Lessons in differentiation at scale from Sendspark's Bethany Stachenfeld

20 Mar 2025 · 34 min

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In short

The SaaS Revolution Show - Episode Summary

Podcast Details

  • Title: The SaaS Revolution Show
  • Host: Alex Theuma
  • Episode Title: Lessons in differentiation at scale from Sendspark's Bethany Stachenfeld
  • Guest: Bethany Stachenfeld, Co-founder and CEO of Sendspark
  • Episode Duration: 30 minutes

Episode Overview In this episode, Alex Theuma interviews Bethany Stachenfeld, the co-founder and CEO of Sendspark. Bethany shares her journey transitioning from marketing to SaaS entrepreneurship, the founding story of Sendspark, approaches to product differentiation, and strategies for staying relevant in a rapidly changing market.

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Key Themes and Discussions

  1. Bethany's Background
  2. Career Transition: Moved from a marketing role to a SaaS founder.
  3. Sendspark's Origin: Identified a gap in the market for scalable video messaging in outbound email marketing.
  1. Differentiation in SaaS
  2. Importance of Differentiation: Emphasized the need to stand out in a saturated market. Simply matching competitors doesn't attract customers.
  3. Unique Features: Developed a feature that allows users to clone videos at scale using AI, making personalized video communication more accessible.
  1. Managing Growth and Innovation
  2. Staying Relevant: Discussed the necessity of adapting to changing sales practices and consumer needs.
  3. Future Trends: Mentioned the shift towards intent-based outreach rather than generic cold prospecting.
  1. Fundraising Journey
  2. Initial Funding: Raised $3 million over five years, aiming for efficiency rather than growth at all costs.
  3. Raising Under Pressure: Shared insights on the challenges of fundraising in a tough market and the importance of early momentum from investors.
  1. Marketing Strategies
  2. Customer Acquisition: Utilizes a mix of outbound marketing, intent-tracking tools, and partnerships.
  3. Use of Sendspark: Incorporates their own product in marketing efforts, observing significantly higher engagement rates with personalized video content.
  1. Lessons for Founders
  2. Pitching Insights: Advocated for clear, simple messaging in pitches that resonate with audiences unfamiliar with complex details.
  3. Continuous Innovation: Stressed the importance of innovating continuously and not falling into the trap of "if it’s not broken, don’t fix it."

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Key Takeaways

  • Focus on Differentiation: Understand what makes your product unique and double down on that.
  • Stay Agile: Be responsive to market changes and evolving customer needs.
  • Build Strategic Relationships: Networking and partnerships can be crucial for growth.
  • Fundraising Strategy: Approach fundraising strategically; aim to create momentum and control your own terms.

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Conclusion The episode provides valuable lessons on differentiation, marketing strategy, and the realities of running a SaaS business. Bethany Stachenfeld’s journey illustrates the importance of innovation and staying attuned to market demands while balancing growth with efficient operations.

For more insights, listeners are encouraged to explore upcoming SaaStock events and join a community of SaaS founders for ongoing support and resources.

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Guest Links

  • [Bethany Stachenfeld on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethany-stachenfeld/)
  • [Sendspark Website](https://www.sendspark.com/)

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Transcript

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0:01When it comes to selling a sales tool, our goal is that our customers are able to sell with a tool. Like that's all that matters to us is like, how are we helping our customers win? And sales practices, tactics, et cetera, it continues to evolve. And it always will because like once you do something a lot, it kind of stops being effective and you have to be on to the next thing. So, you know, we're always trying to figure out like what is coming next and how do we build for that now? Welcome to the SaaS Revolution Show, a podcast by SaaS. Here we interview SaaS founders from around the world who've been there and done that.

0:35as they share the ins and outs of how they built their businesses, their operations, their path for securing investment, and more. Our mission with the podcast is to help you, the founder, learn how to scale your SaaS, maintain your well-being, and navigate the complexities of this ever-changing industry. I'm your host, Alex Deema, and together we'll explore the good, the bad, and the ugly in the journey to SaaS success. All right. Welcome, everyone, back to the SaaS Revolution show. I am your host, Alex Deema, CEO and founder of Sastark, also general partner at Back Future Ventures. Delighted to be joined today by Bethany Stachenfeld.

