing real-time guidance that empowers and engages manufacturing teams. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Martin to my podcast. We explore why many manufacturers have a false sense of what they think has happened, vs what actually happened. The result of this: they can't solve their most pressing problems because they can't pinpoint with accuracy what these actually are. Martin shares how he's solving this problem and what choices he's made on his journey to do so in a remarkable way. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to let us all create a bigger impact, by spending less time in meetings. My guest is Alessandra Knight, Co-Founder, and CEO of Katch. Alessandra studied anthropology and has always had a passion for learning about different people and cultures. She values people-first thinking. And this landed her at Dots - a mobile game studio, where she quickly moved up to an operations-lead-slash-strategic-advisor role for the executive team. Her role was geared towards optimizing time for herself and her colleagues. Soon she started seeing how hard true, uninterrupted focus time was to come by. This sparked a project within Dots to search for a way to give the team more time to do work and less time in meetings. And this became the big idea behind Katch. Katch is on a mission to create a world where people make the time to connect with who they want, on topics that matter at times that work best for them. It's giving all of us the ability to live our lives versus being controlled by our calendars. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Alessandra to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we manage our time or have our time managed for us - and how that erodes the impact we can make. The traditional ways to manage calendars is flawed - since it doesn't take our mindset, energy levels, and priorities into account. Alessandra shares the big idea behind her company and how she'll use technology to give us back uninterrupted focus. She also shares some of her big lessons learned building her SaaS business and what is important to succeed beyond having a remarkable solution. Here are some of her quotes: * > * > During this interview, you will learn three things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to shape the conditions where everyone can come to work in an environment that’s right for them. My guest is Nico Blier Silvestri, Co-Founder and CEO of Platypus. Nico has an extremely diverse and robust 15-year career in recruitment, working at industry-leading companies, including Yahoo!, Trust Pilot, and Unity. He's been pioneering his own brand of culture-centric recruitment. Through his time as Chief People Officer, Strategic Business Advisor, and Director of Talent, Nico has now channeled his business and recruitment insights into Platypus His experience has taught him that company culture is at the core of every step of an employee journey, from attraction to management, to retention. He believes that culture is democratic. That all employees have an impact on the culture of an organization, bringing their personal values as cultural drivers - and that company culture is not defined by top-down values but by everyday actions. This became the founding principle of Platypus, which Nico leads as their CEO. It's on a mission to help organizations understand their culture better and make sure every employee, whether current or future, has the opportunity to prosper. This inspired me, and hence I invited Nico to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the market where it comes to building thriving cultures. We discuss that's very much a management issue - and what difference can be made if technology and people blend in the right way. Nico shares his stories about the journey he's been through in taking the Platypus from an initial vision to where it is today. He shares the mistakes he made and explains how we overcame some big hurdles to get to Product-Market Fit and create a solution that makes a significant difference in the eyes of his customers. Here are some of his quotes: During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give all of us new options to communicate more humanly and be trusted faster. My guest is David Jay, Founder, and CEO of Warm Welcome David was recently named a Top 100 Tech Innovator and Influencer. David is a startup junkie, he has started service-based companies and several software companies. He believes that business can be a tool to help us build better relationships and connect us to a purpose far beyond ourselves. Today he's the CEO of Warm Welcome. A startup that's on a mission to create a world that is more personal, more human, more joyful than ever before. They believe that most people would prefer to engage with another human instead of a robot - and that relationships are what make our lives rich and give us meaning. This inspired me, and hence I invited David to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way communicate digitally and what that leads to. We then discuss the approach David has chosen to solve this problem in a remarkable way. He shares his big lessons learned in building the solution in an as lean as possible way. He addresses the challenges he faced in creating momentum in a completely new category - and ends with his fresh take on the concept of 'launching'. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help young people speak their truths and tap into their superpowers. My guest is Ivy Mahsciao, Founder and CEO of evrmore. Ivy is a champion for human potential who has a 20+ year background in consumer psychology and product science, with a category-defining product management portfolio that includes Genentech, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Nike. Today she's the CEO of evrmore - a startup that's on a mission to help people see their innate potentials and impacts in the world by bringing our social and emotional selves back online. It's an inclusive betterment platform for young people to develop transferable core skills and social mobility. This is especially helpful for those who might be going through the most challenging time in their lives, such as the current pandemic, immigration trauma, grief, separation, and other difficult transitions aka life. This inspired me - and hence I invited Ivy to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's world where it comes to helping young people to grow their self-knowledge and having a strong self-narrative. We discuss how the non-stop push of information and chasing social proof has created a big problem in society. We then explore the journey Ivy has taken to fix the problem once and forever - and the challenges she's faced along the way. We discuss her strategies to scale and