Ep. 527 w/ Dor Sasson Co-founder & CEO @ Stigg
Kevin Horek: Welcome back to the show.
Today we have Do Saan.
He's the co-founder
and c e o at Stig Dore.
Welcome to
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
the show.
Hey, Kevin, great to be here.
Thank you for
Kevin Horek: having me.
Yeah, I'm excited to have you on the show.
I, I, I actually really think what you
guys are doing at Stig is, is really
innovative and cool, and I kind of wish
I would've known about it, you know,
a while ago when I was working on some
stuff, , because I think what you guys are
doing solves like a real pain point that
I think unless you've been through it, you
probably don't realize how much of a big
pain point you guys are actually solving
for, for a lot of people and companies.
But maybe before we get into all
that, Let's get to know you a
little bit better and uh, start off
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
with where you.
Yeah, so I grew up in a small, uh,
village or town, basically right
next to the center of Israel.
Um, uh, what was unique about the
way I grew up is, um, it was at
least until I was, uh, almost 10,
I grew up in a air force space.
Um, okay.
My dad, yeah, my dad used to be, um,
like in the, in the Israeli i d f
in the military, in the Air Force.
And, um, as part of that, some of the
families, um, for, you know, um, reasons
of, you know, having a better quality of
life, they live right next to the base.
So it was kind of like particular
in, in a, in a good way.
Um, because I know it kind of
sound odd, but uh, living right
inside the base is kind of cool.
You get to play hide and seek
next to F sixteens and f . Yeah.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah.
As a kid is like super cool because
you get to do all this crazy stuff
inside a base and sometimes you
can break the rules and such.
But yeah, it was, it was a good
childhood, I guess overall.
, um, yeah, then, yeah.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, keep going.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Uh, at some point we moved around.
Um, my, my ch you know, growing
up was pretty, you know, pretty
like, pretty normal childhood.
Um, you know, I went to school, I studied,
uh, computer science and, and chemistry.
Um, then they, you know,
got on the age of 18.
Typically, most of the folks in
Israel have to go to the military.
It's like a mandatory service.
I joined the military for a few years.
Um, I've served as an officer, then I,
uh, got out of duty and, you know, got
into, uh, uh, uh, product management.
Um, but yeah, I'll probably
elaborate more on that in a second.
Kevin Horek: Sure.
So I just wanna step back on a what,
like why, what got you passionate
about taking what you took in
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
university?
So, um, I studied, so interestingly,
I started actually working, uh, even
before I started my first degree.
I studied, um, um, like a mixture of like,
um, uh, political science with, um, um,
like my, my BA is like political science
and, um, a little bit of business school.
Okay.
Um, but, um, I got into product
management, into building in general,
uh, a little bit before that.
So throughout my military service, I
served in, uh, in the intelligence unit
where I was, uh, doing a lot of similar
stuff to product managers outside of
the, you know, the military world and.
Uh, I was working with developers, I was
working with, uh, similar environments
that you see in every other company.
And, uh, I began to be more and more
passionate about, um, you know, data,
data analysis, working, you know,
as a product person with developers.
And, you know, this is probably
was my main hook into this space.
Um, and you know, funny enough,
like the, what I studied wasn't
necessarily tied to that.
I just studied because, um, , it's funny,
my parents are like the typical classical,
you know, um, you know, stereotype Jewish
parents pushing you to study something.
So I found myself, um, you know,
going to study something just to
get them, you know, happy about what
I'm, what I'm doing with my life.
, fair enough.
But gen, yeah.
But I was already, you know, kind of
passionate and happy about working,
you know, and building new products,
trying different stuff in software, um,
you know, doing UX stuff, doing, you
know, product management in general.
And my first gig was.
Uh, I joined an early stage
startup right after the Army.
Um, we were a small, early stage FinTech
company trying to solve, um, a specific
problem that used to be exciting at that
time, which was how can you, uh, basically
purchase, um, uh, things online together.
Um, that was our main
focus or our main goal.
Um, stuff like from, you know, tickets
to concerts, all the way to, um, you
know, food and, you know, groceries
and, you know, travel tickets and,
you know, snowboarding tickets,
all those type, uh, type of things
like how can you do that together,
um, as a group in a seamless way.
. Um, the, it didn't, you
know, it didn't skyrocket.
We didn't, we, you know, we weren't as
successful as we were hoping, but we've
learned a lot about, you know, the dos
and don'ts of, you know, building software
in a, in a early stage environment.
Sure.
Um,
Kevin Horek: I, we should maybe come back
to some of those dos and don'ts later.
I, I'm curious throughout your, your
career, but we, we can cover that
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
later.
Mm-hmm.
. Um, yeah.
And, and, um, basically that
was my first product role.
Um, I've, uh, found myself,
you know, kinda continuing
my, my path in that space.
I've joined another startup company
named, uh, signify, uh, that was more
lean towards the B2B world, um, you know,
developer space where, uh, AI mach and
like developer AI machine learning space.
We were basically building
software that helped.
