[SaaS Series] The SaaSpreneur Model Explained With Shaun Clark

·38 min·3 clips

Shaun Clark explains how a marketing agency's cold call saved High Level by revealing the missing link in lead nurturing.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz introduces the episode as part of the SaaS series on the Inspired Insider podcast. He briefly mentions previous interviews with founders from Zapier and Pipedrive before introducing guest Shaun Clark, co-founder and CEO of High Level. Clark describes High Level as an all-in-one white-labeled marketing platform designed to help businesses capture, nurture, and convert leads. He recounts the company's early focus on small businesses with two-way text messaging and reputation management, which failed due to SMBs' lack of time to implement. A cold call from marketing agency owner Robin Alex revealed the insight to serve agencies instead, automating lead nurture flows via SMS to deliver booked appointments, which lowered agency churn. Clark discusses his co-founders: Varun, the CTO he hired years prior in India, and Robin, who worked for two years without pay or equity before being made a co-founder. High Level bootstrapped initially, became profitable early, and later raised private equity rounds to reward employees and gain operational expertise. The team grew from two co-founders to 1,600 employees, with a strong emphasis on customer support. Clark explains High Level's 24/7 Zoom-based support model, inspired by the Verizon store experience, featuring a lobby queue and one-on-one sessions. He highlights the importance of community, exemplified by evangelists like Clay Lawrence, who built a business solely on High Level's reputation management feature. The company uses a community voting system at ideas.gohighlevel.com to determine its product roadmap. Clark details the affiliate program, which offers 40% recurring commissions for life, and has paid out over $100 million. He discusses the High Level Summit, an annual event focused on teaching the SaaSpreneur model, citing a specific attendee, Andy, who transformed his business by adopting it. The episode concludes with Clark mentioning featured speakers like Billy Gene and Ryan Deiss, and Dr. Weisz directing listeners to High Level's resources.

As heard by us

A practical SaaS interview focused on support, scale, and the machinery behind customer success.

Dr. Jeremy Weiss uses this Inspired Insider interview to sketch how Sean Clark of HighLevel thinks about scale, and the most useful material comes from the operating details.

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Why you'd press play

When you want the operating manual behind a fast-growing SaaS company.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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