Saas Insider

Akbar Jaffer was the VP Marketing at Social Annex for 2 years, bringing them from marketing debt to process and a scalable lead gen model. In today's show Akbar talks with Shira about what marketing automation software is best for what circumstance, the sales process, and how a rebranding transformed Social Annex. Akbar and Shira also happen to be old friends - so they reminisced a bit as well. About Akbar Akbar was recently Vice President of Social Annex, an enterprise software company developing social commerce and customer advocacy solution as a unified platform. Akbar is an enterprise Software Marketing & Products Executive with proven track record of solid customer and revenue growth, market expansion, commercialization, product launch, and brand management. Akbar brings a unique perspective to marketing technology products with over 20 years experience designing, developing, marketing, and selling software products and services. Akbar has Commercialized 6 products and own's 6 patents. Akbar is pass

This week Shira Abel interviews Nicolas de Kouchkovsky (NK3) from CaCube. Nicolas is a SaaS industry veteran who comes from the licensing on premise software world. Nicolas now works as a consultant helping small and mid-size companies in the SaaS Customer Experience space grow. Today they discussed some of NK3's methods, processes and tools he's created for helping companies focus and grow. About Nicolas: Nicolas De Kouchkovsky is the founder and principal at CaCube Consulting. He is an Advisor and Consultant to B2B software companies, helping them grow. Nicolas covers all aspects of marketing and market development, working on a project basis or as a VP of Marketing on demand. He spent over 25 years in the Cloud and Software industry as a product and marketing executive. Nicolas has a proven track record of creating differentiated positioning, building go-to-market strategies, and developing demand generation programs. He as extensive experience with Enterprise Software markets and is a recognized expert i

Pere Codina from Kompyte is our guest this week. Shira and Pere talk about what marketing channels work best for Kompyte, how they found their niche and what tactics they use to get leads into the funnel. About Pere Co-founder and CEO of Kompyte. He has more than 12 years of experience in eCommerce and Internet. Before founding his first company he also worked in several Internet, engineering & IT companies. In 2006, he founded his first company: Cocosoft Barcelona, and launched several Internet platforms for business, now, every day, hundreds of companies and thousands of users are using those tools. In 2014, he started Kompyte, a Competitive Intelligence tool designed to respond in real time to your competitors' online strategies making easier to monitor all their online channels. He studied Computer Engineering at UPC in Barcelona, always linked to technology and Internet. About Shira Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard, an inbound marketing and branding agency. She is also

This week Jonathan Friedman, CEO of Reactful, is our guest and Shira Abel, CEO of Hunter & Bard, talks to him about cold-calling sales, the psychology of sales, sales versus marketing and how to build that funnel. They also touch on Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) and more. If you'd like to be interviewed on SaaS Insider, ping Shira on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/shiraabel), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/shiraabel) or through the Hunter & Bard website contact us (http://blog.hunterandbard.com/contact-the-hunter-and-bard-team) About Jonathan Founded StudentEvents.com which was later acquired by StudyPortals. He interned at Goldman Sachs and Uventure and has a BSc, MSc (Cum Laude) from Rotterdam School of Management & the Wharton School of Business. Jonathan is passionate about working on projects on the bleeding edge of digital marketing, web analytics and conversion optimization @Reactful. He loves building quality products that make Reactful's customers extremely happy. Ping him if

This week Meira Primes, the CMO of Cloudyn, chats with Shira Abel, the CEO of Hunter & Bard, about being the first CMO inside a company - and the cost of Marketing Debt. About Meira The secret of start-up marketing? You need to be equally skilled in coming up with new ideas and concepts, developing the strategy, creating the plan, communicating the message, and rolling up your sleeves to execute, execute, execute. If you are serious about marketing, launching a start-up or you have cool ideas to knock around-reach out. Always happy to talk innovation, ideas, entrepreneurship, public relations & awareness, and anything marketing! Meira enjoys building and influencing markets, products, companies. Developing and implementing targeted and hard-hitting marketing and revenue generation programs for emerging businesses and tomorrow's market leaders. Interested in helping companies get their concepts and products launched, financed, sold and geared for accelerated growth. About Shira Shira Abel is the CE

Kristian Valk from HotelChamp was interviewed by Shira Abel from Hunter & Bard on this show. They discussed how HotelChamp has gone from idea to product and from a few clients to clients worldwide - all from Amsterdam. Kristian talks about why he prefers having people in an office instead of remote workers, and gets explicit on HotelChamps sales model. Kristian Valk Kristian Valk is the Founder & CEO of Hotelchamp. After 15 years as an entrepreneur in the Ecommerce market, Kristian is now disrupting the online hospitality market with Hotelchamp. Besides helping hotels increasing their direct bookings, he runs at least 200 miles a month and likes to join marathons in New York, Berlin and Rotterdam. Hotelchamp Hotelchamp is a SaaS company that delivers smart technology for hotels to increase direct bookings. By realtime analyzing website behaviour and characteristics of website visitors, the Hotelchamp technology creates unique customer journeys to make every hotel website visit 100% relevant in order

