Greg Lim, co-founder of Persosa, talks about coming up with the idea, funding the MVP, finding his first customers, and finding market fit twice. Listen in for the insights.
Persosa is an experience and data platform that enables businesses to boost website conversions by directly speaking to each customer using personalized internal experiences.
The platform also leverages connected campaigns to display customers' needs when they need them. Such efficiency increases conversions, reduce bounce rate, and improves sales. Co-founder and founder Greg Lim talks to Geordie about his journey.
What You'll LearnWhen businesses understand their customers, they can utilize that awareness to increase revenue. Greg says they have two key products one of which allows customers to track their customers across different channels. Listen to the podcast for more details about this product.
The second product involves knowing how to convert the understanding you have for your customers into revenue. Greg says they have a personalization medium that enables their customers to utilize the data they collect to; personalize experiences for people visiting their mobile app and website. Persosa also solves two problems in the marketplace, which he explains in depth in this podcast.
In the beginning, Persosa was one comprehensive platform, but the team realized they were almost losing it at some point. They then decided to separate their products to serve their customers better. How do Greg and his team introduce their products to customers?
Understanding the customer and their needs is one of the team's most effective strategies. They always use it before talking about their products which helps them determine the right product that best fits the customer’s needs.
Greg narrates how he became the chief marketing officer of a company by chance and without any marketing experience. During his stint, he had numerous questions but no concrete answers until one day, someone he had met earlier, who also happens to be his co-founder at Persosa, called him and shared with him an idea he had.
That was a defining moment for Greg, seeing that he had been seeking a similar solution and even had a ready client. He quit everything else and joined hands with his co-founder. Listen to the podcast for some background story about Greg's co-founder. His co-founder has tremendous experience in data usage tracking.
At some point, he worked for a small startup company whose product was good. However, they (the company) struggled to discuss and sell their product. When Greg's co-founder came on board, he worked out a solution for them which he later realized was some form of an MVP which could become an entire product and whole platform. It was then that the two colleagues connected.
There are some misconceptions surrounding personalization in today's world, especially in terms of privacy. How does Greg's system work while guaranteeing customers of their privacy? To deliver a personalized and engaging experience, all the team needs is to understand what attracted a potential customer to the website.
Greg supports his answer with an example that you can learn about from the podcast. Together with his team, Greg tracks website performance through geo-location, UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters, and collecting data first, meaning new users only get a personalized experience after a few interactions.
Greg's co-founder enjoys building products. When he was starting, the buzzwords in the industry were real-time data, a term that was frustrating to him but one he relied on to unlock value in real-time.
Greg says his co-founder did not do any market research during the development of his MVP. However, when they crossed paths, the MVP was working, save for a few elements, but they still tried it on Greg’s client. Greg explains the concept of the MVP in relation to what the client wanted and what they did to deliver an exceptional experience.
The lack of a repeatable sales process threw Greg and his team in disarray even though they had already found a product fit. Greg illustrates some of the challenges they faced along the way and what they did to redeem themselves.
The team first pivoted in web personalization before shifting tact after realizing that consumers interact with brands in different places. Greg's co-founder altered the platform to include personalization API, data tracking, and personalization to make it more accommodating. Find out how the system now works.
Along the way, Greg experienced some significant failures. For example, he did not focus on customer acquisition, finding product fit, and learning his customers. Instead, he spent time worrying about how much he would spend on marketing when he was losing huge sums in the real sense.
If Greg were to turn the hand of time today, he would invest more in marketing. He speaks about another important lesson that you can learn from the podcast. Greg concludes the podcast by highlighting the importance of being confident as an entrepreneur. Trust your gut feeling, talk to your customer, know them and find out how they interact with your product, then align that with your vision, says Greg.
ResourcesSo you want to sell your SaaS? The dos and donts when selling your SaaS with Lowell Ricklefs of Traction Advising
How to write software series with Phil Alves of Dev Squad and Dev Stats
Minding Your Money and Money Mindset—with Danielle Hayden
How Richard Miles of Closem.ai found a marketing problem for local businesses and created a SaaS to fix it
How Alex Gilmanov went from software developer to agency owner to multiple SaaS owner
How Farzid Rishidi was able to fund and gain his first clients at SaaS startup Respona.com
How Andrew Yates of Promoted.ai went from high paying job to founding ad tech startup promoted.ai and other stories of startup hustle
Daniel Liebeskind (Topia.com)
Kate Chernis
How Tammy Developed a Security Application that Adults and Teenagers can use to Seek Assistance in an Emergency
How Eric Frankel of AdGreets Navigated Challenges to hit 400,000 MRR and Beyond
How David Perry, CEO of GetCarro.com, Build a Video Game Streaming Technology that Won Two Guinness Book of World Records Before Transitioning into the eCommerce World
How Bob Miles of Salad.com Navigated Challenges in the Crypto Industry to Come up with a New Incentive Model and Build a Successful Cloud Computing Firm
Impact before profits with multi-million ARR employee hiring SaaS Eightfold.ai CEO Ashutosh Garg
After years of trying to find product market fit this founder talks about getting through the lean years with 37k MRR clowdwork.com CEO Alexandra Gamarra
Starting and Selling SaaS with incubator startup Todd Larsen.
How Dawn Verbrigghe, CEO of Jottful, gave up a Lucrative CMO Startup Position to start SMB CMS
How multi 7 figure ARR WPX.net became a leader in the crowded Wordpress hosting space with CEO & cofounder Terry Kyle
What is shiny object syndrome and how it helped Zip Message Founder Brian Casel
From failed Wordpress theme service to successful landing buying website & CRM SaaS with Jessey Kwong of Reiconversion.com
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Commercial Edge: Unleash the Power of People
The emPOWERed Half Hour
HCI Leadership Revolution
Human Capital Leadership
The Power of Music Thinking
BusinessWISE
Business Wars