SaaS Scaling Secrets
The SaaS Scaling Secrets podcast reveals the strategies and insights behind scaling B2B SaaS companies to new heights. Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility, leads conversations with successful SaaS CEOs, exploring their challenges, triumphs, and the secrets that propelled their businesses to the next level.
SaaS Scaling Secrets
Why Ignoring Everyone is the Key to Success with Kaveh Rostampor, CEO of Planhat
Host Dan Balcauski speaks with Kaveh Rostampor, CEO and co-founder of Planhat, a customer platform designed to help businesses acquire, grow, service, and retain customers. Kaveh shares insights from his journey in scaling Planhat, emphasizing the importance of bootstrapping, maintaining a clean cap table, and creating an expectation document to ensure employees' success. He also discusses the impact of martial arts on his business approach, the benefits of raising investment capital, and strategies for building and retaining a high-performing team. The episode provides valuable lessons for SaaS entrepreneurs on balancing growth with long-term value creation.
01:05 Meet Kaveh Rostampor: CEO and Co-Founder of Planhat
01:50 Kaveh's Journey from Martial Arts to SaaS
03:48 What is Planhat?
04:56 Bootstrapping vs. Raising Venture Capital
06:58 The Impact of Funding on Business Decisions
13:50 The Importance of a Clean Cap Table
17:34 The Role of Board Members in Scaling Companies
20:41 The Importance of Thoughtful Hiring
21:19 Building Strong Management Teams
22:17 Scaling Internal Teams and Maintaining Quality
22:58 Setting Clear Expectations for New Hires
23:59 Defining Performance Metrics
29:21 Retaining Top Talent
30:55 Rapid Fire Questions
Guest Links
twitter: @rostampor
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaveh-rostampor/
www.planhat.com
Hey, it's in the management that it happens. It's not in some two hour meeting once per quarter, where all the magic happens. It's the day to day decisions that people make, high standards is not about the things you say. Internally it's about the people that you don't keep in the business. Oh man. I say don't listen to anybody. Don't listen to this part. Don't listen. Don't read article. Like just focus on your own thing. Build a good product. Build a good team. If you build a good product and a good team, all the good things will happen to you. Customers will come and investors will come and they'll give you money and you, it'll be good.
Dan Balcauski:Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast that brings you the inside stories from the leaders of the best scale up. B2B SaaS companies. I'm your host, Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility. Today I'm excited to speak with Kaveh Rostampor, CEO, and co-founder of Planhat, the customer platform that helps companies acquire, grow, service, and retain lifelong customers. Kaveh Bootstrap Planhat to over$10 million in a RR before raising capital and successfully built sizable operations across continents. Kaveh is a seasoned operator bringing 20 years of software experience to the table. When he is not leading Plan Head. He serves on the boards of several companies and is a dedicated martial artist and proud father of three. Let's dive in. Welcome Kaveh to SaaS Scaling Secrets.
kaveh rostampor:Thank you for having me, Dan.
Dan Balcauski:I am very excited for our conversation today. It's been a long time coming, but we finally made it happen. I gave folks a little bit of your introduction in the background, but for folks who. Haven't been closely following your career. Could you please just briefly introduce yourself? Tell us a little about your journey in the SaaS world.
kaveh rostampor:Yeah, sure. So, as you said, my name is ve. I grew up in Sweden. Stockholm in Sweden. And I've been in California now for 13 years and I've been in SaaS for 20 years. Before that I was a martial artist fighter. And yeah, so 20 years ago I joined a startup and I was a SaaS B2B company. And, I was there for a long time and learned how to do business there. And I've been founding two companies. One of them is Planhat and, yeah, as you said, like I've been on a bunch of different boards of startups, scale ups, public companies, and have had the chance to learn about business from that angle too, yeah.
