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In this video, Bethany Stover, co-founder of Sendspark, shares simple and practical tips on using LinkedIn to grow your SaaS business. From creating the right connections to posting content that gets noticed, Bethany breaks down her approach to building a LinkedIn presence that brings results. Whether you're new to LinkedIn or looking to boost your existing strategy, tune in to learn how to make LinkedIn work for your SaaS growth!
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Beth:
It was in, I know it was in March, our head of GRU was working in person with us then, and he, like, we did a month of, like, in-person work, and I had a $1,000 MRR in one day, and so I'm like, go hit the gong, and then it just, like, kept happening, and we're like, oh, we thought that was a one-time thing, this is, like, normal, and yeah, so I just remember, it just, like, if you look at Sense Park, it's, like, we made a lot of, like, micro-improvements, like, micro-improvements, micro-improvements, and then just, like, one day it felt like everything started working. after a long time of it not feeling that way.
Andy: So that was pretty great. Today, my guest is Beth, the co-founder and CEO of SendSpark, which is a killer video platform that is changing the game in video selling and marketing. Now, Beth's journey to SendSpark is super fascinating, and it's rooted in her experience in solving real-world problems in marketing and sales. So what I love about Beth is her practical and hands-on approach to building a SaaS company. Now, she's not just another tech founder with a cool idea. She's someone who really identified a genuine pain point in her previous role and set out to solve it. Awesome. So Bethany's background in marketing gave her unique insights into the power of personalized video content, and she's leveraged that expertise to create a tool that's now used by over 50,000 sales and marketing professionals. So in this episode, what we're going to do is dive into Bethany's experience building SenseSpark from the ground up, exploring how she and her co-founder validated their idea, acquired their first customers, and navigated those challenges of early stage growth and got over the cold start problem. Now, Bethany has some really interesting insights on the balance between product led growth and sales led growth motions and how you can make both work in harmony. So we'll also discuss Bethany's approach to building a community around SensePark, her strategies for content marketing and how she's optimized their user expansion funnel. So whether you're a startup founder looking to get your first 10,000 users or a seasoned entrepreneur interested in the latest trends in video marketing, I can guarantee that you're going to walk away from this conversation with insights and strategies that you can apply to your own work. Now, if you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it will help this podcast tremendously. So with that, I bring you Beth. Beth, what's up? Hey, good morning. Morning, can you hear me okay?
Beth: I can, yeah. I'm just adding some white in here.
Andy: No worries. So, hey, where are you at? Are you in Austin right now? I am. Yeah.
Beth: I'm at the WeWork on Congress.
Andy: Hey, we should get together and do like a, like a co-work day or something.
Beth: Yeah. I honestly have like 14 guest pass a month cause I have an office here. So if you ever want to come here, like I never use any of them.
Andy: Well, let's do it. Let's do it when we, when we plan our co-marketing, like integration thing or whatever, which by the way, I just hired a marketing person. So they're going to help me. That's why I've been kind of like, hey, let's do this, but then a little cold on it because I'm like, let's wait for the marketing guy to start, who you started yesterday. Yeah.
Beth: And I've also gotten in trouble from my marketing guy because I like overcommit for sure. So now I have to run everything through him.
Andy: Yeah, exactly.
Beth: You have to send the email and do the follow up and do this and that. I'm like, oh, I just thought that product was cool.
Andy: Yeah, we're just going to do it. Just throw everything everywhere on everyone's plate. So I'll email you after this actually. And then what we'll do is we'll get our marketing guys together and then we can figure something out. So yeah, that'll be awesome.
Beth: Your background looks so good by the way. And now I'm like, oh.
Andy: Thank you. I have a whole studio set up here actually in my house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It took some work actually. It took some work. So, um, yeah, I do a lot of podcasting and all that fun stuff. So I'm like, you know what, if I'm going to be on camera a lot, let's like make it look as good as possible, you know? So how are you feeling by the way? I know you were sick. I'm still sick. I have my, my Starbucks tea, my electrolytes here. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I feel fine.
Beth: I can tell my voice is like a little bit off. but honestly like way better and I it was just so funny because I got sick but I like I still was trying to do everything I had to go to a music festival a wedding like um this like random like thing in San Diego so I've just been like trying to like I don't know, stifle it.
Andy: I've been like, I'm not going anywhere. I am staying inside. Like there is no way I'm going anywhere. Um, so I've been just like chilling inside as much as last Wednesday when we originally scheduled, I think that's when I was like completely dead.
Beth: And I just, I slept like 24 hours straight and then like wake up and then like, take like a decongestion and then go back to sleep. And then, oh no, no, no, we're actually the next day. No, Wednesday I slept and then Thursday I was just like, took a bunch of pills. My husband's a doctor, so I'm like, yeah, just like give me pills. But I didn't think about, he was trying to optimize to get me better so I could go on these trips. And I was like trying to optimize to like not lose my brain and I didn't.
Andy: Yeah, my brain has been clouded for like two weeks, I swear. I'm like, Yeah, I'm with you. It's like it's so this one was weird.
