#407 - How Martin Gourdeau refused the commodity race and added $1M ARR in 9 months

Ton Dobbe: You're a SaaS founder. You've built something solid, but growth still feels harder than it should. Most SaaS companies don't fail because of bad tech. They fail because they've never become a must have to the right customer. This podcast is here to change that. I'm Tondoben and this is the remarkable SaaS podcast. Every week I talk to founders in the trenches, facing friction, making bold moves, and building companies that last. We dig into real choices around focus positioning, customer pool, team alignment. The things that separate forgettable software from the ones that people can't live without. No hype, no hacks, just honest conversations to help you build something that people would miss if it was gone. If your SaaS should be indispensable but isn't yet, this is your podcast. Let's get into it. The guest on the podcast this week is Martin Gudo, CEO of VacationTracker.

Martin Gourdeau: High performers are notoriously bad at managing their energy levels because of this obsession to perform.

Ton Dobbe: This is Martin. We dig into what he saw during a year off and why it convinced him that the next wave of software won't be won by the kind of company that most CEOs are still trying to build. You'll hear why he believes a 22 person bootstrap company has an edge that most large companies will never get back, and why he changed the one number that decides when his whole team gets a race. The conversation reveals what most CEOs of his size keep getting wrong and why he believes small is suddenly the bigger advantage. Well, hi Martin, thank you for making time available today and, uh, being the guest on the podcast.

Martin Gourdeau: My pleasure. Looking forward to it.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. It's, uh, well, it's sort of a, uh, rhythm with the people that I've got on my podcast. I would like to speak to people that I also have a little bit of a connection with. And what you're doing at your company, Vacation, uh, Tracker is something that, um, brings back a lot of memory from my history, so let's put it that way. But before we start talking about the company, I want to hear a little bit about you. What drives you, what gives you energy as an entrepreneur.

Martin Gourdeau: Um, I think it's, uh, this drive, um, towards, uh, curiosity that I've always had. Um, I'm kind of a perpetual learner. I think I've always been all my life. And, uh, I like to really go to the bottom of things. And that applies to business in a very, I think, uh, primitive manner. Uh, whether it's product management or go to market or just strategy as a whole. Um, I'm just super interested in everything and especially how those things connect together. Um, I like the complexity of it. I like the fact that everything is kind of connected to everything, um, m. Many, many variables, uh, interacting at the same time. So it makes for this very complex thing that needs to be optimized, uh, in real time. And it never settles. It's never boring, uh, always leave challenges. I mean, sometimes like many, uh, people, uh, in my seat. I think, uh, you'd like it to be a bit more boring sometimes, but I think it's ultimately, uh, more of a plus than uh, a bad thing. Uh, so always entertained and always challenging.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, you got a pretty impressive history, uh, in the business offer space. And I completely agree with you. There's never a dull moment, as I would call it.

Martin Gourdeau: Never a dull moment. Exactly.

Ton Dobbe: And it is also about the opportunity that that gives. So, I mean, I, I hear you. And by the way, curiosity is not a bad trade to have or something to add to, to master. It's chapter number four in my book. So, uh, it's there for a reason. And it starts with that because, I mean, without the curiosity, uh, I mean, um, pretty much every opportunity that, that is right in front of you is going to be missed. And yes, sometimes you have to dig for it. Now that brings me to the company. Um, from a software perspective. Your history is, uh, with a couple of companies. And one of the last one was Work Leap, which was Formerly known as Keysoft, um, but recently since September 2025, about a year ago now. Eight, nine months.

Martin Gourdeau: Just under a year.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. Uh, you've moved to a company that was way smaller than uh, network, uh, Leap company called Vacation Tracker. Um, tell me a little bit about that. What is the big idea? What is the problem it solves?

Martin Gourdeau: So Vacation Tracker, um, on the surface, um, it's presented as a weave tracking, uh, software. So, um, it can seem a little bit simple, uh, but it's actually got a bit more depth to it. Uh, and that's, to be honest, one of the things that, uh, interests, uh, me in taking this challenge. Um, I've worked in tech pretty much my, uh, whole life. And um, as you mentioned, uh, in my last company, uh, one of our products was, uh, engagement management, where I was exposed to HR tech, which was basically bridging people in tech together, um, two of my passions. And um, so I kind of developed this very profound interest of how people interact with businesses and the technology to optimize that. That kind of relationship. Um, and the patient tracker, I think falls like squarely in, in that space, basically. Um, so what can be seen to, you know, go back to your question. What could be seen as, uh, you know, leave management can uh, be interpreted in, in many different ways. So from a very like static, uh, business perspective, I guess you can call it, uh, a system of record for, for lead tracking. Right. It's a reference, it's something you go back to, um, to consult and to, to interact with in a very kind of serious, uh, business like function. Um, and then when you look at it a bit deeper, it's really about, you know, optimizing people's energy management within a company which is super strategic to the business. Right. Um, we interact, we're starting to touch on these concepts of, of energy management. So how people manage their own energy in a business, uh, which can become quite strategic very, very quickly. Um, we've noticed many, many different patterns. Obviously we have like an incredible amount of data, uh, regarding which type of profiles use, uh, which type of leads to recharge. Um, and one of the things that we're seeing, for example, is. That's fascinating is high, um, performers are notoriously bad at managing their energy levels because of this obsession to perform. Um, so it's just one of the assets. And this is documented in many places. But it's one of the things, I think it's one of those super interesting problems that we can solve, uh, with our product. So it's, you know, to get back to your question, uh, what drove me towards it is all these interesting challenges that are at the intersection of people and technology and business.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, I like that because, I mean, with leave management, of course, people, a lot of people think, okay, it's. This is the holiday that you take and people take a holiday and they need to register it. And so that people also in the business know which people are gone and which are there. And you can make. Exactly. But a lot of times people take a break because there's something underneath that. Yes.

