Episodes

  • 465: Enterprise Sales Strategy: Closing Deals in 9 Days | Briq

    465: Enterprise Sales Strategy: Closing Deals in 9 Days | Briq
    Dec 11 2025
    Bassem Hamdy helped scale Procore to $100M ARR, but his own startup almost failed when investors forced a pivot. After firing 200 people to regain control, he ignored the "expert" advice and returned to his original vision to build an 8-figure AI automation platform. In this episode, Bassem (CEO of Briq) reveals why "listening to the customer" often creates a Frankenstein product. Learn how he closes Enterprise deals in just 9 days using a "micro-value" strategy, why he downsized the team to increase revenue per employee, and the danger of selling to corporate Innovation Teams. 🔑 Key Lessons 🐘 The "Elephant" Trap: Why building exactly what customers ask for creates "bandages on bullet holes" instead of a scalable product. ⚡ 9-Day Enterprise Close: The "Land and Expand" strategy that bypasses long procurement cycles by selling micro-value first. 📉 The Failed Pivot: How investor pressure for "Daily Active Users" led to a forecasting tool that nearly killed the company. 🚫 Innovation Teams: Why selling to the "VP of Innovation" is a trap and how to find the real economic buyer (the CFO). 📊 Revenue Per Employee: Why he stopped measuring success by headcount (300 employees) and focused on efficiency (100 employees). 📖 Chapters Introduction & Welcome Is AI "Human Replacement" Software? The "Construction Data Cloud" Idea (And Why It Failed) Finding the Wrong ICP The "Agile" Trap: Why most product teams are actually doing Waterfall The Investor-Forced Pivot to Forecasting How to Close Enterprise Deals in 9 Days Selling on "Vision & Value" vs. Features SaaS Pricing: Moving to Tokenization & Consumption The Danger of Custom Features & Innovation Teams The "XY Problem": Digging Deeper into Requests Why Headcount is a Vanity Metric This episode is brought to you by: 💖 Gearheart → Book a free strategy session + get 20% off select services 🚀 SaaS Club Launch → Build your SaaS to $10K MRR Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/465 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus
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    50 mins
  • Founder-Led Sales: Landing Instacart & LinkedIn Without a Sales Team | Nexla

    Founder-Led Sales: Landing Instacart & LinkedIn Without a Sales Team | Nexla
    Dec 4 2025
    Saket Saurabh defied standard SaaS advice by skipping SMBs and selling directly to Enterprise giants like Instacart and LinkedIn from day one. Here is the "Enterprise First" strategy that allowed Nexla to become cash flow positive with multiple 7-figures in revenue before their Series A. In this episode, Saket (Co-founder & CEO of Nexla) breaks down exactly how to navigate complex corporate buy-cycles without a track record. Learn how he used "consultative selling" to close 6-figure contracts, the "Magic Moment" live-coding tactic that won Instacart, and the painful "Zero Salary" pivot the founders took to save the company and hit profitability. 🔑 Key Lessons 🏢 The "Enterprise First" Bet: Why targeting SMBs would have failed and why he went straight for the Fortune 500. 🪄 The Magical Moment: How his co-founder live-coded a fix during a pitch meeting to close Instacart. 📉 The Hard Reset: Cutting founder salaries to $0 and downsizing to achieve cash flow positivity. 🤝 Founder-Led Sales: How to sell "Build vs. Buy" to technical buyers who think they can do it themselves. 🧠 Nvidia Lessons: The "Critical Path" advice from Jensen Huang that guides his leadership today. 📖 Chapters Introduction & The "Profit" Quote What is Nexla? (Solving the Data Fragmentation Problem) The Origin: From Ad Tech to Data Infrastructure The Contrarian Strategy: Why "Enterprise First"? Landing the First Customer (Instacart) The "Live Code" Sales Demo Strategy Figuring out Enterprise Pricing & POs Founder-Led Sales: Closing the First 15 Customers Overcoming the "We Can Build It Ourselves" Objection The Pivot: Going "Zero Salary" to Hit Cash Flow Positive The Impact of AI on Data Engineering Lightning Round: Best Advice & Productivity Tools This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 Resources: 🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/464 🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email 💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus
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    42 mins
  • 463: Escaping the "Consulting Trap": How to Pivot to $1M ARR - with Ibby Syed