Beth: We probably have the same thing I bet yeah, I bet it is and I noticed like I listen to a lot of audiobooks and my brain was like so slow I actually had normally I do like 1.5 X and I had to slow it down 1x and that's why I knew I was like better on Sunday I'm like, why is this guy talking so slow?
Andy: Yeah, right.
Beth: I was sick and my brain was in slow motion Yeah, it's yeah it
Andy: Seriously. That's what it is. Like I was on a call, like I couldn't like comprehend things, you know, it was like weird. Like someone would ask me a question and my wife, I was driving her crazy. Cause I was like, huh? Huh? Yeah. She's like, why do you always like, are you doing that? Like, can you not hear her? You know, like, and I'm like, no, I just can't like comprehend things right now. You know? Um, so anyways, let's talk about today. I think the theme, uh, what you've done a really good job of, Beth is, you're obviously the co-founder of SendSpark, right? Which is a super hot video tool right now, for those wondering. You're also a female founder, which I love, because we needed more woman energy on this podcast, because it's a lot of dudes, just naturally, a lot of dudes start SaaS companies, right? So it's good to have some woman energy on here, Beth. So thank you for jumping on. But I think what we should focus on here is, you've done a really good job at building a SaaS since Spark from zero to one and using social to actually build that SaaS, right? And I don't know if you run any pay ads or anything like that, but I think we should dig into that. The other thing I want to hear from you is like, how do you balance Y'all are a PLG product, but you're also like a sales led product, right? Cause that's, I'm sure where the money is for y'all. Um, or for most, uh, you know, PLG type products these days. So I want to get into like how you balance that selfishly. I'm very curious as well. Right. For distribute, like how the heck do we balance like the PLG versus the, um, for deal rooms versus like the sales led stuff. So I want to start with you, like, let's go back and let's talk about sense spark, like how you started it. I want to hear about that. Like, and what, like, you know, let's look back. that zero phase, right, of like where you started. And I kind of want to hear about that journey from you, Beth. Yeah. So yeah, I love to hear it.
Beth: Yeah. So, um, I started Sunspark with my co-founder, Brandon Escalante, and we actually worked together for, for three years at two other startups before starting Sunspark. Um, And what we were trying to do at the last company we were at, I was running marketing, like running marketing, aka the only marketer at a small startup. And he was running product and design. And we were just trying to do everything we could to connect with customers. And so we're sending out a lot of emails. And I was complaining to him and my friend, I'm like, you know, we send videos and emails, like it works so well, people love hearing from the people, especially a small company, the team is kind of the superpower, because you're trying to show like why you deserve to exist when there's much bigger players in the space. So I'm like, when we can send out these videos, it works so well. But it's so annoying for me as the marketer to get the videos from the salespeople and send them out an email, it would take like an hour or video because we're trying to personalize the thumbnail and do little like It just wasn't scalable. And a lot of companies, sales folks will send out their own videos, but they're just so busy. And if you can automate more of that on the marketing side, it just lets people handle the responses and that's much better for everyone. So I was just kind of whining to my now co-founder and he's a designer, right? So he's like, well, what if we made it scalable? We just did this and this and built a platform around it. So we started trying to do things at the last company, and then it eventually became clear that that should be its own product, and then the company ended up selling to Paylocity. They had a great acquisition. So we're like, all right, this is a problem we had. Can we build this for other people? And we definitely thought things would be a lot easier than they were. Like it's been it's been a journey, for sure, but a lot of fun. And I love working with Brandon. And I love the team we've built now.
Andy: Yeah, yeah, well, let's hit on that. Because, you know, this is a common theme I see with with people who start companies, which is they start them to solve their own problems. You know, and I've, I always tell people, it's like, don't reinvent the wheel and try and build the next space X, like make a product that's already out there 10% better, or like build something that solves your own problem. Because if you have the problem, there's probably millions of other people that have that same problem. Yeah. So, so it's like, this is interesting through tinkering. you know, which I think some of the best founders are tinkerers, right? They just, they're constantly tinkering and experimenting, trying things. And with you, you guys were just basically trying to solve your own problem, you know, which, which is awesome. And it's like, I think a lot of times, even me, I overthink like, Oh, what's the thing you want to build? And it always comes back to like, building the thing that I'm like, I wish I had this.
Beth: Yeah. And I also feel like if you kind of start there and other people have the problem, like that's a good start. And then you learn so much from your actual customers that if we were to Like there's no way we would have been able to see exactly what sense Park is now, cause it started from our problem, but then it evolved with our customers and how they were using it and what they were doing successfully. And then how we can make other customers successful the same way. And also how the market changes. So I feel like if there's something that you have a problem or you may as well just try to start it, but be open-minded to see where it can go as well.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good, that's a good way to think about it too. And it's, um, and, For you, let's dive into that. You said listening to customers. And I think if you go on Twitter, or if you listen to any startup guru, they're like, talk to customers. That's number one. But what does that mean for you? Right? Like, are you talking to each individual user that was signing up? Like, and how has that evolved today? Because now you have a full functioning platform. You know, how did talking to customers look like at the beginning? And then like, how what's it look like now?
