The SaaS Venture
Aaron Weiche & Darren Shaw
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Sharing the adventure to lead and grow bootstrapped SaaS companies through experiences, challenges, wins and losses. Hosted by Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. In this current world of "unicorn" , VC funded software companies that have to IPO or get acquired for $1B, we'll spend our time on the bootstrapped, profitable, growing SaaS sector we operate in and share our insights and experiences.
Available episodes
Newest first
Oldest first
Nov 14, 2023
46: 3 Years to Version 1?
Another solo episode with Aaron. I talk about the features we've recently built for Leadferno. It's been 3 years since we broke code (over 2 years to market) and it I'm feeling like we have our true Version 1 - but my definition might be very different than yours or most. I discuss why I love "swiss army knife features" and our new report focused on quality and timing. Plus a marketing and sales update from last episode.
Have feedback or ideas? Email aaron@leadferno.com
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Oct 30, 2023
45: Growth Plateau
A bit of a change, it's a solo episode with just Aaron. I update a recent growth plateau for Leadferno. Churn is up some, leads and new accounts are down, and that combination makes for very little growth over the last 3 months. I share what I'm doing in marketing and sales to try to turn the tide and get back to better MRR growth in the coming months.
If you have any feedback or suggestions on this solo format, please let me know: aaron@leadferno.com
Thanks for listening!
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Jun 12, 2023
44: Catch-up, Mustard, & Summer
Darren and Aaron catch-up on the last few months of business. Darren shares a new product and pricing ... and get's some "spicy" feedback on it.
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Mar 13, 2023
43: User Feedback
Darren and Aaron discuss the benefits of user feedback. Do you know how your SaaS customers and users really feel? Ways to capture it, when to capture it, getting reviews, and all it provides when you have it. The guys also catch up on their latest feature releases, progress, sales, and more.
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Feb 6, 2023
42: Off & Running
2023 is off to a fast start. Aaron and Darren catch up on what's happened to start the new year. New features, growth, marketing, demo challenges, and more.
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Dec 19, 2022
41: 2022 In Review
A look back on 2022 and what took place for Leadferno and Whitespark. Features, sales, wins, challenges, hires, mistakes, and more are shared. We also look ahead to what kicks off 2023 for each of us.
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Oct 28, 2022
40: The Power of Momentum
Momentum is often cited as core to a company's growth. Aaron and Darren talk about at the power of momentum, when you have it, when you need to make it happen, how to help it happen, and more. We also discuss malt liquor and 40's in this 40th episode.
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Sep 8, 2022
39: Positioning - "Why Choose You?"
A recent tweet from B2B SaaS positioning expert and author April Dunford had the takeaway of "why choose you?" from your product demo. Aaron and Darren discuss positioning in your product demo, messaging, and marketing. In a crowded market with many solutions and choices, you need to understand and leverage what makes you unique and win in competitive comparisons.
Here is April's Twitter thread.
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Aug 15, 2022
38: The Burn of Churn
We last talked churn in June 2019 on Ep. 8: https://www.thesaasventure.com/episodes/08-churn-figuring-it-out-and-fighting-it
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Jul 13, 2022
37: SaaS Marketing in 2022 - Part 2
Part 2 on what Leadferno and Whitespark are doing for marketing in 2022. Aaron talks about exploring paid search, co-webinars and hiring a service for cold outreach to book demos. Darren has been launching a ton lately and talks about their video marketing, landing pages and referrals.
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Jun 17, 2022
36: SaaS Marketing in 2022 - Part 1
Darren and Aaron talk about the SaaS marketing strategies for Whitespark and Leadferno in 2022. We covered marketing your SaaS features, podcast interviews and events. In covering just some of what we are doing - we declared this part 1, with part 2 to come! No doubt marketing your SaaS is so important in 2022.
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Apr 25, 2022
35: Mining For Growth Opportunities
Looking internally at your data, customer behavior and more can surface growth opportunities for your SaaS. Aaron and Darren discuss how to find these growth opportunities, some of Darren's discoveries and Aaron has a personal health update.
