Podcast
November 30, 2024

Raised $3M pre-product, simply with the deck. How?

Yash Shah
Co-founder, Momentum91
Robin Bonduelle
CEO & Co-founder, Claap
10m read
10m read
10m read

Introduction

In this episode of Building Momentum, host Yash Shah speaks with Robin from Claap.io, an AI sales coach that automates sales tasks. They discuss the challenges in sales, the role of AI in alleviating administrative burdens, Claap's unique freemium pricing model, and the importance of metrics in assessing business success. Robin shares insights on navigating pivots, raising capital through narrative, and the balance between product development and customer needs. The conversation concludes with a focus on building a successful sales playbook.

"We are tracking our North Star metric."
- Robin Bonduelle

Key Takeaways

  • AI can automate sales tasks, allowing salespeople to focus on selling.
  • Clap's freemium model helps in lead generation and qualification.
  • Understanding customer engagement is crucial for sales success.
  • Pivots should be based on metrics and market feedback.
  • Raising capital relies heavily on the founder's narrative.
  • A prototype can demonstrate execution capability even without a full product.
  • Creating urgency is key when raising funds from investors.
  • User feedback is essential in product development.
  • Sales playbooks help formalize the sales process.
  • Building a business is challenging regardless of product-market fit.

Transcript

Yash From Momentum (00:00)

Hello and welcome back to Building Momentum, the show where we peel back the curtain on the exciting and often chaotic world of building a successful technology business. I'm Yash, your host for this show where every episode we bring you the stories and strategies of people who've been in the trenches, conquering churns, scaling their teams and building products that people and businesses love. In this episode, we'll be chatting with Robin from Claap. Claap is an AI sales coach that automates sales busy work

and handles everything from meeting notes to CRM enrichment and from view reviews to coaching. We're excited to hear this story and the lessons they've learned along the way. We'll be dissecting the wins, the losses, and everything in between. So buckle up, grab your headphones, and get ready to dive in the world of digital products. Hey, Robin, thank you for joining us today. How are you doing?

Robin (00:49)

Hey, Yash super nice. I'm very happy to be here sharing the experience and learning from you as well. So, Hi everyone.

Yash From Momentum (00:57)

Absolutely, absolutely. And so thank you for joining us. And so let's start with what's the big bad problem that exists in the world that you're trying to fix, you're trying to solve with Claap

Robin (01:10)

That's a good question. I think that what is interesting in the Gen .AI era is that, for once, we have the chance to bring people, salespeople, back at what they do best, which is selling. And if you have a look at SaaS selling for a long time, most of their time, more and more, was about implementing reportings, doing sales admin tasks.

Yash From Momentum (01:37)

Yeah.

Robin (01:39)

whether it's configuration, filling up the CRM or analyzing a deal and so on and so on. It was taking a lot of time and it was diverting these like amazing sales reps from what they do best again, selling. With Gen .AI, a new opportunity like is emerging and basically the idea is to say, okay, now AI is smart enough. I want to enter in the debate whether it's fully smart to do everything. I think not yet, definitely. However, it's good enough.

Yash From Momentum (01:45)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Robin (02:08)

with the current state of the art to take a lot of the burden from the salespeople, the sales teams. And this is what we try to do at Claap. So in a way, we try to take everything that is not critical and that can be automated in order to let people do what they prefer, like relying on soft skills.

Yash From Momentum (02:27)

Mm

I love the copy on the website. I read it a couple of times and it's mentioned on a few pages where it says admin is for robots, selling is for humans. I think that sums it up really well.

Robin (02:43)

Yeah.

Yash From Momentum (02:46)

And so for people who want to understand the size and scale at Claap, could you share a little bit about the status quo, whether it's team size, whether it is the amount of minutes of sales calls analyzed, whatever metric that you feel will accurately represent the scale and size of Claap.

Robin (03:03)

Yeah, definitely. So at the moment we have 400 clients. We serve clients in Europe, worldwide basically. But I would say that 50 % of our clients are in Europe, 25 % are in the US and the rest are in rest of the world. In terms of like size of clients, we serve clients from 25, 30 people.