Developers, uh, deal with production
incidents and production alerts
in a much more efficient way.
Um, and, you know, we had a huge, um,
uh, like, um, AI machine learning engine
that helped, uh, you know, consume a
bunch of alerts and, you know, do a
lot of, uh, statistical analysis and,
you know, intelligent, um, um, ways to,
um, reduce and correlate and aggregate
alerts into single, uh, element, a
single issue that you can deal with.
Uh, that was like, um, very exciting
path for me because it was the first
steps into the AI machine learning
world and, you know, using data science
and statistical analysis as vehicle
to create value for, you know, users.
Uh, we were acquired by new.
2019.
Uh, new Relic is like a huge software
company helping developers everywhere,
uh, in terms of like, you know, building
observability tools and ways to, you know,
monitor production environments and such.
And, uh, that wa you know, that was
my main product gig before I've, you
know, co-founded Stig, uh, with Anton,
who used to work with me together
at the New Relic, uh, journey.
Um, yeah, I'm happy to kinda share more
into each and every, you know, step of the
way and, you know, kinda, you know, share
some insights or, you know, gems that,
you know, brought me to where we are.
But ultimately, I think that what
got me hooked into product in
general is the, is the fact that
I'm somewhat of a generalist.
Uh, I like to look on things, um, in
a broader way and see the intersection
of different, uh, variables and see
how they influence on, on one another.
And, you know, doing product.
Gives you that so sense of like,
like naturally be right there in the
middle of everything and you know,
be able to facilitate and listen and
um, basically, you know, um, make all
these things work together in a way.
So, uh, I I guess that's my, you
know, main reason why a product
has always been my passion.
Kevin Horek: Interesting.
No.
Okay, so I, I'm curious.
I, I think a lot of people probably
listening have heard and or have
or are using New Relic, cuz it's a
pretty big well-known company and
I've used it a ton in my career and
I actually think the product's great.
It, it, maybe it's, and it's costly,
but I think it's, it's worth it.
Um, I, I'm curious though, so how did you
and Andrew come up with the idea for Stig
and, and what exactly is it, and then what
made the both of you actually pursue it?
Because you're at a
well-known company, right?
.
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
Yeah.
And it's Anton, so.
Oh, an Anton.
Sorry.
Yeah, no worries.
So, um, the first, you know, uh, let's
call it likes, you know, significant
moment in, you know, that made us,
you know, build Stick was, um, other
second time, uh, second year, new
Relic, um, you know, c o v, uh,
you know, those, you know, yeah.
That was basically covid, uh, situation
in the world and there was a lot of
changes going on, going down with New
Relic and, and the entire, you know,
software, SaaS, you know, industry.
And, uh, as part of that, you know,
we had a new C e O coming in and
basically saying, Hey, you know, hey
team, you know, as a company, we're,
we're going to double down on product
led growth and usage based pricing.
To continue to grow our
business in our company.
And New Relic naturally has been
somewhat product led from the get-go
because it was for developers, by
developers for from the get-go.
But, um, as it grew it's business, uh,
and become more and more popular with
Enterprise, um, it's somewhat, um,
left out this, you know, this edge of
being there for developers and thinking
about the individual users and how,
you know, we can unlock value for them.
And so Oh, interesting.
This, yeah, so this specific ind,
you know, c e is extremely, you know,
passionate about, you know, bringing, you
know, some of that edge back to New Relic.
And, um, I've basically, so coming back
to again, to ST and how that unfolds,
Um, we had a, like a hackathon throughout
the, you know, main outburst of the covid.
It was like February, 2020.
Um, everyone were like a lot of
open-ended questions and uncertainty
around what's going to happen, you
know, moving to work remote and such.
And, you know, one of our, uh, r and
d leadership took the decision to use
this time for like a, uh, like a quick
hackathon for the team to kind of
think about, um, you know, stuff that
are not necessarily on the roadmap.
And, you know, I partnered with
another developer and together
we've, uh, basically hacked,
uh, in a, in a single week.
Something that today I think is somewhat,
um, identified on its own category.
Like something that people
nowadays call, like plg, C R m.
Okay.
Um, at the time as a product manager,
I was kind of frustrated that
there is a discrepancy between the.
As product and r and d and designers
understand users, users needs, users
usage, usage patterns, behaviors and
et cetera, and how the field like
sales Cs and such, how they see stuff
and you know, the signals that they're
getting and this discrepancy made.
Um, you know, our life in one hand
is a bit difficult to build the right
things and their life a little bit
difficult to sell the right things.
And so we used this hackathon week
to basically build something we
called the enlightenment park.
It was like a, you know, super quick and
dirty application on top of New Relic
data that, you know, you could insert
like a customer ID or a name or an account
and basically get like really cool uh,
insights into how you're using New Relic.
Um, and my point was to do those insights.
So stupid, simple that you know, anyone
that you know, even if you're like
reluctant to like, You know, you're
not a statistical kind of person.
You, you don't like to, you know, uh,
go into the weeds and the deepness of,
you know, charts and tables and such.