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Jan 27, 2022
34: All Aboard User Onboarding
User onboarding in SaaS is a critical part of the user experience. Aaron and Darren look at the process of guiding new users to find value with your software product including sign-up, emails, in-app notifications, support and more. It all needs to work together to onboard a user and lead them to success with your SaaS.
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Dec 22, 2021
33: What To Do In 2022
A look ahead at what 2022 holds for Whitespark and Leadferno. Aaron and Darren lay out their hopes and wished for what they can build, accomplish, market and sell in the next year. 2022 should be a year of big growth for both SaaS companies.
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Nov 26, 2021
32: Just 6 Weeks
Full show notes coming soon ...
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Oct 8, 2021
31: SaaS Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint
FULL SHOW NOTES
[INTRO music]
0:00:11.4 Aaron Weiche: Episode 31, SaaS is a marathon, not a sprint.
0:00:16.2 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of Leadferno, and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
0:00:42.2 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.
0:00:45.4 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
0:00:47.0 AW: And if SaaS was a sprint, I would just already be collapsed at the finish line. And I probably wouldn't have finished first in my heat anyway Darren just...
0:00:58.4 DS: Yeah, me too.
[laughter]
0:01:00.6 AW: COVID has taken its toll on my physical well-being. I need to keep working on getting that back under control, so... How have you been?
0:01:10.9 DS: Oh, I've been so busy. I've been...
0:01:14.6 AW: Yes you have.
0:01:15.4 DS: It's... The last few days have been nice 'cause I'm like, "Oh…
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Aug 25, 2021
30: Prepare to Launch
Show notes coming soon ...
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Jun 21, 2021
29: Prioritize or Die
FULL SHOW NOTES
[INTRO music]
0:00:10.5 Aaron Weiche: Episode 29, Prioritize or Die.
0:00:16.2 Intro: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of Leadferno and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
0:00:42.5 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.
0:00:46.0 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
0:00:48.0 AW: Did you see what I did with that clickbait title of our episode today, Darren?
0:00:52.9 DS: I did actually. I wrote something different, but yours is way better, yeah, that's good. [chuckle]
0:00:56.8 AW: I think I was mostly trying to avoid, right? You had wrote prioritization and I was like, that just sounds like a word that I will somehow mangle when we go to hit record, and then yeah, I just went all-out sensationalism and clickbait and...
0:01:12.2 DS: And I actually think, not only is it clickbait…
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May 4, 2021
28: Vision and Mission
FULL EPISODE NOTES:
0:00:12.1 Aaron Weiche: Episode 28: Vision and Mission.
0:00:16.0 [INTRO]: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
0:00:44.2 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
0:00:48.2 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
0:00:49.5 AW: And, Darren, I think from our conversations that we have weekly, you and I, we've both gotten one shot in the arm now, which is nice to report.
0:01:03.6 DS: That is really good to report, yes. I'm just waiting for the second shot and hoping things come back to normal, but a bit apprehensive about things going back to normal, because of variants and whatnot. But it's definitely a step in the right direction, feels good to have some protection that I likely won't die from COVID now.
0:01:26.6 AW: There you go. Yeah, that'…
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Mar 30, 2021
27: Plan the work, work the plan
FULL SHOW NOTES
[INTRO music]
0:00:12.0 Aaron: Episode 27: Plan the work, work the plan.
0:00:16.2 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Here are the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of Leadferno and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
0:00:42.3 Aaron: Welcome to the SaaS venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
0:00:45.7 Darren: And I'm Darren.
0:00:47.7 Aaron: Darren, I wanted to start today with a little bit of an inspirational quote for us in our planning topic. Are you ready?
0:00:55.7 Darren: I'm ready. Let's hear it.
0:00:57.0 Aaron: So Eleanor Roosevelt said, "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."
0:01:05.1 Darren: It's a solid quote.
