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SaaS Stories
SaaS Stories is my not-so-secret quest to learn what it truly takes to succeed in the world of SaaS—and I’m inviting you along for the ride! I have the pleasure of sitting down with brilliant minds and industry trailblazers to explore their journeys, uncovering the secrets behind their growth, the gaps they spotted in the market, and what really drives them.
It’s not all smooth sailing—there are challenges, unexpected turns, and moments of reflection where they share what they’d love to change about their journey. Think of it as a candid, insider’s look into the world of SaaS, with just the right amount of curiosity, empathy, and wit.
Join me as I dive deep, selfishly soak up all the insights, and hopefully share a little inspiration with you along the way—one SaaS story at a time.
SaaS Stories
Build, Scale, Sell, Repeat: Taryn on founding SaaS businesses and owning the creator economy
What does it take to build, scale, and sell multiple businesses while staying sane and ahead of the game?
In this episode, we sit down with Taryn, a powerhouse serial entrepreneur and founder of Gifted, the SaaS platform transforming how brands connect with creators. From raising capital to expanding into international markets and navigating the evolving landscape of influencer marketing, Taryn shares the real, unfiltered version of startup life—and what she’s learned along the way.
Key Takeaways:
- 💸 Raising Capital: What investors really care about—and how timing, traction, and personal circumstances play into funding and exits.
- 🌎 Global Expansion: How to approach scaling to the US, Europe, and emerging markets (and why one-size-fits-all doesn’t work).
- 🤝 Influencer Marketing Trends: The biggest mistakes brands make, why creative freedom matters, and how AI is changing the game.
- 🧠 Product Validation: Why listening to users early (and often) is your secret weapon in SaaS.
- 🔍 Leadership in SaaS: Taryn’s radical transparency playbook, hiring advice, and the importance of building strong teams that can operate without you.
- 🧘 Personal Growth: The double-edged sword of personal branding, finding work-life balance, and why celebrating small wins really matters.
Welcome everybody to another episode of SaaS Stories. Today I'm excited to be joined by Taryn Williams, founder and entrepreneur of multiple businesses. Welcome, Taryn. Thanks so much for having me Now. You've built way too many businesses across talent, across media technology. Tell me what drives you and keeps you innovating.
Speaker 2:Look, I love solving problems and I think all of my businesses have sort of naturally evolved out of one another over the years. So my very first business, like 20 years ago, was and is a full service modeling agency called Wink Models. And as I grew and scaled that business, I could see there was a need for a systemized and streamless backend technology to power agencies. So I built a custom onboarding, calendar management and payroll integration software and that was my first foray into tech and I just fell in love with solving business problems using technology and through that process went oh my gosh, I should have built this as a marketplace. So that was the idea of my second business, which was the Right Fit, a two-sided marketplace for creative talent. So I scaled that business to about 11,000 clients and about 17,000 talent across APAC, raised a bunch of capital, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:And through that process it was just as influencers were really becoming the big go-to for marketers and such a growth area and I could see the need for brands to have a better way to do contra gifting at scale. And so that was the idea for my next business Hash Gifted, hash gifted. And then, after I exited the right fit and the influencers agency, the two businesses that I sold about two years ago. Um, I came up for air and sort of started looking at what I wanted to build next, and I was very clear that I wanted to build SaaS businesses because I, you know, I think they have some really unique offerings that you don't see in other. Um it's certainly in marketplace businesses in terms of valuations and scale. Um and so now I purely work on building um sass businesses, um media businesses and sort of consulting and sitting on boards in a very particular niche so much to unpack there.
Speaker 1:Wow, amazing journey. Um, and I totally agree. I think sass businesses have many more benefits to say a service-based business. Let's start at the beginning of your journey with Wink Models. You founded that when you were 21 years old. What was the biggest lesson you learned from launching a business at such a young age?
