SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Business strategy and execution professional with 15+ years experience of delivering high growth projects for SMBs and large enterprises -MBA INSEAD - MS Virginia Tech - B.Tech, Delhi College of Engineering - IFC (World Bank Group), IL&FS, Carollo Engineers

15 years of startup experience as founder/CEO/CTO. Founder & CEO ProLeads, acquired by OutboundWorks in a seven figures cash deal plus stock. 500 Startups and The Alchemist Accelerator alumni & mentor. CTO at Arrivalguides.com (acquired by Lonely Planet). Founder & CEO Tablefinder (acquired by Visit). DJ as @desertpillar

Mela.Work is an app that simplifies management of field construction teams both online and offline. Founder Francesco Putignano lived in 7 countries and speaks 5 languages. He became a nuclear engineer before getting an MBA and working at a fast growing ticketing marketplace. Founded Mela Works with two of his best friends, with the objective of changing the way work is executed in heavy industry.

BLUErabbit is a gamified engagement platform originally designed for the improvement of classroom environments but has now evolved to generate engagement in any space that requires interaction between players and organizers We received the Outstanding Gamification Software award in Nov 2017 from Gamification Europe and went from 25k gross profit to 150k in one year.

This man has a method that can create bootstrapped profitable SaaS products from scratch. He was Fired from Ernst & Young. Failed at 11 businesses. Figured out what worked. Taught the patterns. Helped create 15 millionaires. Loves building SaaS products. Loves to sing and released his third musical album last year.

Always curious to learn new things, share them with my wife and two boys, customers and business partners. Hooked with so many hobbies that 48h per day wouldn't be enough so need to limit it to a few top ones including golf, ice hockey, fishing and every now and then to other ball games.

Russ Perry is the Founder and CEO of Design Pickle, the world's most successful flat-rate creative service. Russ leads a global team as they rethink and deliver a remarkable new way to find the perfect creative.

Ashely Rose is the CEO of Living Security, where she helps companies reduce risk by making security awareness engaging and quantifiable. If you enjoy this episode, it'd help me out if you left a review. This helps me get hard to reach guests. For more SaaS content, SUBSCRIBE then visit GetLatka.com

His name is Bill Bice, serial entrepreneur since age 14. He is passionate about enabling smaller businesses to more successfully compete with their larger competitors through effective marketing. Through the years, Bill has built and invested in over 25 companies but kept finding the same flaws in marketing strategies so, a programmer at heart, he founded Boomtime, a company that tackles marketing as a technology problem If you enjoy this episode, it'd help me out if you left a review. This helps me get hard to reach guests. For more SaaS content, SUBSCRIBE then visit GetLatka.com

Shibo Xu is the co-founder of Refersion and grew the company from the two co-founders to a leading SaaS platform serving over 7000 merchants across two offices. Before Refersion, Shibo was a technology consultant partnering with Fortune 500 enterprises to concept and build digital products. If you enjoy this episode, it'd help me out if you left a review. This helps me get hard to reach guests. For more SaaS content, SUBSCRIBE then visit GetLatka.com

Ryan Kulp is a marketer and self-taught developer, best known as founder of Fomo.com. He and his wife buy and grow small companies together at their Micro PE fund, Fork Equity (forkequity.com). Ryan has been traveling full-time for 2 years and writes a data-driven travel blog at rickshawlabs.com. On this episode we discuss how he finds companies to buy, why he's ok not getting huge, and how he ensures profitability. If you enjoy this episode, it'd help me out if you left a review. This helps me get hard to reach guests. For more SaaS content, SUBSCRIBE then visit GetLatka.com

Dan Uyemura is the CEO of PushPress.com, a tool that helps boutique gyms grow. Dan shares why he took a $500k loan from the SBA to start the company. Why why he spent $100k in 2010 to open his own gym. How he grew to $1.6m in revenue run rate, up 63% from 2019. If you enjoy todays content, please leave a review. It helps me get hard-to-reach guests! To get more SaaS content, SUBSCRIBE and visit GetLatka.com

RunBolt founder Sam Knight joins me today and talks about he he spun a construction scheduling tool out of it's parent company. We talk about cap table structure, his first sales hire and setting $30,000 quota. How does Sam get 50% of new customers to pay annually up front? How'd he get his first 50 customers? What's his plan to reduce churn? We discuss each of these items. To get more SaaS content, SUBSCRIBE and visit GetLatka.com

Smartlook records users on websites and in iOS & Android apps. With features that allow you to find useful information even in thousands of recordings in no time.

Matt Dion CEO of Mintent, is a technology industry veteran with 24 years of experience ushering early stage companies through the tricky early adopter and early majority market phases.

Internet business executive with over 12 years of experience in managing small to mid-size organizations, product development, business operations, and strategy. Have conceptualized and grown multiple businesses from zero to multi-million dollars in North America and in the Middle East.