0:01:07.4 Aaron: I like the positivity of wishing and day-dreaming without the work involved, [chuckle] but I get where she's going.
0:01:15.2 Darren: Just take your wishes. They're all running aroun…
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Feb 8, 2021
26: A Big Change
FULL SHOW NOTES
[INTRO music]
0:00:12.2 Aaron Weiche: Episode 26, A Big Change.
0:00:16.0 S?: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
0:00:44.6 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, and welcome to 2021. I'm Aaron.
0:00:50.3 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
0:00:51.6 AW: And Darren did you know that 99% of the time for lunch, I eat a turkey, pepper jack cheese, mayo and avocado sandwich?
0:01:05.9 DS: For how long, is this for the past seven years, you've been eating this for lunch every day? [chuckle]
0:01:11.4 AW: I would definitely say the percentage has kicked up highly during COVID, so the last year now, but yeah, just because I'm home just about every single day that's kinda... If I'm home, that's the sandwich I'm making. And my kids just laugh at me,…
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Dec 29, 2020
25: OK, 2020
[INTRO music]
0:00:11.4 Aaron Weiche: Episode 25. Okay 2020.
0:00:16.2 Intro: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
0:00:44.1 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
0:00:47.4 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
0:00:49.7 AW: And we are here to look back at quite the year that we've had. Wouldn't you say?
0:00:57.6 DS: Let's say, yeah, it was a year for the history books, this one. It was... It was a bad year. 2020 really sucks for most of the world's population. It was a crummy year. But I guess... I don't know, I took some notes before the podcast and I have some positive things to look back on, but yeah, definitely it was a tough year.
0:01:18.8 AW: Yeah. As we break it down, I think for me, at the end of it is like, "Okay, we survived this year," right?…
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Nov 27, 2020
24: Raising Prices
FULL SHOW NOTES
[INTRO music]
00:12 Aaron Weiche: Episode 24: Raising prices.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Here are the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:45 AW: Welcome to the SaaS venture podcast, I'm Aaron.
00:48 Darren Shaw: I'm Darren.
00:50 AW: And the best way to sum me up right now is I am malaised in Minnesota, if that's even a correct way to say that.
01:00 DS: I have no idea, I have to look it up.
[laughter]
01:03 AW: I don't know if I should be inventing words, but as we were just talking before hitting record, Darren and one thing, we haven't recorded in almost two months, which is just silly of us.
01:18 DS: It's been a while.
01:20 AW: Yeah. Too long, we need to do better. If we wanna keep listeners going up into the right, people have probably forgotten about us,…
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Sep 29, 2020
23: Course Correcting
FULL SHOW NOTES:
[INTRO music]
00:12 Aaron Weiche: Episode 23, Course Correcting.
00:16 INTRO SPEAKER: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:43 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:46 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:47 AW: And I just finished eating a chocolate chip cookie. What do you think about that?
00:52 DS: It sounds pretty good. I just finished eating a salad. It's the exact opposite. [chuckle]
00:58 AW: If my wife listens to this episode, I'm gonna get yelled at, but when I got gas at the gas station, they have these big chocolate chip cookies, and, yeah, this just looked like a great afternoon snack.
[chuckle]
01:09 DS: Totally, yeah. And now you made me wanna go get one.
[laughter]
01:13 AW: I'll mail you one.
01:14 DS: W…
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Sep 3, 2020
22: SaaS Pricing - Is The Price Right?
Links from this episode:
* Whitespark Local Search Summit
* Summit Beast
* Pricing expert Patrick Campbell on Twitter and his company ProfitWell
FULL SHOW NOTES:
[music]
00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 22, SaaS pricing. Is the price right?
00:16 [INTRO]: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:41 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:44 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:45 AW: And I think summer has just about set for me as we are in the last week of August here, and soon enough, hopefully, we'll be enjoying long weeks of Minnesota falls and then the inevitable winter abyss, but...
01:04 DS: Yeah.
