{"podcast":{"title":"The SaaS Podcast - Real Lessons on Growing Profitable SaaS","slug":"the-saas-podcast","podcast_index_feed_id":745390,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/AHARO1075645324","website_url":"https://saasclub.io/saas-podcast/","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/a7e9f7cc-046b-11ed-9c6d-13dc01eb807a/image/56aa351592d4af156f6e323fc03f036d.png?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"Omer Khan","episode_count":488,"summary":"Building software is easier than ever. Growing it into a profitable business is the hard part. Every week, a founder gets specific about what actually moved the needle: finding product-market fit, landing customers, pricing, defensibility, and durable growth. Host Omer Khan has interviewed nearly 500 software founders, from their first customers to real scale. You get what actually worked, not theory. Lately that includes the honest take on AI: what it changed about building and selling software, and what it didn't. New episodes every week.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-16T22:18:42.217653+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-saas-podcast"},"episode":{"title":"50 Cents a Pool: The Pricing Model Behind a SaaS Exit","slug":"50-cents-a-pool-the-pricing-model-behind-a-saas-exit","published_at":"2026-07-16T12:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-saas-podcast/50-cents-a-pool-the-pricing-model-behind-a-saas-exit","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-saas-podcast","url":"https://traffic.megaphone.fm/AHARO4152116058.mp3","audio_url":"https://traffic.megaphone.fm/AHARO4152116058.mp3","summary":"Ron Hash bootstrapped Skimmer, software for pool service companies, to over $1 million in ARR and 1,500 customers with zero paid marketing, then sold it. His SaaS pricing was the engine: 50 cents per serviced pool with a $29 minimum, when every competitor charged per seat. Ron shares how he validated the idea with one cold call, why his SaaS pricing aligned revenue with each customer's growth, how he cut churn from 6% to 2% by fixing onboarding, and why he never regretted the exit. His SaaS pricing chose a value metric close to the money instead of per-seat pricing, which made adding customers feel good and kept churn low. Ron Hash built Skimmer with no prior SaaS experience and got it to 1,500 customers on SEO and word of mouth alone. That SaaS pricing model kept churn low and made the business acquirable; he sold to Unbundled Capital in 2020, after which the company raised $79 million and grew past 100 employees. He is now building QuickFax. This episode is brought to you by: 🍎 Product Fruits → Book a demo tailored to your product 🔑 Key Lessons 💰 Usage-based SaaS pricing aligns revenue with customer success: Skimmer charged 50 cents per serviced pool, so a customer's bill rose only as their business grew, making them happy to pay more. 📉 Per-seat SaaS pricing punishes growth and drives churn: Ron priced on serviced pools instead of seats, so customers never hesitated to add users and the product became stickier across the whole team. 🎯 Validate with one real conversation, not a survey: Ron cold-called a single pool pro who said \"the paper game is killing me,\" and that one honest answer was enough proof the problem was real. 🚀 SEO plus word of mouth can replace an ad budget: Ranking for \"pool service software\" and delighting customers got Skimmer to 1,500 users with z…","meta_description":"Ron Hash bootstrapped Skimmer, software for pool service companies, to over $1 million in ARR and 1,500 customers with zero paid marketing, then sold it.…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3405,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-saas-podcast/episodes/50-cents-a-pool-the-pricing-model-behind-a-saas-exit/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-saas-podcast/50-cents-a-pool-the-pricing-model-behind-a-saas-exit.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}