#211 - Ilia Zelenkin, CEO of Bitskout on creating transformational change

#214 - Tobias Konitzer Ph.D., CEO of Ocurate - on using LTV to solve profitability issues

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to help B2C business spend their money right - to increase profitability. My guest is Tobias Konitzer Ph.D., CEO of Ocurate Tobias Konitzer is an academically trained entrepreneur who has a proven track record of turning research into technology and into a product that addresses ubiquitous pain points. He worked for Facebook Research and completed a Ph.D. in computational social science at Stanford University. In 2017 he co-founded of PredictWise, where he initially acted as Chief Scientist and became their CEO in 2020.PredictWise processed a large array of public opinion data collected from 260M+ Americans on hundreds of data points. During his tenure at PredictWise, Tobias started to understand the value of this database in conjunction with modern machine learning for consumer-facing companies: Companies have a hard time optimizing over and understanding margins (LTV:CAC ratio) that is crucial for both profitability and accurate financial forecasting. On this premise, Tobias founded Ocurate, empowering brands to focus on the right customer by predicting lifetime value, churn, conversion and growth at the individual level, with unprecedented accuracy. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Tobias to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the ability of many B2C companies to grow profitably. Tobias shares his big lessons learned in starting a revolution, and what it took to create solid traction. He touches upon the importance of investing in getting positioning right. Last but not least he shares his advice on what it takes to build a SaaS business that cannot be ignored, and what mindset and habits to develop to not burn out from the many failures you'll have to deal with on your way. Here are some of his quotes "I used to tell my investors, the vision is making a new way to thinking about efficient spending, the organizing principle of b2c companies. And this new way of of efficient spending, we call, folks call, lifetime value. And I want to say one more word here. The idea behind lifetime value is using AI to predict exactly how much profit, not revenue, but profit, every customer will bring to you as a company. And now, the big idea here is, if I would know that with 100% accuracy, all these other things all of a sudden, are very, very easy." During this interview, you will learn four things: 1. How to win more customers by getting on the same wavelength 2. Why valuing slowness can be the key to rapid growth 3. Why too many SaaS businesses don't have a product-market fit issue, but a positioning issue 4. Why you shouldn't found your SaaS business before you deeply understand the real pain point For more information about the guest from this week: * Tobias Konitzer, Phd [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobias-konitzer-phd-65984454/] * Website Ocurate [https://www.ocurate.com/] Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here [https://valueinspiration.com/musing/] It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

#213 - Baptiste Boulard, CEO Swapcard - on dominating a niche

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to connect business people in ways that are more engaging and drive more value. My guest is Baptiste Boulard, CEO of Swapcard He's an ex-lawyer who turned entrepreneur and tech enthusiast. This Henry Ford quoted what drives him the most: “Anyone who stops learning is old – at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. Life is about keeping your mind young.” Today, Baptiste is CEO and Co-Founder of Swapcard. He swapped his career in law to launch Swapcard alongside two childhood friends with a vision to change the way people network at events. What's underpinning their vision is the belief in the impact of human-to-human interaction in a digital world. Swapcard is therefore on a mission to bridge the gap between the online and face-to-face world - thereby aiming to unlock meaningful encounters that have, until now, been impossible. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Baptiste to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the space where we make our biggest marketing investments: the world of events. How a lot of things have been solved on the process side - but not what's most valuable: Networking. Baptiste shares the big lessons learned from his entrepreneurial journey. What was required to not only survive the Pandemic crisis but to actually come out stronger. The pivots he's led to move from 'nice to have' into the 'mission critical' domain. And what is required to build a SaaS business that the world talks about? Here are some of his quotes: "When you are an entrepreneur, you're building a future which doesn't exist. So if you're not curious it's very hard to because there is no recipe and no one who can really help you. What you have to do is be very curious in terms of your reflection, the people you meet, and grab ideas from everything you do" During this interview, you will learn four things: 1. What skills to develop when you're building a future that doesn't exist - and there's no recipe. 2. What to do when everything you've done and all the value you build seems to become worthless 3. That even in the densest markets you have ample opportunity to dominate a niche 4. That a strong culture is the foundation to survive any crisis - and how to go about building one. For more information about the guest from this week: * Baptiste Boulard [https://www.linkedin.com/in/baptistb/] * Website Swapcard [https://www.swapcard.com/] Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here [https://valueinspiration.com/musing/] It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

