Founder Views

Tom Wright is the CEO and co-founder of Cascade, a software that helps teams stay focused on their goals.Very impressively, Cascade serves +25,000 users, have 40+ employees, offices in 3 countries, and are closing in on $10M annual recurring revenue -all while bootstrapped!

This is one of those episodes you might have to listen to more than once. Eugene Levin is the Chief Strategy Officer of SEMrush, an SEO management platform with over 800 employees around the world.Eugene has a very unique mind when it comes to marketing and how to think about growth in business, and it's clear how much he's contributed to the great success of SEMrush.This episode is jam-packed with actionable takeaways and advice from a high-level executive. We touch on several topics, including how to have a "winner take all mentality", the best ways to utilize marketing spend, the channels driving SEMrush's incredible growth, actionable tips on how any company can think about SEO, important metrics, and much much more.Truly one of those episodes you want to listen to in full, and soak it all up. Enjoy!

I’m speaking with Josh Pigford, CEO and founder of Baremetrics. If you’re in SaaS, you’ve definitely heard of Josh and Baremetrics. Hundreds of SaaS and subscription businesses use Baremetrics to properly display dashboards and metrics to give a real time breakdown of how their company is performing. This is fundamental for every SaaS company, and Baremetrics has been the staple in that department for quite some time.Recently, Josh caused some waves in the SaaS world when he revealed that he almost sold Baremetrics for $5 million, which was a big shock to a lot of people in SaaS, given how transparent and open Josh is with his business. So we’re talking about that, why he went through with the sales process, how the deal fell through, and what impact that had with his team when the news went public.We also talk about how Josh grew his remote company to well over $100k in monthly recurring revenue and what he’s planning for the future.I’m really glad I had Josh on the podcast, this was a very insightful episod

I'm speaking with automation and efficiency guru (or automation geek, as he calls himself), Will Christensen, co-founder of Data Automation.Almost all companies of any size struggle with efficiency and waste countless hours with redundant and manual work. Will specializes in helping SaaS companies save time through automating workflows.We talk about ways Data Automation helps SaaS companies save time through automation, how he's grown his company to +$1M in revenue, specific marketing channels to attract more business, and much much more.Will also shares some of his favourite automation and efficiency hacks which are absolute gems!This was a really great episode with key actionable insights that will really help you see the importance of efficiency in your business. Enjoy!

In this episode, I’m speaking with Spencer Fry, the CEO and founder of Podia. Podia helps creators sell anything online from courses, downloads, and memberships, without worrying about any tech.Podia is about 5 years old, they’re a fully remote team of 19 people at the time we recorded this (possibly even more now), and they just seem to be picking up a ton of traction in this space. Spencer has a bold vision for the company, in the next 5 years, he wants Podia to be the ONLY platform that a creator uses to monetize. We talk about what he’s doing and what they plan on doing to execute on that big vision.Spencer has been serial entrepreneur since day one. He has actually never received a pay check from someone other than himself, which is pretty unique. He’s founded 4 companies including Podia, has had 3 successful exits, and is now focused on growing Podia to the the leader in their space.If you’re in SaaS, a CEO, a founder, or anyone in business, definitely listen to this chat with one of the best executors

I’m speaking with serial entrepreneur, Josh MacDonald in this episode. Josh is a fellow software entrepreneur from the greater Toronto area (as am I), so it was really great to connect with him and hear his story - and what a story it is!Josh is only 24 years old (at the time of recording this of course), and he has a tremendous wealth of knowledge and insights that are very impressive.Josh got into the internet game at a very young age, he was making tens of thousands of dollars when he was only 15 years old. He recently wrote a book called the The Non-Technical Founder, where he talks about his journey and experiences as a non-technical founder, building, growing and eventually selling companies.He’s done all of this bootstrapped, which I love of course. Currently, Josh passively runs a SaaS company called getshout.io, and an apparel brand called Abella, which is making 5-figures a day in revenue.This is an episode I’m really excited for people to listen to. Enjoy our chat!

I’m speaking with Amar Ghose in this episode. Amar is the CEO of ZenMaid, a scheduling management software that helps cleaning and maid services be more efficient and organized.Amar has done an amazing job of building himself a very nice, high margin company. ZenMaid is fully remote, bootstrapped, and are set to cross over $1.5M in annual recurring revenue this year. I’m pretty envious of Amar’s lifestyle, as he’s pretty much a full-time traveler, along with his wife.We dive into how Amar grew the company to what it is today. I love his story, because it’s all about persistence, consistency and staying hungry. Amar reminds us how business is a marathon, not a sprint. He shares how the spent the first several years cold calling to get his first handful of clients, and recounts the very slow grind. They were only growing at about $300 in MRR per month for the first 3 years before things started to take off.But that persistence and dedication have certainly paid off, Zenmaid is growing significantly, revenue is

