Build, launch, and scale your SaaS with real strategies from founders who’ve actually done it.
Honest conversations about what’s working in SaaS growth, recurring revenue, and building products people want.
The SaaS Podcast shares in-depth interviews with proven SaaS founders and entrepreneurs, where we unpack the real stories behind the wins, failures, pivots, and lessons learned along the way.
You’ll discover practical insights you can use to get traction, reach product-market fit, grow your MRR, and scale your SaaS — including how to leverage AI without the hype.
Hosted by Omer Khan — SaaS founder, advisor, and creator of SaaS Club — helping thousands of founders build and grow successful software businesses.
New episodes weekly. Follow the show and start leveling up your SaaS.
All content for The SaaS Podcast: Build, Launch & Scale Your SaaS is the property of Omer Khan and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
Build, launch, and scale your SaaS with real strategies from founders who’ve actually done it.
Honest conversations about what’s working in SaaS growth, recurring revenue, and building products people want.
The SaaS Podcast shares in-depth interviews with proven SaaS founders and entrepreneurs, where we unpack the real stories behind the wins, failures, pivots, and lessons learned along the way.
You’ll discover practical insights you can use to get traction, reach product-market fit, grow your MRR, and scale your SaaS — including how to leverage AI without the hype.
Hosted by Omer Khan — SaaS founder, advisor, and creator of SaaS Club — helping thousands of founders build and grow successful software businesses.
New episodes weekly. Follow the show and start leveling up your SaaS.
Product-Led Growth: From 20,000 Email Disaster to 7-Figure SaaS | Mailtrap
The SaaS Podcast: Build, Launch & Scale Your SaaS
58 minutes
3 months ago
Product-Led Growth: From 20,000 Email Disaster to 7-Figure SaaS | Mailtrap
Back in 2011, Sergiy Korolov's team accidentally sent 20,000 test billing emails to real customers—a complete disaster. They built a simple internal tool to prevent it from happening again, shared it with the Ruby on Rails community, and it exploded. Fast forward to today: Mailtrap generates seven-figure ARR with 100,000+ monthly active users.
In this episode, Sergiy Korolov (Co-founder of Mailtrap) reveals the SaaS Pricing Strategy behind converting a massive free user base into paid customers. Learn his controversial "Mandatory Survey" tactic that unlocked deep customer insights without hurting conversion, how he used a "Fake Door" test to validate a massive product pivot before writing code, and the specific challenges of expanding from a simple testing sandbox into a full-scale Email API platform.
🔑 Key Lessons
📊 The Mandatory Survey: Why forcing users to answer questions during signup actually helped growth without hurting conversion.
🚪 The "Fake Door" Test: Validating a major feature (Email Campaigns) with a dummy button before building it.
💰 Monetization: Transitioning a free community tool into a profitable recurring revenue business using data-driven pricing.
🛠️ Developer Marketing: How to build a product that developers naturally share (PLG) without a sales team.
🔄 The Pivot: How they navigated the risky shift from blocking emails to sending them reliably in production.
📖 Chapters
The 20,000 Email Disaster (Origin Story)
Building Internal Tools: The "Eat Your Own Dog Food" Strategy
The Decision to Monetize a Free Tool
Pricing Strategy: Using Data & Interviews to Find the Price
The Onboarding Myth: Why Fewer Clicks Didn't Increase Conversions
The Mandatory Signup Survey (That Didn't Kill Growth)
The "Fake Door" Test: Validating Email Campaigns Before Building
The Pivot: Expanding from Email Testing to Email Sending
Competing with Giants (SendGrid, Mailgun)
AI for Developers: Hype vs. Reality
This episode is brought to you by:
💖 Sprinto → Learn more and book a demo today
🚀 SaaS Club Launch → Build your SaaS to $10K MRR
Resources:
🎧 Full Show Notes: saasclub.io/456
🎤 Subscribe to the Podcast: saasclub.io/subscribe
💌 Get weekly 5-minute SaaS insights: saasclub.io/email
💡 Join the SaaS Club founder community: saasclub.co/plus
The SaaS Podcast: Build, Launch & Scale Your SaaS
Build, launch, and scale your SaaS with real strategies from founders who’ve actually done it.
Honest conversations about what’s working in SaaS growth, recurring revenue, and building products people want.
The SaaS Podcast shares in-depth interviews with proven SaaS founders and entrepreneurs, where we unpack the real stories behind the wins, failures, pivots, and lessons learned along the way.
You’ll discover practical insights you can use to get traction, reach product-market fit, grow your MRR, and scale your SaaS — including how to leverage AI without the hype.
Hosted by Omer Khan — SaaS founder, advisor, and creator of SaaS Club — helping thousands of founders build and grow successful software businesses.
New episodes weekly. Follow the show and start leveling up your SaaS.
