RevSetter’s Al-Saad is Elevating the Way B2B Companies are Growing their Customers and Revenue
I had the pleasure of interviewing Haydar Al-Saad, the founder and CEO of RevSetter, a modern Customer Platform built to help companies elevate the way their teams work with customers to improve retention, fuel expansion and accelerate business growth. RevSetter is an end-to-end Customer Platform for B2B companies of all sizes, from SMB to Enterprise. The company also offers — as the only company in the Customer Success space — a unique and free PLG product, RevSetter Pulse, for Customer Success Managers, Account Managers and other customer-facing roles, designed to help them manage their top customers, find more opportunities and reduce manual work.
Haydar is a long-time executive in the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) industry with an excellent track-record and long experience leading large teams, both in North America and globally. Haydar has also been active as an investor, advisor and co-founder with successful exits before starting RevSetter.
His extensive knowledge, experience and background from SaaS and leading sales & post-sales organizations, gives him a great perspective on the challenges in the Customer Success space, and as he puts it, “more importantly, the opportunities and how to best maximize them”.
I am excited to share our conversation and the many insights Haydar provided.
Thank you so much for joining us!
Thank you for having me!
What motivated you to launch RevSetter?
For me, as someone that had been in the SaaS and Customer Success space for over a decade leading large teams prior to RevSetter — and being a user, decision maker and buyer of customer software — there were a few main motivating factors.
First, on a high level, I saw a clear shift in general. More companies were becoming cloud- and software centric. With that, their customers — and in extension Customer Success — was becoming key to business success.
With that I felt that there would be a clear shift within the Customer Success space from only focusing on churn and problems, to focusing on opportunities & growth, and Net Revenue Retention (editor’s note: NRR) would become the leading driver for success. This has proven to be the case, which is natural as NRR covers both keeping your customers happy & renewing, and also driving expansion & growth.
Lastly, and maybe most importantly, as a leader depending on great software, I did not see anyone in the space truly solving this new NRR challenge or creating a software that is powerful, but also modern and easy-to-use for the end-users; the Customer Success Managers, Account Managers and CS people doing the work.
These factors, coupled with the fact that I am truly passionate about this space and entrepreneurship, made the decision easy and the motivation high when I first embarked on this journey.
What is it that excites you about what you’re building?
I am really excited about the fact that we have built, and continue to build, something that helps create real value for our users and their companies. In essence, we help our customers maximize the potential of their customers and accelerate growth, which has tremendous impact.
I am also proud of our team and excited that we are always customer-centric and have approached the market in a different way compared to most other companies in the industry. That is why we are the only company in the space offering a free PLG product that we call RevSetter Pulse, as well as make big investments in our Enterprise offering to automate work that takes a lot of manual effort and time for our end-users, like customer data & insight gathering, customer journey mapping, and lead generation to name just a few.
What has been your biggest challenge when growing your startup?
I think the biggest challenge has been the need to constantly prioritize what we want to spend our resources, energy and focus on. At any given point in time, there are many things you can prioritize as a leader and a company — what features to build, what marketing efforts to invest in and so on. So that has been a challenge, but luckily, I have had a clear vision from the start which has helped direct us in those moments.
What are your future plans for your startup?
We are very focused on continuing to build a world-class product and our roadmap is filled with great and exciting things. We will also continue to invest in RevSetter Pulse to make it the best experience possible for our users. Outside of that, the focus is on our customers, growth and continuing to build our team as we are hiring for multiple roles.
If you had to share, “words of wisdom,” with a Founder who’s about to start their own startup, what would they be?
There is so much great advice out there these days for anyone who is about to start their own startup, but there are three things I tell people. First, make sure that you are truly passionate about the space, product, work, mission — whatever it might be within the context of your startup. That passion will propel you through the ups and pick you up during the downs. Second, realize that it will be a marathon, not a sprint. So be ready for the grind and make sure that you have a clear vision of what you believe and what you want to build. And third, every great company is built by great people. Use your network, ask for feedback and advice, and make sure that you invest in getting the right people onboard, especially in the early days.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
They can follow me on LinkedIn where I post regularly about everything SaaS, leadership, Customer Success and more. I would also recommend checking out our blog, The Success Revenue blog, where I write at times and where we post a lot of great content.
Haydar’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/revsetter/
RevSetter’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/haydaralsaad/
RevSetter’s website: www.revsetter.com
The Success Revenue Blog: www./revsetter.com/success-blog/
Free Sign up for RevSetter Pulse: app.revsetter.com/signup
Request a demo: www.revsetter.com/book-a-demo/
This was very insightful. Thank you so much for joining us!
Pleasure was all mine, thanks again for having me!
