SaaS Stories

Hosted by Joana Inch

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Latest episode

Oct 2026

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EN-AU

About the show

SaaS Stories is my not-so-secret quest to learn what it truly takes to succeed in the world of SaaS—and I’m inviting you along for the ride! I have the pleasure of sitting down with brilliant minds and industry trailblazers to explore their journeys, uncovering the secrets behind their growth, the gaps they spotted in the market, and what really drives them. It’s not all smooth sailing—there are challenges, unexpected turns, and moments of reflection where they share what they’d love to change about their journey. Think of it as a candid, insider’s look into the world of SaaS, with just the right amount of curiosity, empathy, and wit. Join me as I dive deep, selfishly soak up all the insights, and hopefully share a little inspiration with you along the way—one SaaS story at a time.

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60 recent

October 26, 2026Episode 4142 min

The CMOs who WIN the Boardroom do this differently

Most CMOs walk into the boardroom ready to defend their budget. The ones who win walk in ready to prove what it’s worth. In this episode of SaaS Stories, Joana sits down with Marie Bahl, CMO of Uptempo. Marie has spent around 30 years in tech marketing, from Sun Microsystems to the early days of the internet. She has taken companies from startup to IPO, with Opower a standout: nine times client growth, 11 times revenue and $50 million raised. Marie makes the case that CMOs should run marketing like a business, with their own products, results and P&L thinking. Joana and Marie talk about why “non-working spend” is the worst label in marketing, how to quantify the impact of budget cuts before finance makes them, and why getting your data in order has to come before AI. Marie also explains why marketers need to stop apologising, with an American football analogy you won’t forget. In this episode: Why marketing builds the market, not just the campaigns How to talk about marketing in a language finance understands IA before AI: why AI on messy data will hallucinate your business How to align sales and marketing around the customer journey What SaaS vendors should say when a prospect wants to build it themselves SaaS Stories is made by Hat Media, a B2B marketing agency for SaaS . We started it because we learn something from every conversation and wanted to share them. Find every episode, plus written takeaways, at hatmedia.com.au/SaaS-Stories Send us Fan Mail

September 26, 2026Episode 4050 min

Two SaaS exits. One very deliberate third act — George Hartley, Nitrosend

After scaling Bluethumb to $100M+ in artwork sold and SmartrMail to 6 billion emails sent before selling it in 2022 — George Hartley could have built anything. He chose email. And in this episode of SaaS Stories , he explains exactly why. This isn't a conversation about email for the sake of it. It's about why email remains one of the only channels you actually own, why the existing tools are structurally broken for the AI era, and what it looks like to build something from scratch when you've already done it twice before. We cover: → Why George came back to email after his second exit — and what he saw that nobody else was building → What's actually broken with legacy email platforms and why they can never fix it from the inside → How Nitrosend is built AI-native and MCP-first — and what that means in practice for your marketing stack → The 59,000-word open source email marketing guide George built for himself — and the three insights every SaaS marketer needs from it → Deliverability, list hygiene, send frequency — the stuff most people get wrong → The AEO lesson that cost them early traffic — why putting "beta" on your website is quietly killing your AI search recommendations → How getting approved as an official ChatGPT plugin sent their traffic through the roof overnight → The go-to-market channels that actually worked across two very different businesses — and what didn't transfer at all → The most honest founder advice we've heard on this show — pick people you can work with for 10 years, don't run out of money, and just don't stop If you're building in SaaS, running email for a growing business, or trying to figure out what go-to-market actually looks like in an AI-first world — this one is for you. 🎙️ SaaS Stories is brought to you by Hat Media — B2B marketing specialists for the SaaS world. Subscribe and catch every episode at hatmedia.com.au/saas-stories . About George Hartley: George Hartley is a three-time founder and two-time exited SaaS entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Nitrosend, an AI-native email API and transactional email platform built for the age of AI agents. Find George and Nitrosend at nitrosend.com . Follow Nitrosend: 🔗 LinkedIn: Nitrosend | George Hartley ▶️ YouTube: @GeorgeNitrosend 𝕏 Twitter/X: @nitrosendx | @gthartley 📸 Instagram: @nitrosend.it | @cosmoblk 🎵 TikTok: @nitrosend.it | @george_books Send us Fan Mail

September 14, 2026Episode 3943 min

Your company knows its numbers inside out. But does it actually know its people?

