Nick Francis

speaker

323 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 30 Jun

Nick Francis’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Startups For the Rest of Us · Episode 839 | The Journey Growing Help Scout to $35M ARR · 30 Jun 2026 podcast

So in summary, I would say...

we were too early.

I still think that somebody's going to come along with a highly disruptive pricing model.

Because look, the secret of SaaS, per seat SaaS particularly, is that 20% of those seats shouldn't be paying for anything because they're not even using the tool, right?

And so I wanted to go directly at that margin and try to win it against our competitors.

And if there's just not willingness to accept that business model, then I have to live to fight another day.

Yeah.

Well, at the end of the day, I feel like I just lost confidence from some of our stakeholders that ended up being like, hey, I'm not the guy to lead the company anymore.

I mean, that's really kind of what led to it.

And I have no regrets.

I'm an entrepreneur.

I was built to make these kinds of swings.

And in terms of leaning into that tension, we raised $28 million, as you mentioned.

Like I'm trying to build $100 million plus company here, right?

when all of my competitors have raised 10 times the amount.

So I've got to do something different and really lean into that tension and that discomfort of the pressure of growth and say, well, hey, if I got to grow, I'm going to swing for the fences because that's what this model is all about.

And so had we been bootstrapped at the time, maybe a $20 million business, we wouldn't have made that move.

But when you accept that kind of capital...

you're swinging for the fences.

And I felt like we had to at least try it.

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