You can just literally just go in
and like, oh, so this is what they
value and this is what they're
using and this is how they're using.
And like, give, like real quick
scoring and pro, you know, ways
to prioritize certain and users
within an account and such.
Now today it was like off the shelf
amazing products out there that are doing
that, but at the time, there wasn't,
and this was like the first kind of like
a milestone, if you will, that made me
realize, hey, there's something there.
Because, uh, when we launched it
internally, people got like extremely
hooked, like all, you know, sales folks.
Yes.
Folks, folks that we kind of
distributed this tool around
from, you know, one to another.
Like it wasn't production grade,
uh, but people got super excited
and like really liked this.
And we began to get like, feature
request and you know, people like,
oh, can we, can you add this, you
know, thing and can you change that?
and we realized there's a huge
potential to, to this kind of tooling.
And it was that moment I began to
explore like what is out there, like
is there any off the shelf stuff?
And it was then when I, you know, kinda,
uh, started to educate myself more into
the product led, you know, uh, point
of view and you know, how people think
about product led in general in b2b.
And, um, yeah, that was like the
first, you know, major story around
how it came up, uh, with Stig.
Um, STIG is not a PLG c r m, so I know
how this, you know, the story ends not
exactly with like a exclamation point,
but, uh, this is basically was like how
we started to research and, you know,
go into the weeds of not what's working
and what's not in a product led motion.
Um, and you know, specifically
into what Stig does.
So I don't know, Kevin, if you want
me to kind of take a step back and
explain what Stig does and then Yeah.
Sure.
Tie to Knot or, yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
So, um, in a natural state, we like
to call it like, uh, headless, uh,
headless pricing, um, platform where
we give, uh, engineers and developers,
um, in all size of, you know,
companies in all size and all stages.
The ability to quickly, uh, launch
any type of pricing model, GTM motion,
um, uh, for their company, whether
it's like usage based subscription,
uh, PE per unit, like all type of ways
to price and package your product.
You can do that with, stick
with, you know, literally like
a day of work, if not less.
Depends on how complex you want to go.
And we approach pricing in general from
the eyes of builders, developers, product
designers, and you know, not necessarily
from the way it used to be approached
by rev ops teams, GTM teams and such.
And basically we, we try to help.
Companies to be nimble in the way
they package and sell their software.
Um, and so the way we do that is
like, this is an API first platform.
Everything is accessible
throughout an API or S D K.
Um, we give you, uh, everything from,
you know, the ability to, you know, gauge
access control to specific features,
build feature limits, uh, manage and,
you know, um, run changes into plan, you
know, PL pricing plan structure and all
the way to even, you know, like Embedable
widgets and UI that is ready to go, that
you can customize and just snap in, drop
it inside your application and go live.
Um, so you basically get an end to
end off the shelf pricing experience.
Um, that's like stick in a, in a nutshell.
Um, and that's on the application side.
We also hook stick into, um, um,
business applications such as crm,
uh, billing data pipeline and such.
So ultimately Stig is like the glue
between your product, your software,
and your, you know, G T M stack.
And, uh, so that's like in a natural
what Stick is and how does that ties
into my story about the Enlightment
Park and the p g application is.
Um, so, you know, bill Staples
new c e o came in and says, we're
doubling down on usage based pricing.
Um, and, you know, product like growth.
And the first thing we had to do
is figure out as a company, well
how do we go usage-based pricing?
Like, how do we change our entire pricing?
And how do we make it work?
And it was like a cross-company
effort to, uh, allow that, um, you
know, um, initiative, um, almost
a year of an effort or, you know,
r and d sales, product design.
Everyone had to be involved.
And that basically gave us the, you
know, first, you know, ding dinging.
There is, there is a huge
problem here that is not solved
and it cannot be this way.
That the only way to be nimble and
make pricing changes is so painful.
Like even at the scale of, um, even
like a cutting edge company such as
New Relic, you know, having to, you
know, spend so much time and effort
into running such a change is something
that we began to be passionate
about how we can solve otherwise.
Yeah.
Kevin Horek: Interesting.
Okay.
Interesting.
So, Like, I think what you outlined makes
sense, but do you maybe want to give,
and you don't have to give like actual
customer names away, but can you give
us some use cases of how some of your
customers have actually implemented Stig?
Just so people fully
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
understand.
Yeah, sure.
So we work, uh, as of today we work with,
um, um, most of our customer base is, uh,
C two A to sometimes B round companies.
Okay.
Um, B2B SaaS that's have, uh, the,
the main use case they're looking to
solve is launching, uh, self-service or
launching, uh, a, a new pricing model.
Um, and basically the way they use
it is we give them, uh, N sdk, we
have both client and server sdk.
They can integrate it to their code
base, uh, in one hand they can integrate
it with Stripe or any other billing
solution on the other side of the road.
and basically they get a UI where they
can build plans, manage features, manage
limits, uh, run changes, run a AB test.
Um, and everything that they do
inside the stick application, uh,
immediately replicates and permeates
to all the knobs that I mentioned.