Yash From Momentum (03:17)

Is that?

Robin (03:30)

50 people, that's really the low limit. And we tend to go up the mid market. And we serve clients like our biggest clients of 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 people. For instance, Revolut in the UK is one of the clients at the moment. So I think that in terms of clients here is a figure. And then in terms of growth, we currently experience a pretty good growth. We'll talk about more.

Yash From Momentum (03:43)

wow. Yeah.

Robin (03:57)

We'll talk about this more later, but we came into a pivot recently. so now we are tracking our North Star metric is really the MRR creation to really assess how good our new positioning and new offering is resonating with the market. And one significant figures, we are pretty proud of this. We announced our pivot like two months ago, and in two months we did plus 50 % of MRR.

Yash From Momentum (04:00)

Yep.

Yep.

Hmm?

Robin (04:24)

So we are in like, yeah, that was a busy summer and like a pretty hectic summer. But that's for the best because now we are paving the road for the next growth scale and how we can like tap into the different acquisition channels and so on to grow more on this solid foundation.

Yash From Momentum (04:24)

wow.

Yeah.

I think that gives us a fair idea of where we are today and so one of the things that I would love to understand from you and we will come to the pivot question in a bit as well which is what I want to learn a little more as well. But the other thing that I want to understand is the conventional wisdom in sales or sorry conventional wisdom in

SaaS products that are helping any sales effort of a prospect or a client. In terms of pricing is that there is nothing that is free forever. So more often than not, most sales tools, including CRMs and outbound tools and automation tools and stuff like that, they will have 14 day, 21 day, 7 day sort of a free trial and then you have to either you convert or you don't. You're one of those very few.

Robin (05:25)

Mm -mm -mm.

Yash From Momentum (05:38)

where you have a free forever plan as well. What's the thought process behind it? How did you sort of think about it?

Robin (05:43)

Yeah, I think that we are closer to what you suggested than you think. We come from a full PLG approach initially at Claap or GoToMarket was really about like a long -term premium a bit what you can see, you know, with big SaaS such as Slack and Notion and so on. And we kept the DNA because we feel that it's a good way not to build really like a

Yash From Momentum (05:52)

huh.

All right.

Yeah, yeah.

Robin (06:13)

like clients on the long term alone. So I think we are no longer really believing on product led to build the clients on their own. However, it's super good to create leads and we see it as like an extension in a way of acquisition channels. And so for us, it's super interesting like to see, to offer a freemium version on the product so that teams can ramp up on this, like getting activated and share the product with product by your team.

Yash From Momentum (06:22)

Okay.

Robin (06:43)

And when we have enough product signals, so we really leverage, for instance, leverage amplitude to track a lot of signals about what's happening on the product. And we have like some like technical definitions about what is a product -qualified lead. And as soon as like the ring bells for a prospect, we're going to like reach out. And so then we enter in the normal standard sales -driven approach.

So for us, it's more a question like a way to proceed with this acquisition and create leads and engage with leads instead of just topping at, okay, now you book a demo and then we're gonna like close the deal and so on. We have this in between step, which is interesting because it's really a way for us to know more about what they need, how they engage with the product and so on. More context for us means more chances in a way to close the deal.

Yash From Momentum (07:40)

Got it. would this be a fair way to put it and correct me if I'm wrong is that the free forever plan is essentially a qualification for whether or not the sales team should engage and when should they engage. Would that be a fair way to look at it?

Robin (07:56)

Definitely, definitely. And again, what we did on top of this freemium plan, this is critical. It's not only a freemium plan where you sign up as an end user and you remain alone. We really encourage you to spread it with the rest of the team. And so for us, it's a way to say, like maybe I will have a contact with Yash, but I will also have a contact like with 10 of his colleagues. And then I have the persona of these, all these people. And so it's a way for me to start mapping the account.

Yash From Momentum (07:58)

Sorry.

Yeah.

Robin (08:26)

even before the first discussion. So it's really like a qualification at the account level, but also like a way to map the team and get a qualification of the team. And so then we can say, okay, I saw you use the product, but then your colleague did this and did you know, and so on. And we can start like identifying champions. We know the product champions, but that might not have, you know, the buying power, but we also have the name of the guy with the other girl basically with the buying power. And so it's a way for us like to map strategically the account.