Beth: Yeah. Um, it's a good question. I think that in our case, we are product led. So we have a lot of users like, like, I think I checked recently, there's like over 50,000 accounts. So I'd say that sometimes people talk to customers and I'm like, how can you not? They find me. SunSpark had some downtime last week. Someone texted me and I was like, who is this? And how do you have my number? He's like, I'm in sales. I found your number. I'm trying to upgrade my account. Can you fix it? I was like, yes.
Andy: Okay. Okay. No shame. Shout out to whoever that was. That's just like texting the founder like, Hey, I need to upgrade my account. Like what a boss move.
Beth: I love it. Like, yeah. Um, so I think that there's been like different levels, like, you know, before we had a product, it was like talking to people who could be customers and just trying to understand what they're trying to do. Then it was onboarding customers. And then, you know, early on, I was the only person doing, me and my co-founder were doing support. And I just remember doing like, just constant, like support all times. And then we hired our first support person. That was amazing. And then actually, like, so I feel like it's really shifted in the last few months I've been doing sales. And then now we're hiring, we're building out our sales team. So I'm not needed there. And now I'm doing a lot of onboardings. So like, I feel like it kind of shifts. Really what it's been very organic, that there's just always something that needs to be done. And I'm like, the one that will try to fill the gaps and make sure like, I think of my job is how do I empower the people I hired to be really good at their jobs? And then how do I fill other gaps? And then once that gap gets filled, I'll kind of move on to something else. One thing I'd also recommend people do, have you seen that like superhuman product market fit formula where when new customers sign up, you're supposed to send out an automated email that says like, what platform do you switch from? What did you hate about that platform?
Andy: No, no super suit. Yeah. Okay, this is tell us more. Tell us.
Beth: Well, it's funny. So this is like the the superhuman product market fit article. Just Google that and you'll find it. And you're supposed to send out that email to new customers. And so I'm like, that's a great idea. I'll do it. We did it. And then people were like, They're like, I can't believe you're asking what I hate. That's such a strong word. So I kind of modified the language a little bit more gentle to be like, oh, what do you not like about your last platform that caused you to switch? So that's like a good way to open every conversation. And then actually just last week, I set up an automation to connect with paid customers on LinkedIn and just ask them how things are going. So like, I'm trying to make sure that there's like a way that lots of feedback can come into me. And just like, because it does help to hear things in customers' own words. you know, even though, and I'm kind of worried at some point, I'm going to, we're going to grow myself out of that position where we'll have, you know, customer success and support and sales and all these functions built. But I think it's important to always have a direct line to customers.
Andy: So if they're really mad, you know, Oh, nice. And then what we're, so I like that, which you're, you're trying to create like a machine of feedback to get back to you as you're building this. Right. And even if they're coming from other platforms, um, Did that shift a major strategy for you at any point in time, someone's response at all, or an accumulation of responses?
Beth: Good question. One thing that can be tough about having a product-led company is you have a lot of feedback on a lot of users. We used to have a free plan as well, so just a lot of feedback often from free customers. It got to the point where we had too much feedback. this isn't actionable anymore because there's too much. So the way that we decided to move forward is by not listening to unhappy customers and only listening to happy customers. I'm saying this like, yeah, of course, I'm not supposed to listen, but the idea is like, focus not on making everyone happy, but focus on making the people that are currently happy, super happy.
Andy: And so that's what we're talking about.
Beth: You'll always hear people being like, you know, why don't you support my uploads from Zoom? And it's like, well, if you wanted to host your Zoom meetings, like there's a million platforms for that. That's not Sendspark. And so like, we don't want to just be everything for everyone. We want to make sure that people are like super happy. And then that's kind of like what led us to the route we're on now, which is we're really, really focused on creating personalized videos at scale. And our customers are marketers, are salespeople, are Rev Ops who are trying to like scale out what they're doing. And for them, we are the absolute best tool. But if you just want to create a quick video, like loom could be better for you. You know, it's, and we're not even trying to, you know, if you want to use us for that, great. But we're gonna make sure that we're always the best solution for our like super customers, as opposed to just making everyone in the world happy.
Andy: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And that's, that's a mistake I made, right? Like recently, where it's like, we're trying to do like, demo rooms, right? Or like deal rooms, which that can mean a lot of things. That can mean like business cases, mutual action plans, like you can have a million things in there. Like we even have video, right? But I wouldn't even say we compete because we're not going to do video at scale. Like our thing is not like, video at scale, our thing is like, like you're dealing with one customer, you want to make one little quick video and like, that's it. Right. And so like, that's not where we want to go. Right. And so that's why we're even working on integration. If, if we get that part edited into the beginning, but like, we're going to like bring sense spark in eventually. Right. Cause I, I want to have a whole platform integrates kind of with everyone. That's, that's our thesis. So. You know, with that being said, it's interesting because I think most founders will start with like, and even me, like I even didn't take my own advice, right? Like with this new product with Taplio, it was very niche, like, Hey, you need to post on LinkedIn. It's a scheduling tool. We can write your post for you with AI, right? Like, boom, that's it. Like do that one thing. And then with distribute, I think where we started was this, huge like, hey, deal room, it's a lot of things. And now we're actually bringing it down. And we're just saying, we're going to help you craft, craft the perfect follow up. And we're just focusing on the workflow. Right? And like, that's it. And like, when I tell people that they're like, I get it. Awesome. I hate following up. It takes time. I don't know how to make it look good to get the next meeting. And you know, like, there's a bunch of noise out there on what to actually do. So we're like, you know what, we're just gonna like, drill into that one work. Yeah. And that's it. And like, that to us, we haven't launched it yet. Right. But that's kind of like, when, when I just talked to like 15 people about it, if I say dealer room, they're like, what is that? I don't know. But when I say follow up, they're like, hell, yeah, hey, following up, you know?