1:13Hopefully I got that almost correct, who is the CEO, co-founder at SenseSpark. How are you doing, Bethany? I'm good. Yeah, thanks so much for having me here. Good to have you. Now, is that a bale of hay behind you or is it kind of like one of those rugs that you hang on the wall? It is. It's a tapestry. And it's funny because I I used to work in like out of our investor's office in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and they had this there and I just liked it. I would always do all my my calls in front of it. So even after moving to Austin, I found it on Etsy and I bought it. I was going to say, did you just take it off your investor's wall and bring it?

1:49I tried. I literally was like, can I just move? The other one was huge. I didn't know it fit my car. And they were like, that was two thousand dollars. You can't have it. So I bought a smaller one for much cheaper. very cool very cool and what is it like a tapestry of it's not the same spot it's literally just what it is i mean i don't know but i i just i like the yellow i feel like it stands out a little it's just a little different it's good it's good giving giving good vibes but good to see you again actually i was just in austin a couple of weeks ago um i hope the weather has improved i couldn't i couldn't believe my luck i wanted to escape the uk winter which has been very long I mean that wasn't the reason I didn't come to escape the UK winter but I just thought it was an added benefit because it's great weather always in Austin so I packed for my shorts and t-shirts and then I came to Austin and the next day I woke up and I saw the weather forecast and it was freezing temperatures and I was like oh just my luck so I didn't see any sun then but I just feel it's improved at the moment it is better yeah you came at literally the the coldest day of the winter so thank you for bringing one mid-winter with you i think it's just following me uh at the moment but good to see you we had a great uh ceo dinner um uh at the eberle good to connect with the the local austin sas founders ahead of sas.usa uh sort of this may um and they're great to have you on the podcast for uh for the first time as well so we're really um looking forward to learning even more about you and the sense park journey uh as well but so let's start with uh learning a little bit more about yourself and, you know, with the question, who is Bethany Stackenfeld?

3:32Who is Bethany? What a deep question to start. Well, right now I feel like I am my company. So I've been working on Sunspark now for over five years. My background is in marketing. So I built a video tool that is kind of a marketer's dream in a way. I'm living in Austin, Texas and I'm from the northeast from New Jersey from New Jersey what brought you to Austin the sunshine it was mostly the sunshine it was actually very hard to get here I love Austin I love Texas and I love sun I'm married to someone who's in medical school so I had to have him match into residency here so he can move here but luckily he's very competent and got in and we we can move out here and like the the tech scene or maybe like has been growing like somewhat in in austin i don't know if it's like because of covid and people decided that they didn't have to be in new york or sf anymore and they wanted the majority better weather um but yeah like how do you view it uh like at the moment and your let's say sass ecosystem or fellow ecosystem of of ceos Is it thriving?

4:47Is it valuable for you? Yeah, I actually think Austin could be the best, my very best friend, could be the best ecosystem for SaaS founders because San Francisco is the best founder ecosystem for sure. But a lot of that is like deep tech or, you know, like AI, more like technical things. But I think if you come to Austin, it's also where a lot of big companies will have their sales departments here. And so if you're building like for sales tech or just B2B SaaS, There's actually an amazing community and the concentration of people doing that is very, very high. And then people will also come in for it.

5:21So that's part of the reason – like I spend a lot of time in San Francisco, especially when we're like fundraising or you just kind of want to be around a lot of different minds. But, you know, in New York you have a concentration of everyone. So it's not just one thing. But I think Austin's very like high concentration B2B SaaS startups and founders. And so it makes it really fun to build here with other people who are building similar, you know, in a similar space and can use each other's products and all that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, we found Austin and probably even like broadly in Texas that certainly like Houston and San Antonio, it feels like there's a good SaaS ecosystem around Texas.

5:59we could probably fill the SaaS stock conference just with folks in Texas. But also, it's just more fun if people are traveling, you know, from across the US, a little bit more, you know, diverse thoughts and opinions there and companies. So you've been there a couple of years, but you've been building Sensebart for over five years. So tell us why you decided to make that leap from the marketing sort of like career to being a CEO. maybe what's easier being a CEO or, or, or being a marketer. Uh, but I guess also you've got an advantage now you're a CEO that knows marketing well, which is, uh, uh, which is definitely an advantage, but yeah, um, I'll, I'll pause there.