Yash From Momentum (08:34)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Robin (08:54)

Of course, we do it pretty lightly when it's a small client, but when it's a client like Revolut, where now we have more than several thousands of users in the platform, it was critical in the first place to have all this knowledge beforehand.

Yash From Momentum (08:58)

Mm

Yeah.

This is something that I, this is new, this is, thank you for sharing, this is a great approach and very, very interesting. The other thing that I would love to understand is that in hindsight, so today you can say whether the pivot was successful or not successful.

However, when you are living through it, what metric or what event happens that tells you that, Robin, you we've tried this for a while, we need to change this. Because more often than not, what happens is that founders think that if revenue is a metric, so, or revenue is a metric or growth is a metric or whatever it is that you choose, what happens more often than not is founders think that the growth or the revenue is not happening because we don't have a particular feature.

And so they'll end up investing in building more and more features and they'll never get to the revenue. So what needs to happen for you to know that it's time to pivot.

Robin (10:12)

That's a really, really good question. Like first, it's a question of belief. I felt that when you are a founder, maybe because I saw a lot about the YC chat sheet and so on. But at one point I felt that every day you need to ask, should I pivot or what should I change? Because there is no state you go. And so every day, maybe not every day, of course, but every week, every month I came to the office and was like with my colleagues, okay, so.

Yash From Momentum (10:36)

Yeah.

Robin (10:41)

Are we sure we are going in the right direction? Just let's not accept and let's not take for granted what we have right now. first, it's a question of like belief. It's a bit of the same. I like this question because it's a bit the same with the PMF. You know, like everyone, when you go through this process, you every day you can, you don't really have a clear definition. What is a PMF product market fit? And people say, you know, or you don't know if you have it, but if you have it, you know you have it.

Yash From Momentum (10:44)

Hmm.

Robin (11:11)

But of course, you can give like a sense of how many client cities or what is the revenue and so on. And so I think that with the pivot, it's kind of the same. For years at Claap, we were in a different mission. Our mission was to foster asynchronous collaboration. What we were building basically was kind of a better loom, making it possible to engage and collaborate with people through video. For long, what we did was,

Yash From Momentum (11:16)

Yeah.

Robin (11:40)

our Northstar metric was we wanted to create a bottom -up product, like a really product -led approach and so on. And so our Northstar metric was acquisition, number of users, and how people were using the product. And so for us, just as an example, it was the amount of club videos that were recorded on the platform. And so every day we were tracking this. And for two years, it was great because all of PLG mechanics

Yash From Momentum (11:54)

Hmm?

you

Robin (12:10)

and tactics were basically fine. We copied the best out there, so it was pretty OK. But at one point, what we felt is, OK, now we have this good growth of users, user base, good engagement levels, pretty happy people. But it was super hard to go to the next stage, which is how to monetize. We could monetize some big clients.

But it was super hard for us completely relying on this business model and this product led growth approach without any sales to build a repeatable business. know, like sometimes from time to time, we had a big client such as Contor, such as Brevo, such as Kavak in Mexico, which is the first unicorn. And success was there. But if you ask me, how can you generate another Revolut client?

Yash From Momentum (12:43)

Yeah.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm.

Robin (13:01)

It was super hard for me. So we had a good business, but not repeatable. It was kind of like a chances people will enter in the product, we interact, we share with their team. And you might have success with an account or not, but you don't really control your destiny. And so for us, the real problem was this. was, we had good metrics of engagement. Okay -ish metric in terms of revenue. However, when it came to predictability and say, okay, okay, in one, two quarters, I want to reach

Yash From Momentum (13:16)

And then.

Robin (13:31)

this target, it was impossible to forecast. And so that was the big problem that we faced. And so at one point we are like, okay, if we have a look at what works best in terms of clients, what are the segments that are really buying from us? What is the use case that is the most similar that we can create to repeat it? This is how we ended up like selecting the salespeople and this like agent and all what I described and what we do today.

