This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to bring presence to things that can't be present. My guest is Maarten Tobias, Founder, and CEO of Dimenco. Maarten is an experienced Strategy and Business development manager with extensive knowledge and interest in entrepreneurial high-tech environments.  He received his Master's in Strategic Management in 2006 and worked at several business development and strategic leadership positions within Philips. In 2010 He founded Dimenco where he acts as CEO and successfully exited the company in 2015 and led their management buy-in again in 2019.  Dimenco has been leading the spatial visualization market since 2010. Their mission is to push the boundaries to achieve the dream of simulated reality. They unite hardware, software, and technology to deliver fast, rich, and natural three-dimensional experiences – no wearables required.  Simulated Reality brings presence to what can't be present. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Maarten to my podcast. We explore the transformation in how we prefer to interact with technology, and what's standing in the way of meeting that need. Maarten shares his vision about creating experiences we cannot distinguish from reality. He talks about the lessons learned in creating scale and standardization to achieve his ambitious goals. Last but not least he shares what it takes in mindset and style, to create a business the world talks about. This is one of his quotes: "We have to avoid that we're becoming a gadget. If you are becoming a gadget, make sure that you earn money for two years, sell the company and go sit on the island. That's not sustainable. You have to overcome the fact that you're not a gadget, but you really add something to the value proposition of the user. That's something that we continuously work on every day. Because if we are not able to prove that, then you have a very short life as a technology company." During this interview, you will learn four things: Why more is not always better - and how doing less can create unexpected breakthroughs Why a design goal for your SaaS product should be to become 'normal'  That it's good for your customers to love your product when they see it - but that's really about the question: what's beyond loving it? Why you should stop believing that you're the next unicorn For more information about the guest from this week: Maarten Tobias Website Dimenco Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration Get my free, 2 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation to power a new generation of production. My guest is Sunny Han, CEO of Fulcrum. Sunny is a serial entrepreneur. He founded Imperis in 2010 and Co-founded Terran Logistics in 2012. He's a prototype of a tech entrepreneur on a mission. He founded Fulcrum in 2015, which he leads as their CEO to build a manufacturing platform for forward-thinking manufacturers. Its mission: To deliver a connected future where frictionless manufacturing production and supply chains lead to faster and better product innovations. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Sunny to my podcast. We explore what supply chain should be about. Sunny shares his vision about the future of manufacturing, and how he's planning to make that a reality. He shares his big lessons learned in creating something that's 10x better and what that requires in terms of leadership, mindset, and structure. Lastly, he talks about what it means to create a generationally valuable software business. Here is one of his quotes "The grandiose vision is that there are problems that are getting more and more complicated as we advance as a civilization. We're going to start yearning over time for higher and higher quality objects and things that we use. And that's naturally going to drive a difference in how quickly we need to be able to react to those changes in the production lifecycle." During this interview, you will learn four things: How to create breakthroughs in design and approach by taking a big-picture perspective of an industry. How to convince yourself that you have to do the hard work when looking for the easy answers is the path of least resistance. The power of creating an existential desire inside your business to build something that's still useful to people when we're dead. What happens when you make your sales process more exclusive For more information about the guest from this week: Sunny Han Website Fulcrum  Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration Get my free, 2 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help B2B SaaS companies make faster, bigger, better sales- increasing win rate by +19%, deal size by +42%, and increasing the average selling price by +35%. My guest is MG Gurbaxani, Co-founder and CEO of Cuvama. MG has been obsessed with customer value for nearly 2 decades. Over the last 17 years, he's helped over 80 global B2B customers across manufacturing, distribution, high-tech, and software realize their monetization potential. in 2012 MG joined PROS, where he led the team in the development of customer value quantification tools and methodologies in response to the company's shift to a SaaS strategy. MG focused on increasing win rate, deal size, the average selling price of solutions, and maximizing customer retention rate. As the software industry moved to SaaS, he recognized that the shift of power to the customer was inevitable. This inflection point became the founding idea behind Cuvama, which MG co-founded in 2017, and leads as their CEO.  The belief: Successful relationships start with doing discovery right, by focusing on customer success outcomes. But this is easy to say, much harder to do. As such, Cuvama is on a mission to help B2B software companies sell outcomes, not products. And this inspired me, and hence I invited MG to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we deal with selling and buying enterprise software. MG digs into the big lessons learned from his years in value engineering on the sales side, and how he found his breakthrough by flipping the focus to the buy side. Lastly, he shares his advice on creating a software business that the world will talk about - and his key takeaways on the do's & don'ts to make fundraising more effective and motivating. Here's one of his quotes Before you think about b2b software sales cycles, it's hard. It's hard to sell, and it's hard to buy. And we want to make it easy. Now if you double-click on that, our belief is that majority of sales reps struggle to ask their prospects about value. When they do, we see that it dramatically reduces sales cycle lengths. By getting the multiple stakeholders aligned on the value we see deal sizes increasing, and win rates increasing, but the bigger impact would be: It's not just about landing that first deal. But how can you grow, expand, and retain that customer? So ultimately, all this would point to an uptick in your NDR or NRR, Net Dollar Retention, and Net revenue retention. During this interview, you will learn four things: How to discover and demonstrate value for your SaaS suite 24/7  That we're often optimizing our product roadmap for the wrong things - and how to go around that That you can create defensible differentiation by not only focusing on your customers but on your customers' customers That a solid way to differentiate yourself is in your ability to commit to the value you deliver, and engineer for that. For more information about the guest from this week: MG Gurbaxani MG’s Musings blog Website Cuvama Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration Get my free, 2 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that enables organizations to know their enterprise data and take action for privacy, protection, and perspective. My guest is Dimitri Sirota, CEO, and Co-founder of BigID Dimitri has over a decade of experience as a privacy expert and identity veteran and is an established serial entrepreneur, investor, mentor, and strategist. He is also recognized as one of the leading authorities in startups and company team building, receiving numerous recognitions, including being named an Entrepreneur of the Year finalist by Ernst & Young in 2021 (New York) and 2022 (Florida). Dimitri holds an M.Sc. in Engineering Physics from The University of British Columbia and a B.Sc. Honors in Physics from McGill University. Today he's the CEO and co-founder of BigID, a modern data intelligence platform that helps customers solve data protection, privacy, and governance challenges. Their thinking: Data drives business. Data is a critical factor for all businesses – not just to persevere, but to continue to innovate. As such, BigID is on a mission to help every type of organization know their data, take action on their data, and unleash their data's value to do that. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Dmitri to my podcast. We explore the challenges companies face in rethinking their approach to data where they essentially have become the custodian, as opposed to the owner. Dmitri explains the novel approach they've taken to solve this. He shares his route towards product-market fit and carving out a business model that could fuel exponential growth. He tells about their approach to creating defensible differentiation, and an ability to expand their story ahead of the competition catching up. Last but not least, he shares his advice on creating a business software business that creates products that customers fall in love with.  Here's one of his quotes So early on, once we did our straw man strategy, we doubled down on one particular area. Once we found kind of a pressure point, we said, Okay, let's just focus on this and do a good job here. And so that's what got us through the first two years, I sometimes described that as a swim lane. We needed a clear definable swim lane that we could own, that was differentiated from other technology players. And we went down that path and invested in it, and it actually worked out for us. We were able to do the classic 5x revenue in year one. 3x revenue in year two. During this interview, you will learn four things: How to create your own blue ocean within a large red ocean The single most important answer to look for when defining product strategy When's the right moment to move on and expand your story  The things you should avoid doing as an early stage B2B SaaS founder For more information about the guest from this week: Dimitri Sirota Website BigID Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 provide researchers, medical practitioners, and software developers the underlying foundation to interpret, analyze and build brain activity products and services. My guest is Yair Levy, CEO of Brain.Space. Yair is a tech entrepreneur with extensive experience in the international business development of technology-oriented companies. His tenure at Mul-T-Lock, where he was responsible for the development and introduction of their ENTR product, provided him with experience in corporate management, upstream and downstream marketing, product management & innovation & execution. The product was revolutionary in its category. In May 2018, he co-founded Brain.Space, a startup that's literally opening the doors to the secrets of our brain. It's on a mission to overcome humanity's biggest health, societal and commercial challenges through Data-Driven Brain InsightsTM. