BC Startup Sales Podcast – Freemium SaaS with Kristen Habacht (Trello)

Kristen Habacht joined us in the studio this week to talk about the impact of freemium SaaS on b2b businesses. Launched in 2011, Trello remains one of the best examples of freemium done right with now over 10 million users and a ton of happy business customers such as The New York Times, Google, Pixar, and Adobe. In the land of project management software there really is no greater example of freemium success than Trello. Kristen is currently the VP of Sales for the business and joined after their initial launch of the business class product in 2013. For those that are unaware, the company kept the product free for roughly two years before building out a paid product. Today she focuses her efforts on managing Trello’s sales team and had a thing or two to say about freemium and how it has impacted Trello. We dig into a number of discussions in the podcast including how to think about setting up freemium at launch, the various types of freemium SaaS and what might work or not work for your business, the always tough decision on when to shift (or not) from high ACV sales to low ACV sales and how freemium can be used in this case, how marketing and sales work together at Trello to deploy the freemium model, what indicators sales should look out for to know when to upsell someone, and finally some big tips and tricks that Kristen has seen work well at Trello. The amount of knowledge that the company has related to freemium SaaS was incredible and Kristen really opened up to share her thinking and point of view on how to do this right. Give a listen below and we hope you enjoy another edition of the Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast.