14 Minutes of SaaS - founder stories on business, tech and life
Technology Podcasts
Listen to wisdom from the true champions of SaaS. Stephen Cummins interviews founders of hyper-growth SaaS ScaleUps with category leading data for customer success & employee success. Interviews are conducted face to face in Dublin, Lisbon, Berlin, Hong Kong & New Orleans (no remote calls). We examine personal histories, learnings & opinions of the world’s most successful SaaS StartUp entrepreneurs. We cover most of these in each episode; short life history, the WHY, day in the life, personal motivations (many are financially secure), personal attributes leading to success, weaknesses, what makes the current SaaS company special & successful, advice for entrepreneurs, opinion on the future of work & future tech, what they’d do if they walked away, work-life balance, the city they work in, distributed or remote teams v co-located or in-office teams. If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of becoming an entrepreneur (or if you are on that road already), join us! #14MoS
Location:
Dublin, Ireland
Genres:
Technology Podcasts
Description:
Listen to wisdom from the true champions of SaaS. Stephen Cummins interviews founders of hyper-growth SaaS ScaleUps with category leading data for customer success & employee success. Interviews are conducted face to face in Dublin, Lisbon, Berlin, Hong Kong & New Orleans (no remote calls). We examine personal histories, learnings & opinions of the world’s most successful SaaS StartUp entrepreneurs. We cover most of these in each episode; short life history, the WHY, day in the life, personal motivations (many are financially secure), personal attributes leading to success, weaknesses, what makes the current SaaS company special & successful, advice for entrepreneurs, opinion on the future of work & future tech, what they’d do if they walked away, work-life balance, the city they work in, distributed or remote teams v co-located or in-office teams. If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of becoming an entrepreneur (or if you are on that road already), join us! #14MoS
Twitter:
@14MinutesOfSaaS
Language:
English
Contact:
353879649504
Episodes
E122 – Trustpilot CEO Founder Peter Mühlmann – 3 of 3 – Market beats Team beats Product
10/8/2020
Episode 122 of 14 minutes of SaaS – Trustpilot CEO Founder Peter Mühlmann – 3 of 3 – chats with AppSelekt CEO Stephen Cummins in Lisbon: "Market beats the team, beats the product. In the sense that picking the right market is often more important than anything else. But then getting the right team in place is more important than you having a good idea or not because it's the initial idea ... it's going to evolve. It's not like you’re sitting in the bathtub with the rubber duck and saying this is what the company is and what it's going to do. It is rather the sum of a 1,000 ideas. And then 990 of them are not yours"
Duration:00:11:14
E121 – Trustpilot CEO Founder Peter Mühlmann – 2 of 3 – Embracing Negative Reviews
10/8/2020
Episode 121 of 14 minutes of SaaS – Trustpilot CEO Founder Peter Mühlmann – 2 of 3 – chats with AppSelekt CEO Stephen Cummins in Lisbon: "It’s ok to get negative reviews. Actually negative reviews can be more valuable for you than positive reviews ... We did an AB split test where we're showing consumers a page with one negative review. And the other page has zero reviews. And then we do a split test that says “so which one are people more likely to buy from? And people are far, far more likely to buy from the one with one negative review ... The notion that, 'oh, you have to be perfect!' is actually not believed by your customers"
Duration:00:14:09
E120 – Trustpilot CEO Founder Peter Holten Muhlmann – 1 of 3 – From the Basement
10/8/2020
Episode 120, 1 of 3. Trustpilot CEO Founder Peter Mühlmann interviewed by Stephen Cummins, CEO & Founder of AppSelekt for 14 Minutes of SaaS. "I sold a lot on the eBays of the world and then I thought, actually I would like to start my own website also ... nobody bought because they suspected that it was just Peter sitting in a basement with his friend, two kids, selling electronics ... that was it was actually true. And I didn't want to refer them to the eBays of the world because all my competitors were there. So I thought, why isn't there a way where I can gather my customers' opinions and show it in a credible way so that people trust my business"
Duration:00:15:30