The fastest way to waste talent is to treat people like a demographic. We sit down with Rick Beaton, CEO and founder of Elevait Labs , to unpack a big claim with real-world stakes: if we can understand an individual properly, we can build better companies, better services, and a better society. If you care about AI for good, human capital, leadership development, employee retention, and building resilient cultures, you’ll get plenty to think about. Rick’s story runs from Cambridge PhD research into corporate identity, through decades advising boards and CEOs, to building an Agentic AI platform designed to pull together the “facets of the diamond” that make up a person. He shares how personality science like the Big Five traits can inform role fit, why adaptability can be learned even when temperament makes it harder, and why startup cultures break when founding teams are wired too similarly or don’t have clear behavioural guardrails. Subscribe, share this with a founder or people leader, and leave a review telling us: what would you personalise first in your organisation? To catch-up on previous SaaS Stories episodes, simply visit us at Hat Media . Send us Fan Mail

August 25, 2026Episode 3848 min

How SSW turned AI into ½ their pipeline — Ulysses Maclaren, COO of SSW

Most organisations are giving their teams AI tools and hoping for the best. The ones actually pulling ahead are doing something completely different and it starts long before anyone opens Claude. In this episode of SaaS Stories , Joana sits down with Ulysses Maclaren, COO of SSW, one of Australia's leading software consultancies, to unpack what 20 years of technology transformation actually looks like from the inside. From .NET development shop to AI consultancy, Uly has lived through every major tech wave and knows exactly what separates the organisations that adapt from the ones that get left behind. This conversation gets specific. We cover: → Why giving everyone a Claude licence without a strategy is a fast way to waste money → The enterprise vs BYO AI adoption models and the trade-offs nobody talks about → Why exec buy-in matters more than any tool purchase you'll ever make → How developers are shifting from writing code to managing "AI clankers" — and why some of them hate it → The inside story of YakShaver, the internal tool SSW built to turn a screen recording into a perfectly formatted backlog item, and what the go-to-market taught them about building for yourself vs building for a market → Why "selling to everyone" is a fast way to sell to no one and how to find the niche that actually wins → What to look for when hiring for an AI-native team in 2026 🎙️ SaaS Stories is brought to you by Hat Media — B2B marketing specialists for the SaaS world. Subscribe and catch every episode at hatmedia.com.au/SaaS-Stories . Send us Fan Mail

July 21, 2026Episode 3741 min

The SaaS Playbook For Growth, Partnerships & Acquisitions

An exit sounds clean on paper. The reality is messier, more human, and way more useful. We’re joined by Brian Nolan, entrepreneur and investor, to unpack how he built Sellbrite by solving a real multichannel e-commerce problem early in the Amazon FBA wave, then sold the company to GoDaddy. Along the way, we get honest about what life looks like after the deal, why corporate pace can feel painful after startup speed, and how keeping fundraising modest can leave founders and employees with real ownership at exit. We also go deep on growth without a giant media budget. Brian breaks down how partner-led marketing actually works in B2B SaaS: earning trust with platforms, showing up at the right conferences, becoming a recommended integration, and doing the math on CAC, LTV, and payback periods. Then we follow the pivots: building BookOutdoors as a marketplace for campgrounds and outdoor accommodation, learning how hard it is to sell tech to operators who still run on phones and calendars, and finally buying a premium lifestyle apparel brand for dog people, Darren & Phillip. We talk US expansion from Australia, 3PL fulfilment, influencer strategy, brand repositioning, and the career advice Brian gives his daughter in the age of AI. More episodes on B2B SaaS available here on Hat Media Send us Fan Mail

June 19, 2026Episode 3644 min

The 7 pillars of trust every leader can build

Trust doesn’t usually die in a dramatic blow up. It dies in the small moments leaders let slide: the awkward conversation that never happens, the “brilliant” employee who gets away with bad behaviour, the silence that lets rumours do the talking. Gearl Loden joins us to share the thinking behind his new book, Before It Breaks, and why trust is the foundation that makes decisions faster, teams calmer, and culture stronger. We walk through Gearl’s seven pillars of trust, a practical framework leaders can actually operationalise: character, consistency, communication, competence, care, clarity, and courage. We dig into why communication isn’t the same as clarity, how promotions fail when competence isn’t developed, and what caring leadership looks like in a brisk, high-performance environment where people still have room to breathe and think. Because many of you lead SaaS teams, we also get specific about scaling from startup energy to a 50 person organisation without losing your culture. That includes onboarding, cross-team systems, AI adoption training, and remote team trust. We also look outward to customer trust: why most SaaS customers won’t complain before they churn, and how mergers and product changes can erode loyalty when you don’t communicate a roadmap early. We finish with a simple but powerful trust repair move: don’t just say “sorry” and stop. Name the impact, own the decision, and say what you’ll do differently next time, then repeat it until it becomes credible. Produced by Hat Media Book & Early Buyer Incentives Before It Breaks: The Seven Pillars of Trust Every Leader Must Build Pre-order now: https://masterclass.lodenleadership.com/before-it-breaks-pre-order Official launch: July 7, 2026 Exclusive for Early Buyers: When you register your book, you'll receive: A complete resource bundle Invitation to a complimentary live masterclass Free PDF of Before It Breaks: The Complete Leadership Workbook (Available during the early launch window) Connect with Gearl Website: https://lodenleadership.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gearl-loden-lodenleadership/ 30-Minute Discovery Call: https://masterclass.lodenleadership.com/lighting-the-path-discovery-call-30 Growth Alliance Newsletter: https://go.lodenleadership.com/Grwoth_Alliance_Newsletter Send us Fan Mail

