SaasRise Mastermind Recap - Jan 28, 2026

Come join us next Wednesday at 8am PT and 12pm PT on Zoom for the type of peer advice you can only get from other SaaS CEOs who are in the trenches.

🚀 Pulse.bot Launch & Web Analytics

Challenges: Understanding initial web analytics performance for a new technology news site; determining if metrics are healthy; tracking bounce rate, visit duration, and views per visit.
Advice: Use Plausible for more accurate analytics than Google Analytics; monitor country-level traffic to identify bot traffic; track Google Search Console indexing progress; benchmark 6-minute average visit duration and 51% bounce rate as good for a new site; use SEMrush to analyze competitor traffic trends.

🔎 SEO Strategy

Challenges: Maintaining consistent SEO efforts over time; dealing with boredom and losing patience; understanding methodology; adapting to AI-powered search engines and programmatic SEO.
Advice: Focus on getting backlinks from high domain authority websites; dedicate one full-time person to backlink acquisition; pay listicle websites to rank your product; post on Reddit as ChatGPT sources content from there; track competitive data monthly using SEMrush; break SEO into on-site optimization (content, keywords, internal linking) and off-site optimization (backlinks, PR, reviews); work with experienced agencies or consultants for 3+ years.

⭐ Review Generation

Challenges: Getting sufficient reviews on G2, Trustpilot, Capterra, and Google; G2’s heavy validation process; ensuring reviews come from ideal customer profile.
Advice: Rotate focus between G2, Trustpilot, and Google reviews monthly; incentivize both customer success teams and customers; ask for reviews after every support interaction (chat, email, Zoom); provide higher incentives for harder platforms like G2; target mid-market customers for reviews to maintain proper positioning; aim for 4.9+ star ratings with 300+ reviews; consider adding Reddit reviews as AI search engines source from there.

📉 Churn Management

Challenges: Elevated churn rates (10% higher than previous year) during Q4 and early Q1; involuntary churn from business closures and budget cuts; inability to retain customers even with 50% discounts; mathematical reality that churn becomes harder to overcome as customer base grows over 9–10 years.
Advice: Benchmark appropriately by ACV tier (target <2% monthly for $10–15K ACV); track Net Revenue Retention alongside churn (aim for 20–30% growth through NRR); define Ideal Customer Profile for retention and exclude non-ICP customers from churn calculations; distinguish between involuntary and voluntary churn; focus on customer acquisition to outrun optimized churn rates; understand that 1–1.5% monthly churn (6–7 year customer lifetime) is better than normal for mid-market.

🧠 Hiring VP of Engineering/CTO

Challenges: Finding technical leader who can bridge business and technical sides; need for someone both hands-on and experienced in team growth; small 4-person engineering team; preparing for exit in 12–24 months; current CTO is genius developer but not a people person.
Advice: Use WellFound (formerly AngelList) for candidates; explore YC marketplace and founder match service; consider high-level talent from recent Amazon layoffs; use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to target specific companies and geographies; consider executive recruiting firms like Hydra CanStruggle (cost: $75–100K or 1/3–1/4 of first-year comp); post LinkedIn job ads and directly pitch laid-off talent; avoid candidates from very large companies who may not want hands-on work.

💸 Paid Search Setup

Challenges: First-time paid search setup; confusion with Google Ads interface; risk of overspending due to broad match settings; understanding whether to manage in-house or outsource.
Advice: Get experienced PPC help immediately to avoid waking up to $20,000 bills; use agencies for 6–9 months to learn, then transition to in-house management; use a part-time/contract paid search resource as a bridge; keep one in-house owner accountable for guardrails and performance.

🤖 AI Impact on Data Analytics Business

Challenges: Concerns about how AI will affect a data analytics platform serving nonprofits; lack of technical expertise as a founder; uncertainty about AI’s future impact on the market.
Advice: Have deep conversations with AI tools like Claude or Gemini about the business; focus on relationships, partnerships, brand, and credibility as moats since development costs are decreasing; make developers 10x more productive with AI; learn how to manage AI’s correct and incorrect answers; integrate AI into the platform to provide better insights.

🧩 Expanding Product to New Buyers

Challenges: HR budgets being cut in the UK market; wanting to expand a note-taking tool beyond HR departments to other buyers.
Advice: Start with existing customer base and leverage trust; expand to adjacent departments like legal that work closely with HR; use land-and-expand strategy; publish studies about problems other departments face; let current customers introduce the product to colleagues in other departments.

📣 LinkedIn Posting Frequency

Challenges: Concern about posting too frequently and wearing out the audience.
Advice: Post daily without worry—different people see different messages; vary content formats (video, text, slide shares); engage with ideal buyers’ content to increase visibility; sponsor 1–2 top posts per week with $50–100 for 3–4 days; people don’t care as much as feared and need multiple exposures to remember a brand.

Recommended Tools

Analytics & Attribution

• Plausible
• Google Analytics
• GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
• Mixpanel
• Amplitude
• LinkedIn Pixel

SEO & Competitive Research

• Google Search Console
• SEMrush

Reviews & Social Proof

• G2 (G2 Crowd)
• Trustpilot
• Capterra
• TrustRadius
• Google Reviews

AI & Search

• Claude
• Gemini
• Perplexity
• ChatGPT

Dev & Infrastructure

• Cursor (with Cloud Code)
• Google AI Studio
• Supabase

Ads & Channels

• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads
• TikTok

Recruiting

• WellFound (formerly AngelList)
• YC Marketplace
• Founder Match
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Hydra CanStruggle

Data & Ops

• Acxiom
• JIRA

Communities

• Reddit

Best Advice

The most liberating takeaway on distribution was: people don’t care nearly as much as you fear—and they need to see a message many times before it sticks—so posting daily (with format variety) and engaging on your buyers’ content beats worrying about “posting too much.”

On paid search, the strongest warning was to get experienced PPC help early, because misconfigured settings (especially broad match) can create expensive surprises fast—use an agency short-term to learn, then bring it in-house with clear guardrails.

On retention, benchmark churn by ACV tier, split voluntary vs involuntary churn, and track NRR alongside churn—because expansion can be the lever that makes the math work even when churn is stubborn.