Speaker 2:Oh, look I think that in the early days I really wanted to do everything. I wanted to touch everything in the business. You know I did our bookkeeping, I did customer success, I did model onboarding and you know, mainly because I thought I didn't understand reinvesting in the business and that you know us paying a bookkeeper, you know, a couple of thousand dollars a month, was actually a better use of money to unlock my time on growing the business, acquiring more customers, acquiring more models. So I think there was some really key learning lessons there in the early days that you know you can't do everything, you can't wear all of the hats, and that I guess delegation and letting go of control too, is, like you know, pretty scary thing in your first business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm still learning to delegate like 20 years later so don't worry, I think every founder has that challenge is, you know, what do we let go of? When do we let go? Who is our first hire? It's a bit of a trust process Moving on to the right fit. What were some of the unexpected challenges you faced with? Scaling that you know, having learned what you've learned at wink models, then applying it to the right fit so it was a completely different business.
Speaker 2:Um wink was and still is, so I still own that business. Um, completely bootstrapped, I own it entirely, entirely. It was very organic growth, you know, had year on year growth every year since the year we launched and it's you know, it's a traditional agency business, so it has high margins. The right fit was a two-sided marketplace. So completely different venture capital backed high growth technology business, high overheads from day one. We had to build out a very complex technology platform, so big team of engineers. Obviously, I had quite a serious board as well. I had shareholders that I was accountable to. So it was a completely different journey and building marketplaces are really really, really hard, and especially building what.
Speaker 2:On reflection on that journey, what I should have done is gone vertical by vertical. We launched with models, actors, influencers, photographers, makeup artists, stylists, videographers and dancers. So we really launched with absolutely anything that you could need to bring a creative campaign to life. And what I learned the hard way is that not only do you need geographical depth, so you need, almost postcode by postcode, the right number of talent available for any job opportunity, but then you need to have enough across each of those verticals for a marketplace to be successful. So it's really really hard. You know you really have to go and you're acquiring both sides of the marketplace at the same time, so you need enough talent depth to fill all of the jobs that you have.
Speaker 2:And so it's a real, and our margins were, you know, we're making seven to 10% on each transaction, so our margins were really, really lean, which meant our acquisition cost had to be really low. So was a really wild, um, very, very challenging journey but, um, thankfully, yeah, managed to scale the business, but certainly way harder than I could have ever. I look back on our very first fundraising deck and I think, oh my god, there was so much naivety in that. You know, we were like we're going to be global by year two and you know, gosh the naivety.
Speaker 1:Big ambitions, yeah, exactly, it's good to have them, though, absolutely. But yeah, no, absolutely a challenge when you've got a platform that requires two sides of the audiences, right, I've definitely been there with a few clients that have had to go on through exactly that journey, and it's not easy. Yeah, getting the liquidity point right is just so hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, especially when it's by geography. Coming back to venture capital, so first business, completely bootstrapped. Second business you've had some investment. There's actually an ongoing debate on these podcasts between different guests about what's better versus what's not. I'm keen to hear your thoughts. You know, if you could advise a new founder, would you say do it bootstrapped, or would you say get investment?
Speaker 2:It really depends on the business and, I guess, the risk appetite of the entrepreneur too. So I think if you can afford to bootstrap the business yourself and you don't need strategic investors. So part of the reason that I raised venture for the right fit was that I wanted people not just to be able to put cash into the business but to also be able to open doors. So I chose really strategic investors who could really unlock growth for us. So an international advertising group, for example, who you know were able to immediately onboard clients for us across APAC. So there was strategic investors that I brought on and then there were purely VC cash investors because I wanted to diversify my risk in the business and not be completely. You know it was a very expensive business to build not be completely self-funding that myself.
Speaker 2:So it really depends on, I think, the risk appetite of the entrepreneur, how much capital you want to be able to put into the business yourself. Do you need strategic advisors and strategic capital that can help open doors for you? Obviously, you can get that in other ways too having an advisory board or giving them sweat equity or whatever it might be, or doing partnership agreements. Um, and how quickly do you need to build a defensible moat, so in marketplaces, for example, it really is a winner, takes most approach.
Speaker 2:So we were very conscious that, um, you know, a competitor could launch, and the one that would survive would be the one that had the most clients and the most talent, the most job opportunities on the marketplace already. Um, and so that was survive would be the one that had the most clients and the most talent, the most job opportunities on the marketplace already, and so that was a part of the decision as well. Do you need to build a defensible mode? How quickly do you need to do that to be able to lock out competition?