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Yair to my podcast. We explore the opportunity to leverage brain insightsTM as a source of innovation. Yair explains his vision and defines the vision that has enabled them to achieve the unimaginable. He shares his big lessons learned in building his organization and what it took to establish a culture that's about support, critical feedback, and working together to move mountains. Last but not least, he provides his advice on building a technology business that the world talks about. Here's a quote from him "To analyze people, you need to have diversity, you need to have big data, you need to have a lot of people. I'm not talking about hundreds or 1000s, you need to have millions of samples in order to really understand what's happening in the brain. Let me give you an example, of what happened in the heartrate industry, when in the past, you had to have a special tool to stick to the chest. And nowadays, you have a watch that is monitoring your wrist, and you have a heart rate analysis out of the cloud. So eventually, this is what we're going to do in the brain." During this interview, you will learn four things: That achieving amazing achievements is about three things: Strong belief. Big Dream. And never look back. What is the secret sauce of creating a good entrepreneurial venture Where to find the best playground for your team of engineers to learn and what to aim for to achieve the goals How to create the balance in your team to keep thinking out of the box, stabilize thoughts and create successful innovation For more information about the guest from this week: Yair Levy Website Brain.Space Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 help us spot, hire & develop the right team for our performance culture … by amplifying the people characteristics that make our business remarkable. My guest is Dr. Patrick Oehler, Co-Founder, and Co-CEO of Retorio. Patrick Oehler was born in Munich, Germany. After graduating from high school, he studied information-oriented business administration at the University of Augsburg and Management & Strategy at the London School of Economics (LSE). Subsequently, he completed his doctorate in Organizational Research at the Technical University of Munich, where he researched behavioral patterns in organizations. This is where he and his co-founder and co-CEO Christoph Hohenberger stumbled upon a big idea that would spark the birth of Retorio. Retorio is on a mission to create a world where people feel accepted, satisfied, and fulfilled in their work, relationships, and company culture. How? By spotting success patterns in teams, hiring matching talents, and developing them into top performers. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Patrick to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we do recruitment today, particularly in large organizations. Patrick shares how 'simply' changing the order of doing creates a revolution - one that creates unbeatable organizations. He digs into how he created traction by niching down and homing in on the most valuable and critical use case. He shares a fascinating story about how he ignored advice from investors on who to target/ not to target - and with that, found a market that's prepared to pay a premium and now represents 80% of the revenue. Last but not least, he shares his experience on what it takes to create a software business that cannot be ignored. Here's one of his quotes "Our investor told us 'don't sell to these clients because they're way too big, they're way too complicated - don't do enterprise sales. You don't know how to do that. You must go for the small ones, this way you can scale way more quickly.' And we always tried to do that, but then once again, the enterprise clients signed up and they were like, 'We're gonna pay more, and we're gonna pay more.' And they offered us big amounts of money to use the technology. And at some point, we said, okay, maybe we should stop resisting.' During this interview, you will learn four things: How flipping the process can be the key to creating a product that creates a revolutionary impact   How a compelling vision can attract critical resources to your startup that are even prepared to work for free How to break the barriers to getting customers to sign up for demos Why your go to market should be ultra specific, even though your platform can support 100s of use cases For more information about the guest from this week: Dr. Patrick Oehler Website Retorio Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration Get my free, 2 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to Software companies over 70% more trial conversions with personalized sales and onboarding videos. My guest is Matt Barnett, Founder, and CEO of Bonjoro. Matt is the founder and CEO of Bonjoro. He is a Britisch designer by trade and loves two things: building great products and building a great culture. He started as a designer, worked as a consultant, did his MBA in 2012, and then co-founded not-for-profit group XTech Sydney in 2013 and Verbate, a video insight agency in 2014. That's where he stumbled upon a problem with reaching overseas customers in a simple and impactful way.  What started as a sales hack for the Agency he was running, Bonjoro went from hack to side hustle to global business in 18 months, and now has a team across 5 continents.  Bonjoro is on a mission to create a world free of spamming - a world where we build trust and love amongst customers by sending something meaningful that converts them for life. It's driven by its ethos of “Automate processes, but never relationships.” And this inspired me, and hence I invited Matt to my podcast. We explore the art of spotting when a business idea has potential and which does not. Matt explains the journey of how Bonjoro was born - and how he took it from an idea to a business that grows through word of mouth and virality. He shares some of his big lessons learned on how to fill his product roadmap with smart investments that create both scale and customer value. Last but not least, he articulates the importance of creating a brand from the start - and how that increases your chances of success. Here are some of his quotes "If every customer brings you two users, then you're like, 'Right - if we make them love us even more, and we activate them, then they'll bring us five." But how do we do that? How do you get the funnel growing faster? And that's not product. It tends to be time and relationships and the loyalty part. If you're passive with a great product, that's awesome, but people's chances of inviting others in is much, much lower. When you're a small business, you have to be active. You can't passively expect this to happen." During this interview, you will learn four things: How to push your R&D department to focus on the desired outcome, not the obvious output Why you should look at your customer funnel with a loyalty lens on, i.e., which customers can become a superfan - a micro-influencer Sometimes your smallest customers can drive the biggest revenue impact for you - indirectly. Why everyone on your team should feel the customer's pain - and how to go about that.  For more information about the guest from this week: Matt Barnett Website Bonjoro Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 empower GTM teams to understand their prospects and supercharge their processes. My guest is Gorish Aggarwal, Co-founder, and CEO of Sybill. Gorish is a self-made tech entrepreneur obsessed with solving hard problems. Throughout his career, he worked as a senior software engineer in the healthcare research team of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT). He's an electrical engineering graduate from IIT Delhi and specializes in the field of ML and Signal Processing for neural and biomedical applications. He loves working on projects which can address the real-world challenges of today and have the potential to create a meaningful impact in the lives of people.  Today, he's the Co-founder and CEO of Sybill. The big idea behind Sybill stems from his time lecturing at Stanford in the summer of 2020. Gorish firsthand faced the problem of gauging student engagement and sentiment in video calls. He decided to solve this problem for us and the world. Sybill is on a mission to introduce a new era in meeting intelligence, going beyond transcription and keyword searches and surfacing the aha! moments and buying intent of your prospects. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Gorish to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we leverage the value of video calls. Gorish shares his vision of how we can give Sales a competitive advantage by augmenting them with insights about the invisible behavior their customers showcase when meeting online. We dig into the big learnings and tough decisions that needed to be made in the development process and how that has panned out in stickiness and viral effects. Last but not least, he shares his advice on what it takes to build a software business that cannot be ignored. Here's one of his quotes "If we can quantify and track these behaviors, humans can actually level up their conversation. If they can get signals about their audience's mental state during the call, they can improve their presentation and their pitch to effectively take the audience from that point A to point B, which is the objective of most conversations. For instance, if sales reps could understand that the prospect is disengaged during the most important section about the core offering, they could actually disqualify that prospect far earlier." During this interview, you will learn four things: Why niching down is essential to creating predictable traction That 'cool' is not often valuable - and how that hurts adoption How to go to market even faster - and gather critical information to gain an advantage. How adding one simple feature can become the ice-breaker in every conversation - and drive word of mouth Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 help Enterprise B2B SaaS vendors shorten their sales cycles by 50-75%. My guest is Justin Beals, Co-founder and CEO of Strike Graph.  