Episode 828 | Am I Building a SaaS?, Serving Both B2C and B2B, Pricing, and More Listener Questions (Rob Solo)

Startups For the Rest of Us

Rob Walling

Entrepreneurship, Management, Business, Marketing

4.9 • 819 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2026

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is your product actually a SaaS? In this episode, Rob Walling tackles listener questions about what really qualifies as SaaS (and where he disagrees with ChatGPT), how to serve both solopreneurs and enterprise customers with a dual funnel strategy, layering a B2B offering on top of a B2C product, pricing a mission-driven app without gatekeeping access, and the impact of healthcare costs on startup runway. Want to get your question answered? Drop it here. Episode Sponsor: Your payroll tool doesn't talk to your bank. Your bank doesn't talk to your bookkeeper. And you're the one stuck in the middle playing admin instead of building your company. Every is the back office platform built for startups. Incorporation, banking, international and domestic payroll, bookkeeping, and tax prep, one login, one platform. You get a dedicated Slack channel with actual humans, up to $3 million in FDIC insurance, corporate cards, and automated accounting. Setup takes under 30 minutes. Most founders are fully transitioned within a week. Check them out at every.io. And if you're at MicroConf in Portland, make sure to swing by and chat with the team. Topics we cover: (3:09) – What qualifies as a SaaS business? (5:15) – Why Netflix and Spotify are not SaaS (8:11) – Where Rob disagrees with ChatGPT on SaaS (12:21) – Serving solopreneurs and enterprise simultaneously (15:13) – The power of the dual funnel strategy (17:02) – Navigating the enterprise sales process (22:20) – Layering B2B features onto a B2C product (28:52) – Pricing a mission-driven job search app (35:57) – Healthcare costs and startup runway in the US Links from the show: MicroConf Masterminds – Applications close April 17th MicroConf’s Masterminds Guide Newscatcher HelpSpot TinySeed Rob Walling (@robwalling) | X 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 Listen to Episode 828

Transcript

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0:00.0	Problem with being all enterprise is that it can be a slog,
0:03.3	and you might not close a deal for three to six months,
0:06.2	and so you're just flat, you're flat, you're waiting,
0:09.6	why is my MRA not going up, and then boom, a big deal drops in.
0:12.5	It's like, hooray, celebrate, and then means there's another episode of startups for the rest of us.
0:34.7	As always, I am your host, Rob Walling.
0:36.6	And in this episode,
0:38.1	I answer listener questions from folks just like you. Questions including, here's what I'm building,
0:44.8	is this SaaS? And I'm going to talk through the key three or four components that I believe
0:51.1	make up a SaaS app. And in fact, when I ask ChatGPT, what it considers to be a SaaS app, we do not agree.
0:59.2	So it should be an interesting debate between myself and an LLM.
1:04.0	Then there are other questions about serving both B2C and B2B,
1:08.1	or serving very small customers and enterprise, but nothing in the middle, as well as a question about pricing.
1:15.6	Great questions today. I'm excited to dig into them. Before we do that, I want to let you know that
1:20.6	MicroConf Mastermind matching is closing soon. We only run matches to maybe three times a year. And if you want to jump to the end,
1:29.7	microcomfmasterminds.com. But if you haven't been involved in a mastermind, they have been a
1:36.2	critical part of my development as an entrepreneur. And I've been a part of a couple
1:41.0	masterminds over the years, one of which has lasted more than 15 years
1:45.8	at this point. The idea behind a mastermind is you have someone along with you on the journey.
1:52.1	So as you run into ups, you can celebrate. As you run into downs, you can get consolation and
1:59.3	advice and camaraderie with other folks who are doing the same thing
2:04.5	that you are. These are other founders. This is not your spouse or your parent or your uncle
	...

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