![]() ![]() In fact, it took almost 10 years for things to come together for him with his business. He struggled with the business and his personal life for several years. But things got even worse before they got better. And that's when he started to realize that just getting VC funding wasn't the answer. And when he did raise funding, he celebrated as if he had achieved his end goal. As Dennis told me, I wanted to get VC funding, and customers were just a way to get there. He wasn't really thinking about customers. He wanted the Silicon Valley startup experience. ![]() He was living in the Netherlands and read TechCrunch every day. When he started out he faced failure after failure, and he'll be the first one to admit that he did. And he's built a company culture that he's proud of. Dennis has grown into a profitable multimillion-dollar SaaS business is fully remote team is spread across nine time zones. In this episode, I talked to Dennis van der Heijden, the co-founder and CEO of an AB testing and website conversion optimization tool. And this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business. Welcome to another episode of The SaaS Podcast. Transcript Click to view transcript Click to hide transcript He lays it all out there and shares all his failures and mistakes.Īnd the lessons he shares are powerful and inspiring. What I loved most about talking to Dennis is how open and vulnerable he was willing to be during the interview. In fact, it took almost 10 years for things to come together for him. He struggled with the business and his personal life for a few years. And that's when he started to realize that VC funding wasn't the answer.īut things got even worse before they got better. He wasn't thinking about customers.Īs Dennis told me I wanted to get VC funding and customers were just a way to get there.Īnd when he did raise funding, he celebrated as if he'd achieved his end-goal. And he'll be the first one to admit that he did just about everything wrong. When he started out, he faced failure after failure. And he's built a company culture that he's proud of.īut things weren't always like that. ![]() His fully remote team is spread across 9 timezones. No endorsement of Cien implied.SaaS Founder Lessons: On Startup Failures, Vulnerability & Leadershipĭennis van der Heijden is the co-founder, and CEO of, an A/B testing and website conversion optimization tool.ĭennis has grown into a profitable multi-million dollar SaaS business. Office Space is a Twentieth Century Fox movie from 1999. You can connect with Rob on LinkedIn or Twitter. Tune into the full episode to find out what other advice Rob had to Omer Khan about scaling SaaS companies and to learn more about Cien. What sets successful founders apart from the rest is that they are able to roll with the punches and try something different. The most important thing to remember is that it’s never going to be smooth sailing, says Rob. After struggling and finally succeeding in growing that business, Rob, Ben and Margot created Cien after realizing they could have scaled the business further by measuring the sales factors that really matter. Next, shifting from the CTO to the CEO role, he created vacation rental technology company. That became the thing that allowed us to go national.” “What was different from other service companies, was that we kept investing into our underlying technology and scaling up the ability to actually process these data feeds and provide a more sophisticated property search. Three years later, they sold the business in a successful exit. “This was right after the dot.com crash and we said to ourselves, maybe we should just make a company that does not rely on any external financing – that just provides a service and people pay for it right away. So, along with his co-founders, he went on to create a business establishing websites for real estate agents. “Before starting his first company, Rob worked at an enterprise software company, calling it his “Office Space days,” but decided that wasn’t what he wanted to do anymore.”Ĭien’s CEO and co-founder Rob Käll joined Omer Khan on The SaaS Podcast to reflect on his personal journey as a serial entrepreneur in the world of SaaS startups.īefore starting his first company, Rob worked at an enterprise software company, calling it his “Office Space days,” but decided that wasn’t what he wanted to do anymore. ![]()
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