Speaker 1:Got it. That's actually a really good tip, like you know, not just accepting venture capital for the investment, but also for the strategic advice, because you know a lot of those people have been there, done that and they can actually offer some really good mentorship that comes with it absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think that's the sort of key thing that you should be looking for in anyone that you bring into the business as an advisor or an investor should be. Can they expedite growth? So yeah, have they been there before? Have they got the scar tissue do? Do they have connection? Can they mentor you? What can they add outside? Just putting cash in the business?
Speaker 2:Because, especially if you don't need the cash. I mean, most entrepreneurs do need a capital injection to be able to build it, and that might change now with AI, you know. I think the ability to build and scale businesses quickly and get platforms off the ground using AI and no code tools is certainly, you know, going to change the game. But I think most entrepreneurs do the capital injection to be able to build a platform and then also for go-to-market and making key hires.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, and so just closing off on the venture capital questions as well, what did you find were things that helped you to secure the funding? What were they looking for? For example, I've heard that a lot of them are really keen to hear exit strategies like are you planning on selling the business and what is the plan around that?
Speaker 2:Look to be honest. I think most investors are especially in a seed round. They're really looking at the founder. Does the founder have deep domain expertise? Do they really understand the business? Can they confidently talk to the metrics that they're going to need to achieve? Can they talk to the total addressable market and do they have the grit and tenacity and determination to get through?
Speaker 2:I think one of the things that helped me raising capital is that I had a proven track record of running a successful business. They knew that I had no naivety around how hard it was to grow a business and that it was going to require working 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a long time, because I had to do that with building link models. So I think really in those early days, all you're doing is betting on a founder. You're really on. Everything else is pretty much back of the envelope. How big do you think the idea could be? What are the metrics? Especially for a business like ours, where there was no competitor in market already, there was no direct comparables. A lot of our investors knew a lot about markplaces so they had a pretty good idea of you know the opportunity size that we were going after. But really you know, seed round. You're backing the founder, you're backing the idea and you're backing the founding team and their ability to go and execute on that idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you've successfully sold a few businesses and and also kept some. But I guess how do you know when it's the right time to sell?
Speaker 2:so I think it comes down to a lot again personal situation of a founder or the founding team. Um, you know, are you ready to sell? Have you got other ideas that you want to go and work on? Can you get the right multiple? Where is the market at Like?
Speaker 2:I think one of the reasons that I sold the right fit was that, you know, we got an offer that financially made sense for me and for our shareholders. I knew that I had built the business to a size that the next expansion into the US or to Europe was going to require huge capital injection and the right strategic partners to go and do that and really running very, very hard for another sort of seven years. And I knew that that wasn't personally what I wanted and I was at a point in my life where I was ready to take some cash off the table and move on to just being able to have advisory boards positions and not be working 24 hours a day in the business as founder and CEO. So you know that business was seven and a half years old when I sold it, so I'd already done that journey and I'd done 10 years before that at Wink. So you know I'd had a pretty intense entrepreneurial journey up until that point.
Speaker 2:So I think certainly like, where's the market at? Is there a good? Is it a good time to sell? Is it, you know, a recession? Are there tight times in your particular field? Has there been any deals done recently in a comparable business that give you an indication that you might be able to get a good multiple? Have you had? We had a lot of inbound interest, which was obviously a good sign for us as well. People had heard about business, they understood some of our metrics, they could see the growth trajectory that we were on and then I think, yeah, understanding personal situation and circumstances and what the sort of founder or founding team and your shareholder base want are probably the kind of key things to look at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, that's really interesting. I'd love to move on to your journey with Gifted, but just before I do, you mentioned something in there that piqued my interest, which was expanding into Europe.
Speaker 2:Was that like the next region after Australia, or you know what was kind of the global plan with that business, and why Europe, yeah, so US and Europe for both for the right fit and hash gifted were always sort of the next natural markets, predominantly because of, like, similar cultural backgrounds, language, the size of the market opportunity there in our particular industry sector. Europe is much harder, obviously, with regulations, gdpr, all of those things. So we probably would have done the US first. The US is obviously much more sophisticated in terms of influencer tools and platforms, so you are going up against bigger competition and obviously it's a huge country as well, right, so you can't just say I'm going to the US, you know you sort of have to go city by city again and you're going to require a lot of cash to get cut through in each of those markets.