accelerate by leveraging the ecosystem in her tech stack. Lastly, we discuss her take on building a remarkable software business. Here are some of her quotes: * > * > * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help create the workplace culture we'd all dream to work in. My guest is Petri Lehtonen, CEO of Flowtrace Petri is a startup leader turned into an entrepreneur. He's what he calls a professional Inter-team communicator. He's had significant exposure to strategic partnerships, nurturing startup cultures, and building cloud products. After 20 years of tackling the slow and manual processes of organizations and teams, Petri figured there must be an easier, modern way of making work more transparent and avoiding the recurrent pitfalls of teams not collaborating with each other. He realized that work is changing whether we like it or not. The tools we use are also part of that change. For a leader to understand their organization, new ways of overseeing are needed. The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 was the final push - as it made it even more pressing to solve the obstacles of collaborating remotely. That became the founding idea behind Flowtrace in 2020. Flowtrace is on a mission to bring about the future of work for everyone. It's doing this by building a platform and focusing on the things that really matter in inter-team collaboration – making modern work more meaningful. And that inspired me, and hence I invited Petri to my podcast. We explore what's broken when it comes to creating successful company cultures - and what are the consequences of failing. We discuss what culture creation really is all about, and how technology can play a fundamental role in amplifying the benefits in areas such as boosting productivity, creativity, quality, and/or innovation. Lastly, we dig into Petri's big lessons learned around creating a product-market fit and creating momentum through messaging. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on the journey and the big resilience lessons learned by a startup as it moved from start, to launch, various pivots towards ultimate success. My guest is Paul Wickers, Founder, and CEO of Huggg.me Paul spent 14 years in the Structured Finance team at RBS and then Santander. During this time he came to study the social economics of the greetings card industry. He realized that the success of physically sending a greeting card in the offline world had never been achieved in the online world. This helped him develop the insight that the principles of giving and receiving emotionally impactful gifts could be applied in a digital way - it just had to be done in a different way. This became the launch of Huggg in 2015. Paul build the platform in his spare time, left his job in 2016, and the platform was first launched in July 2017. But the journey of his company wasn't an instant success from the start. And it's the story of business resilience that really caught my attention - and inspired me to invite Paul to my podcast. Listening to this interview will feel like watching a movie trailer unfold. We explore the lessons Paul learned as he took his product to market. Initially towards Consumers, later towards Business to Business. We discuss the importance of product-market fit. We discuss his lessons learned when it comes to allocating funding to the right levers in the business. We go through what happened when COVID hit the world - the rationalization that followed, then the hibernation, then the rebirth, and finally how sheer perseverance and focusing on the problem, not the product helped him succeed. Here are some of his quotes: * > * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to grow the impact we can make by superpowering our communications. My guest is Surbhi Rathore, Co-Founder, and CEO of Symbl. Surbhi is an international tech leader who advocates for Women in AI with a personal mission to inspire more women to work in Data Science. She comes with experience from technical and customer-obsessed roles in both startups and enterprises such as Nevis Networks and Amdocs. She is a national speaker, an accessibility equity champion, and the ultimate adventure capitalist. Today she's is the CEO and co-founder of Symbl.ai. With her team, she's on a mission to leverage AI technology to democratize conversational tech to make collaboration effortless. And in line with that, they created a new category of voice tech infrastructure – “Conversational Intelligence as a Service”. This inspired me, and hence I invited Surbhi to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we communicate and collaborate digitally. We discuss what is required to capitalize on the potential of human intellect by making collaboration effortless. We also address the tough choices Surbhi made in not going with the flow - but instead taking a radically different approach to solving the big problem in the market. Last but not least we discuss what it takes to build a remarkable software business. Here are some of her quotes: * > * > * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to transform our workplace into a fair workplace - starting with fair pay. My guest is Maria Colacurcio, CEO of Syndio Maria is a tech veteran – she previously co-founded Smartsheet, which went public in 2018. She spent three years at Starbucks, one of the first Fortune 50 companies to go public with pay equity results. Having started her career working on congressional campaigns, she has a long history of mission-driven work, and a compassionate and competitive attitude to spur change. She serves on the board of the nonprofit Fair Pay Workplace and has been named by Goldman Sachs Builders + Innovators Summit one of this year’s 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs. As a CEO and a mom of 7, Maria is walking the walk on eradicating workplace inequities. Today Maria is the CEO at Syndio, a SaaS startup helping companies around the world create an equitable workplace for all employees, regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity. That inspired me, and hence I invited Maria to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's workplace when it comes to valuing people for the contribution they bring and paying them fairly independent of who they are. We discuss the pivot and what it took to change course. We discuss the effects the Pandemic introduced, and what was critical to not only bounce back, but actually come out stronger. And last but not least we address the role of the CEO in creating a business that people love talking about. Here are some of her quotes: * > * > * > During this interview, you will learn four things: __ __ For more information about the guest from this week: __ __ * See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