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah.

Ton Dobbe: That is wrong. And that can, uh, that can lead to other things like the burnout part and, uh.

Martin Gourdeau: Exactly.

Ton Dobbe: So I like how you make the leap now towards energy management to optimize it from a completely different perspective. I like that. So, um, the company, uh, was founded already, I think in 2018 from what I saw. So it's been going on for a while and at some point they must have been looking for a new CEO because there was a CEO, a founder, likely.

Martin Gourdeau: Yes.

Ton Dobbe: What is the big thing that you were hired for.

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah, um, I have a very think unique background with this company, um in the way that I, I was exposed to its creation before uh, there was even a discussion of me coming on board. So when I was, I started my own business uh, a while back with two partners called the pnr and it was a management consulting firm effectively so doing M and A and strategic planning. And um, one of our customers was called Out Horizon and it was actually a service business run by a guy that I knew from a previous life. Uh, and this guy was laugh. Uh, so one of the co founders of the case tracker and la was running uh, with another co founder uh company called Cloud Horizon and they were actually a client of uh tnr. So Live was one of my clients and I was helping him grow this uh, service business. And um, this is an interesting kind of uh, full circle backstory. And while I was helping him grow Cloud Horizon, the service business, uh, he, he pitched me this idea of starting a product and funny enough I was like oh my God, like this is a massive miss focus. Basically don't, don't do this or if you do do it like, do it as a, like a kind of a hobby. Uh, and that business was, was Vacation Driver. So they were not satisfied. It's a, it's a very repetitive story of uh, a service business that was not satisfied with what was out there as a solution to manage um, leave tracking basically. So they built their own, they uh, had a bunch of developers and they built their own and um, they created this lining page and uh, kind of soft launched it and then Covid came and that was very hard on the service business. And on the opposite uh Vacation Tracker took up. So they actually decided to shut down the service business, go all in on Vacation Tracker. Um, and uh, so that's kind of the backstory of I actually witnessed the creation of the business that I run today. Um, but um, but, but to get back to your question, so uh, lab and so the two co founders they uh, they, they had always run a service business. They started this product business. They scaled it to. When I came on board we were probably around 2 million in uh ar. Um so I think the guys did a really great job bringing it there but they kind of reached the, the point where they, it was kind of uncharted territory and, and it got maybe excessively uncomfortable and they wanted to bring uh, someone on that's uh, scaled bigger businesses uh in the past. Um, and there's already this trust relationship because we uh, had worked together in the past. Um, and, um, yeah, so I think that's kind of in a nutshell, the genesis of becoming on board.

Ton Dobbe: Excellent. Yeah. Uh, sometimes the world is small, right?

Martin Gourdeau: Oh, yeah.

Ton Dobbe: And, um, yeah, it's all built on trust and people that you know and that you've. That impressed you. So now I understand that. So you're coming in at 2 million and then the goal is at the end to scale it to, uh, where I think where you left work leap around 100 million. So there's some, some work to do there. Of course. Then you come in last, uh, last year and you got your, your first ideas about, um. Yeah, yeah. What need that needs. Something needs to change at the end because I don't think that here you didn't change anything. What, what was an early decision that you believe was the one to do immediately in order to get the company on a track, uh, for the success that they are aspired for?

Martin Gourdeau: Um, so we did a few things pretty early on. Um, uh, they had not, uh, touched, uh, press game packaging in a while, for example, of how we present the product to our clients. Uh, so we did a few tweets there. Um, I think there was a certain thirst, um, for innovation, uh, from the product team and even the marketing team. Um, there was this, I think, just thinking bigger in general, referring to what I was saying previously about leaf tracking can be so much more than just leaf tracking at the first level. Um, so bringing an aspect of innovation. Right. So again, Ben, this is, I was kind of, I guess tainted or biased for my, you know, uh, engagement days, you know, managing that at work week. Um, but I had this feeling that the market was ready for something different than engagement. Meaning, um, that I think, you know, the buyer Personas, whether it's like small business operators or uh, hr, there was like this kind of thirst for what comes after engagement. I think engagement became a little bit kind of table stakes, uh, with everything going on in tech and business, uh, if you're working in a business and you're not engaged, what are you even doing there? Right. Um, so. Right. So it kind of became table stakes. I think now it became a matter of for. For our ICP anyways, which is SMBs. How do you get the most out of your people?