Dan Balcauski:So you mentioned you brought the martial artist piece back in there. So I'm curious, you were was this like competitive, like you were like making an income doing martial arts?
kaveh rostampor:Oh man. I wish that I was making an income but no, but I was pretty good at it. I been a swish champion several times. I've been competing for the national team, but martial arts at least back then, this is now some time ago, so I. There was, you wouldn't make your money out of it at best. You dreamed about going to the Olympics and win a gold medal. But there was the, it's not like Formula One or tennis anything like that.
Dan Balcauski:I'm curious out of, out of your experience training in such a discipline for so long, have you found getting hit in the face repeatedly in those martial arts practices has helped you in your business career?
kaveh rostampor:I don't know if hitting being hit in the face has helped. Only that piece has not helped, but no, but I, as with, I think any sport at the higher levels, as I've been an athlete, is take a lot of those things with you. If it's discipline, hard work, or not complaining, and, focus on these things, obviously that obviously helps.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. Fantastic. For, you mentioned we mentioned Planhat, which is a company you're currently running and Scaling. For folks who aren't familiar with that, can you just give us a brief, kind of 32nd overview of what Planhat is and where you guys play?
kaveh rostampor:Yeah. So
Dan Balcauski:Yeah.
kaveh rostampor:is we're building a unified CRM, and so we help companies to acquire, to service, to grow and retain their customers. So you can think of it as we think of it as a new generation CRM productivity tool in one. Think of it as a platform that has, all the power and expectation you have with CRM. So if it's data governance, security, stability, and these things and you combine that with sort of the productivity tooling where people actually like to do their work. So try to combine that in one. And we started out this business focusing on the post being a post-sale CRM. So focusing on customer success grow, improving growth and re net retention for companies and sort of broaden ourselves since then.
Dan Balcauski:Got it. Got it. And one area that I find particularly interesting about Plant Hatch's journey is you guys were. Bootstrapped specifically for a very long time in your journey until you were well past what most folks would consider. You'd raise venture capital and from my understanding, profitable but eventually you did raise funding. So I guess, can you, could you. Just take me through briefly, I guess, what was your early sort of view on, bootstrapping the business versus, maybe more traditional path of getting institutional capital, and then what eventually changed to the fact that you guys decided to take a significant amount of equity funding? Yeah.
kaveh rostampor:Yeah, so the business was bootstrap for the first I think seven years. Six, seven years. and the thinking there was, I know I always thought very long term about our business and company,
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:And, try to take long term decisions. And one thing that, it is very important as companies grow is that, you wanna, for me and for us, it's always been important to be control of the cap table of planet. We focus a lot on what we call real value creation, which is, I. Do you generate cash? Can you pay your bills? Do you actually have customers that are willing to pay for your product and services? And if they are, then you are creating value for them. that was a big part of sort of planet's focus in the early days. And yes, we raised our big round, we raised$50 million. A couple of years ago now. And the thinking there was that it's a, it was a bit opportunistic. It was a lot of demand and a lot of investors being very interested in our business. But it was also that we, the ambition levels of the company has been increasing every year so to. Go after the big opportunities that we see. We think that having a big war chest and having a lot of capital is important. So as the cost base of the company increases, as the ambitions increases. You. You also wanna have a bigger war chest and not go month to month or quarter by quarter and looking too much on just the cash that you're generating every month.
Dan Balcauski:Well, you how? Oh, that's that's fantastic. You highlighted, this focus on, real value creation. And I'm curious, like, how, if at all, did your decision making around growth investments change or not After. Raising this significant round, I guess, obviously, I mean, I'm sure there were ways that you guys had thought before of investing. Like now that you had that additional capital, did that actually change how you sort of viewed different opportunities you might invest in?
kaveh rostampor:So I would say both yes and no. So the thing is that if you're a bootstrap for the first seven years of the business, it's very hard to sort of, switch that and start burning tens of millions of dollars every year. That's sort of nothing DNA or the culture of the company. So being financially disciplined and focusing on. things that creates value, which is like sales building products, focusing on marketing campaigns that works and whatnot is, has always been with us. So I think that's just a, that's just a positive positive thing. Now that said, I think that the, we when we have a bigger balance sheet and war chest, the decisions we take when it comes to giving ourselves time to. Figure out new products, figure out the platform, figure out what segments of the market that we want to go after, what verticals we want to go after. I think that that has changed. So just the liberty of being even more long term on the way we think about decisions has definitely changed. So I think that in, in that sense it's definitely the, I mean now in hindsight that the company didn't go bankrupt in the early days or. We are a bigger company with hundreds of customers and global operations and a big work. Just, I think that now in hindsight, it was, it definitely feels like the right decisions to make. I think I.
