Celebrating a Year of Founder AHA! Moments with the Cash & Burn Podcast

The great thing about podcasts is anyone can make one. The hard part comes in producing episode after episode after episode after…well, you get it.

That’s why we’re so proud to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of Cash & Burn.

For the last year, we’ve produced over 54 episodes featuring some of the most successful SaaS founders sharing what they’ve learned in their journey (at least so far). Whether you've been a longtime listener or are a newcomer to our podcast, we've been thrilled to have you on this journey with us.

For those of you unfamiliar with Cash & Burn, here’s the short take: Place CEO Brandon Metcalf spends a quick, 30-ish minute conversation with a SaaS founder dissecting the anatomy of success and failure as we all navigate the ever-changing business landscape.

To celebrate, we’d like to showcase some of our favorite episodes plus lessons we’ve learned from our guests along the way.

A year of lessons and insights

Every SaaS founder comes at the same problems (running a sustainable, growth-oriented organization) with a different background. Welcoming so many SaaS founders with such a wide variety of experiences has been nothing short of enlightening. 

We've celebrated successes, analyzed failures, and examined the dynamics of creating and scaling SaaS companies.

But what's been the biggest takeaway? What should founders be focused on? 

Five lessons from top SaaS CEOs

With over 54 episodes produced, it can be tough to choose. In no particular order, let's take a look at some of our standout episodes as well as  shared by our guests:

The Value Of Having Great Partners 

Featured guest: Darryl Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Hectic

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Why we love this episode: 

Darryl stressed the importance of having the right data to make rational decisions. "If you don’t have the right indicators, it’s all for nothing. You can’t manage cash flow or burn in a meaningful way."

Why Sticking To Your Identity Is Crucial

Featured guest: Jeff Cotten, Alvaria's CEO

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Why we love this episode:

‍Jeff emphasized the need for preparedness for SaaS leaders and broke it into a few different categories. "First thing is being prepared for a downcycle. You need to prepare but you also need to execute for what the current reality is. Even if you’re a cash-burning company, you must have some sort of buffer."

Success on Both Sides

Featured guest: Seamus Ruiz-Earle, Founder & CEO of Carabiner Group

Why we love this episode:

‍There’s no founder that doesn’t struggle to sort the signal from the noise. Seamus pointed out the importance of focus to find what really matters. As Seamus said during this episode, success starts with being able to do that really well. Another factor to success isn’t doing what everyone else is. "Now is the time to exceed expectations and go for it,” Seamus said, “Do something that is out of the ordinary and get people's attention."

How AI is Changing the Way We Think About Technology

Featured guest: Bilal Baloch, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Enquire AI

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Why we love this episode:

‍You might have heard this year at some point that AI is kind of a big thing right now. Obvious sarcasms aside, this is a vital episode for everyone in the business world. Bilal had tons to say on the topic of AI but our favorite has to be the sheer scale of AI today. As he remarked during the episode “I don’t think we’ve seen as big of a fundamental shift across so many underlying areas of technology as we’re going through today. Be it blockchain, be it AI, be it computer power. As founders, we should be thinking about innovating in those spaces. But we should also be thinking more broadly about how we want all these underlying technologies to come together. Founders need to come together and create a new constitution on how we think about technology and what it needs to do.”

The Challenges Faced by Today’s CEOs

Featured guest: Dave Kellogg, Executive in Residence at Balderton Capital

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Why we love this episode:

Sometimes SaaS leaders and CEOs just need someone else to say what they’re thinking. Dave did just that in this episode about how “being a CEO is a hard job [for two reasons]. One, you need to live in the future, that’s what I tell CFOs, if you want to help your CEO, live in the future because that's where they live. The other one is that CEOs need to focus on what really matters, for instance, what you said [Brandon], coming into 2024 strong.”

What’s next for the Cash & Burn podcast?

As we noted up top, the hardest thing to do after creating a podcast is to keep going. Now that we’ve celebrated our first anniversary, we’re certainly far from done. 

We’re going to continue to bring you more engaging conversations with CEOs at the top of their game and maybe even invite a few guests from this year back to provide an update. 

What we can most certainly promise is each conversation will be packed with survival strategies for tough economic times and the tactics that are helping them thrive.

Subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and join us for another year of insights, challenges, and triumphs!