Episodes
For this fifty-third episode, I talked to Matthew Cleevely, Co-Founder of 10to8, a scheduling platform that is built for less digital environments, like the dentist or the national health service. When Matthew was doing his PhD in entrepreneurship, he and his co-founder talked with a dentist friend of theirs who wanted to digitize his business. They dug in, analyzed how his dental practice worked, and found out that he had a large no-show rate because scheduling was a pain. That’s when 10to8...
Published 04/19/22
For this fifty-second episode, I talked to Susanne Klepsch, Co-Founder of MeetFox, a platform for coaches, lawyers and other independent service professionals to schedule, meet and charge in one seamless flow. After brief stints in the tourism and automotive industry, Susanne took on sales at her father’s plastics companies after he passed away. After assuming a leadership position in which she was suddenly responsible for 120 employees, she went looking for a coach. That process took so...
Published 09/21/21
For this fifty-first episode, I talked to Ai Ching Goh, Co-Founder of Piktochart, a software to build beautiful infographics and videos, with the goal of becoming a “business storytelling platform”. After Ai Ching had a burn-out working at P&G, she decided to start her own company together with her husband, at the time a web design agency, with the purpose of eliminating her Monday blues. This is where her journey began to build a company where people come first. One day, about 10 years...
Published 08/26/21
For this fiftieth episode, I talked to Dave Will, Co-Founder of PropFuel, a platform that helps associations better engage with their members. Dave started off his career in the corporate world, working at PwC on systems integration of big corporate systems like Siebel and SAP. The moments that changed everything for him were when his boss told him to walk faster and smile less when moving through the hallways… and when he got fired for lacking a sense of urgency. That’s when he decided he...
Published 05/31/21
For this forty-ninth episode, I talked to Lisa Popovici, Co-Founder of Cartloop, an SMS marketing service that offers you a team that helps customers with their abandoned shopping carts on your Shopify store. Lisa went to med school. While doing that, she wanted to earn her own money, and started a women’s fashion brand. She came home from classes every day, excited to work on her business, and found out she was more passionate about e-commerce than her studies. After getting her degree,...
Published 11/24/20
For this forty-eighth episode, I talked to Udesh Jadnanansing, Co-Founder of Mopinion, an all-in-one user feedback platform for high traffic websites. Mopinion started when Udesh and his co-founders had a digital agency that developed websites and apps. One thing they noticed was that getting qualitative information about the user’s perspective beyond quantitative analytics was hard. And their customers were wrestling with it. That’s when they knew they had to develop a solution for this...
Published 10/27/20
For this forty-seventh episode, I talked to Will van der Sanden, Founder and CEO of Dux-Soup, one of the leading LinkedIn automation tools in the market. Dux-Soup started when Will wanted to help his wife with reaching out to prospects for her business. As a developer, he built tools to scrape different sites, like Yahoo, the Yellow Pages and LinkedIn. When he showed his software to other people, he got quite some interest going for the LinkedIn scraping, so he decided to specialize on...
Published 09/29/20
For this forty-sixth episode, I talked to Steven Benson, Founder and CEO of Badger Maps, a leading mapping platform and route planning app for field sales people. After studying geography and doing an MBA, Steven spent his whole career in field sales at companies like IBM and HP and then went on to sell the Google Maps API to businesses. Being exposed to a lot of mapping problems, he figured there was a space in the market for a mapping product for field sales people. That's when Badger...
Published 09/15/20
For this forty-fifth episode, I talked to Nick Franklin, Founder and CEO of ChartMogul, one of the leading platforms to track and analyze subscription metrics for SaaS and mobile subscription companies. Previous to ChartMogul, Nick worked at Zendesk and he started up its EMEA and then Asian operations as a general manager. He experienced firsthand how difficult it was to track and analyze their metrics and he built up a system for it internally. It wasn’t user friendly however, nor did it...
Published 09/01/20
For this forty-fourth episode, I talked to Amir Salihefendić, Founder and CEO of Doist, the company behind the leading to-do app Todoist and the asynchronous team communication platform Twist. Amir started working on Todoist in 2007 while he was a student, got some immediate coverage and a good amount of users, but then worked on other things for a while. He was the CTO of a social media company called Plurk and then tried building a project management system called Wedoist. Then in 2011, he...
Published 08/18/20
For this forty-third episode, I talked to Randy Rayess, Co-Founder and CEO of Outgrow, a leading platform for adding calculators, quizzes and other interactive elements to your site. Prior to Outgrow, Randy and his co-founder had a marketplace for mobile app development. As the sales team needed to be able to make quick price estimates, they built a calculator. Lots of people liked what they had built and wanted to use it in their sites. Outgrow was born. We talk about how to recruit the...
Published 08/04/20
For this forty-second episode, I talked to Rand Fishkin, formerly Co-Founder and CEO of Moz and now Co-Founder and CEO of Sparktoro, a new solution and data provider for audience intelligence. Rand started off leading an SEO agency and blogging about the topic and then started Moz 13 years ago as one of the first solutions for SEO research. A few years ago, he left Moz and started Sparktoro, continuing to work on his love for making big data and complex problems easy. We talk about SaaS vs....