Dan Balcauski:So, post that funding, I guess, were there any investments that you could think of that you made post-funding that maybe you wouldn't have considered During the bootstrap phase?
kaveh rostampor:Yeah,
Dan Balcauski:Yeah.
kaveh rostampor:Before the bootstrap days, we always had that, this. The sort of vision of, again, as I said, like building a next generation CRM, for lack of a better word.
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:But that's a hard thing to do when you're a small bootstrap business. So you need to start on a, in a very specific niche. And for us it was. Post-sales and customer success, B2B and certain deal sizes, right? That's where we operated now with the funding. It enabled us to build out the platform more and enable the business to go more broader and wider after other other segments.
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:So, so that, I say that's sort of the biggest, that's sort of the biggest thing. So that, that's definitely been on en enabler.
Dan Balcauski:So it, and correct me if I'm wrong, but like I guess kind of what I hear in that answer is a little bit of like, when you're bootstrap, there's a certain need to focus on, let us go capture the demand that's already there, versus there's a little bit more flexibility for maybe painting into a vision that doesn't quite exist in the marketplace that maybe is gonna require. Not only the level of product development, but probably the level of market education of what a unified, full end-to-end customer CRM looks like, right? That maybe people aren't searching, they're not typing that into Google because that thing doesn't really exist yet.
kaveh rostampor:Correct, correct.
Dan Balcauski:It, well you mentioned, the culture aspect of it.'cause you said like you get this, check and it's not in the DNA of the company. Right. And so you as the CEO and, but probably you've, that's seeped into how, employees at the company bring you sort of project ideas. Right. How do you, I guess. Change that, sort of posture in yourself. Was this something that, you had, your sort of board members, were sort of encouraging to do, and then how do you communicate that to the sort of the broader team in terms of this sort of wider expanse to sort of take some of these longer term bets?
kaveh rostampor:Yeah, it's a good question. I it be it come, it's organic. It's not it's not a, you you get$50 million in your bank account. You go out and have a big
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:office next day and tell everybody that, eh yes to all the crazy projects and there's crazy ideas that you guys had. So that, that. That
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:I don't think that that happens for anyone. It's more organic. It's more that, hey I don't know. Say that on the product or technology side, you already have a. A roadmap for what you wanna build the next I don't know, 2, 3, 6, 12 months. And it's not like you change everything. The next day you get a big funding round. Same thing with go to market. It's you don't go out and hire 500 new salespeople when you don't have the management bandwidth or. Do any crazy marketing campaigns before you're ready for them. So it's not that dramatic, I would say, at least for us, it wasn't that dramatic. It's been very organic and gradual, but the ambitions changes, right? You for us, and I think that we, in hindsight, we did do some crazy bets that didn't work out, which which is what it is. But you are more, you take more risk. You, for us, we doubled down on the, on, we have a business that's sort of equally in size in Europe and North America or in Americas. And for us to sort of double down on that strategy and not being a regional player and want to be global player was one thing that we doubled down on. And be like, okay, we are here to stay. We
Dan Balcauski:Hmm,
kaveh rostampor:going to hire even more stronger people, talented people in these regions. They're more expensive. now have the cash to invest in this and so on. So, yeah, that's
Dan Balcauski:got
kaveh rostampor:thought about it.
Dan Balcauski:it. A little bit more organic and less Mosi Sun saying you need to be crazier not crazy enough.
kaveh rostampor:So we're boring that way.