So now that we had this idea about building, niching down on the idea, user base and so on, to build something more repeatable, the definition of success was pretty clear. It was, okay, now user base, even if we have less users, it's not a problem. Revenue, it will come, it's not a problem. However, we want to build something repeatable. I want to be able to see 10 leads in a day or in a week and to say all the time the same thing and to see how much and effort it takes to close it.

Yash From Momentum (14:16)

Yeah.

Robin (14:28)

So it's hard to answer you because it's not a quantitative definition of success. Of course, we are pretty happy with this plus 50 % of MLR that I just described before. However, the process is more about how do you build something repeatable? How do you build a sales playbook? And how do you get like confidence in your model so that you know you're going to be able to scale on this path?

Yash From Momentum (14:35)

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is so interesting because, like aligning to what you spoke about PMF, right? One of the definitions of PMF, I mean, it's not a definition, but one of the things that I've heard around PMF is that you've achieved PMF when you don't have time to ask whether we have PMF. So when you're like the, if the team stops talking about PMF, that's when you have it because the challenge stack, like the challenges that you're facing on a day to day.

change completely, right? And you just, know what needs to happen. You just need to do more of it. Right. And so that is, that is something interesting that I heard, but I,

Robin (15:34)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. I just want to interrupt here because I think I heard about this definition, but I think it could be misleading for people that are in this situation. I'll explain my point. The point is, of course, when you have PMF, and so I think that we can definitely say with this new play that we have a new positioning, we have PMF. And so somehow the definition say, when you have PMF, you know you have PMF.

Yash From Momentum (15:37)

Have a one.

Hmm. Sure.

Robin (16:04)

However, not having the time to think about PMF or saying that everything is smoother and simpler and so on, I would like them to mitigate this because just as an example, in my previous company, I was leading the product. were a unicorn, 500 people company, unicorn, was VP product and so on. And so it was well established, no debate about the PMF thing, but still.

Yash From Momentum (16:17)

No.

Robin (16:33)

every day it was hard to sell and to extend the offering and like leading like a company and building a business is a hard journey in itself. And so even whether you are pre -PMF, post -PMF, it's going to be hard no matter what. And you're going to still wonder whether your offering is good, your pricing is good, your scaling is good and so on. So that's hard. My feeling is

Yash From Momentum (16:43)

Yeah, yeah

yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Robin (17:02)

PMF is a question, but it's more about, do you believe that you can scale with what you have? And at one point, something that helped us is to say, okay, let's draw some lines, like 12 months from here. you know, like option one, we are super successful. What does it mean? Option two, like okay -ish, like steady line, but not that great. And three, we are steady. And then you try to, when you have like this,

Yash From Momentum (17:08)

Hmm.

Robin (17:30)

projection, this forecast, you try to build the assumptions like implied on the product and the business. And then you realize, okay, but in fact, it's just not possible to do the plan A. And so if you are okay, because you have time, you have cash, whatever, you are okay for option B or C, then that's fine. But if you are really targeting option A,

Yash From Momentum (17:43)

Yeah.

Robin (17:58)

then you need to change some things. So forecasting, like with different use cases, the best OK -ish and bad options is something that can help. yeah.

Yash From Momentum (18:10)

Got it. Got it. No, that's important, right? So thank you for offering that clarity that once you PMF, doesn't mean things get easy. That's true for sure. And that's meaningful. The other piece that I also want to understand is I'm sure that you were in very early stages of building Claap and when you raised your pre -seed, right? At that point of time,

Robin (18:19)

haha

Yash From Momentum (18:39)

How do you go about it? What's the promise? Is it the fact that you have a wealth of product experience and you'd be able to crack something and so the investors are essentially investing in Robin and the founding team? Or is it, because you pivoted from what you would have written in the deck at that point of time. So talk us through when you don't have traction or in very early stages of traction, very early version of the product.

How do you actually go about raising capital meeting with investors? What do you pitch?

Robin (19:14)

Yeah, that's a good question. For us, we raised without any product and the business was not started yet. So we raised on a deck. We had, if I remember correctly, 13 slides. And that's it. However, everything is about narrative. I think when the business is started, it's a bit different. Narrative is still critical, but also you need a lot of metrics to back your narrative.