Um, they also use thig to.
Launch stuff like an in-app customer
portal where customers can, you know,
expand their usage and buy more seats
or buy more credits, buy more, um,
any such of element that can be, uh,
you know, purchased, you know, within,
you know, in a self-service manner.
And also the paywalls
basically pays everywhere.
So whether it's like paywalls inside
the application or paywalls on your
pricing page, uh, you can go in and,
you know, see, you know, basically
see pricing tables and information
about pricing that is completely
fetched from stick from our api.
Um, so, so, yeah.
And, and you asked about specific customer
names, so you can check our website.
We have specifically customers that we've
mentioned there, that we list there.
We.
Um, I'm now launching a bunch of,
uh, ROI case studies and like how
customers are seeing stick and
what the value that we're seeing.
But the main free benefits or, you
know, things that we've made the most
impact at is one, uh, time to launch.
Like, literally, you know, being so much
faster in launching new pricing, running,
pricing changes, um, and, you know,
being nimble and fast to market, um, is
something that, uh, companies care about.
Uh, the second thing is reducing
engineering, um, you know, work
required to do those things.
So, Instead of having to have dedicated
teams, uh, maintaining and building
that internally, you can just use the
after shelf and you can customize it
and, you know, with no code, you can
just embed it and, and go, go, go.
Uh, so that reduce a lot
of engineering effort.
Um, and last but not least, ultimately
what we do for you is because
you launch faster and because you
reduce a lot of engineering work
required to support those changes.
Uh, we give a lot of, you know, new
ways to, uh, get information about
how, um, existing and new customers
are using your pricing, like using your
product and in the lenses of pricing
plans and feature limits, et cetera.
So you basically get more data points
and visibility into those usage
patterns and you can make better
informed decisions going forward on
what should you change, if you should
change anything about your pricing.
So that way we basically take.
Uh, pricing and, uh, change
the conversation from, uh,
like, uh, a political thing.
Something that is like full of opinions.
You know, a lot of the folks that we work
with used to see pricing as something that
you, you research competition a little
bit and you try to match it or like do
something a little bit different to a,
you know, a science, something that you,
uh, approach like a product, um, uh, craft
that you need to think about the way you
represent information about pricing to
your customers way that you, uh, represent
value, uh, ways that you help customers
consume your product and use your product
and buy it and ultimately, you know,
bet their buying experience overall.
Kevin Horek: Interesting.
Yeah, that's, that's
actually really cool, right?
Because the reality is, is you're
right, it's usually an argument.
It usually flip flops so many times and
you need obviously like dev and designer
and, um, Time as well to actually
implement some, some of these changes.
And sometimes it's, you know, a few
hours to, you know, a few weeks to
maybe even a month, depending on how
complex your pricing structure is set up.
Right.
And being able to just tweak that
or change that and test that and
get data on it based on Stig,
then there's no, it really cuts
down those discussions and those
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
arguments.
Right.
Yeah.
And also it's kind of like, so you,
so Kevin, you've mentioned that you're
coming from the UX and product design
and product in general world, so you n
know this better than I do that before
you, we had tools like Figma or Webflow.
Yeah, right.
Like every, every change or every
creation that you wanted to do, especially
in web development by the way that,
you know, the world has done such a
tremendous evolution though, right?
Like Yeah.
Uh, tools like yeah.
Webflow and cms, like Contentful and
such, so, , you know how before these
tools, every time you wanted to change
something in your website, right?
Like texts, colors, you know,
branding, video, like content media,
all these things, you had to put,
um, you know, your best, you know,
individuals and teams to work, right?
You had to get the help of designer
and web developer and et cetera.
And nowadays you see marketeers with zero
or to far less, you know, experience in
design and, um, and you know, content
creation and such, clicking a few
buttons inside those amazing tools.
And you have a really, really, you
know, uh, great websites, a really
great content that is being generated.
I'm not even talking about nowadays with
the generative ai, uh, type of content.
But what I mean by that is if you
take this analogy into our space,
uh, pricing used to be a nightmare.
Yeah.
It used to be like a, a a quarter
to even a full year project.
Research, yeah, conversations, meetings.
These, you know, you know,
misalignments that has to be somewhat
remediated and, you know, resolved.
Um, everyone has an opinion like
marketing, product design, you
know, uh, um, sales, um, you know,
everyone has something, you know,
stake in the table when it comes to
pricing, which is still the case.
Even if you're using
Stig, it's still the case.
It's just that the conversation
around implementation reduced so
much stress out of the conversation.
Because think about it, like why it
was so stressful, because everybody
knew this is our chance, right?
Like, we're changing a pricing
this portal, so we have to win, you
know, the way we think it should
be because it won't change at least
for a year or two quarters now.
And like it's, it's not
going to change again.
So, , if you reduce, you know, if you make
the implementation a click of a button,
it become, it becomes less of a political
conversation and more around, well,
how do we optimize, how do we improve?
Because, yeah, we can do another
cycle one month from now, two weeks
from now, and be more, uh, nimble.