01:05 AW: So so far, I've been doing a pretty good job this summer on spending my weekends up at the family cabin, and out in the boat with the kids, a…
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Jul 15, 2020
21: Frameworks
Full episode show notes:
[INTRO music]
00:13 Aaron Weiche: Episode 21, Frameworks.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:43 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, I'm Aaron.
00:46 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:46 AW: And I am currently living summer to its fullest the last few weeks. How about you?
00:55 DS: I wouldn't call it to the fullest. [chuckle] I'm living summer to the "halfest". I'm doing some summary things, but I feel like I need to get out more. We're a little apprehensive about going out, spending enough time outside. We should get out more. More walks, more bike rides.
01:10 AW: There you go, I think it's a good idea. In regards to COVID, I would say that the easiest way I surmise our family and definitely having kids with hi…
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Jun 3, 2020
20: Big Launches & Big Challenges
FULL SHOW NOTES:
[INTRO music]
00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 20, Big Launches and Big Challenges.
00:16 Intro: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses, shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:42 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:42 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:45 AW: And we are back in front of the mic and ready to catch up on... It's been about a month since we've connected, and we definitely have plenty to talk about and catch people up on. But I thought a great place to start... Just from some of the things that we've been talking about regarding Whitespark and some of the things on your plate. I definitely wanna hear about your big launch that you've recently had with the Local Citation Finder and get the nitty-gritty details on that.
01:21 DS: I know, it's exciting times…
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Apr 29, 2020
19: Navigating The Unknown
FULL SHOW NOTES
[ INTRO music]
00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 19. Navigating the Unknown.
00:16 Intro: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a Bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:43 Aaron: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:46 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:47 Aaron: And the way we usually start our episodes is just by catching up. What's going on? What's happened lately?
00:56 Darren: Yeah, what's going on, Aaron? What's going on?
01:00 Aaron: Well, it seems like we're all... Have been doing the same thing for quite a number of weeks now. And it's interesting, until COVID-19 and everything else, anytime someone would post the Bill Murray Groundhog's Day meme on Facebook, or Twitter, or something else, I just never gave it much thought. And, literally, the last... I would say for me the…
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Apr 15, 2020
18: Selling GatherUp - Part 3, The Transition
FULL SHOW NOTES
00:00 Aaron Weiche: Hey everyone, this next episode was recorded on March 5th, 2020, so ahead of COVID-19 and everything we are all experiencing right now. I just wanted to pop in ahead of that as we haven't published it until now in mid-April (April 15th, 2020), and didn't want the conversation, our tone, or our excitement for certain things to be taken out of context. So, thanks for listening. We hope everyone is well, and we hope to get on the other side of this soon. With that, we'll bring you the third part of "Selling GatherUp" and Darren and I will be back in a couple of weeks to give a further update on how our businesses are doing now, during COVID-19 and the pandemic.
[INTRO music]
00:56 AW: Episode 18, Selling GatherUp. Part three, the Transition.
01:02 Speaker 2: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode from Aaron We…
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Feb 17, 2020
17: Selling GatherUp - Part 2, The Process
Helpful links from the episode:
* Alpine Software Group
* Steve Kozachok, Attorney and Partner at Taft
* Lost and Founder, book from Rand Fishkin
FULL SHOW NOTES:
[INTRO music]
00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 17, Selling GatherUp - part two, the process.
00:16 [INTRO]: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go!
[music]
00:44 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:47 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:48 AW: And we are diving into part two of our three-part series on the acquisition of GatherUp from the end of 2019. If you haven't had the chance, part one of the series is the why, laying out things within the decision process, how to, things to consider and think about prepping your company to sell, just a number of aspects with this and today we're kind of…
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Jan 23, 2020
16: Selling GatherUp - Part 1, The Why
Helpful links from the episode:
* Official Press Release from Alpine Software Group (ASG)
* Acquisition announcement and interview on Search Engine Land
* Alpine Software Group
FULL SHOW NOTES
[ INTRO music]
00:09 Aaron Weiche: Episode 16: Selling GatherUp - Part 1, The Why.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:41 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture, I'm Aaron.