Dan Balcauski:Fair enough. Well, you had mentioned in, in hindsight, it looked like the path you had taken bootstrap for, the period of time Nixon period being, growing a big, profitable company and then, taking the growth equity investment later was the right thing. I guess as you look back in hindsight, is there anything that you wish you would've done or anything that you would've changed in that path?
kaveh rostampor:Oh man. No. I feel like we did the right things. We did take some risk. I think, I do think that we overhired for a period there
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:We knew about the risks of that some of the things didn't play out the way we wanted. so no, I'm not regretful of any major things that we did. I wanna say, so I know that this is a bit boring. Like I don't have a good story of we took the money and burn it on some crazy campaign and it paid off. That didn't happen for us. And also we didn't we didn't just truck along either. Like we, we yeah, we doubled down on these big markets and that, I think that that was a, that's a big bet in itself to actually wanting to build a global business ballsy and we sort of went after it. So I, I think I, I don't have any big regrets that, that I think that we did.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. Well, hey, that that, that's all to the good. But we're always if there's history could play out in so many different ways. Well, kind of transitioning a little bit, like you'd mentioned earlier around keeping a clean sort of cap table was really important to you. And I guess, for our listeners or anyone who's, might not be familiar with this concept can you just explain what, keeping a clean cap table means to you and why you think it's so important?
kaveh rostampor:Yeah. So, okay, so, okay. What it means, I think is I think most of your listeners know what the, what sort of high at the highest level means. But I think that, think about what typically happens a lot of businesses, right? Is that an idea, you wanna start a company, you have an idea maybe there's a few of you. So you know, you have a PowerPoint, you go in. People raise, pre-seed round or pre pre-seed round and seed round and I don't know, a series A and a series B and A add-on and C and D and f and g and all these things. And I think the for and. I'm not an expert in this at all, but I don't know. You give up, you get diluted every time you raise capital, right? One is that you get pre shares on your business. And the second thing, you just get more di diluted early on, and then by the time that I don't know, you have a few million dollars or$5 million or$10 million in a RR, you are a sizable business. You're out there, you're fighting a good fight, but. A lot of your business is owned by other people, if it's friends and family and early stage investors and whatnot. And and and again, I'm not an expert here, like these investors, they call you and they have, somebody wants to sell their share. Somebody wants you to grow faster or slower. Somebody has an opinion on how, what kind of products you build and, you don't want you to hire their friend or, I don't know, all kinds of things that happens. And so I think that if we categorize that journey as a. Messy cap table, put it that way. Right.
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:And and we are on the opposite, right, that if you bootstrap for a long time, obviously you then have a very clean cap table,
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:you don't have so many people on the cap table. And I would say that the people you want to have on the cap table are the people that work for your company, the employees, because these people are. They care about your business. They're they give their time and energy into this business. I consider that more of a clean cap table. Nobody calls you and have an opinion on what current products you should build or, Wanting to sell their shares or for you to go left or right or whatnot. So, yeah, so that's what I mean by that. And then but at the end of the day, like this comes from like bootstrapping helps with this. The
Dan Balcauski:Yeah.
kaveh rostampor:you bootstrapped, the easier this becomes. and
Dan Balcauski:curious. I like how did you come to value this as an approach? Was this from experience running previous companies or did you have sort of mentor who is who kind of taught you this? I would imagine like most entrepreneurs are, especially maybe your first business. This is not something that you're like trying to keep front of mind of as a concern.
kaveh rostampor:So, yes. So yes to all those things. So I had I was at another company. That company grew to be very big. That company, I think the first time we got external funding or money into that business. The company was well above a hundred million dollars in a RR, when the company went public, I think 80% or so of the company was owned by the management team and employees and founders and whatnot. So obviously. That's how I learned business and from the founder of that company was very influential there. So I'm very appreciative for that. and also like having friends and seeing other companies how things are done and what happens when these companies grow. I. And also as a board member too, I've been a board member of a bunch of businesses over the years and just seeing how yeah, what happens in the boardroom and, all the good and the messy things that happens in our boardroom as the company are scaling, I.
