Darren Shaw
I'm the founder and president of Whitespark, a local search company with software and services that help businesses improve their rankings in Google. I started developing websites back in 1996 during my first year of university. I failed plenty of courses because I was skipping class to work on my HTML, CSS, and Javascript projects in the lab. Fortunately, people wanted to pay me to build websites, and in 2005 I started Whitespark as a web design and development company. In 2010 we stopped doing web development projects so we could focus on local search, and we launched our first SaaS software, the Local Citation Finder. We now offer multiple SaaS applications and services. When I'm not speaking at conferences, researching the latest in local search, or designing the next best local search application, I like to spend time travelling, skiiing, and dining with my wife and daughter in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Appears in 44 Episodes
24: Raising Prices
Darren is looking to raise his pricing for the first time ever. He and Aaron discuss the many aspects of raising your SaaS product's price, from the amount of the rai...
23: Course Correcting
What happens when you head down the wrong path? You build a feature or spend time on something that doesn't move the needle and then you need to correct your path. Aa...
22: SaaS Pricing - Is The Price Right?
Aaron and Darren catch up to end the summer of 2020. Darren is putting on a huge Local SEO conference with marketing benefits he shares and a recent bad experience wi...
21: Frameworks
Aaron and Darren catch up on business, summer, COVID and then take a dive into a feature framework Aaron created and has been using S.E.A. stands for Security, Efficie...
20: Big Launches & Big Challenges
Another COVID catch up as Darren covers his big launch of a long time feature completely redesigned and Aaron discusses some staff challenges with the dip in business.
19: Navigating The Unknown
Aaron and Darren share how things look for them personally and for their businesses during COVID-19 so far. Repetitive days, mind shifts, small wins, hard decisions, l...
18: Selling GatherUp - Part 3, The Transition
Part 3 of a 3 part series on the acquisition of GatherUp. Aaron shares about the transition of working for the company after the sale of GatherUp. What's different, w...
17: Selling GatherUp - Part 2, The Process
Part 2 of a 3 part series on the acquisition of GatherUp. Part 2 focuses on the process as Aaron shares the steps from verbal offer to LOI to purchase agreement and t...
16: Selling GatherUp - Part 1, The Why
Big news, GatherUp was acquired in November 2019. The first episode of a 3 part series on the sale of GatherUp, Darren interviews Aaron on "The Why" GatherUp sold, wha...
15: A Recap of 2019 and Looking Forward to 2020
Aaron and Darren look back over 2019 and look at a full year of podcasting, running the businesses, what they learned and more. Things wrap up with what 2020 might ho...
14: Working On & Working In The Business
The importance of working ON your software business as well as IN the business is big topic and a daily struggle. Aaron and Darren share their views, current work loa...
13: Running A Great Sales Demo
Your sales demo is often a prospects first look into your SaaS product. It's also a focused opportunity to tell your story, build the benefits of your offering and st...
12: Building Process in the Process
As you grow your SaaS business you'll need to create and implement process to scale, succeed, optimize as well as train new employees. Processes small and large can s...
11: Marketing Your Bootrapped SaaS
Marketing your SaaS offering is a massive need for success. Darren and Aaron dive in to how they have developed marketing strategies over the years, with both focusin...
10: Building Customer Success and Support For Your SaaS
For bootstrapped SaaS companies, service can be a massive differentiator against your larger and well funded competitors. Aaron and Darren look at customer support an...
09: The CEO Journey - 4 stages of a SaaS CEO
Being the CEO of a SaaS start-up is a giant journey. Darren and Aaron discuss a recent podcast from a16z with David Ulevitch that lays out this journey into four spec...
08: Churn - Figuring it out and fighting it
Churn is a constant focus of any SaaS business, even more so of any bootstrapped SaaS. Getting customers is hard and keeping them is a must to succeed. Aaron and Dar...
07: Sales
Sales efforts are critical to the growth of a SaaS company. Aaron and Darren talk sales, processes and sales staff. For GatherUp, things are starting to move from 100...
06: Competitors
Competitors are part of business. In this episode Darren and Aaron talk about their competitors, how closely they follow what they are up to and what the look at. Co...
05: The Design Process
Aaron and Darren dive into the design process for new features and product updates. Whitespark and GatherUp take different approaches to the design process and we loo...