6:41It's funny cause, um, my co-founder just sent out like a thing and I've seen it before. And this kind of like lives in my head of like, we started the company not because it was easy, but because we thought it would be easy. And I think there's so many people that like feel that way or like, Oh, this will be so easy. Let me just do it. And then, you know, you get into it, you're like, actually, there's a lot more to this that I didn't realize. But I mean, personally, I love like the journey. I think it's been, you know, in a way we can talk about some of the problems and challenges, but all of it, it's like just makes life interesting.

7:12So I think I was really drawn to that in terms of like why SendSpark. We just saw, my co-founder and I saw a really big opportunity. We were doing a lot of outbound email. Like I was marketing. I was doing a lot of the email automation and we were trying to send videos and we found that the videos got really good responses, especially if you're in the education space. Like people really like the personal connection. It made a big difference. But you couldn't scale video the way that you could scale email. Like with email, you can have a template. You can change different variables, change different things and personalize its scale.

7:46And with video, you're either recording one video, it's very manual, or just sending the same thing to everyone. There isn't that dynamic element. And so we just saw that as a massive opportunity and thought it'd be a lot easier to do than it is. So we started, you know, six years ago and it probably took us at least like three years to build a really, really good product. And, you know, now I'm super proud of the product and what we built and we're bringing some amazing companies on board and getting great results for them. So it's been it's definitely been like a journey, but I'm super proud of what we built now.

8:22Amazing. I mean, just on the easy sort of like point, I mean, it's definitely not easy building a company or building a SaaS business. I think being a CEO, it's never easy, right? I mean, there's always constant issues that, you know, we have to deal with. I got inspired actually by one of the speakers who's coming to SAS USA who's the the founding CEO of Guidewire and he's now at Battery Ventures and he's got a great talk I don't know if you've seen it but I can send it to you where he talks about it's not necessarily a concept but he uses the word sort of like more mountain and he's explaining this story that effectively he's talking to his team it's like okay like what we're doing you know I don't know like on a daily basis it's like we're digging through a mountain right you know and it's that hard and then what's at the other end of the mountain more mountain yes and that's just that's just how it is it actually inspired me to update my company values and and effectively saying look we we we kind of we don't choose easy we choose hard right and what we do is hard and you know giving that analogy it's just like let's say we we do one event saslop usa once that's done we have to do you know the next event right and it just doesn't never never becomes easier right there isn't that moment there's always well you're like yeah like when we get this like like uh i remember being like super early we're like we get 20k mrr we're gonna buy tesla we're gonna be so and then you're like you're good there you're like no fuck we need a million we need a million in error and then you've a million you're like we need 10 like it never stops like so no teslas yet no teslas yet okay all right we just have to hitch a ride with nathan latke uh then um and and and so five five years in and well actually before we get to get to that uh can you tell us like you are you bootstrapped venture backs i mean i think you mentioned that you uh the tapestry was you know um inspired by one of the VCs.

10:32So, and maybe just a little bit of data about the company, like where, how is it going five years in? Yeah. Yeah. So we've raised some VC, not a ton. Um, well, relatively, I guess we've raised 3 million in VC over the last five years. Um, and so I like, that might sound like a lot of my slang a little, but the way I see us is we're kind of like in the middle, like you basically have your people that are totally bootstrap or not that. And your people that are like, Oh, we raised so much money and we can just do whatever we want. And we're not like that either. We're like, okay, we have money and we're putting it to work.

11:03Like I actually really pride, um, our ability to be efficient. Um, we're very close to being profitable. Um, and we're, you know, still growing consistently, but not like growth at all costs, just burning money. What's really important to us is like having a good business, having really strong, like activation retention metrics, making sure our customers are successful. Um, which all comes into like building a good, like a real business. Um, Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And so is your view that you've raised enough money to help you do this profitable business and not have that requirement to be on the venture path and do an A, B, C, D, E, F and forever raising?

11:48I think we might. I actually think maybe we will go down that route and raise more and do our ABCDEF. But about two years ago or whenever we raised our seed round, we really had to raise. Like we are running out of money. We had really short runway. Like we needed to raise. And I don't think that that was a good position to be in. Like I was not I was not raising because I wanted to. I was raising because I had to. And so I took that as long as an experience. I was like, we will never have to raise again. We will want to raise. We'll be like, great, everything's going so good that we want to put more in the business and fuel this and make sure we have that and choose to raise.