Justin Beals is a serial entrepreneur with expertise in AI, cybersecurity, and governance. He organizes strategic innovations at the crossroads of cybersecurity and compliance and focuses on helping customers get outsized value. In every startup he started, he focused on setting a foundational culture of employee growth. Based in Seattle, he previously served as the CTO of NextStep and Koru, which won the 2018 Most Impactful Startup award from Wharton People Analytics. Justin is a board member for the Ada Developers Academy, VALID8 Financial, and Edify Software Consulting. He's also an author and the creator of the Training, Tracking & Placement System US Patent. He's passionate about making arcane cyber security standards plain and simple to achieve. That drove him to co-found Strike Graph in February 2020 - which he leads as their CEO.  Strike Graph is on a mission to enable its customers to earn revenue faster by completing security audits successfully and quickly. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Justin to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the security audit services market. Justin shares his lessons learned how he found a sizeable market that Strike Graph can dominate by developing a product that creates a shift in value by aiming to be different, not just better.  His story about articulating what business he's really in and how he measures progress is a textbook example of how to create a company that's resilient no matter what crisis it'll find on its path.  Here's one of his quotes "Every company is concerned with their revenue. We didn't want to be a security company. We wanted to be a revenue company. Our goal was to say close deals faster, with more confidence. And if we can shorten your time to close by 50 to 75%, you can imagine the amount of efficiency that an organization gets, you know, in revenue acquisition quarter over quarter, there are startups that I've worked at that that simple change would have saved us, we would have been a market leader." During this interview, you will learn four things: That you create instant differentiation is you ensure the design of your solution amplifies the uniqueness of your ideal customer Why your mission should be about 2 things: Immediate and apparent value for your customers That a good exercise to repeat regularly is to start to look at what scales exponentially and what scales linearly Why crystalizing what business you are really in can mean the difference between failing and becoming the market leader For more information about the guest from this week: Justin Beals Website Strike Graph Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 provide us a significant competitive advantage by leveraging unstructured data. My guest is Kirk Marple, CEO of Unstruk Data. Kirk Marple is a customer-focused technology leader. He has over 25 years of experience developing media management pipelines, leading DevOps at venture-backed companies, and structuring successful exits. He holds multiple patents and industry awards and has truly established himself as an industry leader. Today he's the CEO of Unstruk Data, a company that's on a mission empowering enterprises to transform unstructured data files into actionable intelligence about real-world assets to solve massive business, environmental and societal problems. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Kirk to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the data analytics market - and in particular, unstructured data. Kirk shares his journey of how he pivoted from building a podcast discovery tool to a data platform for real-world assets. He shares his big lessons learned about coming to market too early and how postponing the launch has been a valuable decision that made the company more recession-proof. Lastly, he shares his experience on what it takes to build a software business that's got staying power.  Here is one of his quotes "I think the volume of data is probably one of the big stopping points. Oil and gas companies probably spend millions of dollars to search the undersea floor of their oil pipelines. And now the data just sits in a bucket somewhere after they capture it, and they can't go back and find it, or reuse that data…" During this interview, you will learn four things: Why the real user value with SaaS solutions virtually always happens in the last mile That the thing that keeps founders awake at night is not the worry about having a compelling solution but how to attract companies that need it. Why messaging is often the hardest thing - not the technology. Why having an open platform can cause serious problems in sales For more information about the guest from this week: Kirk Marple Website: Unstruk Data Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 create a world free from security incidents. My guest is Shikhar Shrestha, CEO and Co-Founder of Ambient.ai. Shikhar is a tech entrepreneur on a mission. He builds and leads teams that invent new technologies that transform markets, all with the end goal of delivering magical outcomes for our customers. After several years of R&D in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence in academia at Stanford and industry at Apple and Google, he realized that the reactive approach to security doesn’t work for today’s world.  That sparked the idea to found Ambient.ai in February of 2017. Ambient.ai is a computer vision intelligence company. It's on a mission to transform security operations by preventing every security incident possible - without sacrificing privacy. They're building solutions for the world that we want to live in. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Shikhar to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of security prevention. Shikhar shares his vision to transform the industry and how the journey he's following to make the biggest possible impact. He explains what he's done differently to build traction momentum by creating a strong pull from the market. Lastly, he shares his big lessons learned from dealing with disbelief from customers, investors, and employees - and how to build a software business that cannot be ignored. Here's one of his quotes "In the first phase, the only thing that really matters is getting to product market fit. And I think, over time, the success or failure of the company really depends on the strength of the product market fit.  You want to be able to answer this question, which is: what do you uniquely offer that someone desperately wants. And unique and desperate are really important words there because if it's not unique, other people will copy you, and the company is not really going to be valuable. And if the customers or prospects are not desperate to solve the problem, it's going to be very hard as a startup to convince anybody to buy the product." During this interview, you will learn four things: How to design for creating pull from the market Why going against conventional wisdom is often the route to creating very defensible differentiation. Why early disbelief is a precondition for a good entrepreneurial opportunity Why companies should be built to be anti-fragile and how to go about that For more information about the guest from this week: Shikhar Shrestha Website Ambient.ai Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 join up Healthcare and prevent people from having cancer, losing their mobility, or their lives due to errors and delays. My guest is Chris Dial, Co-founder, and CEO of Salutare. Chris started his career as an analyst at Forrester Research. He joined Microsoft in 2002, where - over a period of 18 years - he enjoyed several roles from Sr. Product managers all the way up to Microsoft's Senior Director of Cloud ISVs and Startups. Here, he led the process of finding and making successful software companies building and running apps using Microsoft SQL, Azure, and Dynamics. He managed this innovation team across 12 European countries. In December 2020, he co-founded Salutare, which he leads as the CEO. They believe that no patient should ever be lost. Every clinician and patient benefits when they are in dialogue together on the patient’s journey, and clinicians can be freed from performing many manual tasks. Salutare is on a mission to create online services where this dialogue happens and where the greatest improvements for healthcare can be made for better outcomes. This inspired me, and hence I invited Chris to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the process of joining up healthcare - and why doing nothing is not an option. Chris shares his approach to making the impossible possible - and the lessons he learned to overcome the hurdles to gain traction. He shares his advice to stay mentally sane in the day-to-day battle that startups face to create meaningful change. Lastly, he shares his secrets to creating software that people love to work with - every single day. Here's one of his quotes It's extremely rewarding when you hear about these cases that you can make an impact. We had an early pilot participant in one of the hospitals, and she said, 'Saturday is my favorite working day. During the week, I've got to deal with all these other hospital systems. And then I work on your software. But on Saturday, I only work with your software, and it's a pleasure.'  And I was so touched by that. And I shared it with the team. And I said we have to aim for that nonstop every day. That's what we want people to say.  During this interview, you will learn four things: How you can create transformative change by addressing problems that cross silos  Why customer anecdotes of joy should be a must-have metric to track for every R&D department.  How to get customers to coach you to make the deal happen.  Why you should design both for adoption and diffusion momentum - and how For more information about the guest from this week: Chris Dial Website Salutare Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 help business app developers make the impossible possible. My guest is Harry Brundage, Co-founder, and CEO at Gadget Harry is a hard-core developer turned into a tech entrepreneur. He worked at Shopify in numerous capacities, building and scaling Shopify's backend infrastructure, frontend technology stack, big data platform, and engineering organization.  