E119 – Braze CEO CoFounder Bill Magnuson – 2 of 2 – Mobile is Personal
8/6/2020
"If something needs to be audacious and if something needs to be comprehensive in order for it to really make the change, you gotta figure out a way to invest in that. And I think that, you know, when you look at … a great example is looking at Space X where they have this big audacious goal but they’ve figured out, you know, in… in as lean as you can get in the rocket world. Like ‘How do we actually sell something to the market so that we can go in and we can learn? And we can fund the thing that is the big audacious thing as well?’" Bill Magnuson, CEO CoFounder of Braze
Duration:00:16:57
E118 – Braze CEO CoFounder Bill Magnuson – 1 of 2 – Reading the Tea Leaves
8/6/2020
"Fundamentally, this problem that we’re trying to solve which is; 'How do we understand people better while they’re interacting with the brand in order to, kind of, communicate with them in a way that’s more valuable to them?' That’s a fundamental human reality and it’s one that’s not tied to any particular generation of technology. And it’s also one that’s not tied to a category of business" Bill Magnuson, CEO & CoFounder of Braze
Duration:00:16:38
E117 – App Annie CEO Ted Krantz – 3 of 3 – Adding Lustre to the Gem
7/30/2020
App Annie CEO Ted Krantz in conversation with Stephen Cummins - part 3 of 3. "Keep your head down and get it done. There's too much of a tendency today to self-promote, to push and ask for the constant, you know, next level. And I think you have to … there's a mix of make it happen and let it happen .. And then you've got to round yourself out .. Sometimes executives, even at the highest levels, they have a very difficult time balancing execution and strategy"
Duration:00:13:43
E116 – App Annie CEO Ted Krantz – 2 of 3 – SaaS to DaaS
7/30/2020
App Annie CEO Ted Krantz in conversation with Stephen Cummins - part 2 of 3. "So you have the full footprint of mobile performance. Then what we’re doing is we’re moving from metrics that we do traditionally like downloads, revenue, monthly active users, daily active users; to strategic C-Suite metrics that we can now calculate with these two datasets … that get us to customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, return on ad spend"
Duration:00:14:28
E115 – App Annie CEO Ted Krantz – 1 of 3 – Forged in B2B Software Sales
7/30/2020
App Annie CEO Ted Krantz in conversation with Stephen Cummins - part 1 of 3. "I've had three legends that I've been pretty close to. Craig Conway early on at Peoplesoft, you know. And then I moved over with Tom Siebel at C3. I’m very close to Bill McDermott still today at SAP"
Duration:00:13:40
E114 – Bob Moore – 3 of 3 – All about the Network
6/5/2020
Bob Moore, CEO & Co-founder of Crossbeam, in conversation with Stephen Cummins: "Start with something that you know and you've empathy for and you think you can have some success behind, and that success will propel you potentially into that thing being great and huge"
Duration:00:16:48
E113 – Bob Moore – 2 of 3 – Selling it Twice
6/5/2020
Bob Moore, CEO & Co-founder of Crossbeam, in conversation with Stephen Cummins: "80 percent of companies say 'we are a platform'. We can't all be platforms. A platform is like the baseline thing on which everything here should be built. It's a mesh of these companies self-identifying as platforms, but the real word should be 'ecosystem'"
Duration:00:15:51
E112 – Bob Moore – 1 of 3 – The Hammer that found a Nail
6/5/2020
Bob Moore, CEO & Co-founder of Crossbeam, in conversation with Stephen Cummins: "I knew I wanted to start a company before I knew what company I wanted to start. And that is a really problematic way to get into it, because I think a lot of people end up in this mode where you're a hammer looking for a nail"
Duration:00:15:53
E111 – Christian Gabriel – 240 Degree Decision
5/27/2020
Christian Gabriel talking with Stephen Cummins "They started off saying, ‘You know, yeah, we'd love to build Capdesk. If we can get, you know, 15 percent of your company in warrants, we'll build it.’ And once we built the prototype and our second funding round came up, I then asked them, you know, how much would it cost to hire two of you to go full time? And they gave me this ridiculous price. So then I said, 'You want to be equal co-founders, then? ... And they said ‘Yes. Wow!’ And the first thing that happened with equal co-founders was, ‘Christian, We need to rebuild the whole platform.’"