#212 - John Hudson, CEO of Luma1 on making customers heroes

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to grow the success of every organization by enabling a fluid knowledge flow. My guest is John Hudson, CEO of Luma1 John is a global tech entrepreneur and investor. While he's worked in tech including retail, e-commerce, and real estate, the main focus has been based on his belief that training is the fastest way to move the needle in any organization and the right technology can make it move faster and be even more impactful. This became the founding principle behind founding LUMA1 in 2017. The company is on a mission to enable people and organizations to drive tangible improvements to training and communications by creating and delivering video experiences that today’s workers want. And this inspired me, and hence I invited John to my podcast. We explore what's broken in today's business world when it comes to transparent communication and sharing knowledge. We discuss how it holds organizations back when it comes to accelerating change, and what's missing to fix the problem. We discuss his big lessons learned in his attempt to embrace product-led growth and how he's steering product development to focus on what matters. Last but not least John shares his views on what it takes to build a B2B SaaS product that makes people say "I need to have that!" Here are some of his quotes "The fastest way to move the needle in any business is knowledge flow. And that can be done through communications, or it can be done through formal learning, coaching, whatever it might be. A lot of organizations just don't do it. I've visited a billion-dollar company that actually does no formal training. It's all done ad hoc, But it's got nothing to do with time, money and knowledge to do it. Oftentimes in businesses, there's this sort of black box, things are sort of cloaked in this mysterious thing." During this interview, you will learn four things: 1. That people need to feel cared about - and how to embrace that as a product concept 2. What we can learn from mistakes made in the eLearning space when it comes to getting users engaged and committed. 3. Why a critical design criteria in development needs to be how your product helps organizations move as fast as they need to move - without dependence 4. What it takes to spark arousal amongst users and customers For more information about the guest from this week: * John Hudson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-hudson-171a35/] * Website LumaOne [https://www.luma1.com/] Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here [https://valueinspiration.com/musing/] It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

#211 - Ilia Zelenkin, CEO of Bitskout on creating transformational change

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to give us back the energy and power to do the things where human intelligence and imagination shine. My guest is Ilia Zelenkin, CEO Bitskout. Ilia spent close to 15 years of his career at Nokia, ultimately as head of product & service innovation, Global Services. He then co-founded SafeRoom, a control center for Encrypted Data. In 2020 he co-founded Bitskout which he's heading up as the CEO. He's passionate about technology changing the world, excited to build Star Trek alike futures, and solving problems that matter. What gets him out of bed every morning is his passion to help people become happier doing their work. The thought that 83% of people who go to work today are disengaged makes him triple his efforts. Bitskout was founded to free people up to do creative and meaningful work and with that bring back passion and satisfaction to the job. Their mission is to give us the affordable tools to make it happen NOW. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Ilia to my podcast. We explore what's broken in managing projects within small companies - and why we should not accept the waste that goes on with that. Ilia shares his vision about how to make the most advanced technology affordable and the journey he's on to turn his intelligence platform into an expert platform that could not only forecast your work but check it later on as well. We also dig into his first principles to create solutions that create a pull from users i.e. a desire for more. Here are some of his quotes "what I did, I wrote every any crazy, stupid ideas that I had in my head for six months, five ideas per day, anything crazy. Anything that comes to mind. And eventually, what happened, you start noticing patterns, and you start noticing things, how they're connected. They came up with the problem, and it was a combination, a sequence of problems. So number one was building solutions to help deliver teams' projects faster. And I noticed that we couldn't breach a certain kind of project waste percentage. So we always were losing around 30% of the project times on some stupid things." During this interview, you will learn four things: 1. That the ability to invent something is a skill - a muscle that you can train 2. That the best roadmap choices start with minimum viable experiments 3. How to optimize your pricing strategy so it incentivizes desired behavior 4. That it takes the same amount of effort to do something great - so why settle for something mediocre For more information about the guest from this week: * Ilia Zelenkin [https://www.linkedin.com/in/zelenkin] * Website Bitskout [https://www.bitskout.com/] Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here [https://valueinspiration.com/musing/] It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

#210 - Nimrod Priell, CEO of Cord on leveraging Make/Buy/Partner in SaaS

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that gives B2B SaaS businesses the opportunity to increase their value by making their product multiplayer.  My guest is Nimrod Priell, CEO of Cord. Nimrod has been a software pioneer from the very first start. He's got over 20 years of experience in development, data science and product management and decided in 2019 it was time to make the jump to take on the entrepreneur role. He loves thinking about how we work and how we can make that experience better. This is exactly why he started Cord. With a team of designers, engineers, and product craftspeople that have collected some secrets from their tenures at leading tech companies like Google, Facebook and Adobe - their on a mission to leverage those secrets to make collaboration at work more effective. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Nimrod to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way SMEs can create true value from their ever-growing SaaS stack. We discuss the underlying problem and what needs to change in mindset of the SaaS Vendor community to cross the chasm that will bring more value for all. Lastly, Nimrod shares his views on what it takes to build a SaaS business that cannot be ignored. Here are some of his quotes "The average SME today, Okta says, has over 90 different SaaS tools. So I saw how these companies work internally, with a lot of tools that are bought, not built-in, and don't have this 'connective tissue.' The tools are built single player and all the communication around them gets stuffed into Slack and inbox. I saw this as a problem because these are b2b SaaS vendors, and this is a problem for their clients." During this interview, you will learn four things: 1. Why the winners in the next decade in SaaS will be the ones building collaboration in their tools 2. Why complacency in SaaS is the biggest risk of becoming irrelevant - and what to do about it. 3. How turning away a lot of business can be a very solid way to grow fast 4. A secret to creating a viral effect with the products you build For more information about the guest from this week: * Nimrod Priell [https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimrod-priell/] * Website Cord [https://cord.com/] Subscribe to Value Inspiration on Friday’s Stressed by the thought of 'not enough' traction? Eager to know how to remove the roadblocks that slow down your entire SaaS business? Then Subscribe here [https://valueinspiration.com/musing/] It's a short weekly musing on how to shape a B2B SaaS business your customers would miss if it were gone. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for privacy and opt-out information.