12:28I think being profitable lets you control your own destiny, raise on better terms, and just be in a stronger position. So the goal is to never need to raise a Series D or else the company will die. But I do believe that Sensefark, you know, can be a unicorn and I want to go down that path. I just want to do it on our terms. Fair enough. But how was that then that experience if they say that you had really short runway raising because you had to going out to these VCs and they would look at, I guess, your data room request, you know, certain information. They see that the runway is short. What was like the feedback from the VCs?

13:10Obviously, you did manage to raise that three million. and I imagine it would have been a very stressful time for you, right? But what was the VC perception of this? Yeah, well, I mean, it was pretty, I mean, it was calming. It was also a really bad time to be fundraising, which we knew, and I'm kind of forgetting the details now because it was a bit ago, but when our runway was getting short, it was a bad time to raise. And so we're like, oh, we'll wait and see if things get better. And then the market just kind of got worse and worse. And we're like, all right, it's time. The clock is here. And so what we ended up doing, our burn was pretty low at the time relatively.

13:47So what we ended up doing was we started taking checks in immediately. So we wanted to raise like$2 million. And what we did was we basically just started taking checks as soon as possible on saves. And I remember like because our runway was short, the first person who was going to invest was like, I'll invest but only if you can get, you know, a small chunk. So not the full$2 million but I think it was$400 ,000. It was like if you can get this much because I don't want to give you a check and then have you go out of business a month later. And so what we ended up doing was we basically were able to then get up that$400 ,000 from, you know, some investors.

14:27And then that also gave us another year of runway. And then so when we raised the rest of the round and the full amount, we weren't having – I'm going to say it was like three months or whatever it was we had a lot more runway and we're in a stronger position and also like thing with fundraising is like no one wants to invest no one wants to invest no one wants to invest and then one person wants to invest and now your round has momentum and then people are throwing checks at you so um it was it was like a little bit nerve-wracking to get that first check and that first thing but as soon as we got it um everything else kind of fit into place and whilst i was in austin i think before we had the dinner it was something it was before maybe the same day i uh i caught up with uh pep uh ladra uh and he said oh you you you know you should get set um uh you should get bethany to to sassock usa and you know business is going really well i don't know if he's one of your angel investors but it was kind of like uh he he was saying a lot of good things there so but i'm assuming he's correct there like but can you share like you know it's going well at the moment what are the things that that you're doing to really kind of like drive the the business forward and grow SenSpot the biggest thing that we did that set us on a really strong path was building a feature that was really really different and really really better than our competitor for us that was like the ability to clone your videos at scale like clone yourself and scale videos with AI so you can record one and then you know personalize it for hundreds or thousands of people.

16:03But I think just as a general concept for founders listening to this, it was just being really different. I think early on, we were getting a lot of feedback that people were asking us to build features that were similar to our competitors. And so we kept doing that. But if you're not like, really different, doesn't matter that you have the same features, people are still going to use their competitor because they've known them longer, you know, whatever. So we kind of made the decision to say, hey, like, we're going to put parity on hold and just really focus on differentiation. What is something that like marketers really need at scale that Loom drops the ball on, that other companies drop the ball and let's like be the absolute best at that.

16:40So we basically niched down. And then, and that just had so many benefits. Like then we were able to like give us a really strong brand direction and we were able to build a brand for ourselves as being the absolute best at personalized video at scale. People who needed that feature would come to us um you know clearly better than the alternatives and so we did that i'm going to say now is like 18 months ago um is when we started making that like really intense uh evolution in that direction and that's what made the the biggest difference i love that and i think there is i'm sure many of the founders are listening and you know they've heard this before but really just try and find you know that one thing that you you know you can be the best in the world on uh and like double down on that uh too often that doesn't happen and you you know you i think you it's very hard like for a lot because of the market is saturated to see like how do we differentiate and you know this company's got this feature so we should have it and so on and so forth and um but uh i love that you've done that and it's it's working out you know putting uh uh i I guess that, you know, the best advice, you know, into practice and seeing the results and hopefully many listening can also just think about what is that one thing that we're the best in the world at or want to be the best in the world at and really double down on that.