Since leaving Shopify, Harry has built many other systems -- a note-taking tool, an automated vertical farm, a QA tool -- allowing him to gain first-hand experience with how repetitive software development can be. The made him ask the question: Why does it need to be this hard! Today, Harry is the co-founder and CEO of Gadget, the serverless stack for eCommerce app developers. Harry and his team are on a mission to enable developers to build ambitious software ridiculously fast. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Harry to my podcast. We explore what's broken when it comes to the speed by which we can develop business applications. Harry shares his vision about making the impossible possible for developers - and how this backs up his dream to be a company builder at the end of the day. He shares his hard lessons learned about what it took to build something that makes even the most critical developers advocates.  Here's one of his quotes "Have you ever heard the Marc Andreessen quote: Software is eating the world? We would say: It's not done yet. It's a very big meal, the world. And there are just a lot of unautomated business processes, and people sitting in cubicles copying and pasting data between different systems. We just believe that there's a huge number of problems that have yet to be solved with software, and we're excited about enabling those builders to do that." During this interview, you will learn four things: How you can create a lot of interest and differentiation by creating a solution that's about uninteresting and undifferentiated stuff  That one way to create momentum is to help users create things they wouldn't be able to otherwise That creating a remarkable SaaS product is not about everything the product does - but how it makes your users feel using it The lessons he learned (and the tough decision he needed to make) in speeding up traction and adoption For more information about the guest from this week: Harry Brundage Website Gadget Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 make becoming data-driven easier than ever before. My guest is Peter Fishman, Co-founder, and CEO of Mozart Data Dr. Peter Fishman has over a decade of experience running data and data-adjacent teams at companies like Microsoft, Yammer, Opendoor, Playdom, and Eaze. He realized that he was building the same types of modern data stacks at each company. Taking a broader perspective, he saw many other companies building a data stack over and over again. This inspired him, and his co-founder, Dan, to found Mozart Data in 2020.  Mozart Data is on a mission to make it easy for anyone to set up a modern data stack, without a data engineer, in under an hour. Why does this matter? Because that enables 10x more employees to get access to data, it decreases the time to insight by 76% and delivers 30% cost savings compared to assembling your own data stack.  And that inspired me, and hence I invited Peter to my podcast. We explore what's broken around the way we can embrace the full potential of data. Peter explains his vision of what can be when we can leverage the power of data as a first principle versus an afterthought. He shares his lessons learned around what a SaaS application has to excel at to overcome the trust issues customers have and create a sustainable business from the start. Here are some of his quotes:  The idea of, let's build everything and let's be good at everything. And I think like this is like, almost the kiss of death. Customers don't want good. Customers want the best. You might say, well, the customer won't know the difference between good and the best. They will know the difference.  What I think of as the way to win business is you have a small contract, and you expand with a combination of the startup and the impact that you're having. So, as you're helpful, that sort of growth within the company, ends up being sort of a no brainer.  During this interview, you will learn four things: That you can build a thriving business by working closely with your competitors  That customers want the best product in the market - whether we like it or not. The opportunity is: they define 'best' - no one else. What principles to follow to grow solid traction around adoption When you know your vision is clear and powerful enough For more information about the guest from this week: Peter Fishman Website Mozart Data Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 consumer product manufacturers an edge in building customer relationships and growing continuous revenue streams. My guest is Ervin Draganovic, CEO and Co-founder of Layerise. Ervin has a proven track record in product development, leadership, and corporate governance and has the capacity to attract, build and lead top-performing teams. He calls himself a digital-product-driven corporate opportunist. In 2019 he co-founded Layerise, which he leads as its CEO. Layerise is on a mission to help companies make their products come alive. Its vision is to create a world free from all the print and ink material used for consumer product and service onboarding. At its core, Layerise believes it can convert environmental positive impact into commercial growth for enterprises worldwide. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ervin to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the customer experience process when it comes to physical consumer goods. Ervin explains how he's found a way to transform a global industry and how he managed to turn a compliance requirement into a commercial engine. He also shares his tough lessons learned in taking the product to market and selling it to an audience that's going to love it in 5-10 years' time but is not aware it exists.  Last but not least, he sets apart what he believes is required to create a SaaS business that's worth making a remark about. Here is one of his quotes We were not able to look at the market and say, Okay, this is a kind of an evolutionary step. We really had to envision a future. And a good way of predicting the future is actually by creating it. So we were looking far out and saying, okay, in 10 years' time, how is a modern hardware consumer goods manufacturer dealing with post-sales activities? Are they aware of who the customers are? Do they need to be in constant relationship with their customers? What are the factors of competitive advantage at that point for each brand? And then we looked at if those are actually to have the best customer experience, product, onboarding, customer relationship, what do we then need to do today?  During this interview, you will learn four things: What we need to do differently to create SaaS products that have a transformative impact, rather than just evolutionary How to package your SaaS products to wake up the market and make people think, 'holy moly - we definitely have to step up our game.' That if you don't do your product right, you end up spending all your budget on marketing. What mindset to embrace to ensure a lifelong competitive advantage For more information about the guest from this week: Ervin Draganovic Website Layerise Subscribe to my Daily Reflection 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 daily reflection 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 enable every B2B Sales person to gain trust and advantage even before the 1st meeting. My guest is Lidia Vijga, Co-founder and CEO of Decklinks  Lidia started her career in the Adtech space where she gained sales experience with both PixFuture and StackAdapt. In 2018 she co-founded Briefbid, a two-sided marketplace where media teams can connect, plan and work together. The insights she got there sparked the idea behind her new company.  Today, Lidia is a Co-founder & CEO at DeckLinks, a platform that empowers b2b sales teams to create the most personal buying experience with video sales decks. DeckLinks is on a mission to make b2b sales more human. It's building a world where sales professionals can show their expertise and personality to create a deeper connection with the buyers at any stage of the sales cycle. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Lidia to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of B2B sales when it comes to how we communicate. Lidia shares her vision of how companies can grow faster by making sales more human. She talks us through the big lessons she learned in her previous startup, and how the unique insights she gained firsthand gave her and her team a formula for success. Last but not least she shares her advice on what it takes to build a SaaS business that's ultra-lean, remarkable, and able to compete with the 'big boys.' Here's one of her quotes: "This is how a buyer thinks. First they make a decision about you as a salesperson. Then they make a decision about the company. The offering, the value prop, everything else is after - but the first thing - the first 10 seconds is whether they like you, whether they trust you, and whether they want to work with you. These are the first three things they answer in their head in the first 10 seconds as they see you as a salesperson." During this interview, you will learn four things: Why deciding to automating everything can be the biggest mistake you ever made  How to win against competitors that have the biggest brand, the best product, and the best price Why the number of customers that refuse to take your discount should be a key metric on your dashboard Why designing for creating an organic network effect should be your biggest priority For more information about the guest from this week: Lidia Vijga Website Decklinks Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 solve the global talent problem. My guest is Nemo D'Qrill, CEO at Sigma Polaris Nemo has traveled many paths driven by a passion to discover, understand, and solve worthy problems. From Mathematician to Logician to Flautist for the Danish Queen to Entrepreneur. He was honored as the youngest-ever Goodwill Ambassador of Denmark, presenting joint ventures of world-leading companies internationally such as Maersk, Vestas, Grundfos, and Lego.  His constant passion for understanding and solving problems naturally lead him down the path of Entrepreneurship. With passion and drive Nemo decided to tackle the age-old problems of inefficiency, discrimination, and inaccuracy in recruitment and HR in general.  That's why he founded Sigma Polaris around a singular vision; Creating a world where HR analysis is based solely on meritocracy and where bias and discrimination are things of the past. Its mission: To change the world of work and shift how companies build, engage, retain, and capitalize on the use of diverse teams in today’s workforce. