Gilles Bertaux is the co-founder and CEO of Livestorm, a webinar platform for enterprise marketers. When his Series C investors said no in 2022, he had a choice - keep chasing funding or flip the entire business model. He chose the harder path. And it worked. Before that moment, Livestorm had 4.5x'd revenue during COVID, going from $2M to $9M ARR in a single year. But 85% of customers were on monthly self-serve plans. The product had expanded into meetings and sales demos, turning into a smaller version of Zoom with no clear differentiator. Positioning was diluted. Sales conversations were getting longer. Conversion was dropping. The failed fundraise forced Gilles to make the company profitable, target enterprise-only customers on annual contracts, and narrow positioning to European marketers in banking, pharma, and professional services. Today Livestorm serves 3,500 customers and is closing in on $20M ARR. š KEY LESSONS š Explosive growth can hide a fragile business: Going from $2M to $9M felt like traction, but 85% of customers were on monthly plans that could vanish with one click. šÆ Expanding too broadly dilutes your edge: Adding meetings and sales demos turned Livestorm into a smaller Zoom with no clear differentiator. š¢ Narrowing your market can accelerate growth: Focusing on European enterprise marketers shortened sales conversations and increased conversion. š You can't retrain a PLG sales team for enterprise: Reps who closed inbound leads couldn't cold-call 10,000-person companies. Gilles replaced almost the entire team. š ļø Sell to the buyer with a separate budget: Positioning as a marketing tool avoided budget wars with Zoom and Teams in IT departments. š° Constraints force better decisions: The Series C rejection pushed Livestorm toward profitability and a more sustainable customer base. ā±ļø TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Introduction 00:39 What Livestorm does and who it serves 01:52 Revenue, customers, and funding 02:21 Building Livestorm as a university project 04:18 The disastrous first webinar launch 06:48 Why a product launch is a timeline, not a day 09:16 Finding the first 10 customers through inbound 10:34 SEO, Quora, and co-marketing as early growth engines 13:51 Competing with GoToWebinar and Zoom 15:33 How product-market fit shifted after COVID 17:36 Going from $2M to $9M ARR in one year 18:58 Support tickets from 200 to 20,000 and servers crashing 21:29 Post-COVID churn and the virtual event collapse 24:31 Why webinars survived but virtual events died 27:00 Losing product-market fit by becoming a smaller Zoom 29:54 Rebuilding positioning around Europe, marketers, and industries 32:18 Why video is a commodity and experience is the differentiator 36:39 How Livestorm processes 4,000+ feedback items per quarter 39:36 The painful shift from PLG to enterprise sales 44:47 Rebuilding the sales team for outbound 46:20 From tech nerd to startup CEO 49:38 Lightning round š§° RESOURCES š Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: https://saasclub.io/email š” Join the SaaS Club founder community: https://saasclub.co/plus š Build your $10K MRR SaaS: https://saasclub.io/launch š Scale from 6-figures to $1M ARR Faster: https://saasclub.io/mastermind šÆ Get 1:1 async coaching from Omer: https://saasclub.io/accelerate š§ Full Show Notes: https://saasclub.io/470 š¤ Subscribe to the Podcast: https://saasclub.io/subscribe #SaaS #ProductMarketFit #Startup #FounderStory #B2BSaaS