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“A Conversation With Ryan Estes, Co-founder at Kitcaster” Scaling SaaS Operations

In this episode of “Scaling SaaS Operations,” Ryan Estes speaks with host Kristine Esparza. Estes discusses how Kitcaster arranges interviews for a podcast with a listener. Kitcaster arranges podcast interviews with venture-backed start-up founders, entrepreneurs who have successfully left their enterprises, and C-level executives. In addition, how this service assists SaaS entrepreneurs and industry professionals who share their experiences, tactics, and insights to establish a customer-centric, high-growth business.

In This Episode, You Will Learn: 

• How Kitcaster arranges interviews for a podcast with a listener.
• What type of entrepreneurs and professionals Kitcaster works with
• What services Kitcaster provides to SaaS entrepreneurs and industry professionals.
• What you can learn from the guests who are interviewed on the show.

Good Question & Answer 1:

Kristine Esparza: So could you maybe talk about how you’ve seen or how you can leverage podcasting not just to generate leads but also build up a good user base?

Ryan Estes: That’s a great question; when to kind of tee that up, I should add that Kitcaster. We book entrepreneurs on the top podcast; almost all of our clients are funded startup founders, entrepreneurs with exits, or C suite execs; we work with B2B SaaS companies every day. So kind of where we start, you know, how can you take advantage of podcasts interviews? It’s going to depend on the outcomes you’re looking for. So, if you’re validating ideas, great. There are opportunities there. If you’re finding traction, if you’re scaling, wherever you are, in your journey, podcasts can be there to help you. Some of those outcomes might be prospects; of course, everyone’s looking for customers. It might be recruiting. Everybody needs, not everybody, but many people; many of our clients are looking for engineers and hiring. So you could go on podcast interviews to find those applicants, brand exposure, just kind of top of the funnel, word of mouth is great with podcasting, the content itself, networking with podcast hosts, so depending on the outcomes they’re looking for, we can kind of tailor a podcast interview campaign to meet those needs.

Good Question & Answer 2:

Kristine Esparza: What are your lessons learned? I know you started Kitcaster. So you’re kind of like a startup founder yourself. What would be some of the lessons learned, one or two, that you would share with a new startup founder? Because as there’s just a lot going on with startups in general, what would you share?

Ryan Estes: Kitcaster, probably, you know, I don’t know, my 10th or 11th startup. Got a lot of losses? Well, no. So we learn, right? Absolutely. And you get used to failing faster. You know, it’s kind of almost like a cliche to fail fast. But it is sound advice. And maybe before that, if you’re a new founder, especially if you’re a new SaaS founder, there’s a lot of hype around entrepreneurship. And I think people will wrap their identities around that of the entrepreneur guy; the dangerous thing about that is that it doesn’t inoculate you for the failures that will come. If you can identify as an entrepreneur, it’s great because it’s broad and means you’re on a journey. But if you’re the guy who does the Fang, or the gal that sells the Fang, and that thing isn’t working, then it’s hard, emotionally, to separate, like this thing isn’t working too, I’m not working. I’ve done that personally and spent 10s of 1000s of dollars just draining it down the tube that I knew wouldn’t work. And even more importantly, months, sometimes years of work on something I knew wasn’t going to work. But I was so emotionally engaged with it that I felt like if it didn’t work, then I wasn’t a value that I wasn’t working. Okay, it’s tough to separate those two; it may be impossible without some catastrophic loss. There’s something about getting older when the weight of the world is crushed. Your dreams a couple of times inoculate you for further pain so as not to discourage anybody. Younger folks that are getting into it, if you can keep a differentiation between the project and the product and behave like a scientist, would you have a hypothesis, this is going to work, what you learn by it not working is just as valuable as what is working, if not more valuable.

Additional Topics Discussed:

• How can Kitcaster help start SaaS startup founders?
• B2B SaaS companies that need to be innovating are beneficial outside of podcasts.

Host / Podcast Bio:

Kristine Esparza graduated with honors from DePaul University with a B.A. in Psychology and a Minor in Spanish. After working as a medical interpreter for patients who spoke Spanish and Polish at an academic medical institution, she pursued a technical degree, earning an M.S. in eCommerce Technology. The dot-com bubble stoked her enthusiasm for technology, and she has followed it ever since. She has a lifelong fascination with the use of technology and systematic approaches to people and process improvement. She has also worked in various areas, including eCommerce, financial technology, and healthcare information technology. Because of her previous work experience with startups and her ability to contribute to the success of their scaling processes, she is inspired to continue to grow her leadership, process development, and improvement abilities.

Guest Bio:

Ryan Estes is a co-founder of Kitcaster. Kitcaster products are validated and scaled by him. For the past ten years, he has been the owner of a media and marketing agency. For eight of those years, he was the host of the Talklaunch podcast. He has recorded more than 300 interviews, received more than a quarter-million downloads, and is consistently rated in the “Top 100” podcasts on iTunes.