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Nemo to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we recruit our talent today. That there isn't a talent problem, but a distribution problem - and how we can fix that with technology - in particular by removing bias and having to rely on intuition. Nemo shares the most important lessons learned from his startup journey. That building a business requires much more than just an amazing product. What advantage leveraging diversity gives them. And why his business couldn't have been what it is today without investing time in exercise i.e. taking care of himself. Here's a quote from him: There is a saying; 'you can get a book to be popular, by getting eight out of 10 people to like it, or by getting two out of 10 people to love it.' Now, when you are a giant, you need, most of the time, the eight out of 10. You need to be having almost all of the people you speak with think that at least you're interesting good. But I think as a startup, one of the things I've realized is this: we need to work with people that truly buy into it, the people that also believe in the mission. Because if you speak with them, sales cycles get shorter, and procurement gets easier. And all of a sudden, you get a reference, and you get a quote from every single client. And I think today, we've had a quote from almost every single client we have worked with because we choose clients that believe. Instead of trying to get tons of people interested, we try to get some people super excited.  During this interview, you will learn four things: His strategy to be less 'all over the place'  How you can create a 300% impact difference in a matter of just 3 months That you can get your product to be popular by getting 8 out of 10 people to like it or getting 2 out of 10 to love it That it doesn't matter how good your pitch deck is if it doesn't get shared.  For more information about the guest from this week: Nemo D'Qrill Website Sigma Polaris Subscribe to the Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 help bring the global unemployment rates down. My guest is Shay David, Co-founder, and CEO of Retrain.AI Shay is a serial entrepreneur who brings many years of experience in dreaming up products and making them a reality: from concept to market, from slideware to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. He co-founded of Kaltura where he helped define the future of video - thereby taking responsibility as CRO, then GM, and today as a member of the Board.  Prior to that he co=founded Destinator Technologies, a mobile-GPS-navigation software, and consulted on open systems to Fortune 500 companies Today he's the Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Retrain.AI a company founded on the vision to make a measurable impact on global unemployment rates by helping 10+ million users find meaningful career opportunities and help enterprises future-proof their organizations. Their mission: To inform, empower and redefine the way enterprises hire, retain and grow their employees.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Shay to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the Talent Development market and why the best strategy for managing HR & talent management today sadly is: "We'll do tomorrow what we did yesterday." Shay share's his vision of how to solve the global talent problem at the core. He also shares his secrets on how to create a sustainable advantage and what needs to be in place to shape a software business that people not only start talking about but keep talking about.  Here's one of his quotes:  Let me ask you, for any organization that you ever worked for when was the last time you logged in to a corporate learning network and expected to actually learn something? The answer is that never happens. Right?  When was the last time that you get an email from HR that actually had important career advice for you? Again, that never happens.  When was the last time that a candidate that a company submitted a resume and got a call within 15 minutes saying we've processed your request, we think we understand who you are, we have two questions, and we want to schedule an interview for you for tomorrow? Again, that never happens.  But this is not a joke. This is a problem affecting billions of people every day, the systems that are intended to manage talent acquisition to manage talent organization, and learning and development, those systems are failing. And the cost of that failure is catastrophic.  During this interview, you will learn four things: Why having a shared image with your customers about the future state of the world is critical to creating momentum That a way to understand whether you are on the right track is to ask your customers to articulate in one sentence how you give them immediate value Why it's not about finding product-market fit - but keeping product-market fit. Why, in order to succeed, you shouldn't think about technology, regulations, or money. That always comes second For more information about the guest from this week: Shay David Website Retrain AI Subscribe to a Daily Value Inspiration 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 daily reflection 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 make 1-1 coaching approachable for all of us. My guest is Christine Tao, Co-founder & CEO at Sounding Board. Throughout her career, a central theme for Christine has always been leadership development. She uncovered the power coaching could have on people when she acted in her role as Senior Vice President of Developer Relations at Tapjoy, a mobile advertising platform, where she led the growth of Tapjoy’s network business from 0 to more than $100 million in revenue in less than 3 years.  She experienced it from the other end when she advised several venture-backed startups including Flyby Media (acquired by Apple), Immersv, and Comprendi.  She realized firsthand that today's workforce is increasingly overwhelmed and stressed with increasing responsibilities and an always-on culture. This inspired her to do something about it. Today, Christine is the CEO & Co-founder of Sounding Board, a company that was founded around the vision to make coaching accessible to leaders at all levels of the organization and break through the high-cost barriers that had made it impossible in the past. Its mission: Develop the world’s most impactful leaders. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Christine to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of leadership coaching and how this - by blending technology and people in the right way can be a thing of the past.  Christine further shares her big lessons learned during the pandemic - and how she and her team not only secured Sounding Board would survive but actually come out stronger as a company.  During this interview, you will learn four things: That the question in a Pandemic is not: 'where should we cut', but 'where can we continue to invest' How to create an organization that's aligned and autonomous, and at the same time more creative and powerful That the way to survive an existential crisis is not to increase focus on your own company, but on that of your customers Why being bootstrapped - and being less well-capitalized than your competitors can be very helpful. For more information about the guest from this week: Christine Tao Website Sounding Board  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 help customer success teams cut churn, boost revenue and grow faster. My guest is Firaas Rashid, Founder, and CEO of Hook. Firaas is a tech entrepreneur on a mission, and one of his passions is Customer Success. He was CTO and Head of Customer Success (EMEA) at AppDynamics and helped it scale from $170m to $550m Annual Recurring Revenue in 2 years. Prior to that, he was a Director of IT at Credit Suisse. Today Firaas is the CEO of Hook to realize his mission to change the way Customer Success is run. Hook essentially empowers Customer Success teams with accurate revenue predictions and intelligent, actionable insights to secure renewals. It takes the guesswork out of their day-to-day - and helps them focus on spending their time where it matters. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Firaas to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of customer success. Firaas shares his experience around what it takes to answer the question "What makes customers renew, and what makes them churn?" He shares his journey of building a SaaS business that changes the way Customer Services is run and creates impact. In this conversation, he explains the counterintuitive lessons he learned and how that helped him create defensible differentiation from the start.   Here is one of his quotes: People tend to focus on their loudest customers. I actually think the biggest problem is, the quiet customers, when you're running a SaaS business are the ones that are going to leave.  And the hard thing is, without looking at the data, you don't know who your quiet customers are because they're quiet.  When I was at AppDynamics, over the course of the couple of years that I was there, we started with very simple metrics. What we were able to find was that in none of those metrics that we looked at did sentiment make a positive or negative difference to whether or not someone renewed. Yet what we saw was that with engagement, there was a direct correlation in every number. If that number went down, the customer churned, if the number went up, they spent more money.  During this interview, you will learn four things: Why do so many SaaS products suffer from the value gap - i.e. what the customer paid for on day zero, is far away from what they're getting. What you can do differently in your product to minimize churn and increase net revenue retention Why do you have to slow down the sales process in order to speed it up The big lessons learned to create messaging that's humanly instantly understandable For more information about the guest from this week: Firaas Rashid Website Hook 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 ace customer interactions and accelerate revenue. My guest is Amir Konigsberg, Co-founder, and CEO of Pragma AI Amir is a Tel Aviv-based tech entrepreneur with vast experience seeding, building, and leading technology-driven companies, taking products to market and growing them into multimillion-dollar revenue-generating global businesses. He's founded, led, and held leadership roles at Twiggle, Israel Brain Technologies, mySupermarket, HourOne, CodeScan, Google, and General Motors. Amir holds a Ph.D. in Rationality and is the author of 18 US Patents. Today he's the CEO of Pragma AI, a startup that was founded to set the stage for a new way of selling. Their mission: keep sales human.