Uh, by the way, this conversation is
more the, you know, the, the scenario
as I described it, is more relevant
for later stages, like scale and above.
Um, for earlier stages, you know, the
number one impact is literally, Hey,
we need to launch pricing tomorrow.
Can you help?
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
Kevin Horek: Okay.
So maybe give us a little
bit more detail on that.
You kind of quickly covered it, but
maybe give us a little bit more detail.
Like, if I'm, if I'm launching
a startup, I don't know, in the.
Few weeks say, and I need
to implement pricing.
Walk us
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
through that.
Yeah.
So, um, would you, I mean, okay.
I'll try to, uh, to depict the
picture, like, uh, like side by
side with without stick, right?
Like, so Sure.
Yeah.
Without, yeah.
So without stick, what do you do?
Right?
You come up with a spreadsheet?
Uh, I do see some notion pages
these days for some founders.
Yeah.
And you, you either talk to your bull,
to your investors, you talk to founder
friends, your research competition,
or you already know the competition,
or you look at similar products and
you start to think, okay, what, what
makes sense from, from my product,
from my software, from my company?
And, um, , you can go as creative as, you
know, as, as to the extent you, you are,
you're able to, but ultimately you will.
Most founders we talk to would have
a spreadsheet that they build, uh,
based on something they are familiar
with, like something from their world.
Yeah.
Um, and that not necessarily that,
like, that's like even that at that
point, there's already a problem there
because you, you don't necessarily
ha have all the knowledge and time to
start, you know, do appropriate research
around pricing and wilderness to pay.
And what exactly is the value
perception of what you've built?
So first thing, and, and, uh, first
like we, you know, we as a company
stick, we create a lot of content that
is easy to consume, like digest around
pricing and how should you approach it?
We ha we've built a community.
That's called, you know,
uh, pricing for Founders.
We've brought the best pricing folks
out there from the SaaS world, uh,
to give advice to founders, these
guys and, and folks are there 24 7 or
somewhat close to 24 7, and addressing
questions and, you know, giving an
advice and sometimes even jumping on
calls and helping founders and builders
everywhere to think about their pricing.
So that's when it comes to research.
Now, let's say you already
know, uh, what the, what is the
pricing that you want to launch.
Um, STIG basically gives you a no-code
UI that you can go in as a non-developer
and just build your pricing plans.
No, the nice thing once your pricing
plans are inside Stig, and it can be
freemium, it can be usage based, it
can be subscriptions, it can be flat
fees, it can be every, any, any possible
pricing model that you can think of.
Um, we immediately sync that
into every single place you
will ever integrate Stig with.
Uh, we give you Klan SDK with the paywall
so you can just snap in, drop, you
know, our paywall snippet and that's it.
You have your pricing plans, you
know, on Webflow pages, you know,
in in React applications everywhere.
And also in terms of, uh, if you want to
start charging and you want to connect
it to a billing provider or payment
processor, you can just integrate it
with a click to stripe and that's it.
You can start literally
charging Now the nice thing.
We got everything figured out when it
comes to like, the way your customers
are going to be, uh, using you.
So whether you want to introduce premium
free trials, uh, you want some email
automation around, um, free trials, you
want to introduce banners, you want to
push customers towards one plan over the
other downgrades, upgrades, everything
that you can think of, uh, that is
related to the customer journey, we get it
accessible both via API or through our ui.
So you can do either way.
So ultimately what it means, uh,
to your question, if you want to
launch pricing, you have starting a
new company, you, you get everything
from knowledge and expertise to think
about your pricing strategy, all the
way to launching it, um, um, and in,
in the most, um, uh, seamless way.
Kevin Horek: Interesting.
You, you said something
there that I want to.
Clarify, well, not really
necessarily clarify.
Talk about how actually useful it is
is, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.
Yeah.
Is basically, you said that I can
add a snippet to my marketing site.
You mentioned Webflow, so obviously
it would work with WordPress or any
other kind of, you know, Squarespace
or it doesn't really matter, right?
Or if you custom built your own
marketing site and then you could
use the same, obviously, well it
might be a bit different for like
your, the application side, whether
it's React or some other language.
And then I would go into
Stig, update my pricing.
It updates on my marketing site,
my web app, and anywhere else that
I've actually implemented Stig.
Right.
Whether it's the application marketing
or other landing pages, for example.
Um, am I correct
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
in saying.
You're 100% correct.
And even, I'll even piggyback on that,
and I'll say not only your, uh, webpages
and, uh, application, but also your crm.
Oh, oh, interesting.
Yeah.
And your billing provider.
So, and your data pipelines.
So that means, let's say you're
using your crm, is HubSpot okay?
And your sales team is on HubSpot.
When they move a deal from deal, you know,
from, you know, let's say demo, uh, or,
you know, contract sign to deal one STIGs
to listen to the, to these events and
let's salespeople basically provision the
new customer, let's say it's an enterprise
customer with the right setup from their,
you know, from the crm and vice versa.
So that means that.