Beth: Yeah, you got to sell use cases, because that's what people can visualize. Like, oh, I have that problem. And it's actionable. It's like, okay, cool, great. We'll sign you up. And then you know exactly what you're gonna do. And then it's it's sticky versus, you know, selling an infinite world of possibilities that is intangible.
Andy: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's, it's, and it's kind of like, counterintuitive, because you're like, Oh, but I'm gonna like, I'm gonna x some people out, you know, or I'm gonna like, like drill some people out, but here's the thing. It's like, you kind of want to do that. Right. Cause like, if you're trying to be something for everyone, then you're something for no one is kind of like what I'm living by now. Right. And so that's interesting that you took that approach, right. Of like, Hey, now we're just doing video, personalized video at scale. And so everything that you do is kind of like, Is it part of that mission? Yes or no? Right? Yeah, that's interesting. Um, go ahead. You were gonna say something.
Beth: Yeah, I was gonna say one thing that helps because it is hard when someone's like looking at you. And they're like, I really want to do it. And you're like, Oh, I guess we could. But like, one thing we did is they turned off all of our free, like our free plan, our free trial, we turned off all of the free in March of this year. And at some point, I could see us adding it back on for sure. But it was it was to help us like, focus on, hey, like, we want to make sure we're not We're not like pulling all these directions like, because how do you know who are your super users? And they're often the people that will pay even if just a small amount because they love the idea. And so we cut off free plans that we do have a solo plan. So anyone can get started for $49 a month. And then that helped us like really make sure we're prioritizing feedback from like the right people, they're paying customers, even though like our customers might be a single account executive or an SDR or like a single person, it doesn't always have to be a big team. But at least that's helped us focus and prioritize and make sure we're building for the right people and not everyone.
Andy: Interesting. Yeah. And we chatted about this, I think, when we got on a phone call before. We were jamming, right? We were like, dang, should we keep the free? We were both thinking about it. And I was like, are you keeping free? Or do you go to paid? Because when we built Taplio, we actually tried two things. We did free, and then we did paid, right? And we A-B tested. And what we figured out was that, yes, you get a lot less signups, obviously. And I think I told you this before, too. But for those listening, you get a lot less signups, obviously, if it's not free. Right. Because you're putting friction. But what you actually what we saw tap is it actually increased revenue over time. Right. Which, duh. Right. But, you know, people basically had skin in the game. So when they signed up, they were like, OK, I'm actually learn this thing. Right. Cause my credit cards online. So it's like a psychological thing where, um, you just got better users when you put on like the gate. Right. And so, you know, I think, um, There's a lot of nuances to this though, because I'm kind of like still debating this, as you mentioned with distribute, right. Which I'm like, right now there's a free, there's a paid. And I'm like, shoot, do we just do straight paid? But I don't think we have enough users yet to do that. Right. Like, I don't know if we have enough, like our name's not in the market enough. Yeah. In order to make that switch. And that's kind of what I'm battling right now. Right. Yeah. Of like, Yeah. What do you think about that?
Beth: Well, I'm going to use this to segue to something you said in the beginning about social media and the power of building your company on social. I think it's important. OK, so the reason why free trials or free anything is usually a good idea is because it gives you the ability to educate the market on what you're doing. And you're like, hey, I can educate, I can show, I can demo this through a free platform. But then I would challenge you to think, is a free thing really the best way to educate buyers on what you do? Or is there something that could be better, like video tutorials, posting on social, sharing use cases in other ways? Because I, you know, as a marketer, I've been in the space for a while, I always thought free is the best, like people love learning through free trials. But as we're actually building the company, we realized that we had better ways to educate customers or potential customers on what we could do. And that if anything, free was distracting because it gives you so many options. But we wanted to just show specific use cases that were more actionable. And so we found that by removing free, it was like removing a handicap we didn't even know we had. And it forced us to be more creative on how to educate and show people value before they buy.
Andy: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. And then, and then you made the switch to paid. Right. And so like you were free and then you went straight paid. Do you, do you wish you would have started like paid initially? Like, and I know, or no, like, are you thinking that, you know, going like doing the free was you were able to educate the market and have them kind of get a free sample or a taste of what you were doing?
Beth: Yeah, I would have definitely not done free to start, I would have focused on educating people by videos like YouTube, LinkedIn, like social email, right, we send video emails. And I would have done that to like drive interest and then go straight to paid. But I don't think I think that free ended up being more of a a thing to maintain, then it really was driving our funnel. Because I think what you have to do is like, figure out what your paid offering is, and then work backwards on the best way to get paid customers. But what we did that I think a lot of companies do accidentally is you start with free and then you try to think of how you're converting people to paid and it's just the backwards way to think about growing your business.