18:00I'll also say there's two parts to that. So you want to pick something that you're the absolute best in the world at. And you also want to make sure that that is part of a growing trend. And so now you're an integral part of that trend and really differentiated. so with us we're able to to really be part of the ai trend which is big but also be part of the go to market engineer trend and the shift to you know people in outbound roles trying to do more at scale and so we're able to like put ourselves in that as the best tool for that and i think those are too important because you don't want to be the best in the world at something that that like no cares about or is small or worse is like a shrinking market you want to be part of the the trend and, and, um, and really good at that.

18:44How are you going to market? How are you acquiring customers? What does that look like? We're doing a lot. Um, we're doing a lot of different things. Also, we never raised a ton of funding, right? So like, we don't have a huge team. Um, I don't, I mean, other than that, we all kind of do a little marketing. We don't have even a full-time marketer right now. Uh, but some of the things we're doing are, um, we do a lot of outbound and we do a lot of, you know, part of the trend of like signal-based selling or inbound lead outbound or something where it's like, we're doing a lot of cold email, cold video, but we really try to, to like reach out based on intent and monitor that at scale, you know, using tools to monitor social or, you know, different shifts so that we can reach out to the right people at the right time and the right message.

19:29What tools are you using? So you talk, we talked about intent there um what are you using there if you're happy to share yeah for intent i mean we're using clay for a lot of things um to track like just different things or behavior on the web we also do a lot of linkedin monitoring so we use trigify to monitor certain like topics we use expandy um to like scrape people who engage in certain posts or follow certain brands or attend certain events things like that and then and that's like what we what's going on in the world and then we're like all right well maybe no one else has a good post or good event so we'll create our own too but part of that is like part one of our strategy that's going to be following up and sending you know great emails and videos so we'll also do our own webinars or we have a lot of people on the team posting on linkedin posting on other channels posting on youtube to try to drive um to drive like more inbound and then specifically for things that we know we're really good at um and we can follow up with we haven't done a ton of ads or seo um just because we have a small team i'd like to do more of that and then we also try to um we try to do a lot of partnerships too because it's part of our product right you're always sending the videos and emailing to other tools so we'll work with other brands and i imagine uh i don't know if you call it drinking your own champagne in in the u.s in england often we say eating your own dog food it probably sounds a bit better drinking your own champagne.

20:55But with your outbound emails, you're using SendSpark a lot. Yeah, of course. We have a video and pretty much, and at least every email campaign, maybe not every single email in the campaign, but it's a lot of videos. I mean, it's cool because then you look at the results and it's always like what email in the sequence is getting the most clicks and the most replies. It's always the one with the video. Is there any data or stats that you can kind of share uh around that so like you send an email without the send spark video uh and the one that you do and you know how does that compare yeah so if we're sending a sequence like we'll usually do like first email like no video and then follow up with a video um and then another one that's kind of like no video and then the last one that's not a personalized video but just like a link to a case study or something like it's maybe video content but it's not like AI personalized for you.

21:48So that's like a common four-step sequence we have. And you can see that usually the second email with a personalized video will have, I mean, a ton more clicks because people are clicking to watch the video, but we'll often have like twice or maybe even three times as many replies as the first one. And then often the one at the end that has the case study video will have a lot of clicks, but not necessarily a ton of replies. But I think it's still good like intent signal to say like maybe not ready now but like they're looking at the case study they're kind of vaguely interested and then sometimes we'll follow up or send like a personal LinkedIn DM after people watch if people are watching their video and don't click and I think that's a great way to use video is you know sometimes it's a hard sell but other times you're just sending something kind of helpful and then you know seeing if someone clicks and then following up from there to be like oh but what about that was interesting to you and you can kind of learn a lot even if you're not um even if they're not ready to buy right then we talked about it's not as easy as we think right and there are there are always issues when we're building a business growing a business scaling a business being a ceo um if thinking about like 2025 maybe and like some of the challenges that you uh have thought about and like how how do we overcome these to really kind of grow and scale the business like can you share maybe kind of like one or two of these like What are the challenges and how you're looking to overcome these?