When you use Stig, it, it essentially
means that you have like a, a central, uh,
we like to see it sometimes as similar to
c m s, but like you have a management, uh,
center that you can run anything related
to your pricing and packaging, uh, while
keeping intact the way you're used to
work and, you know, continue to evolve
and, you know, cha, you know, iterate
on, you know, how you introduce value.
So, uh, yeah, like you said, payables,
webpages, crm, billing, everything.
Um, that's
Kevin Horek: huge.
You know how much time and effort that
saves, like as somebody that's had to
do it in an app, do it on marketing
sites, do it on everything you outlined.
Like just that alone saves
people a ton of time,
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
right?
Yeah.
So multiple teams, even
I honestly think that
sometimes, uh, I don't, I don't.
You know, as you are building, uh, your
company and the product and, you know,
working, you know, one, one achievement
after the other and like kind of building,
you know, going through the journey of
being an entrepreneur, y I don't, maybe
it's just a personality thing, but I don't
get to, you know, sometimes kind of lean
back and say, oh my God, everything we've
built is so freaking ridiculously awesome.
So I don't I don't get to do that.
But, you know, it's only when you reflect
on what we're trying to do and the problem
we're trying to do and what the value
we're trying to do for our customers.
That, or when customers reflect
and, you know, mirror what they, you
know, the way they see us is those
tiny moments when we know that what
we're building is, is, is awesome.
You just said it.
And I think we are still in, you
know, this process of learning.
Like we're still keeping it curious
and we're trying to see like, are
we solving the right problems?
Are we focusing on the right things?
Are we, you know, handling
the right use cases?
Because there's only so
much that you can build.
Um, but ultimately I think our personal
experience, Anton and I together at New
Relic, of seeing how painful it was to
re-architect all those knobs and, you
know, see that everything connects and
everything makes sense and everything
sits tight and we can, you know, help
customers actually use New Relic in a
way that makes sense to the business.
You know, we, we said it
cannot be the way to do this.
Like we need the, you know, pricing
is, so if I, if I can add to that
as a product person Yeah, yeah.
As a product person, I just think.
Pricing is becoming more and more a
product people's problem like it used
to be, oh, pricing, talk to sales.
Oh, that's pricing talks to talk to
revenue organization, talks to the
GTM organization, like we see more
and more companies that we work with.
That pricing is actually becoming
the problem of the C P o,
becoming the problem of the VP
product, like product executives.
Because as you, you, you know, launch
more and more like plg bottom up type of
motions, and you go to market thinking
more and more about the end user pricing
ultimately become part of the experience
is the way, you know users perceive value.
Because if you're doing free trial or
free you, or if you're limiting them to
five projects or three, or if you are
limiting them to, you know everything
they want, or, you know, you're giving,
you're giving access to everything,
or you're starting to limit some
access, it's, it's product thinking.
It's the iteration.
The speed you need is similarly to
the way you develop product, right?
Like you do AB testing on whether
a button should be round or square.
You should, you should also be able to
ab test whether, you know, we should have
starter plan or basic plan or professional
plan and what does it entails.
Interesting.
Kevin Horek: No, I I think
that's, that's really cool.
So I'm curious, y you mentioned
this kind of earlier, um, especially
when you, you had, you were working
on a product that, that failed.
What advice or what have you gonna learned
along the way that you wish you, you, you
or you'd want to pass down to other people
no matter where they are in their career?
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
So our first experience, like my
first experience, um, uh, with
the first early stage startup was
that we had the most amazing team.
Even up until today, I still
believe that we had one of the best
teams they've ever took part of.
They were individuals there.
The work, they were crazy good.
Like that's actually really
Kevin Horek: good advice though,
because it's just, cause you
have a great team doesn't
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
mean, yeah.
So, so now I'm about to give like
the other side, the end of it.
So I as a, as a junior, I was a junior.
Now I know now I can tell it.
I was a junior at the time.
I didn't realize I was a junior,
but, but you know, retrospectively
I was a junior and you know, I
was fortunate to learn so much.
We were doing really
awesome stuff at the time.
It was, it was 2015 I think, and
we were already doing a testing on
millions, millions of customers.
We were doing so many good, you know,
things and a really fast cadence.
It was crazy.
Um, and I learned a lot.
But, um, the, I think the number one thing
I learned is as a team, we were too remote
from the problem we were trying to solve.
We didn't came in, you know, knowing.
You know, firsthand ex, you
know, we didn't experience what
we were trying to solve for our
target, like for our audience,
for our customers, for our users.
We went there and we were too remote and
we spent a lot of time educating ourselves
and learning about a space where we
were trying to disrupt and unlock value.
And I think what I personally took
from that experience, there's a lot
of things I took, but if there's one
thing that I can give advice to anyone
is like my, you know, and again,
completely opinionated, completely my
own personal belief, I really genuinely
think that the most exciting teams
and companies are solving problems.
They have very close and intimate
familiarity because that gives you like a
superpower that that makes you extremely
devoted and passionate and have like
really, , uh, internal knowledge into what
is not working and how you should approach
it and what's important and what's not.
