Oliver Meakings

I'm the founder of Senja.io, a bootstrapped SaaS that helps you collect, manage and share customer testimonials. 

Senja helps you collect testimonials using automations, and share them as images, widgets, popups, Walls of Love, links and videos.

I'd love you to try it: Senja.io

Co-Founder

Co-founder of Senja.io. Collect, manage and share your testimonials.

Olly Meakings

Last week's #buildinpublic report for Senja

We added $500 net MRR

- 48 upgrades
- 37 downgrades
- Work to reduce churn continues
-- Our focus is new product features, onboarding changes and + education to get people activated

Building a bootstrapped SaaS in public, without the BS

I’m thinking of starting a SaaS mastermind 

→ Other SaaS founders
→ Over $40,000 MRR
→ Bootstrapped or seed only 
→ High intent / dialed in

Any #buildinpublic people interested?

My biggest marketing mistake?

Not sending enough emails

I've spent YEARS wondering what nurture emails to send to leads, how I should personalize them for different buyers, and how to sequence them most effectively

I've planned SOP-style emails, customer-centred emails, behavioural emails, "claim your account" emails

I've created 10+ nurture sequences for different ICPs

But this was all over thinking

Nurture emails have one goal: remind people you exist

Everything else is a nice to have

So I've decided to stop thinking about what to write, and start hitting send

#buildinpublic

I used to run a music website that compared pop stars with potatoes

Now I spend most my day writing quite-nice sales and marketing assets assisted by AI

I want to capture some of the silliness and weirdness of my past

Who out there is sharing audacious, ridiculous marketing in the B2B space?

Is there any humour left? #buildinpublic

We're doing $1million ARR with 3 people

But now I am looking for the fourth

I want the marketer that can work alongside me and help take Senja from $1,000,000 -> $2,000,000 ARR

I'm personally working on product and lifecycle marketing

So I want the person that will do customer-centred marketing

Collaborating with partners, educating sign ups, reaching out to dream customers

Where do you find this type of person?

My instinct is that I need to head hunt them and this person won't come to me

Am I wrong #buildinpublic?

PS. the end goal is 5 people, best product, calm but productive company, $4,000,0000 ARR

Tom Hunt

$3.6m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Jan 2014.I'm walking home from a depressing New Year's trip to Oslo with an ex. girlfriend.It's raining in East London.I made a decision:I would replace my management consulting salary (£42,000) by the end of the year.I had no idea from where, but that was the goal...I just about hit it and left the corporate world.And I haven't been back since.Fast forward a decade and I've:- Tried and failed with 17 businesses- Invested in 11- Learnt a LOTThe one that is finally working is called Fame:- We have a weird culture (in a good way)- We start and grow podcasts for B2B businesses- We are fully remote and have 75 full-time team membersI live for our awesome team at Fame, building businesses and great marketing.And I post about them here 🤗

Founder & CEO

We start and grow the world's most profitable B2B podcasts.

Clients include:

👉 IDEO
👉 Workday
👉 HighRadius
👉 People.ai
👉 Zendesk
👉 Bevy
👉 Circle
👉 Suzy
👉 Mazars
👉 LeanData
👉 CXL
👉 Ramp
👉 Alibaba
👉 Signify
👉 eToro

“We need to let them go.”

I’m in a 1-1 and a manager thinks someone in their team isn’t performing.

I'm in shock, to me they seemed enthusiastic and a culture fit.


We dug into the details:

- What weren’t they doing?
- Why weren’t they doing it?

The manager thought they either didn't understand or couldn't do the role.

Then I ask:

“How did onboarding go?”

“What do you mean by onboarding?” they reply.


And that's when we found the issue:

We skipped the onboarding process and replaced it with "a couple of calls".


If you’re recruiting right, you owe it to yourself to onboard right.

You can’t expect someone to join and start performing, you need to set them up to succeed.

Onboard right or do it twice.

Agree?

$4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

Being easy to work with is a skill.

It’s honed with practice.


I call it, being a Working Legend.

Here’s how you do it:

 - Seek feedback
- Be collaborative
- Own your mistakes
- Respect others’ opinions
- Maintain a positive attitude
- Don’t take credit for others’ work
- Offer solutions, not just problems
- Respond quickly to simple requests
- Don’t pretend to have all the answers

What am I missing?

We have 77 full-time team members scattered around the globe.


Building a remote team sounds simple, but the biggest headache is the tech gap.

Most founders do not see these real operational challenges coming.

I spent a decade building businesses, and the move to fully remote with Fame was a massive learning curve.

People talk about the freedom of remote work, but nobody tells you about the friction that quietly damages your culture before it even forms.


When you hire someone new, they need to feel like they are part of the team from day one.

If they sit around for a week waiting for a laptop to arrive, you have already lost that initial momentum.

It is a practical nightmare getting reliable kits to people fast without it becoming a full-time job for your operations person.


Then there are the hidden costs.

Buying hardware upfront is a massive cash drain.

Every pound you lock up in a laptop that depreciates the second it leaves the box is a pound you cannot spend on a big hire or a new growth experiment.


I realised we needed to stop buying stuff that rots on our balance sheet.

We use Raylo to remove this friction.

- It takes 60 seconds to set up a subscription, we pay £0 upfront, and the tech arrives the next day.

- They just launched the new Apple MacBooks for pre-order, and they start shipping from the 10th of March.

- We get flexible terms for our team, and we upgrade for free so we are never stuck with outdated kit.

Running a remote business is challenging.

But Raylo offers a reliable way to get team tech and ensure they feel valued from day one.

You keep your capital for growth.

Brand partnership • $4.5m ARR. $0 raised. I have no idea what I’m doing.

taplio

The Battle

Olly Meakings

Tom Hunt

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreOlly Meakings's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreTom Hunt's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Olly Meakings

Tom Hunt

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Olly Meakings's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreTom Hunt's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreOlly Meakings's LinkedIn Performance