Dan Balcauski:Well, I'm curious from your, experience, on both sides of the table, as I mentioned the intro, you're not only CEO but you also sit on boards of, several companies. I'm curious, what patterns have you noticed about the folks who typically sit on these boards and how that influences company direction?
kaveh rostampor:Yeah, I think I think a lot of startups scale ups until they get sold a majority investor, like a private equity firm, or if they go public times. I think the boards are, have very bad compositions of the boards. There is early stage investors I mean great people, but no. Invest, no experience in running or building businesses. And the early stage funds, they, I think, again, great people very willing to take risks and whatnot, but any fund typically has a fund cycle and an agenda where at some point they need to sell these stocks. Right? So I think that early stage founders and businesses or scale ups need. It will benefit more from having more operators on their boards. So being other people that are building businesses. And it could be that, I don't know, you you have a I think that the. If you have a board of consisting of, I don't know, some tech, deeply technical people that can help your technical teams or product and engineering teams, with sparring and network and whatnot, if you have commercially strong people, marketing people and product people and so on, I think that if a board is com built like that, then they can work with the management teams of actually helping them to get the businesses to the next step versus. Investors that many times come from school or, don't have so much life experience. So I think that's I think that's a learning what you speak about in the board. Meetings are obviously important yeah.
Dan Balcauski:So, so you're leaning more towards sort of operator experience, I guess. If there's folks out there who are, I mean sometimes they're, as part of taking investment, you're gonna get, a board member, either board seat or an observer seat. Or, maybe there's other ways their people are putting together their boards. I guess, are there particular questions that you think about. Asking, future board members to help sort of, screen for these type of things. I mean, obviously have you run a company before? Have you built a company before? Is it would be sort of top of mind.
kaveh rostampor:But they, I just wanna say that too, have met some phenomenal people. That are now investors, that are ex operators. And I think that they're just, there's some people out there just amazing and incredible,
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:Incredible. What kind of questions to ask? No, I'm not a, I'm not an expert in oh, this is the 10 interview questions you should ask. But I do think that thinking about what it is that, that you're signing up for, I think is is smart and a good thing to do. Another thing with this is the pre shares that is added on top, right? And just thinking about that, hey, you want the people that work for your company, your employees, to point being able to sell some of this stock and, adding pressures on pressures doesn't necessarily make that easier. O over time, just to be thoughtful about these things. I don't think these, any of these things are new to people, but just be thoughtful about these things. I think
Dan Balcauski:Yeah.
kaveh rostampor:yeah. Is smart. I.
Dan Balcauski:Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, I mean it's it's one of these things that is not usually widely discussed because it's usually, it's so niche. It happens rarely, but there's, these rare events that happen in our life that are incredibly high leverage for future situations. So, it's not just just, oh, hiring an engineer. Right. It's like we've, hiring hundreds of engineers, on a daily basis or whatever it might be.
kaveh rostampor:I
Dan Balcauski:Yeah, I.
kaveh rostampor:I think just another thing on this, I think that it is I think the way I think about it and we think about, it's like it's more important. So I've been a board member at my companies, and I say this every time. It's Hey, look, board members, investors don't build companies like management teams and people working in companies. They are the people building the company. And like there's no way that you could be on a board and, join a. Meeting once per month or quarter and somehow change the direction of a business if you don't have a strong MA management team and leadership in, in, in place. So I do think that, try to build management teams and a talent pool in your company that are I think that the, the fo that's where the focus should be. That's
Dan Balcauski:That's where it.
kaveh rostampor:or doesn't happen in your business. so I think, I think that, yeah, I think about it that way instead Hey, it's in the management that it happens. It's not in some two hour meeting once per quarter, where all the magic happens. It's the day to day decisions that people make,
Dan Balcauski:well, that's a perfect segue into the next topic. I want to switch from the board level into like actually running and scaling that internal teams is like one challenge that you know, a lot of. CEOs I talked to you on this podcast run into is, during, scaling, rapid expansion, maintaining consistent quality becomes a challenge. And I guess I'm curious, like, how have you sort of approached sort of setting and maintaining those sort of high standards at Planhat as you've scaled?
