We’re championing the Real SaaS Revolutionaries. The leaders and experts building the SaaS companies today that’ll shape our industry and community tomorrow. Each week we’ll be profiling some of the SaaS champions, nominated by their peers. Know someone who deserves the spotlight? They could be our next Revolutionary!
Today’s Real SaaS Revolutionary is Benjamin Dell. Benjamin is founder at MissingLettr, HeySummit, HelpShelf and OnboardFlow. He previously owned a web agency for over 10 years (acquired) and launched a number of SaaS startups (2x acquired). Benjamin is passionate about empowering businesses and brands with tools that help them succeed.
Tell us the founding story of your companies?
I have been in SaaS for a few years now (with Missinglettr being my first – though I sold an early pre-revenue version of an earlier product to David Cancel / Drift before Missinglettr).
My focus has always been around ideation, bringing new products to market and establishing early growth strategies.
Roll forwards a couple of years and whilst launching HeySummit (a virtual summit platform) and found myself challenged with the notion that I may well be a great founder, but am I really a great CEO as well? I wanted to put that to the test so with HeySummit I decided to bring a CEO in to run things for me. We’re close to passing 1M ARR after the first year and have just closed a funding round.
In short – I love bringing new products to market, but I also like to challenge the way I approach launches, growth strategies and organisational structure.
What’s been the highlight of building these companies so far?
Seeing HeySummit flourish without me in the CEO position.
From your experience, what’s the #1 piece of advice you’d give to other SaaS leaders?
By all means absorb information from others but ultimately, honing your own ability to make judgments on key decisions and strategies is what really counts.
Optimise your efforts around learning by ‘doing’.
Recommend one book that’s helped you as a leader?
Carnegie, by Peter Krass