Yash From Momentum (19:22)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Robin (19:41)

and to talk about figures that work for you and so on. But in the early days, if you are pre seed which was the case, narrative is really most of it. so narrative, can optimize your pitch on different areas. First, you need to explain your founder story. Your founder story is what did you do in the past, for sure. But it's also why the problem you are fixing now is important for you.

and why it's you that can fix it. I will just give you an example, but when talking about our previous idea, when we raised the first round, our mission was about asynchronous collaboration. And my personal experience as a product leader in a unicorn company was to say, I lead 50 people, I have a team of 50 people across four different countries.

Yash From Momentum (20:11)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Robin (20:36)

And it was super hard to lead the effort of four different teams across four different GOs, a lot of travels and so on. But at one point you cannot travel all the time. And so how can we make it work as if we were in the same office, but in an international place? And so, know, just this, I show that I have the experience and that I am the good guy in a way to address this mission because I felt the pain myself. So first is founder story. And honestly, when you are pre seed

Yash From Momentum (20:37)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Robin (21:06)

the investors, they will invest because of the founder, also because of the idea, but a lot because of the founder. So you really need to refine the pitch and to train behind, like in front of your mirror and so on. And just like to say, in 30 seconds, one minute, two minutes, how can I make the most of it to explain why am I here today? The second element is we dealt, even if you don't have a product, you can still show something. When I see people like

Yash From Momentum (21:29)

Yeah.

Robin (21:35)

They are preceded and they just say, OK, we are building this and we are going to do this. But they have nothing to show. If you didn't start the business and you don't have a real product, doesn't mean you don't show anything. For instance, what we did was two things. One, we created a small product. It was a viral product where basically we called it a calendar meeting calculator. And so you plug your Google Calendar and it was a way for you to calculate the amount of meetings you had.

Yash From Momentum (21:47)

Hmm.

Okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

Robin (22:04)

every week, every year and so on. And so we had a great visual, like a lot of data visualization. It was easy to do. It was a project driven in a couple of days, but it was fancy. And I can give you an example about how interesting it was. We had 4 ,000 people that plugged it to their calendar in a matter of days because they were like, it was funny. And we optimized the sharing process and we had maybe 200 or 300 people at Uber only.

because it was funny for them to say, okay, I have like 400 hours of meetings every year. Yeah, but me, it's 500 and so on. So you create a game in a way. So we didn't have the real product. However, we showed that we are able to execute something. So it can be a prototype, it can be a small product, it can be even like just a landing page. But at least you want to show that beyond being the best one to fix and address the problem that you're exposing.

Yash From Momentum (22:39)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Robin (23:01)

You also have the possibility to go fast and you know like to be a doer, to do. And the last part is more about momentum. So when you say that you are the good one and you know you can deliver, the next step is, okay, why should you invest now? Because you want to keep this feeling of urgency and momentum. And so what we did, for instance, at Claap is during three months prior to the raising, what we did, we invited every investors

Yash From Momentum (23:28)

Mm

Robin (23:31)

on LinkedIn and we started to publish. And it was a way for us when we launched our campaign, we really considered it as a marketing campaign. So we wanted to make the like as much noise as possible so that everyone could know that we were raising without having, you know, to knock the door. Because if you go to the investor and say, hey, I'm raising, can you get me in a call and so on.

Yash From Momentum (23:33)

Okay.

Yeah.

Robin (23:58)

that's not going to work. They need to be excited and they need to feel, okay, there is FOMO, I need to see what they do. But they need to be informed and they need to be aware. And that's why it was so powerful for us to invite all these people in advance on LinkedIn. Because when we like released our post on LinkedIn, they saw it and they contacted us. And in a matter of hours after the initial post launch, we had maybe like 15 to 20 VCs.

Yash From Momentum (24:00)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Robin (24:25)

That's their job. So if you expose them with the information, they're going to contact you. And they left us a quick note and so on. And in order to build on this momentum, so considering a marketing campaign is critical and it's come back to narrative. Why now? And how can you make the most of noise in a single day? And then you need to really be focused on the pace. For us, it went with basically getting a first term sheet in two days.