00:44 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:45 AW: And we are back in the year of 2020 after finishing off 2019 and catching a little bit of downtime. I know I probably got even more than I normally would with Christmas on a Wednesday, New Year's Day on a Wednesday. It was a nice slow two weeks for me. How about you, Darren?
01:06 DS: Super slow. I touched in a little bit here and there, but I…
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Jan 2, 2020
15: A Recap of 2019 and Looking Forward to 2020
FULL SHOW NOTES
[music]
00:08 Aaron Weiche: Episode 15, a big recap of 2019 and looking forward to 2020.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:43 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, I'm Aaron.
00:45 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:47 AW: And we have made it to the end of another year. Just a couple of weeks away from turning over the calendar and Darren and I thought it would be fun to take a look back at 2019 as a whole. A year in which we started podcasting together. We got in... This is our 15th episode and a number of other things, and take a look at what's gone on in the calendar year for us and what we're looking forward to the next year.
01:15 DS: Yeah, it sounds great. I think it's really good to look back, understand what we've learned ov…
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Nov 15, 2019
14: Working On & Working In The Business
Helpful links from the episode:
* Local Rank Tracker
*
FULL SHOW NOTES
[intro music]
00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 14, working on and working in the business.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges wins and losses, shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:44 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron and I'm back from vacation.
00:50 Darren Shaw: I'm Darren and I don't know when I'm gonna have a vacation.
00:56 AW: There's a clear separator between us. I feel your pain. So, how have you been man.
01:01 DS: I've been great, thanks how have you been? .
01:03 AW: I am newly relaxed after my first real vacation since earlier in the year, in March, my wife and I went to London for a week and that was definitely a vacation. We left all the kiddos, all four kids at home for that though. So this w…
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Oct 16, 2019
13: Running A Great Sales Demo
Helpful links from the episode:
* Zoom
* Pipedrive
* Copper
* Typeform
FULL SHOW NOTES:
[intro music]
00:02 Aaron Weiche: Episode 13: Running a Great Sales Demo.
00:06 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:32 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:36 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:37 AW: And this week, we are gonna dive into what goes in to running a great sales demo. How do you demo your SaaS product and break down a number of aspects regarding that. A very important piece really, I view it as kind of the absolute cornerstone and the biggest value prop within the sales process. And we'll break that down but first, Darren, let's play a little bit of catchup. What have you been up to lately?
01:08 DS: What have I been up to…
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Sep 13, 2019
12: Building Process in the Process
Helpful links from the episode:
* UpWork
* Conferences: LocalU Advanced, Swivel, Content Jam
* Copper CRM
* Pipedrive sales CRM
* ClickUp
* Asana
FULL SHOW NOTES
[intro music]
00:11 Aaron Weiche: Episode 12: Building Process in the Process.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses, shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:40 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:43 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:45 AW: And today, we are going to be tackling all kinds of things related to processes, building processes, why have processes, and how you do all those things while you're extremely over your head in the process of building the business as a whole. So that'll be a fun topic to dive into and one that's absolutely never ending in the business. But before we get to that, Darr…
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Aug 21, 2019
11: Marketing Your Bootrapped SaaS
Helpful links from the episode:
* Whitespark's Google My Business Service
* Whitespark's Local Rank Tracker
* GatherUp's Insights Report
* 100+ Online Review Statistics resource
* FreshChalk: 150k small business websites teardown
* Getting started in public speaking and presentations
* Whitespark Local Pulse email
* Whitespark weekly videos (YouTube)
FULL SHOW NOTES:
[Intro music]
00:11 Aaron Weiche: Episode 11, Marketing your bootstrapped SaaS.