Ethan Rasiel, the CEO of Lightspeed PR, is our guest this week. He and Shira discuss PR for the entire show - so if you need to understand the process of PR and how it can work for your business I highly recommend this episode. About Ethan A true technology connoisseur, Ethan started his communications career as a journalist – by day as a news reporter for Gannett’s metro and business desk, and by night as host of an AM radio show. In 1998 Ethan began a nearly 15 year stint at Edelman. He ultimately led a team of 60 as GM and EVP, and counseled a range of clients from startups to brands like GE, Canon, HP and Motorola. While there, he pioneered Edelman Labs, which revamped the firm’s approach to product review programs. In 2011 Ethan became Director of Communications for Samsung Electronics America, responsible for external communications around all consumer products. While managing five agencies, he introduced several tools to improve collaboration and efficiency both internally and externally. Ethan co-

This week Mark Faggiano from TaxJar talks with Shira Abel about how he sourced, hired and onboarded his remote team as well as how inbound has worked so well for TaxJar. Mark quit corporate life in 2000 and became an entrepreneur. Since then he's started 6 companies. Some have succeeded, some not so much. He's the CEO of @TaxJar now and it's a blast. He has an amazing team that's using technology to solve a super complex problem for ecommerce businesses. Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard, an inbound marketing and branding agency. She is also Acting CMO of Cyara. Clients include: Totango, Cyara, Sarine Technologies, Pushbullet, AXA Tech, CloudEndure, AppsGeyser, Pitango VC, Chipolo, Allianz, and more. Creator and host of the SaaS Insider podcast. Creator of the Behavior Engineering Canvas. Mentor at 500 Startups. Former professor of Marketing for Startups at Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College. MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Loves family time, cooking, and travelling. Hates

This week Shira interviews and advises Sean and Chris Miller from Tubular.io. In a change from most episodes, Shira gave advise and did a bit of mentoring during this podcast - in addition to the helpful information given by the founding team of Tubular.io Sean Miller is the Founder and CEO of Tubular.io and Simplifyd. Born is Zimbabwe, Sean travelled the world working in the Television Live Broadcast industry before moving to the UK and setting up a creative agency which lead to the development of his now Saas passion in Simplifyd and Tubular. Sean is a tech enthusiast and creative who's all about removing unnecessary complexity which is very much the drive behind his products. Chris Miller worked in Business Development in South Africa with ELW Global, and delivered successful, procurement, logistical projects and contingency operations in countries such as Senegal, Togo, Mali, Cameroon, Niger and Burkina Faso. A passion for procurement and sales led to his role with Tubular.io where he now focusses in th

Szymon Klimczak, the CMO of LiveChat is interviewed by Shira Abel of Hunter & Bard. Szymon didn't come from SaaS, but that didn't stop him from having a quant point of view and growing LiveChat from 0 to 15,000 SaaS customers. Szymon has spent last 16 years growing sports, web-hosting and customer service software projects. Since late 2005 he’s been with LiveChat, which he pivoted into SaaS product and took from 0 to over 15,000 customers with zero-budget marketing approach. When not focused on the analytics and growth of the customer base at LiveChat, he follows the NBA and plays with stats in Fantasy Basketball leagues. He’s also an investor and advisor in another SaaS company, Brand24.com. Shira Abel is the CEO of Hunter & Bard - a SaaS marketing agency.

Tim Matthews from Incapsula (https://www.incapsula.com/) chats with Shira Abel from Hunter & Bard (http://hunterandbard.com/) about how he got into SaaS marketing from conventional marketing, the differences between and the special challenges SaaS marketers face when companies scale. Tim has an ebook called The SaaS Marketing Handbook and it's free - you can find it at: https://www.scribd.com/doc/274418815/The-Saas-Marketing-Handbook Tim Matthews was born in New York City and grew up in a nearby leafy suburb before taking the long route to Silicon Valley through Tokyo. He has worked in high tech for twenty years and managed marketing teams at six companies. When not writing or poring over marketing texts, he golfs, crosswords, and tries to keep up with his wife on a standup paddleboard. He has long wondered which is harder: crossing the chasm or a 200 yard carry over a water hazard.

This week Elizabeth Yin (http://blog.elizabethyin.com) joins Shira Abel to talk about Predictable Revenue - how to build it, outbound sales, and being a Partner at 500 Startups. There's a lot of helpful information in this show about building and scaling your outbound sales. About Elizabeth: In HS: She programmed at other people's startups during the dot com boom in the Silicon Valley. Early 20s: Elizabeth studied EE & went to business school at age 23. She worked & lived abroad to travel a lot. Late 20s: She got serious about her career & worked on developer products at Google & side projects. Early 30s: She got really serious about her career and started LaunchBit, an adtech platform for B2B SaaS marketers. Sold it. She now a partner at 500 Startups & run the Mountain View accelerator..

