#371 – How Eli Portnoy turned a frustrating pattern into his biggest opportunity

Episode notes

A story about staying connected to customers while everyone else scales away from them. This Episode is for SaaS founders who feel increasingly disconnected from their customers as they scale—and anyone questioning whether growth has to mean losing touch with what made you successful in the first place. Most SaaS companies don't fail because of bad product decisions. They fail because founders lose their superpower as they scale. Eli Portnoy, CEO and co-founder of Backengine, experienced this visceral pain twice before. In his garage days, he was everything—salesperson, customer success manager, product manager. He had an incredible view into customer pain and could align his entire company around solving it. But as he grew and hired specialists, layers formed between him and customers. He started making decisions based on anecdotes instead of insight. In 2023, he decided to found Backengine and solve the problem that had haunted him: How do you preserve that founder superpower at any scale? And this inspired me to invite Eli to my podcast. We explore how customer obsession creates sustainable competitive advantage when it's embedded everywhere, not siloed in one team.