Product-Market Fit: From a School Project to $20M ARR

$2M to $9M ARR in one year. Then it nearly fell apart. Gilles Bertaux expanded Livestorm into meetings and sales demos after COVID, turning it into a smaller Zoom with no clear differentiator. In this episode, founders will learn how he rebuilt product-market fit by narrowing to a niche most would run from. Gilles shares why 85% of customers on monthly plans was a ticking time bomb, how a failed Series C forced the right strategic shift, and why targeting marketers instead of IT buyers let Livestorm avoid competing with Zoom on budget. Livestorm generates nearly $20 million in ARR with 3,500 customers and has raised $35 million. Gilles co-founded the company in 2016 as a university project and has led it through explosive COVID growth, a near-collapse in positioning, and a rebuild to product-market fit with enterprise buyers. This episode is brought to you by: 🌎 ThreatLocker → Book a demo 💖 Gearheart → Book a free consult and get the first 20 hours free 🔑 Key Lessons 🎯 Product-market fit can be lost by expanding too broadly: Livestorm added meetings and sales demos after COVID, turning into a smaller Zoom with no clear differentiator. The longer the sales conversation, the lower the conversion rate. 📉 Explosive growth can mask a fragile customer base: Going from $2M to $9M ARR in one year felt like traction, but 85% of customers were on monthly self-serve plans. One button click and that revenue disappears overnight. 🏢 Narrow positioning wins against giants: Livestorm stopped competing feature-for-feature with Zoom and differentiated on three dimensions - European company for security-conscious buyers, marketers only to avoid IT budgets, and specific industries like banking and pharma. 🔄 Selling to enterprise requires rebuilding the sales team, not retraining it: Reps who closed inbound leads from a CRM could not cold-call 10,000-person companies. Gilles had to replace almost the entire original sales team with people experienced in enterprise outbound. 💰 A failed fundraise can force the right strategic shift: When Series C investors said no in 2022, Livestorm had to become profitable. That constraint pushed them toward enterprise customers on annual contracts who pay more and stick longer. 🛠️ Target the buyer with a separate budget: By positioning Livestorm as a marketing tool instead of an IT tool, Gilles avoided budget wars with Zoom and Teams. Marketers control their own spend and do not need IT approval to buy. Chapters Introduction What Livestorm does and who it serves Revenue, customers, and funding Building Livestorm as a university project The disastrous first webinar launch Why a product launch is a timeline, not a day Finding the first 10 customers through inbound SEO, Quora, and co-marketing as early growth engines Competing with GoToWebinar and Zoom How product-market fit shifted after COVID Going from $2M to $9M ARR in one year Support tickets from 200 to 20,000 and servers crashing Post-COVID churn and the virtual event collapse Why webinars survived but virtual events died Losing product-market fit by becoming a smaller Zoom Rebuilding positioning around Europe, marketers, and industries Why video is a commodity and experience is the differentiator How Livestorm processes 4,000+ feedback items per quarter The painful shift from PLG to enterprise sales Rebuilding the sales team for outbound From tech nerd to startup CEO Lightning round 💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: https://saasclub.io/email SaaS Club Programs Join the SaaS Club founder community: https://saasclub.co/plus Build your $10K MRR SaaS: https://saasclub.io/launch Scale from 6-figures to $1M ARR Faster: https://saasclub.io/mastermind Get 1:1 async coaching from Omer: https://saasclub.io/accelerate Resources Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/470 Subscribe to the podcast: https://saasclub.io/subscribe