Yash From Momentum (24:31)

Yeah.

And.

Robin (24:55)

Because when you have the first one, people are going to be excited, even if it's not the best one. So you train on the tier two, tier three VCs, you get the term sheet from tier three VCs, and you use it to leverage it with the others. If you fail to do that, and let's say three weeks later, no one is really knowing that you are raising and you don't have your term sheet yet and so on, you know how it is. Like VCs are going to say, okay, but maybe it's not as sexy and it's like...

Yash From Momentum (24:59)

Yeah. Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, everyone else. Yeah.

Robin (25:25)

a game where everyone is following everyone else. And so that's the three pieces of advice to summarize. So founder story, something to show, even if it's not a real business and considering it as a marketing campaign to really hit hard and put momentum.

Yash From Momentum (25:42)

So two things, right? So one is that that micro tool about the calendar is super cool. So I wanted to, last week when I started to do the research and everything before for the conversation today, I had set out about half an hour to see the product and stuff like that. And I, like before the product, I went into that micro tool and I connected my current, because I was curious, right? I wanted to know.

I wanted to have analytics on how I lived my work life over the past few months. And the other piece is that you, before starting this, you had a job, right? So you were a leader, but you were employed. How did you learn this? From where did you figure out the three pieces about raising capital that you sharing with me?

what were some of your sources? How did you learn that these are the things that I should do? Because that was not a part. I mean, you can build great products because that's what you were doing previously. But what was the learning curve for all of

Robin (26:52)

So first to jump on what you said, I think it's important when you start a business, when you are in a job position, when you have a job position and you want to start a business, it's probably good and better to start working on the new idea while you are in your current position. Because it's going to give you a lot of how to say,

Yash From Momentum (27:13)

got it.

Robin (27:20)

it's going to increase your power and branding power. For instance, when I was at Ogury, I was VP product leading a 50 people team. The day after you leave Ogury, you are no one. Of course, you can still talk about your past experience and so on, but it's harder basically to get connections. So if you have the chance to have like a pretty decent position that can let you or give you the opportunity to discuss and engage with a lot of stakeholders, a lot of people getting intros.

Yash From Momentum (27:38)

Yeah.

and

Robin (27:49)

then you should really rely on that. so my answer is simple. I knew how to build great products. That was my job for more than 10 years, but I didn't know anything about marketing, selling, starting a business and so on. So what I did is just like talking with peers. And each time I was discussing with someone, I was like, okay, do you have someone you recommend for an intro or you can quickly catch up and you ask advice and so on. And you ask, you discuss with one, two, three people the first week and

And then the following week it's six people. And so then you get more and more introductions. But all this works also because people want to talk to you. And so in order to want to talk to you, you need to offer them something. You need to be something. And so you need to think about what's your differentiation from a personal point of view and really elaborate on that. For me, it was my experience at Ogury for someone else. Maybe it's going to be about what they do in their company. Maybe it's what they did for studies. Maybe it's...

Yash From Momentum (28:32)

Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Robin (28:48)

their expertise in a given field. But yeah, really think about this because it's give and take. When you have an introduction and you discuss with someone to learn, it goes in the two directions.

Yash From Momentum (28:54)

Yeah.

Interesting, right? So what you are basically saying is that identify the piece of your past life that will give you the right to put the foot in the door, right?

Robin (29:10)

Exactly.

And it's a reliever as well. Because if you start working on your idea, when we started to work on Claap, basically we're still in position. And it was nice, it was fine for us. Because in a way, if it works, that's for the best. And if you believe what you do is not worth it, you remain in your job or you change job, you are not in front of the crazy void and the frightening void.

Yash From Momentum (29:14)

Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah, makes sense. So this Robin brings us to the last part of the conversation, which is where I asked you a question that our previous guest had asked. then you also have the opportunity to ask a question for our next guest. So the last guest is founder of a company called Zuplo. His name is Josh.

Robin (29:39)

Like you have the options on the table.

