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: 50

The SaaS Podcast - Real Lessons on Growing Profitable SaaS
Podcast Episodes
B2B SaaS Sales: How Firing SMBs Led to 8x Growth [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:33
SMBs were 70% of revenue but churning fast with misaligned feature requests. Bernard Aceituno fired them all and focused on B2B SaaS sales in the mid-market. The result was an 8x revenue multiplier in one year, with deal…
Product-Market Fit Lost and Found After a 100x Spike [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:34
Negative 110% gross margins. Then COVID demand spiked 100x overnight - and nearly killed the company anyway. Pat Kinsel spent years chasing product-market fit while losing money on every transaction. When the pandemic br…
Product-Market Fit: 2 Failures to $200M ARR at Pendo [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:25
Two failed startups. Zero product-market fit. Then an obsession that built a $200M ARR company. Todd Olson spent a year doing founder-led sales, refused to hire salespeople until $500K ARR, and would not scale until he s…
Building AI Products: The Positioning Shift to 7 Figures [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:55
He raised over $50M for TeamFlow, then fired two-thirds of his team when COVID ended. Flo Crivello pivoted to building AI products with Lindy, an agent platform that lets anyone automate workflows without code. The first…
SaaS Churn: 100K Signups but Only 100 Active Users [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:48
100,000 signups in the first month. A SaaS churn rate of 99.9%. Richard White had only 100 people actually using Fathom daily after Zoom featured them in their marketplace. Instead of panicking, he used those low-quality…
SaaS Product Validation: 7 Years Before the Fit Clicked [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:30
Seven years. Near-zero revenue. Multiple failed prototypes. Rob Woollen's SaaS product validation journey at Sigma Computing is one of the longest in SaaS history. He raised $8M, built prototype after prototype, and rece…
First SaaS Customers: 100% Conversion From Free to Paid [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:36
He got his first SaaS customers without spending a dollar on sales or marketing - and converted every single one to paid. Jared Siegal built a consulting business with 30 clients at $2M revenue, then deployed a strategy…
AI Startup to $1M ARR in 90 Days With TikTok Affiliates [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 55:08
Zero followers. Zero ad budget. $1M ARR in 90 days. David Zitoun built an AI startup from nothing by recruiting 50+ TikTok affiliates who posted daily videos for 30% lifetime commissions. Two years later, Submagic hit $8…
First SaaS Customers From a Wizard-of-Oz MVP to $2.5M [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:27
"This is not a product," one of his first SaaS customers told him. They were right. Cello had no dashboard, no login portal, and no analytics - just shared Notion pages and Python scripts. But those first paying users st…