Jason Crawford from Fieldbook was interviewed by Shira Abel from Hunter & Bard on today's show. Jason gave some great insights on how Fieldbook did usability testing - resulting in a lot of unexpected changes before launching on Product Hunt. He also talks about the value of influencer marketing. Jason Crawford is the co-founder and CEO of Fieldbook. Interesting things he's done in the past include co-founding co-founding Kima Labs (sold to Groupon in 2012) and running Landing Page Optimization at Amazon. In a previous life, he built supercomputers for biochemistry applications at D. E. Shaw Research. To relax, he reads books about industrial history, and the webcomic Girl Genius. Shira Abel is the founder and CEO of Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com) a SaaS marketing and branding agency working with fast growing companies.

Dale Clareburt from Weirdly, an HR SaaS company, is interviewed by Shira Abel. Dale is the Co-Founder and CEO of Weirdly Ltd. Weirdly (https://weirdlyhub.com/) is a SaaS platform that helps businesses put organisational and team culture fit at the beginning of the recruitment process. They believe that recruitment should be fun, engaging and useful and so they've created a product that delivers just that. Its clients range from SMEs to Enterprise across NZ and globally. Shira Abel is the CEO and founder of Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com), a marketing and branding agency that works with fast growing SaaS companies.

Neil Patel from Quick Sprout and Shira Abel discuss how Neil and his partner Hiten have started multiple successful SaaS businesses, his opinion on why he thinks SaaS fees will be eliminated in the future, and how marketplaces will take over. Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations. Neil has also been awarded Congressional Recognition from the United States House of Representatives Shira Abel is the founder and CEO of Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com) a SaaS marketing and branding agency. Clients include Cyara, Totango, R

Today Shira interviews Mike Sadowski from Brand 24, a SaaS company born and raised in Poland - with no US entity. Michal is the Founder & CEO at Brand24, a social listening tool used by over 1000 customers across 40 countries. He's a mentor at Startup Weekend & Founder Institute and the author of "Social Media Revolution", a bestselling book. Awarded with a "Best Co-Founder" prize in The Next Web Startup Awards 2013. Web Summit Conference 2013 People's Stage winner. In his spare time he is a guitar player in a rock band called Band24. We talk about how humor can go viral when you least expect it, and how the PR channels you were expecting a lot from don't always pan out. You can find out more about Michal at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michalsadowski1 Find out more about Hunter & Bard (the show sponsor) at: https://www.hunterandbard.com/ And Shira Abel at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shiraabel Thank you for listening! If you'd like to be interviewed on the show - just ping Shira in one o

Shira Abel chats with Erik Anderson from Gravy about SaaS startups, metrics, and what seed and starting startups need to know about marketing and growth. Erik Anderson is the co-founder and Managing Partner at Gravy (http://www.makegravy.co). He’s an active advisor to a number of companies and has been on the management team that has invested into over 30 early-stage startups. His jump into tech began with Techstars and their first program in London. He currently splits his time between California and Europe. You can find out more about Shira's marketing and branding agency, Hunter & Bard, at http://www.hunterandbard.com

Today's show Shira Abel from Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com) interviews Ron Sela from Start-a-Fire (http://startafire.com/) Ron Sela is a Full Stack Marketer at Start A Fire. He’s a profit-driven marketer having held roles previously at dapulse, Klear and Pagewiz. Ron is also a blogger at RonSela.com, where he discusses influencer marketing and B2B content marketing topics. Ron’s rich background includes an MBA, a Law degree (LL.B.) and a degree in Economics. Before becoming a full-stack marketer he served as Head of Treasury in leading technology companies. This earned him a deep understanding of the business world and what it takes to grow companies. Ron’s writing is often featured in leading media outlets, like Social Media Today and SEMrush. He was recently named one of Top 100 Influencers in Social Media Marketing (#42) by Onalytica.

Ever wonder when you should start spending money on UX? Design? How do you know you have a good designer? Today's show Shira Abel interviews Idan Gazit from Heroku. An expat New Yorker living in Tel Aviv, Idan is a hybrid engineer/designer and data visualization geek. He’s currently the UX lead for Heroku’s data products, and previously worked on a number of startups (to empty his bank account) and consulting work (to fill his bank account). Idan writes brief things on twitter as @idangazit, and longer things at gazit.me. Idan's views on the show represent Idan and do not represent Heroku.

On today's show Shira interviews Reuben Metcalfe, a startup marketer that has a love/hate relationship with the term Growth Hacking. Reuban is a high-school drop-out failed forward into entrepreneurship, whilst taking a detour in Japanese industrial coatings, utilities brokerage, growth-consulting, international gaming law, and digital internet moneys. If you think he sounds like a character - you don't know the half of it. He enjoys dealing with companies that help people. Has the somewhat ambitious aim of fixing capitalism - preferably yesterday, and in a somewhat lucrative manner. Resigned to, and accepts the fact that 'not everybody's as enthusiastic about it as he is. Ideas guy by nature, scrappy bootstrapper by trade - Can be found listening to people much smarter than himself in an effort to be a better business-guy, or attempting to woo said smart people into collaborating on a project once he realizes he's in far over his head. Has a passing interest in psycho-pharmacology, macroeconomic theory,