I’m speaking with Colin Nederkoorn, CEO and co-founder of customer.io. Colin was an absolute pleasure to speak with. He built customer.io in 2012 with his co-founder John, and have been exploding ever since.For those who don’t know, customer.io is a SaaS company that gives companies one place to manage all of their their emails, push notifications, SMS’s and other messages that come from their product  to their customers.Customer.io is now doing over $10M in annual recurring revenue, they’re fully remote, and have a team of over 50 employees worldwide.We’re talking about how customer.io maintains a positive company culture while being remote and distributed, how they’re maintaining their steady and consistent growth, how their product team has evolved over the years, and much much more.I had a great time speaking with Colin, so much that we lost track of time so had to cut it a little but short at the end. But nonetheless, a ton of great value in this episode, I hope you enjoy!PS. Thank you to my friends at H

I'm speaking with Luca Micheli, CEO and founder of Customerly.io. Customerly helps companies create better relationships with their customers with effective communication. He launched Customerly about 4 years ago, they have over 17,000 customers around the world.This is a fascinating story, Luca is competing in a very hot market, where it was once pretty much a monopoly with Intercom as the main provider in the space. The communication marketing space has now opened up which is evident through Customerly's success.Luca is from Italy and currently lives in Ireland. Customerly is fully bootstrapped, which is amazing. We're digging into a lot of great topics in this episode, that a lot of you will definitely find useful. We break down exactly what Luca did to gain such a large user base in a short time, with lifetime deal offers and other marketing techniques. We talk about what they're doing today to drive up their user base, as well as some of their mistakes and learnings along the way.Whether you're a bootstr

I’m speaking with Braden Urquhart, a fellow Canadian and CEO of RecTimes, a scheduling software that helps ice rinks manage their bookings.This was such a valuable episode to listen to if you’re focused on building a profitable, lean and high-margin business. RecTimes is a small remote team of three people. But because they’re playing in such a tightly defined niche market, they’re able to find customers and penetrate their market a lot easier than most companies, which is such an advantage. They're growing steadily, and looking to double their revenue in the next 12 months.But more importantly, they’re able to live a very nice and comfortable lifestyle, and be around their family and kids, which is a massive benefit in playing in a remote and tightly defined market.We’re diving into that and a whole lot more in this episode. There's a lot of great takeaways, and I have no doubt you'll find valuable. Enjoy!Thank you to Nuclino for also sponsoring the episode. if you’re a company that’s serious about growing,

Recently, I did a talk at the GrowthMentor Summit, which was a virtual summit, that included 50 of some of the world’s best growth leaders.This was such an amazing event. There were thousands of attendees from all over the world, that had free access to some incredible insights from some very talented people.My talk was on outbound sales. It was called "How to get your first 500 paying clients on a bootstrapped budget". I spoke about how I single-handedly got my first 500 paying clients through cold-calling and outbound sales.I broke down the talk in 3 sections: The 6 CRITERIA needed to get your first 500 clients. The 3 KEY ELEMENTS you need to make sure you succeed. The 9 STEP PLAYBOOK I used to get my first 500 clients. So this is the audio version obviously, if you want to see the actual video with the slides, click the link below.Click here to see the video of my talk with slides.BONUS: Click here to get access to my custom recurring revenue calculator

Competition is a great thing. When I see an industry with many different competitors, and many companies offering similar services to customers, my mouth starts to water. This tells me that there’s a healthy market of customers spending a lot of money on services that solve their problems. There are several advantages to playing in a competitive market:A small piece of a big pie = $$My first SaaS company was in one of the most competitive markets there are – real estate! There were literally hundreds upon hundreds of competitors offering similar products. That didn’t stop us at all. In fact, it actually encouraged us. We knew there was a massive market out there spending money on this service, and we wanted to get our piece of the pie. And believe me, if the market is big enough, even with hundreds of competitors, a small piece of the pie can be very significant. Significant enough to build a 7-figure ARR profitable company, and live a very good lifestyle!Skip finding “product-market fit”Another advantage of

I’m speaking with Mark Thompson in this episode. Mark is the founder and CEO of PayKickStart, a subscription management, and affiliate solution that helps entrepreneurs and SaaS companies sell more and manage the payments side of their business with ease.PayKickStart recently surpassed $1M in ARR, and has really been picking up steam. Aside from PayKickStart, Mark runs Digital KickStart, a sister company that houses a couple dozen other SaaS companies and apps.This was such a great episode, because Mark is a true raw and bootstrapped entrepreneur, which I always admire and respect, who also happens to be a a non-tech founder in the SaaS game. Mark talks about how PayKickStart was actually built as an internal tool, and how it organically formed into the great business it is today.We talk about about how he manages his fully remote team, what to look for when hiring overseas developers, he also gives a lot of actionable insights into what PayKickStart is doing to drive up growth, and much more.This is a jam pa

I was super excited about this episode, I’m speaking with Renat Zubairov, the co-founder and CEO of elastic.io, a B2B SaaS that helps enterprises connect and process different applications.They were founded in 2013, and have been seeing triple digit revenue growth year after year, which is extremely difficult for a company this size. They’re currently doing well over $2M in annual recurring revenue. elastic.io was acquired in 2017 by mVISE, a publicly traded company in Germany. They acquired a majority stake of Elastic, but they still operate independently.This was such an informative chat, Renat is a very high-level CEO. We deep-dive into a lot of marketing, including some of the advantages and disadvantages of inbound vs outbound sales, how elastic.io is benefiting from content marketing, and what marketing channels are currently working the best for the company. Renat tells us why churn is the most important metric in SaaS, and how elastic.io maintains negative churn, which is something all SaaS folks shou

