The SaaS Podcast - Building SaaS in the AI Era
AI is changing how SaaS gets built, priced, and used. Every week, Omer Khan interviews founders who are adapting and winning right now. With 500+ founder conversations and 150+ founders coached, The SaaS Podcast delivers the real lessons you need to build and grow your SaaS business in the AI era. No hype. No theory. Just proven strategies from founders who've done it. Join 5,000+ founders at SaaS Club. New episodes weekly.
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Enterprise Sales: How Egnyte Competed Against Box and Dropbox
<p>Hundreds of competitors. Billions in funding. All giving product away for free. Vineet Jain ignored the playbook. No freemium. Enterprise sales only. A hybrid cloud approach nobody believed in. In this episode, founders will learn how Egnyte grew from $0 to $300M+ while raising just $137.5M - and why charging from day one beat free.</p> <p>Egnyte now has 23,000 customers, 1,400 employees, and has raised no additional funding since 2018. It took 12 years to hit $100M - then just 3 more to reach $200M and 1.5 to hit $300M.</p> <p>This episode is brought to you by:</p> <p>🌎 ThreatLocker → Book a demo<...
Product-Market Fit: From Edtech Vitamin to $100M Painkiller
<p>Seven years selling a nice-to-have. Then 1,000 customers in year one. Adam Markowitz spent nearly a decade grinding in edtech before finding product-market fit at Drata. In this episode, founders will learn how to tell the difference between a vitamin and a painkiller - and why that distinction changes everything.</p> <p>Adam shares how experiencing a compliance pain at his first startup became the foundation for Drata, why he refused to sell until his team used their own product to get SOC 2 compliant, and how a "give before you take" approach to AWS made Drata a top 5 ISV on...
Product-Market Fit: From a School Project to $20M ARR
<p>$2M to $9M ARR in one year. Then it nearly fell apart. Gilles Bertaux expanded Livestorm into meetings and sales demos after COVID, turning it into a smaller Zoom with no clear differentiator. In this episode, founders will learn how he rebuilt product-market fit by narrowing to a niche most would run from.</p> <p>Gilles shares why 85% of customers on monthly plans was a ticking time bomb, how a failed Series C forced the right strategic shift, and why targeting marketers instead of IT buyers let Livestorm avoid competing with Zoom on budget.</p> <p>Livestorm generates nearly $20...
Bootstrapped SaaS: From Agency to $5M ARR in 2 Years
<p>Adam Fard bootstrapped UX Pilot from a UX agency side project to $5 million ARR in under two years—growing from $3M to $5.3M in just five months—without VC funding, with 15,000 paying subscribers and a 30-person team.</p> <p>In this episode, early-stage bootstrapped SaaS founders will learn how Adam discovered a wireframing opportunity by testing competitors and realizing they were all faking AI generation with templates. You'll hear why he spent 6-7 months solving the genuinely hard technical problem of AI wireframe generation, and how focusing exclusively on design (not no-code, not backend) became UX Pilot's biggest competitive adva...
Product-Market Fit: How Tito Goldstein Found It After 2 Years of Near-Zero Revenue
<p>Two years. Almost no revenue. Tito Goldstein and his co-founder Arjun raised $3 million to build a scheduling tool for hourly workers. But when they took it to market, customers kept telling them the same thing: we need to stand out, not use cookie-cutter software. So they made a call that most founders would never risk - throw it all out and start over.</p> <p>The rebuild took a year. But when they launched the new version built on composable Legos instead of fixed features, it outsold the previous two years in the first month. Then it 3x'd, and 3...
First Customer: Living in His Customer's Basement to $100M | Qualia
<p>He lived in his first customer's basement for a year. Nate Baker found Qualia's first customer by wearing a Stanford sweatshirt to a conference. That customer, Barry Feingold, didn't just sign up—he taught them the industry, made intros to competitors, and let the team live in his basement. In this episode, founders will learn how to find their first customers through network-based selling and multi-year upfront contracts.</p> <p>Nate shares the brutal early days: building for months without talking to customers, getting their first customer's software shut off overnight, and plateauing at $45K ARR because they didn't re...
Enterprise Sales: How Blings Landed McDonald's in 9 Months | Blings
<p>Nine months. Zero revenue. One cold text to a CMO. Yosef Peterseil landed McDonald's as Blings' first enterprise sales customer while bootstrapping—and learned why charging for POCs changes everything. In this episode, founders will learn how to close enterprise sales deals without a playbook, why free POCs kill your priority, and when you're actually ready to hire salespeople.</p> <p>Yosef shares how he validated the wrong ICP for months before discovering customer success managers had no budget, why a 13-month contract structure eliminates double negotiations, and the $30,000 event mistake that taught him to build follow-up systems first.</p>...
Enterprise Sales: Closing Deals in 9 Days, Not 9 Months | Briq
<p>Bassem Hamdy closes enterprise sales deals in 9 days—not 6 months. After scaling Procore from $10M to $100M as EVP of Marketing, he built Briq to an 8-figure ARR by selling AI automation to CFOs in construction. In this episode, early-stage B2B SaaS founders will learn the enterprise sales playbook that bypasses long procurement cycles.</p> <p>Bassem breaks down exactly how to close enterprise sales fast by focusing on "vision and value" instead of product demos. You will learn why you should never do free POCs, how to identify when you're wasting time with "Innovation Teams," and the la...
Founder-Led Sales: How He Closed Instacart and LinkedIn | Nexla
<p>Saket Saurabh closed Instacart by live-coding a fix during the pitch—and that "magical moment" became the foundation of his founder-led sales playbook. In this episode, early-stage B2B SaaS founders will learn how Saket closed the first 15 enterprise customers himself using a consultative founder-led sales approach.</p> <p>Saket breaks down exactly how to navigate complex corporate buy-cycles without a sales background. You will learn why he went "enterprise first" instead of starting with SMBs, how to overcome the "we can build it ourselves" objection by creating magical demo moments, and why founder-led sales is essential for connecting pr...
AI SaaS Pivot: From Consulting Trap to $1M ARR | Cotera
<p>Ibby Syed built his AI SaaS to $150K ARR—then realized he'd accidentally built a consulting business. Customers weren't logging in. They'd call with questions, get answers, and disappear. In this episode, early-stage B2B SaaS founders will learn how Cotera escaped the services trap and pivoted to an AI SaaS agent platform to hit $1M ARR.</p> <p>Ibby breaks down exactly how to recognize you're stuck in a consulting trap and escape it. You will learn why his co-founder's 100-line OpenAI experiment outperformed months of data science work, and the painful decision to fire legacy customers to fo...
