Peter: What is your interest and passion around SaaS businesses?

Nicolai: I think my interest in SaaS businesses is sort of based on the fact that my company runs the marketplace for content, and there's a growing trend in that industry to transition over to becoming a SaaS, obviously because of valuations, but also because it makes it easier to retain client relationships. So I think that just the fact that it creates a more stable sort of foundation for how you work and, you know, how much volume you can expect from your clients. So to organize your business in that sense makes a lot of sense, even for a marketplace.

Peter: What is your perspective, and also your thinking in your business, around how you really become the must-have for your customers, rather than only do we sound cool?

Nicolai: I think that it comes down to if you create value for them. And actually, I found this through the past few years, that your ability to provide a really strong customer service on a day to day makes a massive difference for reducing your churn. It's about how, if you can make their lives easier, essentially, if they can go home and leave work at a decent time of day and come home and see their kids and they feel safe, making them feel safe and sort of having that trust built into it. I think that's what, for us, drives growth in business.

Nicolai: We've got customer relationships that have been on for more than six years and very low churn. So I think that it's vital, I think, especially in this climate that we have now, that you can retain your clients because it's so expensive to get new ones. And actually, there's a lot of value in the ones that you do have. And so I think that's what's come home to me really in the last year or so.

Peter: And one thing that is closely connected to this value creation is of course business strategy. What is business strategy to you? Like on a more conceptual level?

Nicolai: This is something I've found out by failing a lot in other businesses, but for me I think it's about understanding who your clients are and understanding their everyday from when they get up in the morning until they go to bed. And that's how I think you need to build your business because I think a lot of businesses, and myself included, you build something for months or years and you assume lots of things and there's no business strategy behind assumptions. I think you need to understand people. And as a tech sort of founder, sometimes you can be a little bit introverted and maybe afraid of people, but in fact that's the key is to push yourself out of that comfort zone and go and spend time with your customers. I think if you can get that right, then you've got your business based on that.

Peter: And what role does business strategy play in your company?

Nicolai: It plays a big role. I mean, it plays a role in the way that we need to understand what our clients need but we also need to understand if we then create a solution for them that we understand, that we know how we can get that into the market and grow it. And I think business strategy is such a wide term and there's so many things where you can go wrong so it's a little bit difficult to answer. I think.

There's no business strategy behind assumptions. I think you need to understand people.

Peter: One of the key concepts within business strategy is this thing about being really clear about your choices but also the tradeoff. And sometimes I hear that the tradeoffs are actually sometimes more difficult than actually the choices. What is your perspective on that?

Nicolai: I think actually it's a good question because the biggest problem for us, and for me personally, has been always trying to do too many things at once. And if you're a little bit visionary, you can see a larger picture and then you try to do all of those things at once or you try to present all of those things to your investors. But in fact, what it ends up with being is you seem massively defocused. So I think that's what I've learned the hard way in the last couple of years is that you need to put more thought into what not to do and then stay where you feel that it creates value and then kill your darlings.

Peter: If I ask someone within your organization about your company's business strategy, how would they talk about that? Or how would that sort of materialize for them?

Nicolai: I think, to be honest right now, they would feel confused and that it was slightly defocused. I think mistakes that I've made as a co founder is communicating directions based on a whim or conversations and then not realizing that when you move a little bit as a founder, all the people around you, they need to move a kilometer, and then they get confused. And then I move back, and they need to run all the way back. And you need to think about that as when you have a team. And I think that if you ask them now where we're going and heading, they would say different things. So I think that's a realization is that you need to be very clear about where you're heading and sort of stick to it. I think it's important.

Peter: And them saying actually a lot of things, what does that actually do to your business as a consequence?

Nicolai: I mean, it creates confusion between people, and it creates sort of a little bit of an unsettled feeling about what are we as a business? And you've got in the different sort of teams, you have different sort of perceptions, perhaps, of what is our business? And I think that really just drives home the point that it's really difficult to create alignment between people. And that's why you need to keep your story simple, because you might think, I know what it is, but you forget that as someone who's very focused, let's say they're a product manager or they're a customer success person, they live in a different world, sort of in the day to day. So that's what I've learned, I think, to keep things really simple.

Peter: I think that's great insight. Final perspective from you. If you look at sort of your business and priorities, then what is the number one priority right now for you in your business?

Nicolai: Our number one priority right now is growth through a single product. And to not try and do other things to forget and then just focus purely on one thing, and that is driving customers through one entry point, one product, and then just being very focused on that for a long period of time, because that's where the growth is going to come from.

Peter: Actually, in that slide, there's also a lot of things that you choose not to do.

Nicolai: Yeah. With pain, because there are things that you want to do, but if you do them, you spread your butter so thin on the bread that you end up not doing any of it exactly.