Like it helps you make
compromises and trade offs and
think clearly about the problem.
I know it's not such a helpful advice
maybe, but it's like it's, I learned
the hard way that you can be part of the
most amazing team and spent two years
building the wrong thing, and that hurts.
Right.
So I
Kevin Horek: think, yeah, I think
that's actually really good advice.
I think the other thing too, just
listening like through our conversation
is you found a problem while working a day
job that you applied into doing a startup
that's completely unrelated, right?
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
Yeah.
I, I, I, I basically found a problem
that I couldn't let go of . Yeah.
I couldn't, like, I couldn't, I I,
I felt like this has to be solved
.
Kevin Horek: No.
So I, I'm curious then.
, did you bootstrap the company?
Did you raise some money?
Walk us
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
through that for sake.
. So I'm going into a little
bit of a personal story here.
So what happened was, I, I always
knew after the first startup that
Crush and Burn, I always knew that
I wanna come back as, you know, as
the founder this time and cannot try
to reflect from what I've learned.
Sure.
And, and, and, and I, I always
was waiting to learn something.
Right.
Like, for me, you know, building
a signify, building America,
it was all about learning.
It was all about finding an
interesting problem to solve.
And it felt to me like, this is a problem
I'm willing to spend my life solving.
I know it sounds like a little bit
dramatic, but it's like, it's like,
I'm, I really want to solve this thing.
Sure.
And basically, and basically what
happened, I, I, I immediately knew
that before anything else, before
funding, before v mvp, before product,
I, before everything, uh, I really
want to join forces with somebody that.
It's like, it's like a
wedding, like someone I want
to spend my life building with.
And so, I mean, I really wanted
the time to partner with Anan,
but it wasn't a good timing.
So I find myself just, you know, you know,
I had my first child at the time and I
said, okay, I'm gonna take some time off.
It was end of Covid anyway.
I'm gonna take some time off and
try to research and do this thing.
Right.
And basically I was unemployed and I
started to do a lot of research, lot
of research, talking to anyone that
was willing to, you know, have a chat,
a Zoom conversation with me, CPOs,
product executives, uh, you know, r
and d, executive designers, anyone
that's ever had something to do with
building pricing for the company.
And I just wanted to hear out
what's, what's not working.
And every chat I had, we, I was
just more and more convinced
this is, this is not working.
. Like, fair enough, there's
a huge problem there.
and, uh, I, my , this is where
it came, becomes personal.
So my, my spouse, Anna, she was like,
Hey, , you gotta find a job sometimes
Mm-hmm.
sometimes it's either you're
jumping into this wagon and, you
know, you're building this company.
You're like, oh, you know,
find, find a real day job.
And, you know, uh, it was,
it was a funny conversation.
Was a good conversation because kind
of like the tap in the back that
I needed to, you know, pursue this
opportunity and call it lack or not.
Anton was, uh, like some change in,
in his life and his setup, um, uh,
basically, um, you know, allowed us
to recon, you know, rejoin forces and
start walking on this problem together.
And when we started, we had nothing.
It's not really bootstrap, but
it's like we had nothing, right.
Uh, besides, you know, the problem
and the fact that we wanna solve it.
Um, We started to build some, you
know, mocks and some prototypes.
We started to show it to some, uh, folks.
We started to even get some, um, you
know, potential design partners that
want to give it a try when it's ready.
Sure.
And yeah, and we ended up raising,
you know, based on that, you know,
caliber of like a bunch of really
interesting companies that wanna
work with us to build this thing.
Um, uh, and then we raise their sea ground
then, you know, you know, a lot of water
under the bridge since that moment on
.
Kevin Horek: No, it's great man.
So I'm curious, how do you monetize Stig?
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
Awesome question.
Uh, so we use Stig for Stig.
Uh, we actually dog food our software.
Um, interesting.
Stig?
Yes.
Smart, smart.
So, so we use Stig.
So if you go to our website,
actually you will see the actual
reactors decay, like STIGs reactors
decay, like in our pricing page.
and we iterate and we try
different things from time to time.
And, um, right now, the way our, our,
uh, way to look at our own pricing
is that we have two, we call, it's
like in pricing world, it's called
volumetrics Value metrics is, is the
variable that you monetize on, uh, you
know, seats, uh, storage bandwidth.
You know, there's a bunch of ways
to basically look at value metrics.
So for Stig, we have two value metrics.
One is seats, and the other
is active subscriptions.
So like, basically paying
customers of our customers.
Um, so that means that we will charge
you for, you know, uh, like a, like an,
a summary of, you know, the number of
members you want to have inside Stig as,
as a company, and the number of active
subscriptions that, um, uh, that basically
you have managed under Stig and the main.
I think the main motivation there is
like we always say in Sidestick that
our North Star is to help our customers
to see more growth and like basically
turn more free or trial customers into
pay, you know, happy paying buyers.
And the way to do that is like,
hey, we, you know, we want to be
part of the, you know, the, you
know, value being unlocked, right?