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Amir to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we empower sales today to succeed in a remote-first world. We discuss the art of picking your niche, and what it requires to create something that's not only used but value differentiated. Amir shares his experience in what it takes to get your messaging right and how to navigate between the signal and the noise as you scale your startup. Last but not least he reveals his insights on what it takes to create a SaaS business that cannot be ignored.  Here are some of his quotes "We work very, very closely with customers. And we try and listen as much as we can. And it's very difficult to do by the way. You say you're listening, but most of the time, you're actually you're looking to get a thumbs up for what you've done, because it's pretty painful when sometimes you don't hear that. Or sometimes you can hear 'Thumbs up' but it's kind of soft. And what we're basically looking for, as you do with every startup: 'We need this. When are you going to deliver this because we can't live without it!' " During this interview, you will learn four things: How to go about crafting your message so that it resonates? Why you should not rest until you're certain that what you're doing is distinct enough to be remarkable, and not just something that people use. That running a SaaS business is a marathon, not a sprint - and how to go about sustaining yourself and your team to move mountains for a long time How to find the nuggets to focus on that people are prepared to pay a premium for? For more information about the guest from this week: Amir Konigsberg  Website Pragma AI  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 practice sales conversations without pressure. My guest is Ariel Hitron, Co-founder and CEO of Second Nature Ariel has held various executive positions including VP of New Markets and VP Sales and Customer Success at Kaltura, where he ran global sales teams with dozens of reps He's a tech entrepreneur drawing from experience in both the field and the lab. He's run global sales teams with dozens of reps; built playbooks and training sessions for sales as a product marketer; and earlier in his career, designed and developed multiple software product lines from the ground up, each generating tens of millions of recurring revenue, used by millions of consumers.  What he learned is that the key to success in scaling a sales organization is hiring the best people and coaching them to be even better.  That's why he co-founded Second Nature in 2018. Second Nature is on a mission to help make talking about your products as easy as second nature, to ace every sales call.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ariel to my podcast. We explore what's broken in way we equip sales to deliver top performance. We discuss the disconnect between marketing and sales, and how things can change for the better if these departments would understand each other better. Ariel shares the big lessons learned from starting and gaining traction with a SaaS business in a very crowded market. Last but not least, he tells about the do's and don'ts to create a software business that no one can ignore. Here are some of his quotes: We're getting the materials and the kind of messaging from marketing. We're getting everything, here's our messaging. The reality is, nobody cares. Nobody cares about your messaging. Yeah. And now you have a very short time span, and you have to understand what do they care about at this point in time? What do I have to prove to them today? In 13 seconds, or five minutes or 25 minutes, if you're lucky? And how do I focus the conversation on that? During this interview, you will learn four things: Why many software vendors don't get the traction they hope for How to overcome the cynicism in the market around embracing innovation The best investments to make in the early stage of your product evolution How to go about making big steps forward on your start-up journey without burning yourself out For more information about the guest from this week: Ariel Hitron Website Second Nature 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 enabling more electric, autonomous mobility to become a reality. That paves the way for automated compliance. Seamless transactions. And smarter, cleaner, more efficient cities. For everyone. My guest is Dan Hubert, Founder and CEO AppyWay Dan initially founded AppyParking after experiencing first-hand the pain of parking caused by a fragmented and broken market when trying to park near the Royal Albert Hall for a concert. From this was born the AppyParking mobile app, but more questions quickly arose... What if we could digitise parking spaces? And not just spaces – but all of the UK’s kerbs? What opportunities would that unlock? How could a digitised, dynamic kerb not only meet the ever-growing demands of urban transport today – but shape that of tomorrow? From that lightbulb moment onwards, Dan was hooked. He became unashamedly kerb obsessed and founded AppyWay a startup that's on a mission to lead the charge to help cities thrive, from the kerb up. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Dan to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the world of parking. Dan shares his vision of how to make the kerbside a value driver and turn it into a positive revenue engine that benefits all of us. He shares how incredibly hard it has been to create momentum, and what he's done to create breakthroughs, momentum and secure defensible differentiation for his business. Last but not least he shares is advice on what it takes to create a SaaS business that the world will talk about (and keep talking about). Here are some of his quotes: I pitched it to all the parking departments of London. And they looked at me like I was a lunatic. Basically, their business is to manage parking enforcement and make money from parking sessions. And I was trying to convince them: here's data to create better information to make sure people can get to the destination without a fine and reduce pollution. And at that meeting, there was a guy from BT, who's in charge of a big 40.000 fleet of which 8000 operating in London, and he had a £3.6 million parking problem in London, And he asked 'Can I have your data into my system, please, because this will help my drivers.' And I was like Ok, here's the opportunity. During this interview, you will learn four things: How meaningful value can be created if do the opposite of the norm and breaking the pattern That extremely valuable innovation ideas are often right in front of us - we just need to develop an eye to spot it. How to win governmental authorities to champion your idea and help realize it - even though they appear to be the biggest blocker at first sight That momentum sparks when we start telling stories and paint a visual picture of 'what can be' For more information about the guest from this week: Dan Hubert Website: AppyWay 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 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.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 "It actually came from my time at Gettable. And I spent four years there, trying to find product-market fit, and never quite found. But I did learn a lot about collecting customer feedback, using customer feedback to guide a roadmap. And it just kind of got me obsessed with this idea of using customer feedback to build a really great product. So I started actually looking around on that one and came up with this idea to go tackle that. So the initial spark was actually solving my own problem. It was I knew I was going to have to solve the product-market fit problem at some point. And I knew that customer feedback was the best way to improve a product. I actually came across a blog post from Rahul Vora about how Superhuman found product-market fit, I applied some of those ideas to the system. And then went off to the races from there and quickly realized that this was a larger problem than early-stage startups." During this interview, you will learn four things: That it can take years to find product-market-fit if you are not making some critical choices Why it's way easier to design and build a remarkable product when you got a very specific user in mind. How to create products that result in jaw-drop moments every time you demo it. That just solving a customers problem doesn't mean that you're going to have a product that grows For more information about the guest from this week: Daniel Erickson Website Viable See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, 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: If you read articles around remote work or the future of work, many of the companies have been very positive, saying: Productivity has been through the roof. We can get work done. Everything's fantastic on the work side, but we want to get people back into the office because we're missing out on the engagement and the happiness and those bursts of inspiration. I see it is really a lacking of tools. During this interview, you will learn four things: That we often make the mistake of creating solutions that literally mimic what we think needs to be done, without thinking about what it needs to achieve. Why often it's not the quality of the solution that prevents creating traction, but our inability to change human behaviors  Why we shouldn't be obsessed with Product-Market fit, but with Problem-Market fit. Why avoid going the funding route and focus on building a SaaS business that's sustainable. For more information about the guest from this week:  Scott Markovits Website Spontaneousli 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: I used to work for fortune 500, corporate companies in the tech space. And I was working on large projects that would cover an entire city, for example, a safe city project or an integrated city project. And we have a lot of tools, everything from video wall tools to access to databases and information in real-time.  But when you're doing a large city-type project, you're interacting with the real world. You're not sitting in a bubble, you're interacting with people, workers in the street, frontline people that either are providing you valuable information, or you need to provide them valuable information. What I realized while I was doing that was: Oh my God,...as soon as we want to get information out to the front line or get information from the frontline back into the HQ, everything stops being digital became manual. During this interview, you will learn four things: How to avoid wasting lots of energy, time, and money by focusing your efforts on people who believe what you believe Why you should always strategize about the two or three moves ahead - plan early - do a lot of smaller executive steps ahead of time  That there's a fine line between being capital efficient and missing an opportunity - take chances. Why every opportunity should start with the simple question: Do I firmly believe in it?  