This was an episode I was really excited about. I met Nim in Boston back in January 2019. He told me about what he was building, and I was instantly pumped about it. He founded CloudTax, which is a tax filing service that helps Canadians easily file their taxes online for free.The reason i was excited to speak to Nim is because tax and accounting have always been close to me. I got my BCom in accounting and finance, and one of my side hustles back in the day was filing taxes for my classmates, so this was a really fun and nostalgic episode for me especially.Nim was born in Sri Lanka and migrated to Canada shortly after the tsunami in 2004. He worked with the CRA for a couple of years, and had some experience at Sunlife as a financial advisor. He eventually circled back to his original passion which was taxes, and that’s how CloudTax was formed.We’re talking about how he built the initial product, how he funded the development, getting certified by the CRA, and eventually launching the business. This past year

In this episode, I’m speaking with Baptiste Debever, the CEO and founder of Feedier. Feedier is an app that helps companies get feedback from their employees in a fun, seamless and engaging way.He launched the company in early 2018, they have over 8000 users on the platform and over 50 paying clients. They’re a team of 8 people based in France.Baptiste breaks down what they did to get their first thousand users by using AppSumo shortly after they launched.We talk about how Feedier is using content to drive the bulk of their leads and sales, their outbound strategy and how Feedier dips into the outbound sales game. We also get into metrics, and which kpi’s are important for Feedier to track their success.I had a really great time speaking with Baptiste, he’s definitely a go-getter, and there’s no doubt in my mind you’ll be seeing a lot more of Feedier for years to come. So here it is, I hope you enjoy our chat!PS. If you're looking for a phone system to fit your MODERN business, check out my friends at AirCall

In this episode I’m speaking with Robert Zalaudek, founder and CEO of Pomodus. This episode is a little bit different than what you might be used to - Robert is just starting out in the SaaS space. He’s developing an app called Pomodus, which integrates with Slack and helps you stay productive and focused.I wanted to get Robert on the podcast, because a lot of my listeners are early stage SaaS founders, just like Robert. So i thought it would be  helpful for other folks in similar positions to hear Robert’s journey and what he’s done to not only build Pomodus, validate the idea, but also what’s he’s doing to market it, and gain the initial traction to get the business off the ground.I know that part is often a struggle for a lot of early stage founders out there, and Robert does a great job of providing actionable ideas and insights.We get into quite a few specifics including how he plans to leverage Product Hunt for his launch, other marketing tactics he’s going to use to help gain initial traction, and what

In this episode, i’m speaking with Devid Henzel, the CEO of TaskDrive. TaskDrive helps companies improve their outbound sales efforts by providing qualified leads to your sales team through personal outreach, among other services. David actually acquired TaskDrive about a year and a half ago, and has been scaling up the company ever since. He also has other portfolio companies he runs, aside from TaskDrive.We’re talking about many different topics in this episode, including the benefits of outsourcing your workforce, he gives some really good advice on how you can get influencers to help gain traction if you’re just starting out in business, of course we’re talking about outbound sales, and specific outbound sales strategies that work.David shares some of his and his team’s favourite tools to stay organized and productive. He also drops quite a few gems including some great questions to ask your next hire, and some amazing book recommendations that really helped positively impact his businesses.I had a great

In this episode, I’m speaking with Darren Gallop, a fellow Canadian SaaS CEO. Darren runs Securicy, they help guide companies through creating, implementing, and managing Information Security Programs.Securicy has raised a total $1.8M from investors. Before starting Securicy, Darren founded Marcato, another SaaS product for music festivals, which recently got acquired.This was such a great episode, Darren is one of the brightest CEO’s i’ve spoken with. We talk about quite a few topics, including how Darren leveraged his existing network to gain early traction at Securicy, some of his go-to market strategies that they’re testing right now, he shares a lot of specific frameworks, metrics and tools that Securicy implements in their company. Darren also talks about some really good hiring tips, and how responsibilities change as a CEO when you have investors.A lot of great discussions in this episode that many people will find a lot of value in. I hope you enjoy!PS. Thank you to my friends at Humi for sponsoring

I’m speaking with Xenia Muntean, the CEO and co-founder of Planable.io. Planable helps brands and agencies better manage their social media content.Xenia has been running Planable for about 3 years and has seen incredible growth in such a short time. They made their mark at the famous TechStars accelerator in London. They recently closed a seed round to help ramp up their growth, which we talk about in the episode.Xenia was recently named in Forbes 30 under 30 for 2019, which is incredible. We’re also getting into a lot of other topics including, how Planable got their first handful of customers and some specific strategies they used, Xenia’s opening up some of her marketing playbooks and sharing what they’re doing currently to drive new business, she’s also sharing the customer count that Planable currently crossed, which is huge.This conversation is jam packed, we really dived in pretty deep. I had such an amazing time chatting with Xenia, this is one you’re definitely going to enjoy!PS. Thank you to my fri