Best Of: SaaS Origin Stories with Rand Fishkin, Alfonso de la Nuez, Bryan Clayton, and Sujan Patel

How many of these questions can you answer? 

• What is audience research and how is it done?
• How do you scale your net retention rate?
• What is the 80/20 rule for founders?
• What are the telltale signs of an excellent product-market fit?

In this special episode of SaaS Origin Stories, Phil Alves brings you the Best Moments in SaaS from four big players in the SaaS space, Rand Fishkin, Co-founder of SparkToro; Sujan Patel, Co-founder of Mailshake; Alfonso de la Nuez, Co-founder and CVO at UserZoom, and Bryan Clayton, CEO and Co-founder of GreenPal. 

Listen in to learn the answers to the questions above.

Guests at a Glance:

Rand Fishkin is the Co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, a SaaS company providing audience research for its clients. Rand is also the former CEO and Founder of Moz and the author of Lost and Founder. He shares practical advice on how to build a sustainable and profitable business without tapping venture capitalists. 

Sujan Patel is the Co-founder and CEO of Mailshake, and he shares his experience and mistakes while building and scaling Mailshake and how to identify product market fit. Sujan is also a data-driven content marketer, Managing Director at Ramp Ventures, and a part-time Board Member of the Entrepreneurs'​ Organization. 

Alfonso de la Nuez, the Co-founder and CVO of UserZoom, shares his insights on delivering the best-in-class user experience that helps amplify your net retention rate. He is also the author of the bestseller The Digital Experience Company. Winning in the Digital Economy with Experience Insights.  

Bryan Clayton, CEO and Co-founder of GreenPal, joins the conversation to discuss how him and his co-founder turned a household errand into an incredibly successful SaaS business... while both working full-time.

Key Takeaways:

In this episode, we discuss the following:

• Audience research will be a game-changer in the next 10 years
• Customer retention starts on day one
• The 80/20 rule for founders, i.e. be pretty good at everything
• How to create an excellent product-market fit

Rand Fishkin - Leading Through Sources of Influence

Most customers won't care about your product in its early phases, though they will utilize a crappy product if it solves a problem they have. 

This conundrum persists because businesses benefit hugely from audience research since it clarifies which issues they should concentrate on or address first. Rand discusses the value of audience research, why you should know your audience thoroughly, and how audience research fits into a marketing strategy.

The best way to influence the market is through audience research, which is SparkToro’s bread and butter. It depends on knowing and spending time in the places where your target audience already hangs out, so you can understand and relate to them directly.

We are laser-focused on building a unique product that solves the audience research problem and not diversifying into other areas - Rand Fishkin

Sujan Patel - Finding the Right Customer

The first 250 customers of Mailshake were from pre-launch marketing but needed help finding the product market fit. The product had a retention and activation problem, and people weren’t using it successfully. Sujan was trying to solve these problems by talking with every new customer. Eventually, more salespeople started using it, so Sujan and his team decided to focus on them, rebrand, and improve their functionalities.

Figure out how to remove noise first. But first, look at how to identify the noise. And again, you found a new customer. But who is the right customer? - Sujan Patel

Alfonso de la Nuez - What Makes a Great User Experience?

Retention is the holy grail for a SaaS business. You have to build a phenomenal onboarding and day-to-day user experience. Great UX design understands what the end user is looking for and exceeds expectations. When you deliver a great user experience, your customer will become your best salesperson and marketer.

You only have one chance to provide a great first experience - Alfonso de la Nuez

Brian Clayton - Applying the 80/20 Rule to SaaS

When you start a SaaS company, you need to be good enough at everything. That includes coding, product design, basic accounting, data science, and copywriting. Apply the 80/20 rule and invest your time to learn and get good enough at every skill. Then, hire somebody to do it.

As a founder, you have to be 80/20 and good at about 30 different things - Brian Clayton

For more interviews from the SaaS Origin Stories podcast, check us out on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player!