Yash From Momentum (30:08)

And he's building a platform for developers to essentially create API documentation while writing APIs. So they are basically making the process of creating APIs 10x faster with their platform. And one of the questions that he has is, and I think you're a great person to answer that, is when you're building a product, you set out wanting to build something that you believe is great for the customers.

But at that point of time, the customers don't really realize it. And they have requirements that are a little different from what you actually want to build. And so how do you balance between you wanting to build cars but customers wanting faster horses? How do you sort of balance that? And the reason why I believe you're a good person is because you've worked in product for the longest time.

Robin (31:03)

Yeah, and I will be super simple here. Usually your potential client, prospect or user is good and right and you are wrong. My point is when you have a hammer, everything that you're going to see looks like a nail and you want to use your hammer on everything. But you need to take a step back and some stuff are maybe screws and some stuff are nails, but you don't need the hammer to fix everything.

If I take my personal example, for three years at Claap, we built a solution to foster asynchronous communication. And I was strongly believer in this category and tool. We were using it at Claap every day. So I was really confident it was useful because I was the first user and the team was super motivated to work on that. But at one point it was hard because it was really changing a lot how people work on a daily basis.

Yash From Momentum (31:32)

Yeah.

Mm

Hmm.

Robin (32:01)

And some of them were crazy about what we did and used it a lot. But for most of the users out there, it was not natural. And so at one point, we just decided to be more tactical and to say, OK, when we build something, really need it to resonate with the users. We want them to use it. It's the first thing. Because you can say you can hide yourself behind the long -term vision. No, what I build is long -term.

Yash From Momentum (32:10)

Mm.

Robin (32:28)

I need more and more more features so that they're to use it and they're going to understand. But no, usually this is what MVPs are for. It's really to build something in a matter of days, in a matter of weeks, where people understand the idea and want to use it. Even if they don't use it, at least they express the willingness because they see the pain and they understand how you can address it. If you fail it, that depends for sure because you have some long -term open AI.

for long, they GDP1, GDP2, and so on. It was not okay and not ready. So for some areas requesting a lot of user research, it's going to take a lot of research and development. That's fine. But for most of the products out there, you can come with an MVP, whether it's a prototype, like with a large layer of service as well. Not everything needs to be automated in step one, but you need really to see users like the...

Yash From Momentum (33:08)

Yeah.

Mm.

Robin (33:23)

the eyes blinking in front of you because otherwise you have your hammer and you try to use it everywhere where it's not supposed to be used.

Yash From Momentum (33:25)

Haha.

Interesting. And what's your question for our next guest? What's something that you are solving for today at Claap?

Robin (33:38)

So we talked about product. My next question would be sales. Now that we are entering in more of a sales driven approach, still using product led growth to nurture our leads as we explained, but really like focusing on sales driven approach to extend and expand our user base and customer base. I would say, how do you build a successful like sales playbook?

Yash From Momentum (33:43)

No.

Robin (34:07)

What are the different deliverables and the different steps? And when can we say, okay, like, it's important to get a playbook and to write things down and not just testing here and there. So the question of formalization, the good moment to formalize and when can we consider it done and useful and so on and so on. So all about SaaS playbook for me is a bit blurry at this stage and we are working on that.

Yash From Momentum (34:20)

Yeah.

I sort of reframed this question a little bit as well. I think this is another type of PMF. This is a playbook market fit. When do you know that the playbook is complete? Something similar to that. How do you actually go about reading it as well? Awesome, Robin. Thank you for joining us for this chat. This really insightful.

Robin (34:36)

Yeah, it was complex, sorry.

Yeah, we can simplify like this.

Yash From Momentum (35:00)

any meaningful and for all the people who've been watching or listening to this on YouTube or to Amazon music or Spotify, you'll be able to find a Claap. It's Claap .io, Claap with AA. You'll be able to find the link in the description. If you have sales teams and if you believe they need coaching and every salesperson needs coaching, can consider signing up and checking out the product as well. Thank you Robin for joining in for this episode.

Robin (35:29)

That was great, great discussion and thank you for having me here, Yash.

Yash From Momentum (35:34)

Absolutely.

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