2020 Year In Review: How I Launched This, A SaaS Story

Stephanie Wong (@stephr_wong) and Carter Morgan (@carterthecomic) take us on a journey recapping serial entrepreneurs, surprising lessons learned, critical technology pivots and uncovering there is no silver bullet to security. The episodes of 2020 surprisingly revealed many common themes between founders, CEO’s and their respective companies. While dual pandemics plagued this year, we kept the recordings going in hopes of giving listeners a platform to learn, grow from and simply enjoy.

This year, we learned what it takes to start and scale global businesses. Being flexible and adjusting to trends and new technologies was a big theme, and we were lucky to hear advice from multiple professionals about how to keep companies effective as the world changes. The complete pivot CEO Dirk Hoerig of commercetools took early in the company's journey is a great example. Pendo CEO Todd Olson enlightened us on the importance of product-led growth in business and how sometimes things have to break to get better.

Bringing together industry tools to create something more than the sum of their parts was a big take away from episodes like TrueFit and Change Healthcare. Flexible, indexed data that's easy to use was another point a lot of our guests touched on, and MongoDB's product offerings focus on just that. We talked online security with guests like MongoDB's Lena Smart and how important it is to have functional, secure networks for users and employees.

From tips on productivity and remote working to understanding the social constructs that affect workplace comfort, we've tackled some of the big issues of 2020 and learned how entrepreneurs have leveraged technology to help overcome these challenges. Guests like Mandy Price taught us about the anonymous reporting system, Kanarys, that's working to create a safe and inclusive workplace. Aeris CEO Marc Jones joined us in a candid conversation about race and entrepreneurship as well, pointing out how a lack of support can create risk-aversion and limit opportunities for certain races of people. Companies like Upswing are striving to change that by supporting marginalized people through college and beyond. And when companies support diversity, great things can happen, Quitebit was a perfect example of this.

Outside the workplace, entrepreneurs are working for a healthier planet as well. Our very first episode tackled air pollution. We learned from Founder and CEO Davida Herzl, how Aclima is revolutionizing air quality improvement through data mapping and Olea Edge Analytics is helping companies conserve water with their unique meters.

Check out all the episodes from this year to hear in-depth conversations with these guests and more! Thanks for joining us, we'll see you in 2021!

Episode Links:
Aclima
True Fit
Quantum Metric
commercetools
Change Healthcare
Qubit
Pendo
Kanarys
Aeris
Olea Edge Analytics
MongoDB
Upswing.io
Reputation.com
Informatica
Redis
Elastic
Qubole
DataStax
Olea Edge Analytics