kaveh rostampor:Yeah, Oman. I think that's the most difficult thing when you are a small, if you're a five 10 man team, it's relatively speaking easier than if you're a hundred, 200 three, 400 man company. So okay, for us, we have this we have this thing where we do we'll be. wanna be very clear with expectations for people when they sign up to our business. So being employees that are joining. We obviously think that we have a great place to work. We think the planet is amazing. We want talented and strong people to join the team. But we have this concept of an expectation document that we put together. So the hiring manager puts together an expectation document. We sort of document and write out all the things we're expecting. For this new hire that we wanna bring on board. So it's it's something that we spend a lot of time on. We do this in all commercial opera ops roles and whatnot. Where we say that, okay, like this is, for example, this is the vision of the role. This is where the person will report into this is what we expect is good performance for this role after say, six months or 12 or 24 months in the business. So we're sort of. to document down on the vision that we have for what what great performance is for this
Dan Balcauski:Mm-hmm.
kaveh rostampor:And then what we do is that we sort of break that down and make it very very tangible. We say that, Hey, if you wanna achieve this goal, say after 12 months in the company or create this much value after 12 months in the company, what are the things that we expect you to do just after one month? What are the things we expect you to do after two months, three months, six months, and so on. And then we say that these are the metrics that we will, or things that we will measure you on. And just and this is not only to measure you, to hold you accountable to it, but also hold ourselves accountable to helping you achieve these things. Because if you follow this path, we believe that you will achieve these goals that you have after, say, 6, 12, 24 months in the in, in this role. And then what we say is that we try to say this is what we mean. If you achieve these things, then that will be, we sort of define we try to document and define great performance at any point in time. And we also define bad performance and mediocre performance. Okay. So it's a pretty extensive document and what we do is that before hiring anybody we share this document with the person that, hey. This is what we're trying to do here together. you ready to sign up for this? So it's very,
Dan Balcauski:Yeah.
kaveh rostampor:yeah, black or white. And and this is a way that this is just, this is sort of a way, a vehicle for us to keep ourselves. To high standards that we wanna have in the business. Now this document doesn't become this Hey, you didn't meet certain metrics, you're out. Like it doesn't work like that, but it's a guiding principles or guiding document that helps us achieve the high standards. So, we always say that high standards is not about the things you say. Internally it's about the people that you don't keep in the business. That makes you having a high performing team of a team of with the, with just, with the average output or standards very high. So
Dan Balcauski:I.
kaveh rostampor:really.
Dan Balcauski:Well, that's fascinating. And that's a really that's quite an elaborate system and I think it, it's beyond what I think most companies do, even those well beyond your scale where, you've, it's, I mean, I heard a bunch of things, but one is sort of working from sort of a year out, backwards into the super near term, a month into the job, three months, six months into the job. But then also looking at, what is. Not what is, all, hey, these are metrics, but also what does excellent performance look like? What is good or acceptable and what does bad performance look like? Most folks kind of don't think about that as well, and I think that's super powerful. There's old coach of mine gave me a framework that kind of maps that, which is he called it the Three Rocks, which is rockstar rock, solid rock bottom. So,
kaveh rostampor:Good.
Dan Balcauski:Which I. Well, I didn't come up with it. I give him credit. But I'm curious, is that something that's sort of evolved over time? Has there been, because I mean, I that's, as I've mentioning that's quell quite well articulated and structured have, were there kind specific influences or perspectives and sort of shape that approach?
kaveh rostampor:I don't know. It came it evolved into, within the business. Been a main big driver of this in the business. So the hiring manager fills this out. There's a conversation, typically say with me in the business or the hiring manager's manager, they discuss it in depth and align on it so that it's aligned. I think at the end of the day, like it, it has to do with one thing to. Doing what you can to set the employee up for success. And I do think that a lot of tech companies, I think especially tech companies and especially fast growing companies, there's this misunderstanding that happens when the person is getting the job that the
Dan Balcauski:The hiring manager.