Published 07/07/20
For this forty-first episode, I talked to Veronika Riederle, Co-Founder and CEO of Demodesk, one of the leading video solutions for sales demos. Veronika studied all about becoming an entrepreneur in university. After spending about 7 years in strategy roles at Bain, Audi and Telefonica, she decided to make the jump. She and her co-founder found a way to make the sales demo process more efficient, and they managed to enter Y Combinator with their startup. With a team of 20, they’re now...
Published 06/23/20
For this fortieth episode, I talked to a very special guest, Jason Fried, Co-Founder and CEO of Basecamp, the famous project management and communication platform. Jason loves creating things he wants and selling them to other people like him. That’s how he started way back with selling stereo equipment and cordless phones and is now selling software to help teams do a better job. The very first thing we did when starting Salesflare was reading his first book and almost manifesto “Getting...
Published 06/09/20
For this thirty-ninth episode, I talked to Max Armbruster, Founder and CEO of Talkpush, a recruitment automation platform that leverages chat interfaces for recruitment. After stints at companies like CNET, Altran, ATKearney and SAP, Max started Talkpush based on in-house software he built in a previous business to streamline their recruitment process. Despite being a US national with German origins, he leads his company from Hong Kong with half of his company being based in Latin America....
Published 05/26/20
For this thirty-eighth episode, I talked to Alex Theuma, co-founder of SaaStock, the first and leading conference dedicated to SaaS companies in Europe.. After a sales career of about 11 years, mostly selling software, Alex got an itch to start his own business. He started a blog about SaaS companies and invited experts to contribute. Very quickly a podcast followed, he started organizing meetups, and a community was formed. After this community expressed the need for a SaaS conference in...
Published 03/31/20
For this thirty-seventh episode, I talked to Rahul Vohra, co-founder of Superhuman, the company behind the self-proclaimed fastest email client ever made. After Rahul sold his previous company Rapportive to LinkedIn and spent a while there as a product manager, he decided to take on the challenge to rethink one of the most fundamental software programs of today’s knowledge worker: email client. Rahul’s dream as a kid was to be a game developer and he taught himself how to code starting from...
Published 02/25/20
For this thirty-sixth episode, I talked to Mada Seghete, co-founder of Branch, the leading platform that makes deep linking to specific places in mobile apps easy. After Mada's mom helped her to get a full scholarship to study in the US, she studied computer engineering and got her first job as a software developer. She only did this for a year, after which she consecutively worked as a business consultant, worked as a product manager, went to Stanford Business School, and co-founded her...
Published 12/17/19
For this thirty-fourth episode, I talked to Darren Chait, co-founder of Hugo, a platform that brings all your meeting notes together in one place and connects them with all the tools you use. Darren and his co-founder started Hugo off as a way to prepare better for meetings, but then found instead that the bigger problem was what happened after the meetings. Today, two years since their pivot, their software is used by great companies like Nike, Dropbox and Twitter. We talk about how...
Published 11/06/19
For this thirty-fourth episode, I talked to Harrison Rose, co-founder of Paddle, a leading subscription and commerce platform that helps SaaS businesses grow faster. Harrison started Paddle with his co-founder when they were 17, going on 18, right when they were due to join university. They dropped out before it even began. At first they built a marketplace for businesses, much like the App Store, but when it turned out nobody wanted another marketplace, they dropped the customer facing...
Published 09/17/19
For this thirty-third episode, I talked to Xenia Muntean, co-founder of Planable, a social media collaboration and approval platform for agencies and bigger companies. Xenia started a social media agency in Moldova when she was in university and built it out to seven people, until she founded Planable to solve one of the collaboration issues they were facing in her agency. Her startup was discovered by an accelerator in Romania, and afterwards by Techstars in London. We talk about why you...
Published 08/20/19
For this thirty-second episode, I talked to Perttu Ojansuu, co-founder of Happeo, a social intranet platform for companies using G Suite. During his studies, Perttu was already selling different products and phones, and then founded an e-learning platform. His interest in entrepreneurship spiked and he started university studies about it to deepen his knowledge. Helping organizations with implementing G Suite, Perttu and his co-founders recognized a need to organize internal knowledge...
Published 07/23/19
For this thirty-first episode, I talked to Omer Molad, co-founder of Vervoe, a leading hiring solution that enables you to hire employees based on their skills instead of their experience. After his military service in Israel, Omer worked at a few startups. After this he moved back to Australia, where he used to live as a kid. He then went to law school and worked at big companies in management positions for many years. It was only after a chat with his co-founder David that they decided to...
Published 07/02/19
For this thirtieth episode, I talked to Allan Wille, co-founder of Klipfolio, a leading real-time dashboarding platform for small and mid-sized businesses. Straight out of college, Allan started a web design company with two friends, that turned out to develop one of the smallest Java runtimes in the world, took a lot of funding, and IPO’ed. He then took the learnings from this venture to start Klipfolio. At first, they built a downloadable widget engine that people used to build personal...
Published 06/11/19