00:16 Show intro: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:42 Aaron Weiche: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:46 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:47 AW: After a nearly month hiatus and a failed podcast attempt, Darren we are back hopefully in the groove of things and can return to a mo…
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Jul 11, 2019
10: Building Customer Success and Support For Your SaaS
Helpful links from the episode:
* Zendesk
* Helpscout
* Olark
* Zapier
* GatherUp app on Zapier
* GatherUp User Guide
* MozCon
FULL SHOW NOTES
[intro music]
00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 10: Building Customer Success and Support for your SaaS.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to The Saas Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of Gather Up and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:44 Aaron: Welcome to The SaaS Venture podcast; I'm Aaron.
00:47 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:49 Aaron: And we have hit double digits, my friend.
00:52 Darren: This is it. We've finally made it, big time.
00:55 Aaron: Let's just shut it down.
[chuckle]
00:58 Darren: 10 episodes; this is our final episode.
01:01 Aaron: But somebody that's just listening thought we maybe meant 10 years, but no, we just mean 10 episodes, but that feels good for fiv…
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Jun 25, 2019
09: The CEO Journey - 4 stages of a SaaS CEO
Helpful links from the episode:
* Stripe
* MnSearch Summit
* MozCon
* a16z Podcast: What Time Is It? From Technical to Product to Sales CEO
* David Ulevitch on Twitter
*
FULL SHOW NOTES
[music]
00:12 Aaron Weiche: Episode nine, The CEO Journey.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to The SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Here the experiences challenges wins and losses, shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:42 AW: Welcome to the SaaS venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:45 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:47 AW: And we are back in front of a microphone, sharing our business secrets, our love secrets, everything in between, and making them public, so that we can share them with our listeners. And, if anything, sometimes it's probably cathartic and healing and everything else, wouldn't you say?
01:07 DS: Yeah, definitely, I have not yet shared any love secrets, so…
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Jun 3, 2019
08: Churn - Figuring it out and fighting it
Helpful links from the episode:
* Hotjar
* Heap Analytics
* Mixpanel
* Appcues
* Google Analytics
* Net Revenue Churn
* Net retention
* ProfitWell
* Baremetrics
FULL SHOW NOTES
[intro music]
00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode eight, Churn, Figuring It Out and Fighting It.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:45 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:48 Darren Shaw: I'm Darren.
00:50 AW: And we are back at you with Episode Ocho, which I feel like is, every week I like seeing that or every time we talk, Darren, I like seeing a bigger number. It makes me feel like we're really accomplished and we're almost hitting double digits.
01:05 DS: I know, that double digit's gonna be a huge milestone.
[laughter]
01:07 DS…
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May 23, 2019
07: Sales
FULL SHOW NOTES
00:05 Aaron Weiche: Episode 7. Sales, inbound, outbound, and all around.
[intro music]
00:11 Intro: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:40 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:43 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:44 AW: And this week we are talking sales, but beforehand, let's kinda catch up on the last couple of weeks. We went from a month in between almost our last episodes to now, just a matter of less than two weeks, so that's good that we're getting back to our tighter cycle. But what's new from your side of the Canada border this week?
01:10 DS: Yeah, it feels like I just talked to you. I saw this on my calendar today, and I was like, wow, [chuckle] look at us, talking again so soon. Let's see, what's new in the wor…
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May 6, 2019
06: Competitors
Helpful links from the episode:
* MozCon ticket giveaway
* Whitespark's new Local Search Service
FULL SHOW NOTES:
[music]
00:10 Aaron: Episode six. Competitors, obsessed or don't care?
00:16 Speaker 2: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrapped SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:45 Aaron: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:48 Darren: I'm Darren.
00:49 Aaron: And today, we are going to dive into the topic of competitors. But before we get into the main course of this episode, Darren, I'm excited to hear about all the prep you had to go into the Brighton conference and your travels over to England. I'd love to hear how both the conference went for you and did you get a chance to do some touristy and fun things? How did all that go?
