Episode 9

009 Armando Biondi - Follow the Trail of Breadcrumbs: Discovering Hidden Revenue In Organizations

Armando Biondi is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who has invested in over two hundred and fifty startups. Armando is now the Founder and CEO of Breadcrumbs.IO, the first no-code scoring engine that finds hidden revenue in companies in minutes.

Today, Jeff and Armando talk about identifying and accelerating revenue growth, the elusive concept of product- market fit, mergers and acquisitions, and trends on the horizon of SaaS.

Episode Sponsor

Champion Leadership Group – https://championleadership.com/

Small Fish, Big Pond – https://smallfishbigpond.com/ Use the promo code ‘SaaSFuel’

Key Takeaways

01:23 – Jeff introduces today’s guest, Armando Biondi who joins the show to share some of the SaaS companies he’s founded and his experience going from startups to larger organizations

07:41 – Armando talks about launching Breadcrumbs.IO and the relationship between Marketing and Sales

13:09 – Why not all leads are created equal and how product-led companies are different

21:26 – Jeff takes a moment to thank today’s sponsor, Champion Leadership Group

22:18 – Armando shares biggest lessons from starting his own businesses

27:03 – The North Star: Product-market fit and how Armando identifies companies to invest in

33:12 – Trends that are on the horizon in SaaS

35:36 – The importance Armando places on empowerment and OKRs when it comes to building and leading a team

38:38 – Advice Armando would give to early-stage founders

40:49 – How to think about M&A (mergers and acquisitions)

46:50 – Jeff thanks Armando for joining the show and lets listeners know where to follow him and learn more about Breadcrumbs.IO

Tweetable Quotes

“Particularly as a founder and entrepreneur, I think you can either excel at being a senior member at a large organization or continue down the path of entrepreneurship. It’s very, very hard to be great at both.” (07:01) (Armando)

“And so now, as companies grow and mature, they have different tools that cater to different functions. So there is kind of a siloed type of situation where Marketing has its own tools, Sales has its own tools. But there is no connective tissue in between. And so there is always this kind of fence between the two sides that’s hard to breach.” (09:37) (Armando)

“One big lesson is around, not surprisingly, the importance of the alignment between the different functions within organizations and how the companies that win very rarely do it just because the product is great.” (22:40) (Armando)

“Product-market fit is a very elusive concept in the sense that it changes over time. The degree to which you can have product-market fit can change over time. Not only based on things that you do, but also based on competitors, and/or the market, and/or customers.” (28:43) (Armando)

“Focus. Focus. Focus. Let’s get more customers like the ones that we are seeing happy with the product. And how do we reach them, and how do we make this a repeatable, scalable process?” (39:56) (Armando)

“An offer is a signal that there is something in the market going on for which your type of company is appealing and palatable to a category of operators. And so it should open up the conversation.” (45:18) (Armando)