Speaker 2:But obviously the upside there is that you know the total addressable market is so much larger. So the you know you can double or triple the business if you successfully execute in one of those markets. So the other industries or the other markets that I'm really interested in are developing economies like mobile first um economies. So latin america, india, indonesia, um are all really interesting. But a go-to-market strategy in those is is much more challenging because you're working on cultural differences and language differences and currency challenges and yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 1:The reason I ask is exactly for that reason. I I've heard that the us might be easier, just because europe it's all different countries, so they all have different cultures, different languages, different everything. So it's almost like a different strategy for each country. But having said that, I mean the states in the US can almost be considered their own separate country sometimes. So you're right, going city by city in the US also might be necessary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you have to have a real understanding of like with the Right Fit. For example, our key audiences were very clearly in New York or in LA, like that's where a lot of entertainment media work is done. So for us the next natural markets would have made sense to go there, but for a I don't know, for a direct-to-consumer brand or, you know, a B2B business, it may be a complete, it might be Chicago, it might be. So, really understanding where your target base is going to be situated and trying to knock off, yeah, on a market-by-market approach, I think is the way to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Coming back to Gifted, tell us what inspired that idea and how did you turn it into a SaaS business.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the right fit was a pure play marketplace. So you would post a job, we would charge a commission on the transaction and we would secure the booking to the talent payment to the talent insurances, blah, blah, blah who were like, hey, you know, we want to work with this great influencer, but you know, we don't have we're not paying, but we have, you know, a thousand dollars worth of clothing to give them, or you know, two nights free hotel stays or whatever it was. And I was always really stuck because I was like, well, we can't charge a commission on that. Like, you know, we can't touch 20% of clothing, you know it doesn't work like that. So I could see that there. But on the flip side, there was creators who wanted those opportunities and so I was like, oh, this is really frustrating. There should be a way to bring these two parties together for those collaborations in a way that's more structured.
Speaker 2:And then, as a creator myself, I was constantly receiving products to the office from PR agencies and brands who had my details, and I would feel really bad because I was like, oh gosh, you know, like I've got a ongoing partnership with a skincare company, for example, so I can't post about this particular product. I didn't ask for it, it was unsolicited. But there's other times where I would love to be able to say like, hey, I've got this black tie event. I would love a black tie dress from you to wear and I'll post an exchange. So again it came back to this idea of like it's so unstructured. Creators are manually reaching out to brands on Instagram or TikTok saying, hey, can we collaborate? You know, if you send me some free product, I can do X, y and Z. And on the flip side, brands were having to reach out either through social platforms or via a PR agency to creators Again, very unstructured. So that was the really simple idea is that I was originally just going to build a very, very simple website where there could be listings of these opportunities. Again, as always, it turned into a bigger than Ben-Hur idea and from the creator side, it's like a dating app. They can swipe left and right on products that they'd like to receive and then, from a brand side, they can see all of the applications for their opportunities. They can shortlist. Chat book automates the orders out to the creators if they've got Shopify integration and then captures all of the completed content as creators post about them.
Speaker 2:So, um, I was very, very clear from day one that I wanted it to be a SaaS business.
Speaker 2:After going through the exit process of the right fit and thinking a lot about how I could have built that business differently, because it took us, as you can imagine, took us a really long time to build high levels of net revenue in that business based on a really low commission multiple. And so I was like, wow, if we'd built this as a SaaS business from day one, where people were just paying even 10.95 for access to use the platform when we weren't charging commission on each transaction, actually the multiple would have been better. So I was very, very clear that I wanted to build a SaaS business, and so when I was thinking about, okay, how do I connect these two parties, it was really then thinking about which side of the transaction do we charge? Where is the value based? Um. Do we have different pricing models? Um, so we have different uh tiers of membership to unlock different features. Um, yeah, so that was kind of the journey into building out um cash gifted as a business I love that.