Andy: Yeah, I like that, right? Which is like, How do you, yeah, reverse engineer is like, okay, start with, they're going to pay. Just put that, like, put the nail in the coffin there and then work backwards. So like, what are you going to do to get them to do that? Um, I like that. And I'm still battling this myself. Like, let me ask you for distribute, like shoot deal rooms. I know you, you've integrated with some other deal rooms. What's your, what's your thoughts? Like roast me, I guess, in terms of like what I should do. Cause I'm, I'm open to feedback here.
Beth: Yeah, it's a good question. I'm trying to think what I know about the space. I think that one thing that you want to figure out is where your revenue is going to come from. And will it be individual sellers on a bunch of solo plans? Or will it be larger companies buying it for their teams?
Andy: Yeah, larger companies, 100%.
Beth: Larger companies, 100%. And I think what could work. So the way that I would think about it is like, what I do is I figure out who those buyers are going to be. I'm telling you this, you've been far more successful and built more companies than me. So I'm just thinking out loud.
Andy: No, I always have a beginner's mindset, you know, like, because as you do that, you think you know everything and you don't and like, I don't want to ever get in that that mode. So I always, I always have this belief like beginner's mindset, like you don't know anything, you know?
Beth: So I would talk to the people that would be buying it and it'll be, you know, the decision makers at the larger orgs and just ask like why they have bought other deal rooms or specifically like most importantly, why they haven't and what their concerns are. And then I would try to build like just those things first and then like win over your buyers first. Um, because I think if you were to do the opposite where you're like, Oh, we're going to do bottoms up, And we're going to try to get all the users on board and we're going to have them convince their bosses like, well, that just could be like way harder. And it could mean, it could be like a dead end because you don't really know that the users have the same concerns that their bosses have. Like they just might not. So I would talk to the people who are actually going to buy the product and figure out like, you know, what are they missing in the market? And then just, this is something we did wrong first too, is we spent a lot of time building like video recording software that was similar to what was on the market. Now I'm happy we have it, but I think we would have moved a lot faster if we started out by building the AI features and the personalization at scale and those really strong differentiated features that we have now first, because we would have like been able to fight on something different versus like if you're just doing a lot of the same as your competitors, you're going to be starting out, you know, you're going to be equal to them and you don't want to be equal. You want to be better in some things and worse in others. So I probably would do free. Maybe you could do like pilot like free pilots or something with the buyers, but I wouldn't necessarily go bottoms up because that's what all your competitors already do. And you'd have to, you might be. Yeah.
Andy: Now for you, do you find that like individual users sign up and pay and does that give you leverage to go to the, like the whole company? Like, is that part of your playbook? And does that work? Right? Like, do individual reps sign up and then you you go to like the the big company and you say, Hey, you know, Johnny or Sally have signed up like we should get your whole team on like, what's that look like for you and in the transition? Or are you just focused on PLG entirely and don't, you know, really care about the bigger deals?
Beth: Yeah, I think it theoretically should work. But I don't think it works as well as people think it works. It's something that I think is okay. So let's say Sally signs up for Sunspark and Sally is like a star and doing amazing. Like you would think it'd be like, Hey, well, don't you want all of your reps to be just like Sally? Um, why don't like, you know, why doesn't everyone sign up? And it doesn't really work like that because there's stuff that's different about Sally than other people. And so like, even if you were to give Sally the same tools, their whole process and workflow could be different. It like theoretically could work, but it's just a little bit more nuanced than that. I think in reality, we definitely see like Sally will tell her friends and then people sign up and get those like natural referrals. But I think the bottoms up to top down is just a little bit more nuanced in practice. But what we have figured out is. There might be specific features that we can sell Sally's manager that could inspire a larger account. But it's not always like, oh, just have everyone be like Sally. Because maybe then what they'll say is like, hey, anyone that wants to sign up and like two more people will join. But like if we can, what we're trying to do now is offer more like management features that's like deeper integrations, analytics, things that the manager wants, because the manager doesn't necessarily want everyone to be like Sally. They have their own goals and their own things they're optimizing for. And so I think it's important to think like it's not just take Sally and replicate out. That's what people told. I'm only saying this because I feel like we've gotten that advice a million times. And it just doesn't really work. But if you know what size manager cares about, then there's an opportunity to upsell to them. But it might actually not be the same features.
Andy: Interesting. So where are you focusing then? Are you focusing on the manager side and the PLG side? Or are you just like all in on the PLG stuff?
Beth: Right now we're 80-20 PLG and managers. I could see that changing over time. But basically the PLG stuff is working like super, super well. So we don't want to like slow down there and like I also feel like these are our users and the people that trust us to build a good product for them. I want it to work and I want to live up to what we decide we do. So most of our focus is there right now, but then we're also making sure that we can do the things that the managers need. But in a way, it's almost like a different product, right? It's like things they need are very different. So definitely number one focus is making sure it's a great experience for Sally. she's going to book more meetings. Like she's going to win. She's going to hit our goals. Um, so we can like live up to that fully. And then kind of like a small portion of our team is working on building out more like enterprise features. So, you know, we have them when people come in for us, we'll, you know, and we can add more over time.