    463: Escaping the "Consulting Trap": How to Pivot to $1M ARR - with Ibby Syed
    Nov 27 2025
    Ibby Syed spent 18 months building a customer analytics product that hit $150K ARR—only to realize he'd accidentally built a consulting business, not a software company. Then his co-founder wrote 100 lines of code using the OpenAI API, and everything changed. In this episode, Ibby shares how he and his co-founder pivoted from a struggling analytics tool to building Kotera, an AI agent platform that crossed 7-figures in ARR. He explains why most vertical AI startups will grow fast and die, and how teaching customers to build their own agents created a more scalable business. You'll learn: How to use LinkedIn outbound with an 8-10% response rate to book 25+ customer interviews per week Why early revenue can trap you in a "local maxima" and make pivoting harder How 100 lines of API code outperformed a bloated data science solution and triggered a pivot Why sending prospects actual value (like leads) beats generic pitches in today's saturated market Why building horizontal tools may be more defensible than vertical AI solutions Full show notes → saasclub.io/463 This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
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    57 mins
  • 462: Polly: Lessons on Building a 7-Figure SaaS on Slack's Platform - with Bilal Aijazi

    462: Polly: Lessons on Building a 7-Figure SaaS on Slack's Platform - with Bilal Aijazi
    Nov 20 2025
    Bilal Aijazi built one of the first Slack apps ever created. The install process was so clunky it required five manual steps of copying and pasting tokens. Yet 80% of people completed it anyway. That's when he knew Polly was solving something people desperately wanted. Today, Polly serves millions of monthly active users across Slack, Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Google Slides, and PowerPoint, generating multiple seven figures in ARR with just 20 people. But the journey from that first $8/month fantasy football customer to enterprise deals wasn't obvious—and platform risk nearly derailed everything when Slack launched competing features. You'll learn: How Bilal discovered that only 12% of Polly users would ever become creators and why that was actually a good thing for the business Why their first paying customer at $8/month for fantasy football led them to HR teams who now pay five-figure deals How adding simple demo booking hooks throughout Polly enabled hundreds of customer conversations that revealed their real monetization path What happened when Slack launched Workflow Builder six months after Polly signed their first five-figure deals and how they survived Why Bilal believes every founder building on platforms must eventually become a platform themselves or risk getting crushed Full show notes → saasclub.io/462 This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
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    57 mins
  • 461: GoProposal: How to Sell a Bootstrapped SaaS for 8-Figures - with James Ashford

    461: GoProposal: How to Sell a Bootstrapped SaaS for 8-Figures - with James Ashford
    Nov 13 2025
    James Ashford built GoProposal, a pricing and proposal platform for accountants, on a $5,000 WordPress multisite. Five years later, he sold it to Sage for eight figures with just 12 people on the team. But the path to that exit wasn't about raising money or building fancy tech. It was about moving faster than well-funded competitors, staying closer to customers than anyone else, and building systems that made the business sellable from day one. James picked off the top customers of a competitor with $75 million in funding by publishing helpful content daily, running weekly webinars, and speaking to an accountant every single day just to learn. You'll learn: How James built and launched his MVP for $5,000 on WordPress and why that helped him get to market quickly without funding Why going deep on one ICP for years gave him clarity, focus and traction in a crowded market How publishing useful content quickly, instead of polished content slowly, became his biggest differentiator and drove conversion and onboarding How simple playbooks helped the team deliver a consistent customer experience and scale without complexity How James created demand and trust long before the sale, so customers came in already bought into his approach Full show notes → saasclub.io/461 This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • 460: Assembled: From 8 Months Without a Dollar to 8-Figures - with Ryan Wang