kaveh rostampor:I. Has this, yeah, has not articulated what success actually means and how to get to success in a proper way, which sets up the person for not being successful. And it just, as everybody says very costly. Lemme just break it down for you as an example. One thing that we do is to say that the first month as an example, we're a product. We're a product first company. So that first month or first couple of months in the job of almost any role you need to. You need to know the product, you need to know what the hell it is that we do. as an example, we hired a general, a new general counsel a couple of months ago that was on her expectations stock two that month one, month two, month three. Like you need to focus and learn the product because legal, but deeply understanding the value this product creates for our customers. Understanding the technicalities of this platform and how it works is your time to learn it. It's super important for us. So that's an example, like we break it down, say, Hey, knowing the product, what does that mean? As you said, if you wanna be a rock star on, on Dan's scale, like what does that mean After just one month? How much do you know? What can you do in the product and so on, so forth. So it's it's a great method. I am I'm super about it. I just another thing on this people ask me sometimes other friends, founders say that, Hey, how can you guys be cashflow positive at this scale and growing this much? And I said that this is one of the things that enables us. We don't do like people that are here, they are performing above average to great. In average in the scoring of these metrics. And if that happens, then value is created across the business.
Dan Balcauski:Well, I, on the flip side, it's not only about sort of acquiring folks but retaining them. And I know that you had highlighted one of our previous conversations that you were pretty happy with. How low rate of turnover that you've had at with the employees at Planhat. I guess. Has there been anything that you feel that you guys have done intentionally that have been really effective in helping you kind of retain top talent during you know what is probably imagine the company's changing quite a bit. So the fact that people stick around and able to grow with you is pretty impressive.
kaveh rostampor:Yeah. Oh, super happy about that. So, We talk about this a lot like the people that are, How many talent the people that we hire do we lose? And then like after two months, three months, six months, or a year and so on. And we're very proud of this fact that like senior people or people that have been here for a long time, there's almost zero churn on people there. We don't lose people. That's been here for some time. And
Dan Balcauski:And again. I
kaveh rostampor:I don't know. It's good, good management, if you like, but it's, I think more than anything, like if people are successful, then they tend to stay around, right? If people are learning, they're developing, they're growing, they get challenged and they're successful. They're part of something that is successful, I think that'd be, wanna stick around?
Dan Balcauski:Yeah. Well that's impressive.'cause it, the companies that are scaling at that level can quickly outgrow you, right? If you're in a leadership position and all of a sudden you're growing a, an organization that's, maybe twice as big or more multiples of that, larger than you, you might be felt comfortable with. So it's good if you can keep those folks around as the company kind of grows around them. Well, KA I could talk to you all day but I wanna be respectful of your time. I, I wanna close out with a few rapid fire lightning round questions. You ready?
kaveh rostampor:Let's do
Dan Balcauski:Good. All right. What's a what's a contrarian view you hold about AI's role in our future?
kaveh rostampor:Oh. Oh, man. I know. I dunno a good answer to that. I think that nobody really knows. I don't know. I don't wanna comment on this. This is I dunno. It's super exciting. Now, I'll tell you that I think it's super exciting with all the things that are happening. But I don't have any, I Good one-liner for you here.
Dan Balcauski:He he does not wanna be pinned down to a prediction that will be disproven in six days. So, the AI.
kaveh rostampor:I am, and we, the people that work for our company, we're not the kind of people that are like, oh, I have strong opinion. I saw the light. I'm an expert because I read two articles about I we, yeah. Have, I don't have that.
