3 episodes

E03 w/ Craig Hewitt: Restarting growth after stuck at €16k/mo
On Smart Bear Live, Jason Cohen and Castos founder Craig Hewitt tell Podsqueeze founders Tiago Ferreira and João Amaro that their two-year plateau at €16K/mo is the self-serve podcaster market, not the product: shows fade, while agencies and media companies barely churn. The tool hit €14K in six months with 15–20% monthly churn; SEO and features didn't move the curve. Cohen says 'too expensive' is never the real churn reason; their Portuguese clients accepted a 5x increase without blinking—far from the ceiling. He advises pricing to value, positioning it as an all-in-one pipeline, and selling to agencies—clients paying €400–500/month stayed a year. Abroad, deals died for lack of priority; financially a sideways business is worth little—maybe 1x revenue—unless an agency buys it strategically.Aug 23, 2026 · 2:30:43 · 4.4K views
E02 w/ Rob Walling: $1M ARR, how to expand into a new market
Jesse Schoberg's DropInBlog has 2,000 customers, 2% monthly churn, and a plateaued growth curve; hosts Jason Cohen and Rob Walling argue DropInBlog should deliberately push into BigCommerce businesses and agencies serving them. Schoberg says enterprise visitors were 5% of traffic but converting zero; after adding invoicing, audit logs, and white-glove migrations, $399/$499 plans began selling. They tell him to market engineers and marketers separately, pitch marketers on AI/LLM visibility as job security, use ads to learn messaging not just ROI, and build an agency channel because one agency can bring multiple clients. They also challenge his Laravel focus, argue BigCommerce is where the fish are, and advise giving each initiative an owner, separate metrics, and company-wide alignment.Aug 16, 2026 · 2:14:17 · 8.3K views
E01: Using transparent metrics to restart growth when stuck at $32K MRR
Jason Cohen and Dmytro Krasun dissect Dmytro's SaaS ScreenshotOne ($32K MRR, 9% monthly churn, flat growth) and find a structural ceiling around $40K MRR—9% churn on a growing base cancels new revenue. The crux: after four years and thousands of customers, no single large, repeatable market for screenshots-as-an-API has emerged. They lay out four honest options: incremental improvement to push $40–50K MRR; building a different product (e.g., regression testing for marketers) leveraging screenshot expertise; selling the business; or pivoting to AI integrations (MCP server, CLI, SDKs) to get embedded in AI workflows. Dmytro commits to a month of intensive exploration of the AI path, running the business on skeleton mode, to determine if this can restart growth or if he should sell.Jul 21, 2026 · 2:04:49 · 10K viewsOn Smart Bear Live, Jason Cohen and Castos founder Craig Hewitt tell Podsqueeze founders Tiago Ferreira and João Amaro that their two-year plateau at €16K/mo is the self-serve podcaster market, not the product: shows fade, while agencies and media companies barely churn. The tool hit €14K in six months with 15–20% monthly churn; SEO and features didn't move the curve. Cohen says 'too expensive' is never the real churn reason; their Portuguese clients accepted a 5x increase without blinking—far from the ceiling. He advises pricing to value, positioning it as an all-in-one pipeline, and selling to agencies—clients paying €400–500/month stayed a year. Abroad, deals died for lack of priority; financially a sideways business is worth little—maybe 1x revenue—unless an agency buys it strategically.
Tiago Ferreira and João Amaro bootstrapped their AI podcast-repurposing tool Podsqueeze from zero to €16K/mo in less than a year, but then watched it sit flat for two years despite more features, better SEO, and free trials. Cohost Craig Hewitt (Castos) and I dig into the real problem: the self-serve podcaster market is structurally brutal—most shows fade within months, so the product's value fades with them—and the real money is up-market, with agencies and media companies who barely churn. A candid working session including: - why "too expensive" is never the real churn reason - pricing to value - the 5x price test that proved they're nowhere near the ceiling - enterprise vs. just-big customers - positioning an all-in-one tool - what a plateaued "sideways" business is actually worth when someone offers to buy it =============== ME ME ME!!! =============== Subscribe on YouTube ► https://www.youtube.com/@asmartbear 📘 Get my book ► https://hiddenmultipliers.com 📘 My bio + 20 years of articles ► https://longform.asmartbear.com/ https://twitter.com/asmartbear https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncohen/ ======================================== STARRING TIAGO FERREIRA & JOÃO AMARO ======================================== Podsqueeze ► https://podsqueeze.com Tiago's podcast, Indie Founder ► https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/indie-founder/id1567397702 https://twitter.com/wbetiago https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiago-ferreira-48562095/ https://twitter.com/JOAOTHA https://www.linkedin.com/in/joão-amaro-62446a4a/ ============================ WITH COHOST CRAIG HEWITT ============================ Castos ► https://castos.com More About Craig ► https://craighewitt.com Rogue Startups podcast ► https://roguestartups.com/ https://twitter.com/thecraighewitt https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-hewitt-78386a66 ============================== REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE ============================== "Pricing determines your business model" ► https://longform.asmartbear.com/pricing-determines-your-business-model/ "How repositioning a product allows you to 8x its price" ► https://longform.asmartbear.com/more-value-not-save-money/ ============== TIMESTAMPS ============== 0:00 Meet the founders: bootstrapped to 16K, then stuck for two years 3:09 Riding the GPT wave to 14K, then two flat years 9:03 Podcast fade: why most customers quit within months 20:26 Why 'too expensive' is never the real reason they cancel 26:50 The Portugal B2B win, and why it won't travel abroad 34:35 Enterprise vs. just a big customer: Joe Rogan isn't enterprise 49:43 The 5x price test: they raised it and nobody blinked 57:33 The Shopify model: how brutal churn can still win 1:03:40 Charge for what grows as the customer grows 1:14:40 Selling to agencies: why the demos never close 1:20:53 Why enterprises take the meeting, then never buy 1:37:48 The all-in-one bet: good enough beats best-in-class 1:52:07 A homepage that's a mess because it talks to everyone 1:55:45 The 500K offer they turned down: sell or double down? 2:02:16 AI should kill the busy work, not make the content 2:18:42 What your SEO traffic is actually worth 2:26:22 Stuck in a bad market, and the path to a better one