    460: Assembled: From 8 Months Without a Dollar to 8-Figures - with Ryan Wang
    Nov 6 2025
    Ryan Wang is the co-founder and CEO of Assembled, an AI platform for customer support that helps companies manage both human and AI agents more efficiently. Today, Assembled is an 8-figure ARR company with about 120 people, serves several hundred customers, and has raised $71 million. But getting there was brutal. Ryan and his co-founders spent two years building before launching in March 2020—the same day the WHO declared COVID a global pandemic. About 25% of demos didn't show up. It took them 8 months to earn their first dollar of revenue. When they finally got customers on usage-based pricing with no minimums, usage flatlined during the pandemic. They thought it was their fault before realizing it was macro-related. So they stopped chasing growth and focused on the customers getting value, meeting them in person and building what actually mattered. You'll learn: How Ryan knew he had a real business when he discovered that Stripe, Casper, and Grammarly had all built similar color-coded spreadsheets What Ryan learned the hard way about usage-based pricing with no minimums and how they fixed it How Ryan's team decided which early deals requiring custom work would help them grow versus become distractions Why Assembled focused on one Slack community instead of trying to be everywhere at once The simple method Ryan used to create a detailed ICP by looking at patterns in the customers he already had Full show notes → saasclub.io/460 This episode is brought to you by: 🔐 ⁠⁠⁠Sprinto⁠⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and book a demo today⁠ 💖 ⁠Gearheart⁠ → ⁠Book a call + get the first 20 hours of development free 📡 ⁠⁠⁠Signal House⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo 🚨 ⁠⁠⁠⁠NordStellar⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠⁠⁠Book a demo and get 20% off with code blackfriday20 Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
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    54 mins
  • 459: Everflow: From Selling Just Screenshots to $30M ARR SaaS - with Sam Darawish

    459: Everflow: From Selling Just Screenshots to $30M ARR SaaS - with Sam Darawish
    Oct 30 2025
    Sam Darawish sold his first startup for $50M, then invested a few hundred thousand of his own money into Everflow. He didn't pay himself for two years. Most founders would never show screenshots at a trade show instead of a working product, but that's exactly what Sam did — and it landed his first customers. Today, Everflow generates nearly $30M ARR with 1,200 customers and a 120-person team across four continents. They've done it all without raising a single dollar of outside funding, proving that capital efficiency beats hypergrowth for building sustainable SaaS companies. You'll learn: Why showing screenshots at a trade show led to their first paying customers How narrowing to a tiny $70M TAM helped them reach $1M ARR faster What happened when they expanded to a bigger market that looked similar but wasn't Why spending only $400K to start forced them to focus on what really mattered How to maintain 25-30% growth while staying profitable from day one Full show notes → saasclub.io/459 This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠⁠Sprinto⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠Learn more and book a demo today 📡 ⁠⁠Signal House → ⁠⁠Learn more and get a demo 🚀 SaaS Club Launch → Build your SaaS to $10K MRR Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
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    46 mins
  • 458: Read AI: The 8-Figure Playbook for Product-Led Growth - with David Shim

    458: Read AI: The 8-Figure Playbook for Product-Led Growth - with David Shim
    Oct 23 2025
    David Shim sold his first startup for $200M, but when he started Read AI in 2021, he built something that failed spectacularly — 5% retention after 30 days. Instead of pivoting to chase revenue, he focused obsessively on fixing one metric: day-one ROI. Today, Read AI generates 8-figures in ARR, adds a million accounts monthly, and spends virtually nothing on marketing. David discovered that in the age of AI, the companies that win aren't the ones with the biggest models — they're the ones that solve real problems instantly. You'll learn: How David validated his idea by calling Zoom's founder directly and getting instant clarity Why focusing on day-one ROI instead of revenue led to 81% retention How to build viral loops that drive 1M+ monthly signups without marketing spend Why giving away your product for free can be your best growth strategy How to compete when Microsoft, Google, and Zoom enter your market Full show notes → saasclub.io/458 This episode is brought to you by: 💖 ⁠⁠Sprinto⁠⁠ → ⁠⁠Learn more and book a demo today 🚀 SaaS Club Launch → Build your SaaS to $10K MRR Get weekly SaaS lessons and new founder stories → saasclub.io/email
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    57 mins