Andy: Nice, nice, nice, nice. Got it. It's a, you are focusing on the PLG motion, which is, which is interesting. Cause like the friends that I talked to other founders, right. They're like, Um, a lot of them would say that PLG is overrated, right? They're like, there's a ton of churn, uh, like, you know, 10 to 20% of the users churn. That means in, you know, 10 months. You'll turn your entire user base almost. Right. So like, um, for you, how are you battling that churn kind of issue? Are you having a churn issue? I don't even, you know, let me ask that first, but like, I'm sure you do have churn, right? Every PLG product does. And how do you battle that?
Beth: Well, yeah, it's, so I hate churn. So that's like my favorite part about PLG is the churn.
Andy: Everyone does.
Beth: There's like, there's no way you like take a person, even people are like, love Senspark. I just, I just said like focusing on different stuff right now, but I promise we'll be back in three months. I'm still like, like in the heart. So I hate churn, but I think it is par for the course of PLG. And there's so many benefits to working with users like That virality, people will post about how they're using it. They're drawing other customers. They're telling their friends. It's a very, very, very fast sales process. Often, you're not even talking to people. If you do, it's one call. Because you're just talking to the person who can buy, there's not like, oh, let's set up five different meetings with different stakeholders and then think about it for six months. It's very fast. So there's a lot of pros, and that con is definitely churn. It's easy come, easy go to some extent. So I think you just have to be realistic about there are some things that we're going to do and we're going to have a faster sales process and we're going to have these scalability factors. But yeah, the trade-off is turn. And is there a way that we can also figure out how to then use our PLG users to get these longer contracts with the companies they're at, which, you know, we definitely see some that too. And we see that happen organically. But you are often competing with yourself because you'll talk to a company and And they're like, yeah, it seems great, like big deal. Let's make it happen. And then they'll be like, actually, we can just have five users sign up online. So like, you do battle that. But I think that I think that like, the grass is always greener a little bit. Like, there's flaws of every business model.
Andy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that it's, it's, um, Yeah, that's see that's that's the issue that I think a lot of people face, which is like do I spend time with individual users? Right that are gonna like pay this money and then in three months are just gonna leave anyways And it's it's kind of like just a leaking bucket right in that case and so it's all you know I guess if you have a really sticky product Right. Obviously less churn, you know, less, less chance people will leave. Right. Um, in that case, but for you, it sounds like it's working, which is amazing. I think you're one of the few people that I think it's, it's, it sounds like it's working pretty well.
Beth: And some advice that I got when we were kind of figuring out which route to go from, um, Mark Roberge, who is the founding CRO of HubSpot. He was saying that, like, if you think about. there's two experiences that you always have to build for the user experience and then the manager experience. And if you are to go top down, like it's still going to, there might still cancel if the users don't use the product. And so if you have to build two eventually, like it could make sense to start with the user experience because like they're, you're going to have to build it eventually, but they can only start buying sooner than if you just sort of do the top, they sign up. then no one uses it and you still have that churn. It just may be delayed a year because they paid for an annual contract. So that's how we thought about it of like, you know, we don't want to have a bad user experience. We may as well, as we're kind of building here, let people buy it individually and move faster. But the reason why I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for you is I think you should at least start by talking to the people who are going to make that decision and then see what makes sense. But if you're in a situation where the users are not the buyers, then I don't know. I want to have a good user experience for a product.
Andy: So yeah, no, it's true. It's like your hook, right? Like if the users are like, so if the users aren't using the product, they're not in, you're in an annual contract. They're not going to renew. If the users aren't using the product, they're not going to pay for it individually. So it really does come down to the user experience. This is where it gets interesting in terms of building for like enterprise SAS, right. Or selling to companies. Cause you are building for both at the same time. That's where it becomes an art. Yeah, we're like, you have to focus definitely on the user, but you also because adoption is key when you're selling any single type of product to end user. Adoption is number one. And I think a lot of people underestimate that, right? Especially in today's market. Yeah. Post Zerp area era, right? Like, you know, outreach, right? When we were growing like a weed. Number one thing was always like implement them well, because with good implementation equals good adoption, right? And so, you know, the reason people would churn there is no one's using it, right? No one's using it. They weren't trained well enough. Like we know the product works, right? Especially at the time there was not a ton of competitors, all this ton of stuff, but your product is relying on the user adoption, right? And so, It totally makes sense there. Like, if the users don't use it, you're screwing yourself both ways, whether you're doing PLG, or top down, right? So it's, it's definitely like, okay, focus on the user experience, then it versus the admin experience is kind of like been our take as well. Yeah, we just launched our first admin, like dashboard, Literally today, right? Yeah, thank you, right? Like, because we're building for the user. And so we were like, Alright, we're gonna do it for Adam. And we built everything for user and all the admins in our in our customer accounts were like, Hey, like, I don't have any visibility into what the users are doing. Um, and that was our talk track, right? It was like, Hey, what we have to do is we don't have that yet because we're optimizing to make sure your reps will love this thing and can't live without it. Like I want everyone in your reps to be like, I can't live without this anymore. That's how I know we've won. Right. Like with adoption. And so then they see that and they're like, got it. Makes sense. Right. Um, but we've had to battle that in our deals. right? Because they're like, there's no admin anything in here. Like my wife's team, you know, uses it too. And she's like, we're when you're building my dashboard, you know, like, all my whole sales team is using this. I don't know what they're doing. But they're using it. But and they love it. But I don't know why they love it. Because I can't even see anything. So, um, definitely big lesson there. For sure.