Dan Balcauski:Look, we all have transformative moments in our lives. I like to think of him as superhero transformation moments. One day, you're Peter Parker, normal high school student. You get bit by a radioactive spider. You go to sleep, you wake up. The next day, you're Spider-Man. What moment was that for you in your life?
kaveh rostampor:Oh man. I think so. One was the, so I sort of divide my life into maybe three. One is the latest being that hey, become a parent. That's obviously amazing and all the things that comes with parenthood. That's awesome and that's amazing. And professionally, sort of, I have two. One was that I was a martial artist. I was a fighter. I was in the gym and. Fighting, traveling around the world and fighting people in a ring. And then the other things I've been doing business and been in, b2B enterprise and software for a long time. So the The first part. I was training a lot, I had a coach there that was very influential too. sort of realized to how, who I became later on. he was, deep into his craft. And he taught me a lot, about just being all in, being very focused and going deep into your craft. I think that affected me a lot. And also this you don't complain. If you want to go in what's required of YouTube winner and be a Swedish champion, a world champion and be in this and that all it was very, it was cool and in business, I worked for this other company, I said. I worked closely with the founder and the CEO of a company. The company's name was Meltwater and he taught me a lot, too. A lot about business. Gave me a chance. That was my first job, so just gimme a chance. That was just fantastic for me, obviously, and
Dan Balcauski:And.
kaveh rostampor:me a lot about business, how to do business, what not to do, what to do, what to focus on, and whatnot. So those will be very influential for me.
Dan Balcauski:Fantastic. Well, running and Scaling a business can be taxing spiritually, physically, emotionally. Are there any habits that you've cultivated that keep you on the top of your game?
kaveh rostampor:Yeah, I talk Yeah, I about this a lot. Internally. I say that, that you, it's very important to eight hours per day out every day and day, well. And if you could do you do that. You can go really hard for a really long time. I think if you don't do those things it gets very tough. So that's my that's my hack. And I'm pretty good at all, all three. I am. I sleep very well. I work out every day and I try to eat healthy. So it helps. It works.
Dan Balcauski:Very important. When you think about all the spectacular people you've had a chance to work with, learn from, is there anyone who just pops to mind who's had a really disproportionate effect on your growth success?
kaveh rostampor:Yeah. I think the people I mentioned well, has been very influential for me. I think that the co-founder of Planhat STEM is ko. He is just a fantastic, fantastic person. He phenomenal and I think we compliment each other really well. I think it's had a huge effect on obviously our business and our company and what it is.
Dan Balcauski:The importance of good partners is there anything from your relationship with Nicholas or like how you guys came together that is we could learn from and take advantage of'cause I guess you, you don't always know upfront if it's gonna work out in the depths.
kaveh rostampor:Yeah, no. I think in, when building a tech business, I talk about this also a lot to to some people like friends, is a tech company like? It's now I'm focused on obviously B2B and enterprise. What is it that part of it is about building products and building technology. The other thing is to sell products and technology, take it to market. And so there's a commercial aspect of building a tech company and a product technical aspect. So I think that if you are two co-founders. Should, one of you should be very good at one of them and the other on the other, so that you compliment each other. Nicholas is a fantastic technologist. he's just fantastic, man. He is phenomenal, phenomenal.
Dan Balcauski:well, we appreciate Nick List and his compliments for sure. If I gave you a billboard, you put any advice on there for other B2B Sass CEOs trying to scale their companies, what would it say?
kaveh rostampor:Oh man. I say don't listen to anybody. Don't listen to this part. Don't listen. Don't read article. Like just focus on your own thing. Build a good product. Build a good team. If you build a good product and a good team, all the good things will happen to you. Customers will come and investors will come and they'll give you money and you, it'll be good.
Dan Balcauski:Don't listen.
kaveh rostampor:you to join their podcast. All the good things will happen
Dan Balcauski:Yes, exactly. Yes. Don't listen to this billboard. Go build a good product. Con this has been fantastic. If listeners wanna connect with you, learn more about Planhat, how can they do that?
kaveh rostampor:Go to our website planet.com. I know we are on LinkedIn. We are we're not on Twitter or so much, but yeah,
Dan Balcauski:Awesome.
kaveh rostampor:check the link, social media. Send us an email. Yeah.
Dan Balcauski:Well, I will put those links in the show notes for listeners. Thank you so much. That wraps up this episode of SaaS Scaling Secrets. Thank you to Kaveh for sharing his journey and insights. For our listeners, you found Kaveh's insights valuable. Please review and share this episode with your network. Until next time.
