Relay by Chargebee

“The thing that I appreciated the most about Christina [Cacioppo] is that she had a lot of respect for product marketing. This wasn’t a short-term focused, check-the-box (‘oh, our website/messaging sucks, we really need to bring someone in’) hire.” 💪⚡️🌟 In her Relay interview, Vanta’s VP of Marketing, Sarah Scharf, listed the many ways — chief among them: a deep appreciation for the craft — in which early-stage founders can help enable first product marketing hires. ... (For Sarah’s excellent notes on achieving this function’s customer-led impact, making measurable sense of one’s work in the first 90 days, writing billboard copy that sticks, and more, head here: https://lnkd.in/dvxgE8N4)

In his Relay interview, Uizard’s co-founder and CEO, Tony Beltramelli, pointed at a defining limitation of pre-product, willingness-to-pay surveys — that they can produce a lot of noise as mere first accounts of perceived value. And emphasized how actually helpful pricing (and PMF!) signals must be gleaned (consistently) post actual usage. “For beta users, we could look at how many minutes/hours/weeks they had spent actively using the product and plot that usage against their takes on pricing.” ⏳⚡️⌛️ … For further notes on how they went beyond standard segmentation, how they’ve remained data-driven while acknowledging that pricing is really an art, why they’ve found “charge more” to be easier-said-than-done advice, and more, check out Tony’s complete interview here ➡️ https://lnkd.in/dJ9-66wZ

In her Relay interview, Arcade’s co-founder and CEO, Caroline Clark, discusses, at length, how they’ve gone about embedding gamification to drive deeper product engagement while acknowledging that they’re still building serious B2B software for enterprises: “We’ve figured it out, but it has been a tough tightrope to walk on. We want to keep this product-first ethos for driving better engagement and, at the same time, convey to customers that we care as much about their end goal, which is driving revenue.” 🎮 ⚡️ 🏢 Read on: https://lnkd.in/d5faPPik

“Email platforms are a very established category...What’s really hard to do is to sell a two-month old tool to somebody who has 20+ years of experience in the email domain.” 💡 🗞 In Relay’s latest, Loops’ co-founder, Chris Frantz, spotlights how they've overcome an increasingly common SaaS challenge: the reality that as markets mature, so does the bar of user expertise, making it ever-harder for early-stage products to be compelling. He also dives into 👇👇 → Why they got into YC → Why they build for and sell to multiple personas → The notion of self-thinking app → How they positioned Loops to stand out → Sequencing freemium right → And more! Check out the complete interview, here: https://lnkd.in/gNAdgYsD

I recently spoke with Akash Sharma from Relay by Chargebee to share more about Arcade's story and how we think about building great products. We cover a range of topics, from how we divide our product efforts to the importance of evoking joy in the user experience (we call it "juice" 🧃 !) and why there should always be room for creativity—no matter how rigorous the process is! Check it out below ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/d8QCdrep

“I will never forget the day my implant was turned on. You immediately go from complete silence to a world of noise and sound. A whole world of interactions existed outside, and I had no idea….It was an amazing experience but also very challenging.” 🪄 ⛳️ 🔥 🗞 In Relay’s latest Arcade’s co-founder, Caroline Clark, tells a heartening tale from her childhood that evokes a much-needed, increasingly rare — amidst all the reigning hype and discontent — sense of technological hope and wonder. She also dives into 👇 → How to map goals from a broad-stroke, 10-year vision to daily stand-ups → Leaving room for creativity, no matter how rigorous the process  → How Arcade divides efforts between core UX, differentiators, and new bets → How they’ve woven gamification into the product → Their freemium flywheel (with a 10% free-to-paid conversion rate) → And more! Check out the complete interview here ⏩ https://lnkd.in/d5faPPik

“…we were definitely excited about the idea of humor in communication. We also found that this was something clearly missing in the software industry. More, importantly, we felt we were good at it.” 🎭🃏🎬 🗞 In Relay’s latest, tl;dv - AI Meeting Assistant’s co-founder, Raphael Allstadt, describes the inward probing that led them to an unlikely B2B medium and thus the punchlines, the pacing, and the empathetic, hilariously accurate depictions of how a lot of us spend our days in SaaS. He also dives into 👇 → How being viral wasn’t enough → Why what’s obvious in marketing should be treated as such → How the "first 100K is the hardest’ bit is category-dependent → The trouble with "all-in-one" approaches to SaaS products → How they’re deploying AI along JTBD lines → How tl;dv thinks about culture → Why founders being vulnerable shouldn’t be a taboo → And more! Check out the complete interview here: https://lnkd.in/gN8afHXB

“Between both product and go-to-market, our team is built with people that can execute. Even managers are still expected to have tangible deliverables. No red tape. We can make mistakes and fail but we need to try and put stuff out there.” ⏩ ⏩ 🗞 In Relay’s latest, Canny’s co-founder, Sarah Hum, writes about operating with a guiding, execution-first agility across their lean, ~16-member team. She also dives into 👇 → What building in public has meant to them → The (great) forcing function of being self-funded → Their freemium hypothesis (and experiment) → Paying just the right (product) attention to competition → And more! Check out the complete interview here: https://lnkd.in/gzS8CWMk

In his Relay AMA from ’20, GoSquared’s co-founder and CEO, James Gill, wrote thoughtfully about the three pivotal junctures that “if made differently would almost certainly mean the company wouldn’t exist today.” Today is a day as great as any to be revisiting those and other insightful notes from James — hiring senior people, being power users of their own product, shaping a profitable, long-run business, and more — as they mark 18 years (👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽) in business: https://lnkd.in/gbBFrFUv  

In last week’s Relay H&H, June.so’s co-founder, Enzo Avigo, reasserted the multi-faceted sense-making — seeing, observing, and feeling — that is measuring product-market fit: “...the startup stories that you read are often post-facto summaries. ‘We tried this, then this, then that, and then one day we pivoted and found PMF.’ Those stories happen. But mostly, there are multiple steps that inform PMF.” Read on: https://lnkd.in/gfbzhpzV