23:12I think some challenges are that things are just changing. I mean, things always change. It's not like a new challenge. But I think when you're doing any type of... When it comes to selling a sales tool, our goal is that our customers are able to sell with a tool. That's all that matters to us. How are we helping our customers win? and sales practices, tactics, et cetera, it continues to evolve. And it always will because like once you do something a lot, it kind of stops being effective and you have to be on to the next thing. So we're always trying to figure out like what is coming next and how do we build for that now?

23:51I think one of the things that's been kind of in motion that we saw coming and is now getting to be really important is reaching out to people based on actions they take and intent and not just like cold prospecting. And so that's something that like we just really are trying to figure out how to build into our product and set our customers up for successfully, even though it can look a little bit different for every company. Because the way that like you find intent for people attending like SaaS stock or sponsoring SaaS stocks couldn't be very different than the way, you know, a med tech company finds a hospital that's hiring and needs their, you know, doctor hiring tool or whatever.

24:27So we're trying to figure out like, how do we, how do we help our product personalize at scale for a bunch of different industries and a bunch of different things. And, and that's just like, it's a little bit of trying to predict the future, because you got to like, predict and then build it and then have it ready for when, you know, people are like, just on that, because I mean, well, for me, it's very topical. at the moment like I guess I'll sort of just give you my example now obviously we're not a SaaS company we're we're an events business like as in terms of let's say that's the core proposition but also community and you know providing content etc but the our conferences provide the most revenue oh sorry I don't know what happened there but I'm back but yeah our conferences provide the most revenue it's the you know the core stream of the business and And when I kind of reflect, you know, I created the product.

25:28We had some iterations, you know, around sort of like innovation. But then there certainly was a point where it was like, well, if it's not broke, don't fix it. So the innovation wasn't necessarily coming. And then you start to see that actually, you know, there is a shift in what the customer wants. But actually, we haven't necessarily sort of like built that. uh and and so there was a certainly a period i would say like 12 to 24 24 months of where we hadn't innovated and then we're seeing you know maybe this kind of like an adverse uh impact to an extent we were still doing well but we also saw that we weren't quite delivering what the customer wanted uh and then you know finally i think like this year um you know i spent a bit of time last year you know thinking about the future and then like how do we uh you know innovate how do we upgrade the product and and we've done that for for 2025 and then when i look back and say well actually you know it should have been my job as the ceo to constantly think about innovation but perhaps i was thinking well we're not a sas company so we don't have to come out with all these new features uh so on and so forth um but i i guess with with your role as the ceo thinking about like you know what is the future going to be how are we going to involve the product how do you spend your how do you do that how do you spend your time on that and getting these ideas in you know into the business oh man it's so hard I mean I think that um every day like looks a little different in terms of are we planning for the future or are we just focusing on delivering what people are asking for right now or are we raising money or hiring it and you know, there's always a mix of like planning for the long term versus just executing for the short term.

27:15So I don't have like a great system. I mean, honestly, some of my system is just like, do what I want. Like, it sounds bad. But like, if there's something I feel like I like should be doing, but I really don't want to, I will often just be like, well, maybe I'll do something else right now. And then I'll just see if I want to do it later. And now I'm kind of like optimizing for maximum enjoyment. But like, I think when you enjoy things, you get better. So, you know, sometimes I'm just like, hey, I'm really, maybe I'll have a conversation or something sparse. I'm like, I'm really into this right now.

27:45I'll walk up an hour and do it. And then try to like, do something else later. And what I'm trying to make a habit of doing is like, when I start something, like really try to finish it at the moment, or at least like, get it as finished as possible. So maybe that means like, pushing out the next thing I'd planned in 30 minutes, but making sure like okay while I'm thinking about the future right now instead of being like I'm gonna half think and then like do something else and come back I'll try to like complete it get it in motion and then I can move on to the next thing because I think one of the things that's be that can be really bad at a startup like for any person the founder or employees is when you have a ton of like half started things and nothing's like actually getting out or done and you're like I'm so busy but you're not doing anything so I kind of do a lot of different things But what I'll often do is just be like, okay, I'm going to do this and I'm going to finish it and then I'll do the next thing.