Maciej Zawadziński – CEO of Piwik PRO and Clearcode; analytics and advertising technology expert; entrepreneur and startup founder. Maciej is an expert in analytics and advertising technology and founder of several successful companies. He has led Clearcode to its position as a leading software house building custom advertising and marketing technology and in 2013 founded Piwik PRO, a privacy-compliant analytics platform. He advocates for better data privacy rights as a supporting expert at the Panoptykon Foundation.

Andy Fletcher is a serial entrepreneur now working on his 3rd company. He has a background in development and a Masters degree in Computer Science but fell in love with digital marketing about a decade ago. This makes martech SaaS pretty much the perfect place for him to be.

Started career in banking. Now 3x SaaS founder for Beamer, Hibox and Joincube. Love running hyper lean bootstrapped B2B SaaS companies outside of SF. Have been based in Spain and Chile. Moving to Boulder shortly.

David Friend is the co-founder and CEO of Wasabi, the hot cloud storage company that delivers fast, low-cost, and reliable cloud storage. Prior to Wasabi, David co-founded Carbonite, one of the world's leading cloud backup companies. He has been a successful tech entrepreneur for more than 30 years.

Karnell is a serial entrepreneur and has founded 4 companies, including one which he scaled to more than $100M in gross revenue. He has significant business expertise in operating and scaling digital platforms and has helped run significant operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. Presently, Karnell is the President and COO of Truelytics.

Founder and CEO of Hopin, the online events platform. Hopin has grown from 1 person to a 40 person remote company in 5 months and grew in revenue from 0 to $1m+ ARR in three weeks.

Chris Savage is the co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a web-based software solution that helps marketers turn viewers into brand advocates to grow their businesses. After graduating from Brown University, Chris and his co-founder Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan's living room in 2006. They founded the company with the goal of helping businesses effectively market their products or services more creatively through video. Recently, Savage and Schwartz turned down an offer to sell Wistia and took on $17.3M in debt instead, which allowed them to buy out their investors, gain full control of Wistia, and take the path less traveled in the tech industry. Now, more than 500,000 businesses across 50 countries depend on Wistia's products to build their brands and their businesses, including HubSpot, MailChimp, Sephora, Starbucks, and Tiffany & Co.

Clay is the CEO at Ripl, a marketing software company used by millions of small business and independent marketers worldwide. Clay has spent most of his career at the intersection of software, marketing, and emerging media. He lives in Seattle and rides his bike in the rain.

Vasil is a growth marketing and startup event entrepreneur, who has produced over 500 in-person and virtual events, as well as built a 90K+ network of tech entrepreneurs and marketers. He's the founder of Growth Marketing Conference, one of the leading growth marketing events in the industry, and he's the CEO of startup professional network Startup Socials (as seen in Forbes). He's worked with big brands like IBM, Adobe, Microsoft, and Delta Airlines, high growth startups such as Intercom, Pantheon, Gainsights, Instapage, and Zendesk, and digital marketing thought leaders like Neil Patel, Rand Fishkin, and Larry Kim to help them produce high-quality, successful events.

Prasanna Sankar is the co-founder and CTO of Rippling, where he's scaling the engineering team across two continents. Previously he was Director of Engineering at Zenefits, and co-founder and CTO of LikeALittle, a social media app that attracted two million users in six weeks. Prasanna is a former competitive programmer and was ranked #1 in India on TopCoder. Today he codes for fun, and lives in the Bay Area with his wife and son.

Naeem is a serial entrepreneur and the founder & CEO of TeleSense. Naeem is 7X startup entrepreneur and 5X CEO with successful exists. He is deeply ingrained in the Silicon Valley ecosystem and frequently speaks about innovation and entrepreneurship. Naeem has authored five books on entrepreneurship and he teaches entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley and Northeastern University. He has a graduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota. More about him at www.NaeemZafar.com

Co-founding CTO, now CEO of MarketMuse. Former VC Associate at OpenView Partners, Big Data focus. Associate, Analytics practice within Diamond Management & Technology Consultants (now PWC Diamond Advisory). Michigan Ross BBA '07. Computer Science, Washtenaw Community College '03. Born in Debrecen, Hungary.

John S. Kim is the Co​founder and CEO of SendBird (Y Combinator W16), a B2B startup providing a messaging solution for enterprises. The platform currently serves tens of millions of monthly active users and many of the best-known logos around the world, like Yahoo! Sports, GO-JEK, Hinge and one of the most active websites in the world. John is a serial entrepreneur and an expert in the messaging space. Little known about John is that he was Korea's no.1 pro-gamer for Unreal Tournament.

Joost de Valk is a web developer, SEO and open source fanatic from The Netherlands. He is the founder and CEO of Yoast, which provides software and training for website optimization i.e. SEO. Yoast SEO, Yoast's main software product, currently runs on over 10 million WordPress websites.