Beth: For sure. Anyway, turning is learning like there's no better way to like, like you want to get that feedback of People are signing up. They're using it. If they're not happy, they cancel. You get that feedback. You can really optimize that user experience. And then from there, add your admin dashboards.
Andy: Yeah. And let me ask you this. I'm curious. When was the big breakthrough for you, Bethany? Was there ever a moment in time where you were like, holy crap, OK, people are signing up. People are paying. People are using this. Was there a breakthrough moment for you all?
Beth: Yeah, there was. I know it was in March because our head of growth was working in person with us then. And we did a month of in-person work in Chattanooga. And I remember there was a gong in this office because it was a co-working space. And I had him go up and hit the gong because we just had multiple thousand dollar MRR days where Oh, no, it was the first time. So we had a $1,000 MRR in one day. And so I'm like, go hit the gum. And then it just kept happening. And we're like, oh, we thought that was a one-time thing. This is normal. And yeah, so I just remember it just like, I feel like if you look at Sendspark, it's like we made a lot of micro-improvements, micro-improvements, micro-improvements. And then just one day, it felt like everything started working after a long time of it not feeling that way. So that was pretty great.
Andy: Nice. And was that after you launched a new pricing page when everyone had to sign up and pay?
Beth: Oh yeah, it was only a few weeks after. We did a bunch of things then, so I don't think it was just that. We made a lot of product features, we were doing more marketing, we were doing a lot of things. And then we shut off the free plan because it was also just hard to support a lot of free users and we wanted to focus on making sure the paid people were getting a really good experience and we were continuing to build on for them.
Andy: Nice. Interesting. Okay. So, and, and then what do you think led to that? Was it just like, was it, was it your marketing LinkedIn post? Was it a certain thing?
Beth: Was it just like everything compounding and compounding things? Um, things definitely snowball a little bit where it's like, you know, you add new features and then people talk about these features on LinkedIn and then that gets more exposure and then people are signing up and like, Yeah. So it just, it felt like a bunch of things kind of coming together and working at the right time. Also helped that we had an extra person on the team, like Ben joined then and he's really great and was doing more demos and more marketing, more everything. So it just, and it's tough because I started, there's a, before that we had a long period where we're doing a lot of things and they, it's like every, we knew every improvement was good, but it's like, we're still missing something. So we do this and people are like, oh, just do this. So we do it. Oh, just this. And like nothing was happening because there were still too many holes. So it just all of a sudden felt like the compounds were compounding. And then as we added more, they would add more on top of that. And that was really pivotal. And it took a long time to get there. It was a lot of work.
Andy: Yeah. Wow. And was it like, do you think a certain feature kind of triggered that? This is a dumb question, but like.
Beth: If anything. So I feel like investors are always like, it's not one feature. Cause as a founder, you tell them.
Andy: Right. Yeah. Everyone's like, it's not features, but you can't just keep building features and then like, it'll, you know, it'll work.
Beth: Honestly, I do think that the AI, um, the AI voice change was really big for us. Cause we had a lot of ways to make it dynamic before then, but people always wanted to say, well, I want to say the first name. Hi, Andy, in the video. And I think that adding that was like, definitely helped a lot. It definitely wasn't everything.
Andy: But it's a little thing. Yeah, right? It's like that little thing that's like, Oh, what do people want to test or try or tinker with? You know that is so awesome that nice and so now OK, full picture here. We went from like 0 to one. We went from. you know, where your head at, is that with pricing, how you got some traction? What are you using? I think that the last part of the picture here that people would be interested in is, what are you using to continue growth? Are you doing paid ads? Are you just literally doing LinkedIn? Are you doing cold email? We talked a little bit about this at the event a couple weeks ago in person. But like, What channels are working for you that you swear by right now?
Beth: Yeah, I would say we're not so we're not doing paid ads. The reason is just paid ads are really expensive to do well, because you need like extra budget to like test and refine things. And as soon as you stop paying, it goes away. So I'm not like against that. But like, you should have extra money to play with if you have that. And we've never Yeah, you just need to make sure
Andy: Yeah. You make sure you're ready to pay. You have to pay. It's like pay to play, right? You have to pay to learn and make it work. Yeah.
Beth: And so like, what I would say is video is the superpower for founders, um, in a few different ways. And what we do is we do a lot of video on LinkedIn where we're sharing. It's not just me, like our whole team's posting where like, I'm sharing like part, like reasons why we're building sense bar features. We're excited about use cases. We're excited about, The team is posting different things as well. And we work with partners, other people in the space that are also posting ways that you can use sense bark and clay together or other tools. And I think that this is a superpower because as a startup, it just doesn't take that much to get a lot of attention. And because not that many people post on LinkedIn, you think people do because that's what you see. But the reality is not that many people post.