For more information about the guest from this week: Rami Darwish Website Arrow Labs 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: Really good salespeople are really good 'in the moment'. Having the conversation really listening well, understanding what's happening. They're not the same people who are good at then typing all of that up. It's just it's a different skill. And so the things that CRM asks them to do are the things that they're bad at. It's structurally flawed. And so, the salespeople who are really good at updating the CRM are the really bad salespeople. I had one sales VP telling me when he takes over a new job as a VP of sales, he looks to see who does the best job at CRM, and he fires those salespeople. Crazy. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why we have to stop creating solutions that demand users to do things they're not good at and principally despise. Focus on what they need to be successful instead. That often the only way to deliver remarkable impact is doing the hard things first.  Why we should do away with the preconceived notion we know our domain like no one else - it can seriously get you stuck in sales Why it's key to set your ego aside as a CEO and invest time listening to your customers. Not leadership, but actual users. Not once, but weekly. For more information about the guest from this week: Adam Honig Website Spiro AI See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: "Just recently, we started focusing on building partnerships with these large media companies, specifically in TV and web publishing. So an example today is: you're watching television, you see an ad for a Ford F150 truck. Like most Americans, 97% of people watch TV with a second device in their hand. You see this great ad for a truck. You say: I want to learn more about it. You go to ford.com, and they show you a minivan. That's a real lost opportunity. Not only for the company, but it's a disconnected conversation with the consumer." During this interview, you will learn four things: That building a product that drives transformative change is not enough. The other thing is how to remove all critical barriers to adopting it. How critical it is to understand what your customers want, but then layer in your vision and give them something beyond what they're asking for.  Be aggressive in those areas where you can learn what resonates with your customers instead of burning your marketing budgets (how conservative they might be)  How getting to Break Even first opens a lot of doors and opportunities to control your growth rate and gives leverage when you talk to investors. For more information about the guest from this week: Gregory Lim Website Persosa 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. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: So Mind Bank is a platform for you to create a digital twin of yourself. We want to make a platform for people to bridge AI, and move humanity to what we call AI-enhanced humanity. It's not about the metaverse because the MetaVerse is all about living in another place. Now we're more concerned about ThisVerse. How do I take the AI and data and all the sides that we have to make me or make you a better person and help you in your personal development?And ultimately, store your wisdom. How much wisdom and knowledge is lost when people pass away, especially in family wisdom? So we have the technology to not only learn about ourselves and optimize ourselves, but also that wisdom could last forever - and add value to your family forever. And that's really building this database of humanity. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why having an eye for what matters - and for the things we'd miss if they were gone - is a fantastic source to spark meaningful innovation  That even if everyone is blown away with your big idea is not a guarantee funding will flow in. Never underestimate this. Why thinking big and long-term will make it a lot easier to keep focused and overcome critical challenges short-term. Why thinking about money should come last in all the strategic decisions you make For more information about the guest from this week: Emil Jimenez Website Mind Bank AI 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: in 2018, I was sitting at a lunch table complaining and really just emphasizing the difficulties of ensuring compliance across all these different nationalities and countries. And my co founder said: 'there has to be service out there, Stine. There has to be.' And he started looking for one and we couldn't find any. And you know, when the butterflies start to flap and you get the tingling in your body. That's how I felt at that point. And that's why we founded Openli. During this interview, you will learn four things: Where to strategically focus your investments when you're starting a SaaS business How you turn something that's perceived as a cost of doing business into a competitive advantage for your customers How to go about creating momentum when nobody is looking for your SaaS solution How to keep your SaaS business on track when adversity hits - and how to come out stronger?  For more information about the guest from this week: Stine Mangor Tornmark Website Openli 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: We are making something that many people find very annoying way more simple and way more fun. That's the obvious benefit they get. But then when people actually start to track their time, immediately and more in detail, they see where their time is really going. Because the funny thing about time is: our perception of time is distorted by our emotions. One hour of fun feels like five minutes, and one hour of something boring feels like five hours. That's why we always think those nice things don't take as much time as we think. And the boring things take way more time than we think. During this interview, you will learn four things: Why not only focusing on business value - but as well on user value will help to create momentum That a product is only worth developing if people are prepared to pay a premium for it. That it's not only about creating launch momentum but about securing long-term retention The value in obtaining a frugal mindset to build a product that people want to use the entire day For more information about the guest from this week: Manuel Bruschi Website Timeular 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: The tools we provide they're going to help people be their own mental coach, so to speak, to develop self-leadership capabilities that take me through the day in a way that I feel for myself as positive and productive. And what that can mean is: the ability to focus when I need to ability not to focus when I don't want to. The ability to recover. The ability to be emotionally balanced. The ability to motivate myself. There are so many micro-decisions that can be decisive throughout a given day, for me to make this a productive day. During this interview, you will learn four things: What being crystal clear about segmentation actually means and why focusing just on demographics is not enough Why having a compelling vision and realistic optimism are key ingredients to build resilience in your SaaS business That, in order to become a remarkable software business you have to invest in soft skills in communication - especially when emotion get involved. That the pressure to get the funding is nothing compared to the pressure that's is building once you get the funding For more information about the guest from this week: Jonas Vossler Website  Flow Lab 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.  Just Start & Think big Declaring war to the problem Challenge the status quo and create change The right mindset - because there are no shortcuts The power of creating leverage Clarity about value Removing ego - act as a team 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: People have a lot of ideas, constantly, I guess that's what we do as humans, we have plenty of ideas, but ideas are cheap. What matters is his execution. And unless you execute, and how long can you execute once you've decided that you are someone who indeed executes? You know, how long can you go? How far can you go?People start companies, but they all drop along the way. People drop, people drop, people drop, and they stand on that shelf as a souvenir of startups that tried anything and did not go all the way through? During this interview, you will learn four things: That having a product that's functionally rich and technically scalable is only half the battle. Business model scalability is the other one. That the best thing you can do for your company is to demonstrate persistence in sticking to the one thing you're after. Don't pivot too early That a ground principle of creating something remarkable is to focus on doing something utterly different (not better) Why you need to be persistent in finding problems that are mission-critical, not just nice to have For more information about the guest from this week: Arnaud Henneville-Wedholm Website "How Hard Can It Be" 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: "I was doing a pro bono asylum case, representing a woman and her toddler, and in those cases, it really comes down to a final hearing, and it's life or death for these individuals. And so, there was a moment at that hearing where I saw the judge was not inclined to find in favor of my clients. But I pointed him to a sentence in my brief, which was a 50-page intense legal document.  That was what convinced the judge. He looked at the evidence, he looked at that report, in the context of my argument, and we won the case."  During this interview, you will learn four things: Why you should develop a strong evidence skill and avoid taking shortcuts in finding product-market-fit.  