The SaaS Club Newsletter

Hey Reader

Here's a quick round up of what's been going on at SaaS Club:

 In this week's newsletter:

• 🎧 A first-time founder's epic sprint to $1M in 12 months
  

• 🚀 Join other SaaS founders on the road to $10K MRR
  

• 🛠️ The counterintuitive path to scaling demos
  

• 📗 Three must-read books for SaaS founders

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🎧 Podcast: New Episode

Pocus: From Founder Pain to First $1M ARR in One Year

Alexa Grabell is the co-founder and CEO of Pocus, an AI-powered sales prospecting tool that helps sales teams generate pipeline more efficiently.

In 2019, while working on sales strategy and ops at Data Miner, Alexa was frustrated seeing sales data scattered across multiple tools and systems.

She decided to hack together her own solution.

During her time at Stanford Business School, she met her co-founder and they began working on a way to help sales teams spend more time selling instead of drowning in data.

Through Stanford's Lean Launchpad program, they interviewed 350 sales professionals to validate their idea before writing a single line of code.

It took a year to build the first version of the product. But their patience paid off – within their first year of launching, they hit $1 million in ARR.

But as first-time founders without any enterprise sales experience, they struggled with everything—from business cases to complex negotiations.

They faced constant pressure to expand beyond sales into other teams, but stayed focused on serving sales teams exclusively – a decision that proved critical to their early success.

Today, Pocus is a Series A company with 30 people, generating seven figures in ARR, and helping customers like Asana, Canva, and Miro.

In this episode you'll learn:

• How Alexa and her co-founder validated their idea through rapid experimentation before writing a single line of code

• What strategies they used to grow from zero to $1 million ARR in less than a year

• How they built a thriving community of over 4,000 members that became a powerful lead-generation engine

• Why their approach to AI focuses on augmenting rather than replacing sales teams

• How they overcame the challenges of enterprise sales as first-time founders

• What methods they used to differentiate themselves in a crowded market of sales tools.

I hope you enjoy it.

Check out the full episode on:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Web

🚀 Early-Stage SaaS Founder? Hit $10K MRR Faster

Struggling to scale your early-stage SaaS? Most founders waste precious time and money making rookie mistakes without a clear path forward. 

SaaS Club Launch is a 12-week group coaching program that connects you with a close-knit community of early-stage SaaS founders. 

Get personalized guidance, weekly group coaching, and grow alongside fellow founders also on the path to $10K MRR.

Apply now to join

🤔 SaaS Insights

Your Demo Skills = Growth Ceiling to $1M ARR

What if I told you crushing your SaaS demos is killing your path to $1M ARR?

Here's why talented founders get stuck after hitting $100K:

1. Your product expertise is a trap: you nail the technical discussion in every demo, but no sales rep can match your deep knowledge.

2. Your high close rate hides problems: you convert 40% of demos because you're amazing, but a normal rep will close 10% with your current process.

3. Your sales deck doesn't matter: you barely use one because you know the pitch cold. But a new rep will drown without solid sales assets.

4. Your calendar is the bottleneck: deals sit waiting for your demo slot, creating a hard ceiling on monthly revenue.

The fix? Build a simpler sales process.

✅ Write a clear value prop.

✅ Document common objections.

✅ Create a sales deck that actually works.

✅ Make it so an average rep can close at 25%.

Truth is, predictable process beats raw talent when scaling ARR.

You can either be the best closer or build a sales machine. Not both.

Which will you choose?

Want to join a group of like-minded six-figure SaaS founders supporting each other to $1 Million ARR and beyond?

Apply for my Mastermind here.

 📗 Book of the Week

This week's book recommendations are from Alexa:

1️⃣ The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building by Matt Mochary and Alex MacCaw

2️⃣ The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

3️⃣ Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity by Frank Slootman

🌟 Help Spread the Word

Enjoyed this week's newsletter? Please do me a favor and forward this email to someone who would benefit from it as much as you did. 

Sharing is caring, and it helps us grow! ❤️

😍 Let's Get Social

Want to get more social? Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Have a great week!

- Omer

Interested in sponsoring The SaaS Podcast or this newsletter?

P.S. Whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

1. Join SaaS Club Plus: Get early access to our new community for early-stage SaaS founders. Join the waitlist now!

2. Apply for SaaS Club Launch: Designed to accelerate your journey to $10K MRR for new and early-stage founders.

3. Apply for SaaS Club Mastermind: Scale from six to seven figures with our focused mastermind group.