Episode 53 - Four Pillars of Scaling SaaS Company with Matt Wolach

On this episode of the DevReady Podcast, Andrew and Anthony sit down with Xsellus founder and SaaS enthusiast, Matt Wolach. Matt has been into SaaS for about 15 years. On the podcast, Matt shares his insights into how to develop a SaaS company, how to market it to the right people, and how to scale to something big—even in a world dominated by cloud services. Matt argues that people are usually missing one or more of the four pillars of scaling your SaaS company. He developed these pillars as follows: 1. Attract—This is where you guarantee you bring the right people in. 2. Engage—It doesn't matter how you do this, but you need to find a way to engage your customers in a meaningful way. 3. Close—Once you’ve spent the money attracting and engaging them, you need to close the deal. Focus on emotion. 4. Scale—We need to be able to repeat this. Beyond this, Matt shares key details about what actually works when thinking about attracting and engaging the people who will really allow your company to flourish. Key takeaways from this episode are that you need to figure out how to remove barriers to your product (both on entry and exit), and that there is a way to use emotion to create buy-in that transforms into real conversion. Matt says the emotional language is about getting people to see services applied to their very own situations. Get them talking about themselves to understand the real emotional value. Topics Covered: ● SaaS businesses. ● Methods to scale a SaaS business. ● Steps to attract customers for expansion. ● Why you need to pounce. ● How to remove barriers to entry (so you can close). ● Understanding the middle ground. Key Quotes: ❏ “I help other software founders to not go through those early-stage struggles that I went through.” (3:00) ❏ “It’s really hard to find anything that’s not server-based now.” (4:45) ❏ “Whether or not you do it, your information is still there.” (6:00) ❏ “Everyone is so used to being pitched at for some new software tool.” (7:30) ❏ “We, as founders, still have conversations with our market.” (9:20) ❏ “Competitors will come.” (18:00) ❏ “Free trials are not your closers. Free trials are not your closers.” (21:00) ❏ “Never make it hard for someone to hand you money.” (26:15) ❏ “If they’re not a good fit, don’t make it hard for them to transition out.” (29:30) ❏ “People get emotional about themselves, about their own world.” (31:50) ❏ “They kind of sell themselves.” (34:20) ❏ “Hire three; fire two.” (36:30) ❏ “If you have the right process, it’s all about reining them in.” (39:45)