Episode Details

Pete Koomen and Dan Siroker failed at two startups before getting their SaaS sales funnel right at Optimizely. They pitched agencies $1,000 a month for a product that did not exist yet - and two said yes before a single line of code was written. That founder-led sales approach gave Optimizely revenue on day one.

Pete reveals how the SaaS sales funnel they built through pre-selling compressed time to first dollar from five months to one day, why hiring the wrong salesperson cost three months of zero closes, and how Optimizely grew from two co-founders to 350 employees and 8,000 customers including Salesforce, Disney, and Starbucks.

Optimizely has raised over $88 million in funding. Pete and Dan ran a friendly deal-signing competition that helped close early enterprise customers, proving that founder-led sales skills transfer directly to hiring and fundraising.

🔑 Key Lessons

• 🤝 Founder-led sales compress your SaaS sales funnel feedback loop: When a technical co-founder sells directly, the cycle from customer objection to product fix is instantaneous - an advantage you lose when you hand sales off too early.
• 💰 Pre-sell before you build to prove real demand: Optimizely earned $1,000/month from two agencies before a single line of code was written, compressing time to first dollar from five months at their previous startup to one day.
• 📉 Hire entrepreneurial sellers, not scripted reps: Optimizely's first sales hire from a competitor produced zero customers in three months. Their second hire, a struggling mattress company founder, now runs Optimizely's European operation.
• 🎯 Your SaaS sales funnel skills transfer to hiring and fundraising: Pete Koomen says selling, hiring, and raising investment are all the same skill. Every major founder activity requires convincing people to take a risk on your vision.
• 🛠️ Build the minimum viable thing only you can use first: Optimizely's earliest version was raw JavaScript injection that only Pete and Dan could operate. They productized incrementally after startup validation, not before.

Chapters

• Introduction
• Pete's favorite quote: Make something people want
• What Optimizely does and who it serves
• From Google to two failed startups before Optimizely
• Building the first prototype at Y Combinator
• Pre-selling Optimizely before writing any code
• Compressing time to first dollar across three startups
• Selling a product description with no demo
• The Haiti earthquake and Optimizely's first real use case
• Building the minimum viable product
• Lessons from over-building at Carrot Sticks
• The biggest mistake: building things people don't want
• Would you pre-sell again if starting a new company
• Why polite feedback from friends is dangerous
• How Optimizely acquired early customers
• Finding enterprise customers as early adopters
• What Pete would do differently with marketing
• Scaling from 2 to 350 employees
• Why everything a founder does is a SaaS sales funnel
• Selling vision and problems when hiring
• Optimizely's business today and growth
• Mobile, personalization, and Stats Engine

Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/56
• Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email