01:16 S2: Yeah. Totally, yeah. So, it a wa…
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Apr 1, 2019
05: The Design Process
Aaron and Darren dive into the design process for new features and product updates. Whitespark and GatherUp take different approaches to this process and we look at each process to see what works best and why for each team.
Helpful links from the episode:
* MozCon - GatherUp is a sponsor!
* Brighton SEO conference
* Invision
* GatherUp March webinar
FULL SHOW NOTES
[intro music]
00:12 Aaron Weiche: Episode Five, The Design Process.
00:16 Speaker 2: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:43 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:46 Darren Shaw: I'm Darren.
00:47 AW: And we are super excited to talk this week 'cause it's been a few weeks since we've connected, but we have a common theme. I just got back from a week in London, and you…
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Mar 12, 2019
04: Building & Running Remote Teams
Helpful links from the episode:
* Whitespark Review Checker Tool
* Jira
* ClickUp
* IFA 2019 Conference
* LSA Conference
* GatherUp TextBack feature
FULL SHOW NOTES
00:11 Aaron Weiche: Episode Four - Building and Running Remote Teams.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SAAS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SAAS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:42 AW: Glad to be back on the SaaS Venture Podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:46 Darren Shaw: I'm Darren.
00:47 AW: We are back to recording action, probably three weeks between our last episode, as we've both been a little bit busy taking on other things.
00:56 DS: Yeah.
00:56 AW: And with that, for me, some of the highlights or things that have gone on, one, we did our first large show as an exhibitor. We were at the International Franchise Association convention in Las…
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Feb 21, 2019
03: SaaStr Annual Recap & Rebuilds
Read the full show transcript below as Aaron and Darren talk about SaaStr annual and billing system rebuilds.
Helpful links from the episode:
* SaaStr Annual conference
* 5 Questions CEO's Struggle With and How To Answer Them - Dave Kellogg presentation at SaaStr
* A Step-By-Step Guide To Revenue Growth (PDF) - Mark Roberge at SaaStr
* Billing systems mentioned: Recurly, Chargify, Chargebee
*FULL SHOW NOTES*
00:09 Aaron Weiche: We're bringing you episode 3 - SaaStr Annual Recap and Rebuilds.
00:16 INTRO: Welcome to the SaaS venture podcast. Sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:42 AW: Welcome to the SaaS venture podcast. Darren, both of us have... We've been on the road and doing some travel, are you back and settled into the daily desk, in the daily grind?
00:54 Darren Shaw: I am s…
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Feb 4, 2019
02: Sprints & Features
Read the full show transcript below as Aaron and Darren talk about how they run their sprints and release features in their products.
Helpful links from the episode:
* Whitepark's free Google review link generator tool
* SaaStr Annual conference
* GatherUp GMB integration launch
FULL SHOW NOTES
[music]
00:11 Aaron Weiche: We are back with episode two, Sprints and Features.
00:16 Speaker 2: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp, and Darren Shaw of White Spark. Lets go.
[music]
00:44 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, episode two. I'm Aaron.
00:50 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:51 AW: And we are excited to absolutely 100% what we're doing because we're going from one to two episodes, and that’s pretty exciting. I felt good about getting one episode in the books. I don't know how you felt abo…
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Jan 16, 2019
01: The Hard Things
Aaron and Darren jump into things as we officially launch The SaaS Venture. Our topic for the episode is "The Hard Things" and we each share one of the difficult things we accomplished in 2018.
The full show notes are below the helpful links.
Helpful links from the episode:
* GatherUp
* Whitespark
* Local Search Ranking Factors 2018
* LocalU Advanced conference
FULL SHOW NOTES
00:08 Aaron Weiche: Alright. Well I guess there's no going back. We are officially launching episode one, The Hard Things.
00:15 Speaker 2: Welcome to the SaaS Venture Podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins and losses shared in each episode. From Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
[music]
00:44 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture. I'm Aaron.
00:47 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:49 AW: And we have finally decided to abandon or move away from all other ways of communication and get into this…
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