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
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...
04: Building & Running Remote Teams
Aaron and Darren catch up from their last few weeks and dive deep on building and managing remote teams, specifically remote development teams, via a listener question...
03: SaaStr Annual Recap & Rebuilds
Aaron recaps some of the highlights and best presentations from SaaStr Annual in San Jose, the largest SaaS conference on earth. Darren and Aaron then look at the reb...
02: Sprints & Features
We dive into what our sprint cycles look like at our companies and how we plan and build features. Aaron talks about GatherUp's new sprint format for 2019 and Darren ...
01: The Hard Things
Aaron and Darren officially launch The SaaS Venture podcast. Our topic is "The Hard Things" and we each share one of the harder things we accomplished in 2018. For Aa...