Speaker 1:I love that because every great business I um that you know is successful always starts off with the founder always says to me I found this gap in the market, I was having this problem, and so I just went, you know I'm going to fix it. And from then they went and tried to solve that problem. It was never, like, you know, trying to replicate someone else's idea or, you know, it always comes with a problem that they found and no one else was solving it. So I love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the more and more businesses you launch, like all. I kind of learn the more I go is that you identify these problems and with the right fit, I went and saw a whole bunch of clients and talent before I lifted a finger in building, you know, any tech or anything like that. I really went to understand is this a real pain point? Is it just me? Do other people have this pain point? Doesn't need to be solved and same with Cash Gifted.
Speaker 2:You know we spent a lot of time just doing user research sessions, really understanding the problem statement and then going and mapping out wireframes and walking through them with people and going would this make sense? How would you use it? Would you use it this way? Because I think a lot of people similar to what you're saying on the flip side can go I've got this problem. They then go and build a whole business and a product around solving that problem and then realize it's actually not meeting the user needs of 99% of the other people that might have that problem, if they even. Is a problem to be solved?
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's definitely something about you know validating the product pretty early on, seeing you know everyone else is having this problem and do they want it fixed and how urgent is it for them. I think that's pretty important Coming back to like your marketing strategy, because I kind of get a sense of okay, you found the gaps in the market, you went out and you built the product. What were some initial marketing strategies that really helped you grow the user bases of these products?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've been very lucky with all of my businesses that the supply side of the marketplace so talent and influences has been purely organic and word of mouth Predominantly, because there isn't a great deal of other tools out there, especially in Australia, for creators to be able to build their careers, monetise their audience, get collaboration opportunities and it's quite a tightly held market so all of the creators know each other, they speak, so that's been really helpful for us in not having to spend money to acquire that side of the market. On the flip side it's the brand side really helpful for us in not having to spend money to acquire that side of the market. On the flip side it's the brand side, especially in Hush Gifted. It's a B2B sales plan so, as you can imagine, the cost to acquire a customer in a B2B business is higher than in a direct consumer business and it's a longer sales cycle, so there's more touch points.
Speaker 2:So things that have worked really well for us is sort of a general sort of sales outreach strategy, being very targeted and who we go after key performing clients that we know, um, invest a lot in influencer marketing or have a ugc content creation strategy that you know this business would be right for, and then thinking about all the other touch points that those people would need to have. So retargeting campaigns across social, making sure that we're showing up in the places that they would be going to seek information so trade press, podcasts, press opportunities, blogging opportunities, the places that they would be going to seek information and then making sure that we are providing value through email know, email marketing, newsletters, all of those things yeah, sounds like you got a pretty good marketing strategy all locked in there there's always something more to do and, like you know, I feel like our own social marketing across all of my businesses, despite it being kind of my background and skill set is like plumbers always have the worst plumbing at home, right.
Speaker 2:Like you're always like, oh so much more on tiktok, or we should be doing so much more strategic things on reddit or whatever yeah, you always get busy doing the client work and you neglect your own right.
Speaker 1:Um, we mentioned ai earlier. I was keen to hear you know, with ai coming out, what do you think are some of the future trends when it comes to influencer marketing? What do you think will happen with that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's going to really help brands get a lot more strategic in who they work with. So helping them identify audiences, audience overlap, engagement rate, conversion rates I think is going to be really helpful. I think it's been a little bit of a black box and a little bit hard for brands to really deeply understand, and I do think that AI and some of these new AI tools will be really helpful for brands in that space. I also think it's going to be really interesting to see how social media changes with AI generated content. There's so many platforms out there now where you can get AI generated UGC and testimonial videos and I worry or I'm sort of intrigued and concerned about what that's going to change conversion rates and how we think about testimonial videos and UGC.