Like the more we are better at helping you
convert, um, free, um, or trial non-paying
users basically into buyers, uh, you
are happier and so should, should we be.
So it's like tying your faith with
us is like a growth alliance that you
have between Stig and your company.
Kevin Horek: Very cool.
Um, tell us more about, or tell us.
Code to
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
Cash . So, um, code to cash is
like a really, uh, it's funny,
we'll launch it last week.
So Code to Cash is a project that I've
started together with Ajit Comman.
So Ajit is a, a one of the best
pricing experts that I have.
I was fortunate to meet.
Okay.
Um, we, we actually met
online over a LinkedIn post.
That's awesome.
Um, yeah, I read this book and I , I, I
used to be a fan and now we are friends.
Um, and so, um, uh, we've this, you
know, we, we, after we've met over
this LinkedIn post, we realized we
are passionate about the same thing.
So we have the same insights
into the SaaS monetization
space, um, from different angles.
That Jet is like looking at things
from strategy and, you know,
quota, cash and, you know, deal
flow and how to build the right.
Uh, vehicles to, you know, have an
appropriate pricing strategy in place.
Um, and I'm looking more into
the implementation things, right?
Like all things, pricing,
implementation, being able to build
the right way to launch pricing.
And so we said, Hey, why don't we host,
you know, experts as executives from
all, you know, all around the globe to
talk about how they basically, what was
their journey, uh, with pricing, right?
Like, what was hard, what was easy?
You know, uh, how do they basically,
you know, what, what are interesting
stories around their pricing and strategy?
So this is like a
podcast that we're doing.
Uh, we already recorded, um, like
dozens of episodes now, and we
are launching them one by one.
Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm, I really enjoyed that.
I didn't think that I will be great at,
um, talking into this type of, uh, shows.
But what was, uh, what was,
what is fun about Ko Toke is I
don't need to talk much because.
There's, there's a lot of really
awesome, you know, people coming in
and, you know, sharing their story
and I get to ask the questions so that
it's, I get to be you, Kevin, I guess.
. Yeah.
No, that's awesome,
Kevin Horek: man.
That's great.
. So we're, we're kind of coming to
the end of the show, but is there any
other advice or things you've learned
along the way that you would like to
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
pass on to listener?
Um, sure.
So I think.
Founders are being given and
builders are being given a lot.
The advice of, you know, don't care
about monetization, care about adoption.
Uh, it used to be a very
true before the downturn.
Now it's a little bit changing.
But, um, when we lived in a world
of like growth at all costs, people
always talk, talked about adoption,
like monetization comes later.
And I think it made founders and
builders kind of like be reluctant to
talk with customers about pricing or
try different things or even try to
test some hypothesis around pricing.
And also builders and founders always
look at pricing from the lenses of like,
okay, so we've built this tech software
thing, now how do we price this thing?
Um, you know, reverse engineer pricing
in a way, my advice would be, Hey,
actually it's one, it's never too early
to think about your pricing, um, and
ask the right questions, your customers.
Uh, the second thing is
never be afraid to talk.
Face value, like talk to your
customers about pricing and how
they think about it, not you.
Like when they ask you about pricing,
it's an amazing opportunity to see
how they think about your pricing
and what they perceive as value.
And there's really cheap
ways to understand if you got
your pricing wrong or not.
That doesn't require a lot of research.
Like obviously the best perfect way is to
do a lot of research, uh, quant and qual.
But you can also do with a couple
of few conversations with, you
know, representative customers
learn a lot about how your
customers thinks about your pricing.
So, um, my advice would be it's never
too early to talk about pricing.
Um, especially nowadays, uh,
revenue efficiency matters.
And so your ability to quickly
understand value, perception and monetize
appropriately can be the thing that will,
you know, determine the fate or the future
of your company and being nimble wins.
The perfect pricing strategy, like the
ability to be speedy in introducing
changes and trying different
things is actually more important
than nailing the right strategy.
Um, that will be my advice.
No, I,
Kevin Horek: I think that's
actually really good advice,
but sadly we're outta time.
So how about we close the show with
mentioning where people can get more
information about yourself, STIG, the
podcast, and anything else you wanna.
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
So, yeah, uh, Google, STIG io
or you know, feel free to reach
out over LinkedIn or Twitter.
I'm pretty responsive.
Um, or I'm trying to be as
responsive as I can and yeah.
And hap happy, you know, happy
to, you know, have a conversation
any day about pricing, see how
we can help regardless to Stig.
Um, yeah.
Uh, excited to be connecting
with builders everywhere.
Kevin Horek: And it's Stig with
two Gs, like s t IgG, g.io.
Exactly.
Perfect.
Dowell, I really appreciate you taking
the time outta your day to be on the show,
and I look forward to keeping in touch
Dor Sasson_ Building The Future Interview (2022-12-06 11_56 GMT-7):
with you and have a good
rest of your day, man.
Thank you, Kevin.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you.
Kevin Horek: Okay, bye.