28:35But for those that I don't have like necessarily the best system of how to balance. Yeah, no, it is hard. But I think like for me, again, if I look at last year, maybe one of the changes, like obviously speaking to customers a lot and just kind of like seeing like what's happening in the market, what are they looking for? like you know anybody else doing this and kind of getting their feedback uh going to some of the market leading events and you know just kind of checking out not necessarily direct competition but you know other other like industry shows and just kind of uh learning from um and and then i think yeah just spending a bit more time thinking about like uh in innovation and and just kind of changing that mindset of uh well if it's not broke don't fix it because i think um then if you're not innovating and not not changing for the future then it will come a point where it you know comes back to comes back to bite you um i want to um so like last year sensbar entered the sasot usa pitch competition and you guys got to the final um uh unfortunately didn't win but you were in the final three i think you know out of uh initially 100 companies and then 50 you know at the conference so it's a a pretty good achievement what uh maybe for those that are listening you know uh the i guess kind of early stage because you have to be preceded seed you know thinking about potentially you know applying to uh the pitch competition at sas.usa this year in may uh any like good advice lessons learnings that you had uh from that were um that you can share i think when it comes to pitching what's hard is cutting things out like you want to tell story that people 100 % understand and can get excited about.

30:24And I think as a founder, sometimes you're like, but there's so much more. And it just, it doesn't matter because people can't understand everything in a three minute pitch. So you really have to distill like, what do you want people to like, remember and take away? And I think the best pitches are the ones that are really simple, but still showcase why it's really exciting, why your customers love your product, why what you are building needs to exist in the world um so try to try to just cut cut it out and get it to like a third grade comprehension level um and you know your audience is on expert in your space they're just going to be excited by what you're building if you you can share that and just a couple of final questions uh bethany so um i guess just like we spoke about austin it's sort of like booming in SAS, SAS.

31:15And that's great. And then part of the reason that SAS.USA is there. But if you're coming from out of town and there's one thing that you've got to do when in Austin for SAS.USA, what is it? What's your recommendation? Like top tip? You can do tips, but top tip. Top tip, just go out with the people after the conference. Doesn't matter what. Like, yeah, you should eat barbecue. You should do all these things. But I mean, people are coming from all over the world and from within Austin. There's great people here. So just try to go out and meet as many people as you can and just have a good time.

31:50Don't try to sell your product so hard. It'll sell itself naturally. Just try to have fun with all the people there. Yeah. Well, you can't not have fun in Austin, I think. But not only because it is a great fun city, but I think just generally all the people seem super cool there and very friendly. and yeah. Fast Talk brings a great crowd, you know. I think so, I think so. And so Beth, if people want to reach out to you, I mean, if people are coming to Fast Talk USA, they'll get to meet you in person and not sell their product to you, but maybe just get to know you a little bit better, say that they listen to the podcast and it helped them.

32:30But if they want to reach out to you before then, how can they do it? And yeah. Yeah, either by email. My email is bethany at sendspark.com. Send a video, spark conversation, send spark. And LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm the only Bethany Staggenfeld as far as I know. So you can find me there. Awesome. Great stuff. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. Looking forward to seeing you in May with better weather. I mean, it's guaranteed, right? Mid-May. Unless we have like a tornado. Yeah. Well, unless I come and then I'll just bring something with me. But that won't happen. That won't happen.

33:03But looking forward to it. Thank you so much. and we'll see you in May at SAS.USA. Awesome. See you there. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the SAS Revolution Show. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you learned something from it, check out sasdoc.com forward slash events to find all the upcoming SAS.Conferences around the world. Want exclusive SAS content and actionable insights to grow your SAS? Join our community of over 36 ,000 SAS founders at sasdoc.com. Oh.

From the publisher

Host Alex Theuma is joined by Sendspark Co-founder and CEO (and SaaStock USA speaker) Bethany Stachenfeld.

In this 30 minute episode, Beth shares:

- Her journey from Marketer to SaaS founder and CEO.
- The Sendspark founding story and journey so far.
- How Sendspark approaches differentiation.
- Advice for founders differentiating their product at scale.
- How to stay relevant in a fast-moving product space.
And more!

Guest links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethany-stachenfeld/
https://www.sendspark.com/
 

 

 

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business forward: 

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Book tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/

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Book tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/

🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS
founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and
helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)

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bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most
pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

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