Eric Santos, CEO and Co-Founder of Resultados Digitais, the leading marketing automation tool in Brazil and Latin America joins Alex for a conversation about the steps to convincing a market of the value of a product that it doesn’t understand, how to build an audience and develop customer discovery before a single line of code is written, how to create a “Disneyland-like" user conferences.

Eric has been a tech entrepreneur for the past 15 years and founded Resultados Digitais in 2011. The idea behind the company dates back to 10 years ago when he first discovered online marketing and its power. What he found frustrating was that to make the most of it, he had to use a number of disconnected tools. By 2011 he decided to build a product a unified product.

He ran into a problem, though.

Very few marketers in Brazil were familiar with online marketing or its benefits. No one was doing digital. So in order to launch his marketing automation product he first had to educate the entire market about the benefits of online marketing. In the following 18 months, he went on to kickstart a movement and create demand for his offering without writing a single line of code. A lot of content marketing, many speaking gigs and a host of "Mechanical Turk Experiments" followed.

Six years later, Resultados Digitais boasts over 10,000 customers, 1500 channel partners, and 8000 attendees at its yearly user conference, RD Summit, which Sujan Patel rightfully says has a Disneyland effect.

Listen on to learn:

 - What were the precise steps he took to prepare the market for his offering?
 - How he built a movement?
 - What are the core tenets of a successful user conference and why it’s worth the effort and expense?
 - How they grew RD Summit from 250 to 8000 attendees in 4 years?
 - Why building a channel program before reaching $10 million ARR is fine and how to do it?

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How to convince an entire market it needs your product with Eric Santos

On the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show Alex is joined by Chris Hall, CEO at Dutch marketing tech company Bynder. In the conversation they touch on the pillars that define the journey of a CEO - from scaling and growing the company, its culture and its people to the personal transformation a CEO undergoes and how to deal with it. One key lesson he has picked on the way is that the most satisfying thing about being a CEO is seeing every person succeed in the right role.

Founded in 2013, Bynder was a spin-off from Label A, a web development agency Chris ran with his co-founders Roland Keijzer and Stefan Pelders. The company bootstrapped its way to $10 million ARR in the following three years.

“When you are bootstrapped, your only problem is cash,” Chris says. “Every purchase you make feels like it’s coming from your pocket.”

To seize the potential Bynder had for growth, it needed the sort of cash injection that comes with VC funding.

By August 2016, Bynder secured a $20 million Series A round. Chris had to very quickly transition from the entrepreneur that fixed everything to the CEO that would let go and allow others to do it.

Listen on to hear:

 - How to stop micromanaging people.
 - How to tackle the challenges of being the CEO of a venture-backed scaling company.
 - How to balance the act between listening to your own gut and what blogs and podcasts are telling you to do.
 - How to get and keep the right people at the different stages of a company growth.
 - How to create an authentic and genuine culture and live up to the words you put out as CEO.

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The Journey of a SaaS CEO with Chris Hall, CEO at Bynder

Peter Holten Mühlmann, CEO of Trustpilot, an online review community, talks with Alex Theuma on the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show and offers practical wisdom such as when is the right time to go international, how to fundraise and what is the question every CEO needs to be answering as a company scales.

In the interview, Peter talks at length that the key to scaling successfully is maintaining personal balance throughout the journey and relentlessly answering the pivotal question Why we exist as a company to everyone around.

Listen to learn:

- How to fundraise as a European company
- How to know when to go international
- How to outsource scaling to all your employees
- How to remain sane on the journey of scaling a SaaS company

If you like the episode, please leave us a review.

The most important question to ask while scaling up, with Peter Holten Mühlmann, Trustpilot

As is often the case in tech, timing is crucial. It’s hitting the sweet spot of offering a solution when a market is just ready but not overflowing with competitors. Hanno Renner, CEO and co-founder of German HR solution Personio, and the latest guest on the SaaS Revolution Show got his timing just right. He launched the company two and a half years ago in Munich at a time when the HR industry in Europe was ripe for digitization. In fact, it was so ripe in the small and medium businesses segment that to this day Hanno hasn’t had to do a cold call to sell his product. 30% of prospects still come from organic referrals.

However, there is more to scaling and success than timing and luck.

In Personio’s case, the hardest thing has been growing the organisation that supports the somewhat easier product adoption.

Listen on to hear:

- How to interview candidates for fit 
- How to avoid making hiring decisions out of necessity
- What guiding principles to use when setting an organisation 
- Why you should seek the advice of business angels 
- How to rely more on your gut feeling when you hire

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How to set up an organisation for 10x growth with Hanno Renner, Personio

Fred Shilmover, CEO of InsightSquared, shares how he has grown the company the past 7 years by staying laser-focused and not expanding globally.  

It has been there since day -1, back when Fred applied for an MBA to figure out what SaaS company he wanted to create.

Fred did a proper research what would be of most value to people. Eventually, he figured that to deliver the best value to customers and not have a bloated product, the focus should be only on revenue.

A lucky early sale to a cohort of similar companies showed a pattern that what they were onto made sense. Fred created a prototype putting together loads of spreadsheets and gave that to his co-founders to build a product. In the first year, he made all the sales. Somewhere there Fred made the decision that sales efforts would be focused solely on The North American market.

With that geographical focus, InsightSquared now has close to 1000 customers, has banked $27 million in funding and employs 130 people.

In that, he is a prime example that to grow, SaaS founders have to do less.

Listen to learn how he has kept his focus on:

- Why a CEO should do a tour of duty for all main functions
- How to avoid building the wrong product at the start
- What is the cost of defocusing
- How to manage your appetite when you are hungry for many things
- How the strategy of a company should change through its different stages

How Fred Shilmover grew InsightSquared by not going global

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