Duration:00:17:03
E110 – Ilan Twig – 4 of 4 – Halcyon Days
5/13/2020
TripActions Co-founder Ilan Twig in conversation with Stephen Cummins: "When I worked for HP, there was no goal and everything was certain. And I'm just thinking about it right now. But that was the reality back then. That's why I was a walking dead. At least for me, I need to have something to aim for. And I need to wake up in the morning knowing that I need to solve something. I need to challenge myself with something. Be true to yourself … because when you start masking it with whatever bullshit, the chances that something good will come out of it is so low … it’s zero actually."
Duration:00:16:54
E109 – Ilan Twig – 3 of 4 – Fantastic Voyage
5/13/2020
TripActions Co-founder Ilan Twig in conversation with Stephen Cummins: "Expenses are a pain in the butt. What you optimise for when you travel for work is completely different than what you optimise for when you travel for leisure. We thought if there is a way that we could then make people think about how they make their decisions when it comes to corporate travel more similar to how they do it when they book their leisure travel, there is an interesting opportunity for saving money for the company."
Duration:00:15:15
E108 – Ilan Twig – 2 of 4 – Stream to Ocean
5/13/2020
TripActions Co-founder Ilan Twig in conversation with Stephen Cummins: "We sold StreamOnce, but I didn’t really feel that I filled a desire of building a company in the valley. It’s a nine month journey. So really there was nothing. We knew that the next thing would have to be big. And in order for that to be big, the market must be big. You know, there are markets you can have the most amazing idea, but if the market is small and you are the most successful with no competition, it will still be small"
Duration:00:16:05
E107 – Ilan Twig – 1 of 4 – Loving the Machine
5/13/2020
TripActions Co-founder Ilan Twig in conversation with Stephen Cummins: "I never try to impress. I always assume I know less. And I think this created space for wonderful relationships. And relationships are so important when you start a company."
Duration:00:15:24
E106 – Georg Petschnigg – 6 of 6 – Perpetually Meaningful Movement
4/29/2020
Georg Petschnigg in conversation with Stephen Cummins at the Web Summit in Lisbon: "Start with the team ... Because like, who knows where are things gonna go? Like, you want to be with people you like .. that you learn from, right? Because there will be highs, there will be lows. And there might not even be light at the end of the tunnel. But you will enjoy the journey if you enjoy the people that you’re with. So it’s like you’re already a winner no matter what happens if, you know, if you have the right team"
Duration:00:16:28
E105 – Georg Petschnigg – 5 of 6 – New and Old Amsterdam
4/29/2020
Georg Petschnigg, in conversation with Stephen Cummins: "Having a tool for great thinking - Paper. Having a great tool to see inspiration and hold onto it - Collect. Having a tool to show, you know, your work -Paste. Having a great tool to deliver your ideas – Transfer. Right. So, we have a tool for thinking, seeing, showing and delivering. These are sort of the pillars of the creative process.And that's an incredibly exciting proposition, right? Because the world hasn't...doesn't understand that this exists yet. But it does. Like, we built it!"
Duration:00:16:54
E104 – Georg Petschnigg – 4 of 6 – Dancing with Big Tech
4/29/2020
Having a business that has a hybrid business model where you can counter and interact with your consumer … either with free or subscription. That's what makes it so powerful because you're actually … I think WeTransfer is one of the few companies that can dance with the big tech companies. But can do it authentically, because we don't we do not depend on their distribution.
Duration:00:15:51
E103 – Georg Petschnigg – 3 of 6 – Beautifully Obvious, Fifty Three to WeTransfer
4/29/2020
Why did Bas and the team actually build WeTransfer? Well because they wanted to get behind great ideas. Okay? That's why it exists. Right? It's not to send the file. It is to make a client happy … to get like your music out … to deliver the great video! That's why they got into this! It’s the same reasons why we got started with Fifty Three! We got into it because people have those ideas locked in your head, and you have to get them out. And that's sort of where we then, you know, start thinking about … well, what if it's not about just sending files? But it's really about the transfer of ideas. It's about the movement of ideas. We want to be the company that's behind every great idea.
Duration:00:16:35