Björn W. Schäfer | Entrepreneur, Business Angel & Book Author
148 episodes listed below
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Die Funky Flywheels Show ist der Sales- & GTM-Podcast für B2B-SaaS- & AI-Startups im DACH-Raum zwischen 1–10 Mio. ARR.Im Fokus stehen die vier teuersten Phasen beim Skalieren:1. Fake Sales Teams Du hast 2–3 Seller eingestellt – aber schließt immer noch den Großteil der Deals selbst. Kein Sales-Team. Nur teures Umsatz-Theater.2. Symbolic Sales Leadership Head of Sales mit starkem CV, schwachem Impact. 6–12 Monate verloren, hoher Cash-Burn, Frust im Team.3. Premature Scaling VC-Druck auf 3× Growth – aber dein Sales-Prozess ist nicht replizierbar. Ergebnis: Hohe Burn Rate, schlechte Unit Economics.4. No Proper PMF – yet 15 Deals, 15 Use Cases. Keine klare GTM-Motion. Kein messbarer, wiederholba…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Bjorn Schafer makes SaaS growth measurable by testing founder stories against the sales processes and operating details behind them.
Funky Flywheels Show turns B2B SaaS growth into a series of operational questions: how discovery calls reveal customer problems, how sales teams measure real progress, and how founders make a go-to-market process repeatable.
Bjorn Schafer asks about your open deals before letting you celebrate that win rate.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A disciplined pricing reset for founders who may be leaving revenue on the table.
SaaS pricing is framed here as a living revenue choice, not a set-and-forget task. The guest, a pricing expert and co-founder of ValueShift, makes a plain case that many founders lock in a number early and then let it calcify even as the business evolves.
Pricing is framed as a practical fit problem, not a template choice.
Pricing is treated as a working problem, not a slide deck exercise. The argument is that copied models break down when they ignore product market fit, measurable added value, or a clear goal.
A sharp PMF reset for founders with revenue, but not enough clarity.
Michael Sauter frames Product Market Fit as something that can be measured, not assumed. He breaks it into four working parts - Customer Success, Repeatability, Profitability, and Market Traction - and ties each one to how a board should think about GTM, momentum, and the risk…
A direct pivot framework for founders who want diagnosis before pushing harder.
Die Folge nimmt die Frage ernst, ob ein besserer Sales-Prozess noch hilft oder ob ein Pivot faellig ist. Stefan Sanetti bringt dafuer die Sicht eines Serienunternehmers mit 25 Jahren Erfahrung und mehreren Firmen mit harten Pivots ein, dazu ein 60-Fragen-Framework und die…
A practical alignment story about building a repeatable revenue system before layering in more automation.
Holycode is framed as a disciplined growth-ops story rather than a flashy one. It shows a move from founder-led selling and no CRM toward a more repeatable revenue system, with marketing and sales tied to the same goal of recurring revenue.
A blunt look at why product love still needs a budgeted business case.
This episode stays on a familiar enterprise-growth problem: liking a product is not the same thing as getting it budgeted. Manuel Boenisch and Marc-David Wagner use ProGlove's 500 million exit in 2022 and the company's European scaling experience to show how messy expansion gets…
Paid customers only matter when usage proves the fit.
Alexander Welsch turns 25 paying customers into a problem to examine, not a win to celebrate. The episode keeps coming back to the gap between money and actual use, and that is the right place to look if the goal is to understand product market fit instead of just counting…
A practical reset for discovery calls that are too often mistaken for demos.
Discovery Calls erscheinen hier als der erste echte Haertetest eines strukturierten Sales-Prozesses: Entscheidend ist, wie viel die Sales-Reps sprechen, welche Fragen den Business-Pain wirklich freilegen und wie schnell sich per Call-Recording erkennen laesst, ob der Ablauf…
Rob Walling on bootstrapped SaaS growth, plateaus, and exits — with founders who lived them.
Abbey Ashley's playbook for turning your job skills into a virtual assistant business.
Naval Ravikant on epistemology, startups, and crypto, from David Deutsch to Vitalik Buterin.
Alex Theuma interviews SaaS founders and investors on scaling to $10M-plus ARR.
Guy Raz traces founders' origin stories and fields live advice-line calls from entrepreneurs.
Alex Blumberg interviews guests like Megan Phelps-Roper and Shane McAnally about failure and reinvention.
Die Folge dreht sich um Discovery Calls, die in der Praxis oft eher wie Demos wirken.
This episode discusses how Henrik Meinhardt improved forecast accuracy to 80% by reducing CRM attributes and using smart transcripts, addressing issues when sales teams don't utilize CRM effectively.
This episode discusses the importance of RevOps for founders to build a solid foundation for revenue growth by transforming CRM into an effective management tool and addressing common issues like unclear deal pipelines and data gaps.
This episode discusses essential meeting formats and enablement strategies for sales and go-to-market teams, focusing on the Revenue Rhythm framework to address common issues like ineffective meetings and growth plan failures in startups.
This episode discusses the importance of focusing on customer retention and product usage metrics like LIR and TTV in board meetings, rather than just new revenue, to ensure long-term business success.
Alexander Welsch starts with a blunt mismatch.
Björn Schäfer interviews Yershi Shikla on mastering the Discovery Call in B2B SaaS sales.
For the 100th episode, roles flip.
This episode critiques the SPICE Framework's limitations in sales forecasting, revealing that even with proper CRM integration, teams struggle to predict deal closures.
Cara Benecke describes how WorkFlex built customer success from zero, starting without a CRM, without a CS team, and with sales and onboarding handled by the same person.
Konstantin Papadopoulos erklärt im Gespräch mit Björn Schäfer, warum „needy sales“ in B2B-Verhandlungen teuer werden und wie Phase 0 mit Mindset, Zeit, Macht und Information beginnt.
Jörn Schäfer talks with Anastasia Albert about a product marketing framework built around three Cs: customer, competition, and company.
Die Folge fragt zuerst, wo Product Validation aufhört und Scalable Growth anfängt.
Lars Fischer's Account-Based Marketing.
Theresa Engl and Lars Thalmann walk through how Holycode grew after starting with founder sales and no CRM.
Theresa Engl and Lars Thalmann of Holycode say most AI sales tooling is still “high with no impact,” but Read AI, Amplemarket, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and Zapier are already changing how they work.
Pricing ist hier kein Feintuning am Rand.
Lukas talks through the path to a 9.2 million euro Series A and the work that made it possible.
The conversation opens with a familiar founder mistake.
The episode opens on share of ICP as a core GTM metric.
Bjorn Schäfer opens with a direct challenge to the usual CRM win-rate number.
This episode discusses the challenges of sales qualification in B2B SaaS and AI startups, highlighting how different teams use disparate criteria.
The company’s rise is traced from pub prototypes to a 500 million exit in 2022.
Michael Sauter and Bjorn Schafer discuss the surprising fact that a company can pass one million in revenue and still not have product-market fit.
Pricing is the real subject here.
Daniel Grube joins Bjorn for a candid GTM debrief.
Die Folge setzt bei einer Nachtfrage an.
Björn Schäfer deconstructs the pipeline management system used by top 15% of sales teams, offering a framework for reliable forecasting.
Björn Schäfer and Michael Rapp discuss how MEDIC can be used as a company-wide revenue framework beyond sales qualification.
Interview with serial entrepreneur Jörg Sech about building a founder-led go-to-market machine for B2B SaaS startups.
A debate between two experts on B2B sales versus go-to-market strategies for scaling SaaS startups.
Interview with Jan Schönmarkers, founder of Hase und Igel, discussing his journey building an AI platform and the importance of corporate culture and hiring.