May 22, 2026Episode 3547 min

The Human Edge in an AI World with Nik Froehlich, CEO of Saritasa

When the travel agency industry vanished overnight, Nik Froehlich saw what was coming for every industry and built a business to help them navigate it. In this episode of SaaS Stories , the President & CEO of Saritasa shares why 20+ years of bridging business and technology still comes down to one thing: people who can speak both languages. From coaching CEOs through digital transformation to adding AI agents that delivered an 83% improvement in customer service for a youth sports SaaS platform, Nik's story is proof that the future belongs to those who stay optimistic, stay agile, and never stop learning. Brought to you by Hat Media — B2B marketing specialists for the SaaS world. Send us Fan Mail

April 27, 2026Episode 3434 min

The 80/20 Growth Strategy: How to Find Your Most Valuable Customers

Is your SaaS business growing but somehow still feeling stuck? You might be spending 80% of your energy on the wrong 20% of clients. In this episode of SaaS Stories , host Jo is joined by Christine Day, B2B growth strategy consultant, published author, software developer, and fractional CMO, to explore the 80/20 Growth Strategy and what it really means for SaaS businesses trying to break through growth plateaus. Christine shares the moment everything clicked for her: sitting in a client's office and realising that the one thing missing from every growth strategy is a data-driven ideal customer profile. What followed was a framework and eventually a software tool to help businesses objectively score and rank their clients, then laser-focus their growth efforts on the ones that matter most. In this episode you will learn: What the 80/20 (Pareto) principle actually means for SaaS revenue and client value How to identify your top 20% using business goals and top-down metrics, not guesswork The three options for dealing with your bottom 80% What a value inflection point is and how to recognise when you have hit one How account-based marketing fits into a high-value client strategy Why most SaaS companies track metrics at the company level but miss the most important view, the customer level Whether you are in early scale-up or have been stuck at the same revenue number for a while, this conversation will give you a new lens for growth. Brought to you by Hat Media Send us Fan Mail

March 31, 2026Episode 3312 min

Account-Based Marketing Fundamentals with Hat Media

Short and sweet episode on the fundamentals of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) . The fastest way to waste a B2B SaaS budget is to market to the wrong accounts, then call it “pipeline”. Joana sits down with Nigel Houghton, co-founder of Hat Media , to unpack what actually changed in B2B sales and marketing over the last 20 years and why those changes make account-based marketing a must for enterprise SaaS. If you’re choosing between demand generation and account-based marketing, building an enterprise pipeline, or trying to break into a small set of high-value accounts in Australia and beyond, this conversation will give you a clearer path. Subscribe for more, share this with a teammate, and leave a review with the one ABM question you want answered next. Send us Fan Mail

March 3, 2026Episode 3245 min

Stories that Sell: The marketing strategy algorithms can’t kill

Want a marketing edge that still works when algorithms shift and feeds overflow? We dive deep with publisher and ghostwriter Henry DeVries to show why story beats noise and how a single book, paired with the right stages, can turn your expertise into inbound demand and high‑value clients. Henry lays out his “Magnificent Seven” for converting pages into pipeline: run small online seminars, speak on other people’s stages, publish consistently, show up in target‑rich communities, volunteer to open doors, create short video assets, and host paid deep dives that often break even while surfacing serious buyers. Along the way, we talk generosity as a brand, why trust outlasts tactics, and how to market actively without sliding into hard sell. If you’ve felt stuck at seven figures, spread thin across demos and content formats, this conversation makes a focused case to niche harder and be intensely useful to fewer people. View more SaaS Stories at Hat Media. Send us Fan Mail