Speaker 2:Is it going to change how consumers engage with social media altogether if it starts becoming completely AI generated content? So I think the platforms have a lot to think about there and I think you know, as a nation, australia has a lot to think about there in terms of disclosures and regulations around true content both video stills and written content, power of sort of journalism and trust in the press and all of those things. So I think it's going to be a really wild time over the next sort of six to 12 months, and I think there's a lot that brands can be doing in simply automating workflows, automating reporting, thinking about some of the touch points in their day-to-day and how they engage with creators, or how they're making cutdowns of video content in a more sort of streamlined and efficient way using AI, before they go the whole hog of maybe completely doing all of their content with AI. I think there's a middle ground that keeps that consumer trust but also cuts down on sort of basic general workload and efficiencies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think trust is a big, big word there. I recently did a lot of research around it on a book I was working on. There's a whole chapter dedicated to trust, and I was looking at data from the Edelman Trust Barometer and unfortunately, it is going down every year with each generation as well, and I think what worries me about influencer marketing and AI is that a lot of these influencers could not be real people. They could be AI versions of something and, yeah, it's. You know, I kind of I'm not looking forward to that world, to be honest.
Speaker 2:And I just sort of think more broadly as well, like the um, do people have the, the critical and analytical thinking to be able to determine and and think about trust in the press, trust in our media, trust in discerning what is real content, what is not real content? I just don't think that we have that level of sophistication, especially in some of the younger generations and probably older generations as well, that digital literacy to really understand, which is really terrifying, yeah.
Speaker 1:Sure, coming back to businesses wanting to work with influencers, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see businesses make when they go on their journey trying to find a good influencer that will help, you know, spread the message, get some product sales, all of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's some really common ones, which is usually getting brought up on vanity metrics. So they'll say, you know, I want someone with 200,000 followers, without really understanding that you could have someone with 20,000 followers who's got a higher engagement rate in your particular niche and that's going to drive much more value for a brand than someone with a high number of followings who doesn't have a good engagement rate and isn't in your particular niche. So, yeah, definitely getting caught up on vanity metrics. Also, the fear of having to relinquish control to a creator. I think the only creator campaigns that work are those where it feels really authentic and where it's influencer led and that their creativity is allowed to shine, where they're allowed to bring that brand message to life. And I understand from a brand's perspective that can be really scary. You know, relinquishing control and saying you know, this is our brand this is what we stand for.
Speaker 2:This is the message that we're trying to convey. You're the creator, you're the one that's built trust with your audience over the last 10, 15, 20 years. What's the best way for us to do that? And allowing them to come up with a script, a narrative, keywords, even understanding you know what type of material is going to work best. Should this be a story? Should this be a reel? Should it be statics? Should it be a TikTok video? What should it be? Should it be long form written content, getting their input on that and allowing them to craft the creative message that makes campaigns that convert so much more. But I think there's still very much a brand first lens on how brands want to work with creators, where they say we want a reel, we want these to be the touch points. We want you to be saying this, we want these to be the key words. It needs to be shot speaking to camera X, y and Z and I think so often they just fall flat.
Speaker 2:They feel so inauthentic and the audience can smell it a mile away and it feels like advertising as opposed to feeling like social content and and that loses trust correct.
Speaker 1:It's a little bit so yeah, yeah, no, I, I totally agree. I think trusting the influencers to deliver the message in an authentic way to their audience would work well. I love that advice as well, because I actually recently heard someone tell me they used an influencer to promote their product. This particular influencer only had like 12,000 contacts or followers, but it was so effective because these 12,000 followers were exactly the right target audience and they were very engaged with her content.
Speaker 2:So it worked beautifully, yeah finding that micro and nano creator can be so powerful. And, yes, it can be more time consuming in the sense that they may not have worked with a brand before. It might be their first campaign. They probably don't have as much experience have worked with a brand before. It might be their first campaign. They probably don't have as much experience and to be able to scale that en masse, you're probably going to have to work with more people than you would if you were just working with two or three hero creators. But the conversion rates can be amazingly powerful.
Speaker 2:And I always say to brands think of it like, obviously, your marketing funnel and you're going to use your top tier people you know Kim Kardashian or whatever it might be purely for reach and brand halo and sentiment effect.
