Episode 739 | Selling SaaS to Customers Who Don't Know They Have a Problem

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Management, Entrepreneurship, Business, Marketing

4.8 • 792 Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In episode 739, Rob Walling interviews Andy Kim, co-founder of Trotto, about his unique journey into SaaS. Andy shares how “go links” work, and why they are so valuable for internal, enterprise use despite their relative obscurity. They also explore the marketing hurdles and customer adoption challenges in a business like Trotto. Episode Sponsor: Hiring senior developers can really move the needle in your business, but if you bring on the wrong person, you can quickly burn through your runway. If you need help finding a vetted, senior, results-oriented developer, you should reach out to today’s sponsor, Lemon.io. For years, they’ve been helping our audience find high quality, global talent at competitive rates, and they can help you too. Longtime listener Chaz Yoon, hired a senior developer from Lemon.io and said his hire ”definitely knew his stuff, provided appropriate feedback and pushback, and had great communication, including very fluent English. He really exceeded my expectations.” Chaz said he’d definitely use Lemon.io again when he’s looking for a senior level engineer. To learn more and get a 15% discount on your first four weeks of working with a developer at lemon.io/startups. Topics we cover: 3:13 – Go links, URL shorteners for enterprise 6:14 – History of the problem and core users 9:44 – Customer education and growth opportunities 15:37 – Finding the repeatable marketing funnel 21:07 – Buying into a co-founder role at Trotto 24:42 – What’s the hardest part of running Trotto? Links from the Show: Exit Strategy: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Selling Your Business Without Regret MicroConf Masterminds - Applications close on December 4th, 2024 Trot.to Trotto go links (@TrottoHQ) | X TinySeed How did go links start and evolve at Google? Quiet Light If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to another episode of Startups for the Rest of Us. I'm your host, Rob Walling.
0:04.1	In this episode, I talk with Andy Kim. He's the co-founder, co-owner of a SaaS app called Trotto.
0:10.7	That's at Trot.2. Andy acquired the majority of the business from the original developer that built it.
0:17.6	And Trotto is in an interesting position in the sense of once they acquire customers,
0:22.6	their attention is extremely high, but most people who need the tool are either unaware they
0:27.4	have a problem or problem aware, but they're not even solution or product or most aware.
0:32.9	And we talk about that dynamic in the show of how difficult that can be and how it can be a bit of a headwind to get over.
0:39.6	But to Andy's credit, he's making progress and growing the business month to month and has figured out some interesting approaches for getting around that.
0:47.6	Before we dive into the episode, I have a Kickstarter that's launching a week from today.
0:52.8	It's for my new book that I co-wrote with my wife, Dr. Sherry Walling.
0:57.0	The book is called Exit Strategy, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Selling Your Business Without Regret.
1:02.6	Sherry and I have taken our combined many, many years of experience going through exits,
1:08.5	counseling founders through exits.
1:11.1	And it's not just focused on SaaS.
1:13.0	It's all types of businesses.
1:14.0	But obviously there's a light emphasis on SaaS
1:16.4	because, of course, we do have more of a network in the space.
1:20.9	But if you'd consider backing the Kickstarter,
1:22.8	you can head to exit strategybook.com
1:25.1	and click back the Kickstarter button,
1:27.3	and we will be in touch the moment it
1:30.1	goes live. We could really use your support. First 24 hours is a great signal to everyone that if
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