Searching for SaaS: Two Entrepreneurs Building Software in Public
Some podcasts aren’t intended to develop new business per se. Instead, they offer other, more intangible benefits. For Josh Ho, the Searching for SaaS podcast was a way to build in public and showcase his mentorship of a young entrepreneur, Nate Bosscher. Their podcast features perspectives on the stages of building a software as a service (SaaS) business. Josh is in the company building phase. While Nate struggles to start a profitable SaaS of his own.
Listen to my interview with Josh below. Subscribe to Podcasting in Professional Services on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Searching for SaaS: Two Entrepreneurs Building in Public
More than 100 episodes published, Josh and Nate have been hosting Searching for SaaS since February 2021. It all started with Nate asking Josh questions about how to launch a successful SaaS business.
“[Nate’s] a little earlier in his saas journey. So it's helpful to have a mentor, a guide type of thing. And we were already connected in a slack group, so we were talking every once in a while. And he's super bright, he's super curious.”
“I love nerding out about this stuff and thinking about, oh, how would I have done things differently or prompted with different problems? How would I solve them? So you kind of get that mix of just talking about what's going on and what you're both passionate about.”
Taking on a Public Mentorship Role
One unique aspect of Searching for SaaS is the concept of a podcast centered around the mentor-mentee relationship. This could be both an entertaining and educational show format for business podcasts in other industries.
“Over the course of doing the podcast, acting more as a mentor, I would give him tasks, like, ‘no coding, but do some research; go to these forums, go to these places and try to find a problem or get yourself embedded in a community and understand what's really going on. What are their pain points? What is it like to be them?”
The podcast has helped Josh clarify his own thoughts, too. He uses the podcast as a filter through which he decides whether a topic is worth investing more resources. “[The podcast] helps refine ideas,” said Josh. “Maybe I'll write a blog post about it. Maybe I'll write a tweet thread about it. Maybe I'll do a LinkedIn post about it.”
Staying Grounded in the Podcast’s Purpose
I asked Josh what role the podcast plays in his business. At first, it seemed to him that the podcast could be a marketing vehicle to drive new business. However, audience growth wasn’t what he anticipated it to be.
“I was hoping it would grow a bit more. We have a decent audience, and they come in and out depending on phases, but it's not going to be a top 100 on Spotify or anything like that,” said Josh. “When Nate and I sat down, probably I'd say maybe it was like six to eight months in, we just made sure we were on the same page, that [audience growth] was not the reason we were doing this.”
Josh went on, sharing how this clarity helped them make decisions about changes to their podcast production workflow, where they optimized for efficiency and ease.
“At a certain point, we stopped doing intros and outros and our editing, instead of editing out all the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’, we essentially do the audio balancing, hit noise reduction and export it out to mp3 and upload it and schedule them.”
In addition to this streamlined workflow, Josh and Nate also made an adjustment to the frequency with which they publish new podcast episodes. “We started to do it every other week because sometimes every week felt a little more laborious or we didn't always have something to talk about.”
The future of Searching for SaaS
Recently, Josh and Nate started doing more interviews on their podcast, which they’ve enjoyed. After their 100th episode, they took a step back and did some retrospection.
“We have 100 episodes worth of data and recency bias,” said Josh. He went on to elaborate. “What did I enjoy doing? What was sort of fun? So how can we keep it going? But how can we separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and just get even more of the good stuff?”
“There were some really good interviews, and we're like, yeah, it takes more work to prepare for the interviews, but, wow, sometimes we got a lot out of it and really felt energized about it. So I think a few more interviews will be on our horizon.”
For example, Josh recently had Chris Savage, CEO of Wistia, on for an interview that walks through Chris’ journey building the brand of Wistia, making technical bets and navigating changes in the market.
Referral Rock: Scaling Referrals
I wanted to talk to Josh about his experience podcasting, but also about referrals. His company, Referral Rock helps companies run end-to-end referral programs without the pain of building the ideal referral experience yourself.
“What referral rock does is it kind of takes that little nugget of word of mouth that you have, and especially as you get to be a bigger business and you really want to scale it,” said Josh.
“I think at a certain point when you’re maybe five, six people, ten people, you start to go, ‘maybe I need a CRM instead of this spreadsheet.’ That's where we step in,” Josh continued. “It's when you have more digital touch points, because we help automate this process of asking for referral, tracking the referrals, and managing the rewards.”
Key Elements of a Referral Process
I asked Josh what he believes are the key elements of a successful referral program. “Everyone starts with the incentive,” said Josh. “That is a key part. But I don't actually think that's the main part. I think the main part that most people miss out on is the active promotion.”
Josh is referring to referral marketing. At its core, referral marketing is driven by the power of word of mouth. A referral system works because people (even buyers of professional services) are more likely to be influenced by recommendations from friends and colleagues.
Sometimes, however, we put up artificial barriers that stop us from asking for referrals. “I already hit them up for sales, I hit them up for renewals, I hit them up for extra services. Do I want to ask them for another thing?” said Josh.
Referral Rock creates a referral system for businesses to go beyond manual processes and emotions that prevent action. If you’re part of a mid-size or larger firm, you might find this platform to be valuable.