Speaker 2:So they're not the people that you're going to be using when you're thinking about conversion. So you might be working with different people at all different points in the funnel. So you know the brand awareness, the consideration phase you're going to have different people there and then the conversion phase. So figuring out what it is that you're trying to achieve with each part of the influencer campaign, because if it's purely about reach and it's not about conversions, well great. You know you can be looking at a different type of person in a different type of campaign. But if you're trying to change you know maybe brand consideration or you're trying to change sentiment about your brand or repositioning, you know you're really going to have to think through what is the strategy, what kind of person is right to engage with and what messaging do I need that person delivering for me? Yeah, so what follower size do I need?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense, moving on to running a SaaS business, what advice can you give founders out there about managing a team and maybe tell us about your approach to leadership as well?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think one of the things that's consistent across all businesses and is probably a no-brainer is that your journey as an entrepreneur is so much more enjoyable if you have lots of great people around you that you admire, who are much better than you at whatever particular niche it is they're bringing to your business. So I think in the early days, especially at Wink, I was like no, I have to do all the things. And then you get to a point where you realize actually, no, wow, I so much more enjoy coming to work when I have a brilliant head of accounts, when I have a brilliant go-to-market expert, I have a brilliant head of engineering or whatever it might be. That makes that journey. I'm inspired by them, I'm learning from them every day and I know that they're really owning and delivering a part of the business that I can then take a step back from having to worry about or think about every single day, knowing that I've got a brilliant head of that department, head of sales, whatever it might be.
Speaker 2:So I think, finding really, really good people and bringing them in and I'm all about radical transparency, giving them full visibility to the operating metrics of the business, where we need to go what we need to deliver by when you know whether that's financial targets, whether that's fundraising targets, whether that's, you know, business growth targets, whatever it might be giving them visibility to those things so that your team, who are hopefully really brilliant in each of these areas, can help you solve these problems.
Speaker 2:So you know my CTO would never come to me and say, you know, for me to deliver this, I need to hire 15 more engineers, because he's got full P&L transparency and he can go. Well, I know, like I can make three more hires here and I can make two more hires there and I need to be able to drive this much more revenue growth if I want to hire more people. So they're helping you solve problems in a realistic and creative way because they're really, really clever and they've got that full visibility and trust. I also think giving people equity in a business is a great way to incent and align everyone's objectives and goals in a company, and I think having people feeling like they are owners of a company and wanting what's best for the business really aligns how they show up and think about their role. They're not just here building widgets or doing customer outreach. You know, they're here trying to grow a company and I think it helps give them that 30,000 foot view of the business as well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I love that Like empowering people to make the decisions not just come to you for, you know, solving the problems and yeah, I think something about giving them equity makes them feel like you know, I'm not just responsible for what my contract tells me, I am. I'm actually the owner of this business as well, so I can contribute in X, Y, Z ways and yeah, I think that really helps and having those types of people can really help with scaling a business absolutely and unfortunately it's so hard to find like it's it really is.
Speaker 2:You know I had a silver bullet solution for finding. You know more people who are entrepreneurial minded, who are problem solvers, who are critical thinkers. You know, know it is really challenging, but when you find them?
Speaker 1:Where are they Exactly? But I love what you said earlier, which is, you know, coming to work and actually getting excited about coming to work, enjoying what you're doing, because if you wear all the hats and you're in the trenches all the time, I think at some point you just stop enjoying running the business. You just feel like an employee. Or you know, you find yourself a job. Yeah, Absolutely, You've just given yourself a job. So I guess, with that in mind, you know you do quite a lot. You're a founder, an investor, a board director, a speaker. How do you balance all of that? What's your? Do you believe in work-life balance or is that um?
Speaker 2:I think now I I really try and only take on projects that um are with people that I really really enjoy learning from um and who I feel um that I'm going to be a little bit outside of my comfort zone. So, whether that's a completely new industry um, whether that's a new business model that I haven't worked in before, so I really enjoy that. I'm still at a point in my career where, if I'm going to take things on, I really want to be learning. And I think finding the balance is really hard, because I think every time you think, you know, I looked at my year in January and I was like, right, I've got a good balance, I've sort of mapped everything out here, I know where my busy periods are going to be, and then something can come out of the blue like a new opportunity or a new board role, and you go, oh, you know, I really want to do that, and it throws everything out the window. So I think getting the balance right is really really hard.