Andy: So if you post like point 1% of all users, or maybe it's 1% of all users post or something crazy like that, right?
Beth: Yeah. And so it's like we post and then that drives a lot of just overall brand awareness. And then what we do is our Our outreach is mostly targeted towards people who are qualified and who engage with the post. So we do send a lot of emails, a lot of cold emails. We sign on so many videos, you have no idea. But we're just because like this is easier, it's warmer. We're focusing on people who've engaged with content that we've written or someone else has written about us. And then if they're qualified, then we'll send that video that's like, hey, so you engage with this post, you know, here's a quick demo of how SunSpark works. If you want, you can sign up here or meet with our sales team. And so just the way of warming the water with social has helped so much. And it makes the sales process a lot easier because if you're sending out videos, people see your face and they trust you a little bit more. And so when we weren't doing this a year ago, we'd get on a call and people are like, oh, I've never heard of this company. Who are you? Like, why does this exist? Kind of like pushy. But now we talk to people, people are like, Oh, I've seen your stuff. I know what you do. I know that warmly or whoever uses you and they're really successful. So it just changes the vibe. So I'm really big on like social video. And then like, of course, email is really powerful, but we use it like it's not really the first touch anymore. It's later in the process, or not even later. It's just like to and beyond.
Andy: Yeah, you're the epitome of eating your own dog food. You're using your own video tool to send videos to people to show them, hey, here's the video I made for you. You can do this too, which is super interesting. That's what your product does, right? It helps you do video at scale. Yeah, that's all. And are you personally doing the videos, Beth, like for for like the people that engage on your posts or? Yes.
Beth: Well, the thing is, remember, there are videos at scale. So I have one video myself I really like. That's like it's a product I want to use. So it's like, you know, hey, first name. Thanks for checking out. Here's a video that shows how it works. And like I made this six months ago. It's a great video. So I reuse all the time. And then I have like a great one of of Ben on my team and Melissa on my team. And so whoever I want to handle the replies, that's who the video will be from. But I often set up, because I did marketing automation before starting SoundSpark. It's how I relax.
Andy: And are you sending DMs to these people? Or are you emailing them if they engage on your post?
Beth: Um, right. It's usually a lot of DMS because it's like a little bit, uh, it's just like a little bit easier to be on one platform. And I, I use like, I do LinkedIn automation, so, but not, not a ton, just, just a little bit.
Andy: Be careful. Be careful. Be careful. Hey, we don't want to get you, we don't want to get you banned or anything, but yeah. Yeah.
Beth: Um, yeah, so I'm keeping an eye on it, make sure we're not doing anything like we're not like abusing the system to do too many, but it works really well. The only problem is if you're not abusing the system, there's a, there's limits, right? Like you only send out 30 to 40 a day. So we're, we've started adding more emails on top of that just to get like higher volume. Um, but we're also limited by how many people are on our team to be able to like handle replies. So we weren't, it was like, like right now you have to wait a week to get a demo of SendSpark. It's been like that for the last, like, three weeks, we're trying to hire like a couple inside sales reps to help out. So yeah, the LinkedIn DMs have been fine. But we're gonna add more, more email and other ways to like get higher volume once we have this.
Andy: The other big lesson for people here is just like pick one channel and go ham. on it right like don't focus on Instagram and Twitter and all these like you're just like LinkedIn like or I mean from what I see right you're not doing other channels really you're just like one LinkedIn boom owning it.
Beth: Great to hear you say that because like probably once a week some of the teams like oh we forgot about YouTube ah Twitter we should just post on Twitter why do we not do it but like yeah we're all on LinkedIn.
Andy: Yeah LinkedIn is the best I'm obviously a huge like You know, I'm all about LinkedIn. So, yeah, well, this has been great, Beth. Thanks for kind of giving us like a masterclass here and like going from zero to one with your SaaS, you know, from coming up with the idea, right? Like you guys were trying to solve your own problem to, you know, hitting that, like building the product. continuing to add features and waiting for that breakthrough moment where you're like, holy crap, like this thing's working to now how you're continuing to like scale. So, um, I'm hoping everyone listening got that picture there, um, on that and realizes that SAS, although it's getting easier to build, it's still fricking really hard. Right. Uh, I hope everyone knows that. Um, you know, cause I've, I've friends and stuff. They're like, yeah, I'm gonna build a SAS. It's going to be the next space tax. And I'm like, man, If you're going to build sales, you have to just do the sass, right? Like sass is hard, you know, like you sure you can use replic now and build something in a day or whatever, but like, it's hard. Distribution is like everything, right. And positioning and, and, you know, all this stuff that kind of goes along with it, right. There's just so much to it. So, um, thank you for sharing Beth. Um, last thing people could find you where on LinkedIn, you can email me too.
Beth: My email is just Bethany at sunspark.com.
Andy: Nice. And if they send you a video, your chances on Sense Park, chances of getting a reply is like 10x, right? Yes. Yes. Well, thank you, Bethany, for coming on.