A successful entrepreneur with a 20+ year track record, Yuryi was previously CEO and founder of YMF, a leading financial software company with 300 employees that was later sold to TOTVS. A well respected authority in the Brazilian technology sector, Yuryi is often called upon to advise firms and individuals on IT best practice and solutions. Before founding YMF, Yuryi spent 8 years in the Investment Bank GARANTIA as a Trader and Portfolio Manager.

A.J. Altman is founder & CEO of HOVER, a mobile app that is transforming homeownership by creating 3D home models from smartphone photos. Prior to founding HOVER, A.J. was an engineer at Intel Corporation and served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps.

Kurt has served as CEO of Ubersmith since 2014 and Venture Partner at NextGen Venture Partners since 2017. Previously, he helped build and scale three startups - Parallels, Worklight (acquired by IBM) and MongoDB (IPO) - into companies worth $6 billion. Earlier, Kurt was a Lead Product Manager at Microsoft.

Dave Lee is a marketing automation pioneer, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. He's the CEO of PlusThis, the #1 campaign toolkit for marketing automation users. Dave has been featured on NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox television affiliates speaking on marketing automation and small business success. Outside of work, he's usually skiing, kitesurfing, wakesurfing or creating amazing experiences with his wife and three boys.

Hates to go to, and to go home from parties. Loves skiing and the beer that comes with it. Love travelling with my family and friends. Background in small tech companies, advertising companies, and leadership training. Spiritual but not religious. Optimist and self-critical. Co-founded Learnifier but change how learning happens. Product guy with a passion for aesthetics and ease-of-use.

CEO of Vindi. SaaS & Fintech entrepreneur focused in payments industry in Brazil. Former executive at Itau (major Brazilian bank), angel investor of 5 companies.

Wade Foster is the CEO and co-founder of Zapier, a workflow automation tool used by over three million people to connect the work apps they use every day. Prior to Zapier, Wade worked as a customer development lead for The Idea Works, Inc. in Missouri. He is an alumnus of Y Combinator and has degrees in industrial engineering and business administration from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

CEO and co-founder elastic.io, before Talend, DHL and Nokia, geek, father of 3

I am a software engineer and entrepreneur who is currently down the blockchain rabbit hole. I have worked in various industries such as Travel and Sports. I started my company Zastrin last year to teach developers blockchain programming through real world projects. I love my family, food and travel.

Leif is the co-founder, CEO of AND CO. The #1 freelancing software in the world, which was acquired by Fiverr in 2018. He is also a Parter at Prehype, a venture development firm in New York and investor in companies like Ro Health. He also co-founded Pay with a Tweet, which was acquired by the German company builder Hanse Ventures in 2013. Served as Director of Product for West Studios in San Francisco, where he worked with start ups like Rdio and Venmo. He also worked as Creative Director at R/GA. Leif was named one of the "Top Minds in Digital" by AdWeek and earned numerous awards including two Cannes Lion Grand Prix and a MTV OMusic Award. He's also an advisor to Venture Capital firm Urban.Us and a number of early stage companies.

I just hate wasting time or doing unnecessary tasks, doing things over because the first job was not good enough is event better. This happens again and again in construction projects. As a Computer Engineer, born and raises in the construction industry, I saw that I could solve this. It's not done until it is CHECKD!

Sonny Patel is the Founder & CEO at Insurmi, a white-labeled conversational A.I. platform that enables carriers to generate new business online, streamline claims, and provide excellent A.I. driven customer service. He is also a proud #YESPHX business leader who is passionate about helping other founders make their entrepreneurial dreams a reality!

>15 yrs software developer. In 2016 I quit my job with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to found CodeLingo and tackle the Technical Debt crisis head on. In a 40hr work week, a developer spends over 17hrs on Tech Debt (https://bit.ly/2MSQr7b). I've become obsessed with fixing this and unlocking the true potential of development teams. CodeLingo does this by transforming the whole software stack into a big data problem, detects anti-patterns and then automates common development tasks, such as code reviews, bug fixes and generating contributor guidelines - to name a few. As developers, we're good at scaling up anything except ourselves. CodeLingo unlocks code quality at scale.

Scott Weiss is the Founder of Referagig and President of Makena Partners, a technology recruiting firm. Both companies are based in Seattle, Washington.

Awareness Technologies, Inc. (ATI) provides endpoint security solutions for both home and business. With over 50 employees and offices in Westport, CT and Bristol, UK, ATI both develops and acquires market leading solutions trusted by millions of parents and thousands of businesses.

Originally a software engineer, and now serial entrepreneur, I love applying technology to solve real world problems, and like the best of ideas, Shine is an idea borne of frustration and real world experience of the recruitment process.

Franz Riedl, co-founder of Styla, an agile Content Management System. Styla automates design and unifies content and e-commerce to create seamless inspiration and shopping experiences. Today, Styla works with more than 100 brands and retailers such as Footlocker, Otto Group, Thomas Sabo or OBI. Prior to Styla, Franz cofounded several gaming companies and worked as a consultant in strategy and innovation - supporting enterprises in tackling the challenges of digital transformation.