Speaker 2:I'm much better now at saying no, um or no, I can't right now. You know, let's talk about this in six months time or let's talk about this in three months time. Um, and also bringing in. I suppose the benefit of having an exit is that you can um, I can put in people into projects now and say I'm willing to back this project for, you know, six to twelve months with a someone who's spearheading that particular venture and give it time to to run and find its feet and then go out and raise capital around it. So I think being able to have a few concurrent irons in the fires with really great people in each of those businesses is sort of how I'm trying to juggle it and make it work at the moment, but I can certainly tell you I don't have it nailed. There's definitely weeks where I go oh my gosh, like this is not sustainable.
Speaker 1:You can't do it. I don't think anyone has it nailed. I think it's a constant challenge for everybody the ongoing battle, absolutely, with starting new businesses. What's your take on personal branding and thought leadership by the founder? Do you think that's important to like grow the business? And also, I guess, when selling that business, do you see that as a as a weakness for people wanting to buy it? Because if it's all based on the thought leadership by the founder, surely when the founder leaves that could be problematic it's really.
Speaker 2:It's such a double-edged sword. You're absolutely right. So I do think that consumers want to know the people behind brands and they want to consumers customers they do want to have visibility and trust and transparency in companies now, and so I think having founder and CEO and leadership teams that people can have or hear direct contact from is really important. So I think you know, when you look at big global companies like you know, tim Cook, people being able to speak on behalf of a brand and their personal values being reflected in the company values I think is really important. That's what consumers want to see.
Speaker 2:And I do think it becomes a double-edged sword when you think about exiting a company. Or even you know at a company the size of Apple, looking at leadership transitions, you know, and key man dependencies in a company. When you lose a Johnny Ive from your design you know, head of design or you lose your Tim Cook or whatever it might be, it does, it can present a real challenge. So I think there's a really delicate balance there in making sure that I think founders and CEOs and leadership teams are developing their own personal brand, that they can draw a correlation between their personal values and the company values and speak authentically to what it is about their job, their role, their company, their vision. That aligns with trying to grow this business, especially in high growth tech startups and, you know, in the early stage founding team.
Speaker 2:I think it's really important. And then I think you have to think about how you de-risk that. So with the Right Fit, for example, I was very, very much the face of that business but I had a very strong leadership team and I had, you know, a CEO in place and COO and CTO and heads of all of the divisions, so that when we went to exit the company, yes, of course there had to be transition planning and yes, of course I had to do an earn out for that business, but that the buyer was comfortable, that there was, you know, there wasn't so much key man dependency in the business that it really required my day in, day out involvement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think there's definitely something to you know, the founder of a business coming out and just being really transparent and, you know, giving that personality to the business. Um, even the ceo of snapchat, who never really does any kind of public speaking, just came out on a podcast just to kind of show that personality side and I think it makes a huge difference the way you think about a brand when you see that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely I couldn't agree more my last question for you.
Speaker 1:Uh, it's a traditional question that I ask every single guest on this show. It's if you could go back in time and give yourself one bit of advice, what would it be?
Speaker 2:um, oh, probably in the early days, like probably to enjoy the journey a little bit more I think I didn't realize the challenges and growth challenges that I was going to have ahead of me.
Speaker 2:So I think those, the first years of Wink you know, whilst they were challenging in that you know it was my first time growing a business and managing a team and all of those things Actually it was they were really beautiful years and I really wish I'd sort of spent more time celebrating the incremental victories and enjoying that process and instead of always looking at like what's next, what's next, like what's the next growth target? Same with the right fit, I guess. You know I was very focused on you know, how do we get to the next? You know how do we get to our series a, what do we need to do? What's next? How to grow the bit, what's? You know what new market are we launching and what new subsection, blah, blah, blah. Um, that there wasn't a lot of time to sort of stop and smell the roses and and really go wow, you know we've achieved a lot here, so that probably would have made the journey a lot more enjoyable.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, hopefully you can enjoy it now. Um, having said that, that's definitely going to be my bit of advice too. I think if I could go back and say that exact thing to myself, I will Not sure if I would have listened, but that's the other thing.
Speaker 2:Probably a lot of people said it to us along the way, but did we listen?
Speaker 1:Probably not what's next. What's next? Taryn, thank you so much for being on the show. That's been really insightful. I think a lot of founders and marketers listening to this podcast have a lot of notes that they can take away and apply to their own businesses. So thank you so much for your insights.
Speaker 2:Well, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
