Welcome back to startups with the rest of us. I'm Rob Walling, and in this episode, I'm talking with Claire Swellentrop about the new book she co-wrote with her co-founder, Gia Lottie. The book is called Forget the Funnel, a customer-led approach to driving predictable, recurring revenue. Gia and Claire have run a consulting firm for the past several years where they are working with startups and SaaS companies to help them learn more about their customers in order to drive more revenue.

And this book is essentially a distillation of a ton of their learnings.

So with that, let's dive into my conversation with Claire. Claire Swellentrop, welcome to the show.

Rob, thanks so much for having me. It is so nice to talk to you again. It's been, I was trying

to think, was it Microkov? Do you remember 2017 in Vegas?

2017 or 18, but really, in case, like what feels like a lifetime ago now?

It's been a while. Yeah. Well, and I was telling you before we hit record, it was super cool to meet

your co-founder of Forget the Funnel, Gia Lottie. It was super cool to meet her. And today,

we're here to talk about the book that you have co-written

with Gia. It's called Forget the Funnel, a customer-led approach to driving predictable,

recurring revenue. First question, forget the funnel. Why that title? And I think it's the name

of your company as well, but where did that phrase come from? Yeah, it is the name of the company

as well. And Gio was just recently on Lenny Wurchitsky's podcast.

They were discussing the same, like, why forget the funnel?

And there's this really funny clip of Gia going, funnels are gross.

But to be more specific than just funnels are gross, what that really speaks to is the fact that

even prior to

Gia and myself having met, we were leading marketing at two different, both very fast-growing

SaaS companies way back in the wild days of the 2010s. And really it speaks to the reality that

for us a SaaS business, for a recurring revenue-based business, thinking of

marketing as an activity that ends when a new customer signs up is just the tip of the iceberg,

right? Because if the business lives and dies by customers being retained over time and

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