How to build a product that has staying power with its core users and put a smile on their face - every single day. Why it's key to connect the dots to the larger impacts we're aspiring to understand the true problem we're solving. How to introduce meaningful change to an industry that's not changed in decades. For more information about the guest from this week: Jacqueline Schafer Website Clearbrief 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 See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: My first statement, when I came to realize that this world was being turned upside down, was: This is a global crisis. And there will be winners and losers in the global crisis. And I believe we have a fair chance to come out of this crisis being a stronger company - without knowing what that meansBut the first address for the organization was the reminder of. It is a crisis. Every crisis is a mix between challenges and opportunities. Let's be very, very cautious and careful about the challenges. But let's focus on the opportunity.  During this interview, you will learn four things: How to embrace uncertainty and fear when adversity hits - and the power of trust in each other to overcome the biggest challenges. Why every company should educate and develop every employee to be able to tell a 30-second story about the company  Why capturing the transformational stories from customers are critical to creating an aligned and proud organization Why leaders should encourage every employee to go out of their comfort zone and do things they have never done before For more information about the guest from this week: Volker Smid Website Acrolinx See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: We're helping people come together in order to get real work done, but without having to be in the same place to do it.While it's always great to be in person, and I'm excited to get back in person when we can start doing more of that. Having to do it isn't good for anybody. It's not good for us as people, it's not good for our families. It's not good for the environment. It is not good for business, because it just slows everything down. It's incredibly expensive. We like to move fast. So this is a problem we have been talking about for many years. And we had an opportunity at the beginning of the pandemic in order to put our money where our mouth was. And going back to curiosity, being ambitious, and working with great people - It was an opportunity. We had four weeks and we said "hey, what if?" During this interview, you will learn four things: The importance of laser-sharp segmentation - in particular, understanding who you're not for How to continue momentum when the virality effect of 'the start' fades out How to tune messaging when you're bringing something to market and people are not in the mindset and may not even think there's a solution out there they need What to change to be able to better deal with failure - and become stronger from it.  For more information about the guest from this week: Matt Compton Website Filo See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: We wanted to make something different. We wanted to make something that everyone could afford. Most planes, as you know, are very expensive.We wanted to make something affordable, at a price point that nobody could compete with us. So our competitor is a 4x4 Land Rover. In terms of cost, not a plane, any 4x4 is my competitor. Because that's the real cost of operations. Obviously, we can take much carry much more and travel further, than where a 4x4 can go. But that is my competitor. So we made it at a price point. And it was a huge risk because we thought at the time: Time will tell whether we're genius, or crazy. During this interview, you will learn four things: It's easy to think about the downsides. It's hard to be positive - choosing not to spend time or energy on what can go wrong, but what can go right Why we need to start with the end in mind - and envision how your product can make the biggest possible difference The power to catalytic invention - create something that excels at the three A's: Applicability, Accessibility, and affordability How to create something that drives word of mouth from the start For more information about the guest from this week: Derek Mendonça Website Singular Aircraft See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: We make a lot of promises and have a lot of efforts to try and do things like be responsible citizens as brands to promote different people of all different colors and orientations. And yet, when we look at the content we put out, we don’t always tell that story. And I think part of it is because it has become very, very difficult to analyze content at that scale and in an objective way. We can help o even get an initial pulse check as to how you’re doing on things that don’t even relate to marketing performance. What is the message you’re really sending, I think is the broader question. And how do we help you figure out whether or not the messages that you are really sending actually are in line with the brand values and the things that you would like to be sending? During this interview, you will learn four things: Why having an honest perspective about how your company is really running is key. Staying in that bubble and thinking you’ve got everything together will just make the mess bigger.  Why we’re often the biggest obstacles in our own way  Make the big bets. Think ‘what’s the worst that can happen and push forward.’ Your reflection will tell you ‘why didn’t I do this sooner’ Why success often starts by cutting things down to the core For more information about the guest from this week: Anastasia Leng Website CreativeX See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: The gold standard that I always thought of for technology was GPS for your car. So one of the things that GPS does is that it doesn't drive your car, it doesn't dominate your attention. Every once in a while, it gives you a little insight. And then based on that insight, you're way more effective. So there's this idea where as humans, we are awesome at solving problems, we're awesome at collaborating with one another. Where technology and data can help is to sift through data to make sure that if we're standing in front of a problem, we're standing in front of the right problem and the most important problem.So I always saw that there's this opportunity to combine what we are best at with what technology is best at. During this interview, you will learn four things: That to succeed in creating momentum and successful adoption we have to go at the speed of humans What it takes to sell your SaaS solution to people on the shopfloor (vs the boardroom) How creating remarkable software starts with people that care about what they are building - and people that are empowered to make decisions That people often think going small and incremental is easier than doing things that are big. Fact is - Doing something big is far easier to get people on board and excited about the journey.  For more information about the guest from this week: Martin Cloake Website Raven AI See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: Our life is a spontaneous train of events We never know how the next hour and whatnot will be scheduled. We're creating a product to work hand in hand with spontaneity and believe that being able to have these conversations ad-hoc, when you're in that right headspace to connect with someone, is important.Being able to focus on what's most important in the moment, being more productive, and still having time to do what matters most. During this interview, you will learn three things: That it's very possible to disrupt a market that's been around for decades and is dominated by extremely large tech-giants Why passion for the product is not enough,w the passion needs to be about how the product help impact the lives of others That we always try and move forward in our paths - but sometimes we have to move laterally to get where we need going - and that's OK Why openness, passion, and diversity are key ingredients to create a SaaS business that's able to create remarkable momentum. For more information about the guest from this week: Alessandra Knight Website Katch See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: My big picture genuinely is to kill bullshit branding. I'm exhausted from looking at videos or organizations advertising themselves. It's all the time the same. Put another logo, there's nothing genuine and honest about the reality of this. It's not helping the organization. and it's certainly not helping the candidates or the people outside. Secondly, we really want to achieve is for people to find the right organization for them to work in. That's the whole idea with Platypus. Platypus is this amazing animal that probably shouldn't exist because it's so specific. But in the right environments, in the right setup, it's happy, it's thriving, and it exists and it's evolving. That's why for us we call it Platypus because it's all about finding the right environment for the person. During this interview, you will learn four things: That a critical lever for success is positive conflict. You don't need people that agree with you. You don't need to hear what you've just said in a different voice. Remove the ego from leadership. You're not in a leadership position, because you're right all the time. You're in a leadership position because you're the best at getting the best out of people. That as a CEO you want to go so fast, and you're so self sold into your own idea that it's critical to have people that are not you making decisions on the product. How to go about making the decision to kill your product, and start all over again. For more information about the guest from this week: Nico Blier Silvestri Website Platypus See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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: It really helps people stand out. Everybody is been doing things the old way. Everybody has a funnel built. They have email campaigns. You sign up for a product, and you get 20 emails. And they all look the same. They're beautifully designed, they're full of text and graphics. But when you put your face behind something, you build trust way faster than you do with pretty graphics. And for most products and services, people want to trust the person that's making it before they're going to buy it. During this interview, you will learn four things: That we're too often building remarkable software, but forget the power of human touch. Combining the two creates something that stands out.   That, in order to more often succeed, we should replace the word 'launch' with 'planting seeds'.  Why we should always test the water in the market with something lightweight - something we can still adjust without wasting money. Why it's key to turn early customers into evangelists - and how to go about that.  For more information about the guest from this week: David Jay Website Warm Welcome See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices