SaaS Product-Market Fit Lost at $9M ARR Then Rebuilt

SaaS Product-Market Fit Lost at $9M ARR Then Rebuilt

Author: Omer Khan February 12, 2026 Duration: 1:02:20
Livestorm went from $2M to $9M ARR in one year during COVID - then lost SaaS product-market fit. Gilles Bertaux expanded into meetings and sales demos, turning Livestorm into a smaller Zoom. After a failed Series C, he rebuilt SaaS product-market fit by narrowing to enterprise webinars for European marketers in banking and pharma. You will learn why explosive growth can mask fragile SaaS product-market fit, how to rebuild PMF by narrowing positioning instead of expanding features, and why shifting from PLG to enterprise sales required replacing almost the entire sales team. Gilles Bertaux is the co-founder and CEO of Livestorm, a webinar platform for enterprise marketers. The company generates nearly $20M ARR with 3,500 customers and has raised $35M. Gilles built Livestorm as a university project in 2016, grew it through SEO and Quora, then navigated the product-market alignment challenge of post-COVID market validation. This episode is brought to you by: 🌎 ThreatLocker → Book a demo 💖 Gearheart → Book a free consult and get the first 20 hours free 🔑 Key Lessons 🎯 SaaS product-market fit can be lost by expanding too broadly: Livestorm added meetings and sales demos after COVID, becoming a smaller Zoom with no clear differentiator and declining conversion rates. 📉 Explosive growth can mask fragile PMF: Going from $2M to $9M ARR felt like traction, but 85% of customers were on monthly plans - one click away from churning overnight. 🏢 Narrow positioning wins against giants: Livestorm stopped competing feature-for-feature with Zoom and differentiated on three dimensions - European company for security, marketers only, and specific industries. 🔄 Enterprise sales requires rebuilding, not retraining: Reps who closed inbound leads could not cold-call 10,000-person companies. Gilles replaced almost the entire sales team with enterprise outbound specialists. 💰 A failed fundraise can force the right strategic shift: When Series C investors said no, Livestorm had to become profitable - pushing toward enterprise customers on annual contracts who pay more and stay longer. Chapters Introduction What Livestorm does and revenue milestones Building Livestorm as a university project The disastrous first webinar launch SEO, Quora, and co-marketing as early growth engines How SaaS product-market fit shifted after COVID Going from $2M to $9M ARR in one year Post-COVID churn and the virtual event collapse Losing SaaS product-market fit by becoming a smaller Zoom Rebuilding positioning around Europe, marketers, and industries The painful shift from PLG to enterprise sales Lightning round Resources Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/470 Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email

For anyone building a software company, the journey from an idea to a sustainable business is filled with specific, often daunting, questions. The SaaS Podcast-AI, Growth & Product-Market Fit for SaaS Founders exists to answer those with concrete stories, not abstract advice. Each week, host Omer Khan sits down with founders who have actually done it-they discuss the messy reality of securing those first few customers, the difficult adjustments needed to find true product-market fit, and the tactical decisions behind scaling to and beyond a million dollars in annual revenue. Conversations delve into the nitty-gritty of pricing models, sales processes, reducing churn, and the practical application of AI in a SaaS context. Omer’s perspective is shaped by having personally coached over a hundred and fifty founders past critical revenue milestones and conducting interviews with more than five hundred others. This depth of experience means every episode cuts straight to actionable insights, whether you’re painstakingly bootstrapping toward ten thousand in monthly recurring revenue or managing the complexities of rapid growth. The focus is relentlessly on proven strategies that have worked in the real world. Tuning into this podcast feels like gaining access to a private mastermind, a resource where thousands of other founders gather weekly to learn from the honest successes and setbacks of their peers.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The SaaS Podcast - Real Lessons on Growing Profitable SaaS
Podcast Episodes
Eric Ries on How Founders Quietly Lose Their Company [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:29
He wrote the startup playbook. Then he watched founders who used it lose control of what they built. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, felt like he was feeding companies into a meat grinder. Founders will hear his s…
Community-Led SaaS Growth: How Ninety Hit $44M ARR [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:08
He talked openly about his startup idea. A competitor took it and beat him to market. Mark Abbott shared his SaaS vision inside a tight-knit coaching community. A member passed it to a client who launched first. Founders…
Founder-Led Sales: From 2% to 20% with 10-Hour Custom Demos [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:11
Two years on Quora and Reddit. Zero customers. Yega Kumarappan and his two co-founders had no sales experience. They bet that founder-led sales could beat the B2B sales playbook. Founders will hear how Paperflite grew fr…
Bootstrapped SaaS: $12M ARR Across 5 Products With a Team of 10 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:10
Two failed startups. 250K euros in debt. Stuck in Paris with a sick baby and no plan. Tibo Louis-Lucas walked away from a stable CTO job and shipped 11 products in 4 months on unemployment benefits. Today TMAKER is a boo…
AI Startup Hits $8.6M ARR With V0 MVP and €85 Pricing [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:20
Hadn't coded in four years. No team. No idea. Marius Meiners launched his AI startup, Peec AI, with a V0 prototype built in 1.5 days and 8 letters of intent. 14 months later: $8.6M ARR, 55 employees, and a competitor wit…
The 8-Figure Open Source SaaS Playbook [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:12
He built a free tool as a lead magnet. Then customers started calling his cell phone, begging to pay for it. Ev Kontsevoy turned an open source SaaS side project into Teleport, now an 8-figure ARR business with 500+ cust…
The Risky AI SaaS Rebuild That Broke a $2M ARR Ceiling [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:02
Most SaaS onboarding is terrible - rigid, pushy, and forgettable. Karel Papik spent 15 years designing video games before he looked at B2B software and thought: this is hopeless. He co-founded Product Fruits, a digital a…
Finding Product-Market Fit After 3 Years of Failed Ideas [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:07
Three years. Zero traction. Then product-market fit hit - twice. Girish Redekar taught himself to code at 28 and spent years on failed ideas before B2B product-market fit clicked with RecruiterBox. Customers endured a br…
Bootstrapped SaaS Growth When AI Took Over the Market [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:07
His competitors have raised hundreds of millions. ChatGPT can do the basics of what his product does. Sylvestre Dupont's entire company is six people. His competitive differentiation strategy - that most businesses want…
Vertical SaaS: $0 to $10M ARR With Flat Pricing for Everyone [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:55
Five years to the first million. Zero dollars raised. NFL teams pay the same price as high school teams. Hewitt Tomlin built TeamBuildr into a $10M ARR vertical SaaS company by focusing on one job function and refusing t…