Ton Dobbe: Right.

Martin Gourdeau: Um, so that's kind of the one of the first things I changed is like allowing us to think beyond just the logistics of lead management. Um, so how can we be more strategic as a product? And then we started looking into and reading and prototyping various, uh, aspects of Energy Management, uh, which we launched a few months after, uh, I came on board and we're still iterating on that. We've got some pretty, pretty interesting, uh, customer feedback, uh, and I think there's something there.

Ton Dobbe: Right.

Martin Gourdeau: So we keep on digging in those various aspects that are connected to retracking, but that could be a bit more deep and more, uh, strategic to businesses.

Ton Dobbe: Let me make a small interruption here. Martin just made a remark that sets his approach apart from most Nissa CEOs. He described the pyramid. Most SARs in his category sit at the bottom layer, doing the paperwork. Solid, but a commodity. Martin questions whether his job was to compete at that layer at all. He looked at one or two layers up where the conversation isn't about features anymore. And this is what remarkable SaaS companies do. They aim to be different, not just better. They master the art of curiosity and then create new value possibilities. Want to master these traits as well? Simply read my book. I've made the electronic version available for free. Just visit theremarkableeffect.com to grab your copy and inspiration will spark within 10 minutes. Back to the interview. Yeah, it's funny how you say that. It's because it's a, I mean it's a big leap to go from leave management to energy management. And the leave management, the end is about the tracking and of course, yes. Uh, I mean, maybe even the cost side of things whereby energy management really gets into the performance base.

Martin Gourdeau: Exactly, exactly. And that's when I, when I, when I pitched this to the team internally, I kind of presented it as. There's this pyramid of where you interact with your clients as, as a product. And right now we sit at the bottom basically, which is logistics. We, we help people with logistics. And I think we do provide pretty solid value. Um, it's simple products, it's great product, we solve a very clear problem. Um, and I think there's an opportunity for us to move one or two steps above in that, in that pyramid. Um, the top of the period being strategy. Um, I don't think we're there yet, but I think we could move one or two steps above with, uh, things like energy management and uh, helping people like you said, perform better. It could seem like a bit of a stretch, uh, but it's actually, you know, we have the data, we have the touch points, we have so many tools to make it happen in practice, uh, it's really not that much of a stretch. And the proof is we have an MVP that's launched and people are using it and we're getting great feedback. So it's uh, super interesting.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. The things that you mentioned, uh, that you changed in the beginning, the packaging, the new push towards innovation, thinking bigger. All of these things of course are always the nice things to do. But what has been the toughest decision you have to take so far? What is this thing that the business was really hung up to where you say no, we're going to cut it here. This is direction.

Martin Gourdeau: Um, I think, I mean that's to me I don't want to minimize the impact of. And there's so much hype and people talking about the impacts of AI. Um, and I think the answer to your question, to be super transparent, is actually happening live as we speak. Um, and that's where do we position ourselves with this change that's happening right in front of us? Um, and the discussions we're happening now that are happening now and where this decision is being taken kind of live at the moment is how do we position the product. We know the value we want to bring in terms of we're still going to stay, leave management and provide that value. Uh, but I think we could provide a whole lot more value with the whole example, the energy management aspect, the big decision that needs to be taken and it's already kind of taken. I'm giving you uh, kind of a spoiler but um, it's investing in this kind of new way of working that people are, are embracing right now in these AI tools. Basically there's, there's this trend going on of, of headless software. Um, and, and it, it's kind of, I think it's kind of the answer to all the hype around AI is going to eat SAS. I uh, think AI is going to eat SA, certain types of SaaS, the ones that are front end wrappers basically. Um, but the systems of record like us, they have this incredible value that they can provide. Um, and that's a tough decision because I think businesses like us always thought their interaction or their relationship with the customer was through the ui. Um, and it's changing that mindset of we can actually provide a whole lot of value, um, with business logic that happens in the back end and we only present you know, the results to either an agent that connects that with your operations and provides incredible amount of insights or value. And that's a, it's a very different way of thinking and it's something that we're going through right now. So it's, I think it's those types of decisions that are, that are the hardest, um, they're very strategic, they're, they will have an impact. Um, but again it's so, so much fun and exciting to see all these changes happening.

Ton Dobbe: It starts with uh, what you just said before, the thinking bigger part to really see yourself outside of that box of leave management, um, and what is really getting to the essence of what it's really all about. And then you can go all kind of ways, like you just said, become part of a workflow that people are building. Anyway, um, that could be the layer that the user doesn't even see, the agentic layer. Nice. Now I mean talking about this market for leave management, uh, uh, I think I've said it, uh, part of what you offer was also part of the suite that I used to run at Unit four. And of course there are far more solutions that do something in this area. How do you then prevent, well, how do you go about differentiation? Um, what are the steps that you take in order to take the differentiation that the product already has? Uh, to keep it, but also to ensure that in today's market, I mean talking about this um, enormous wave that is not only changing uh, products but actually also how companies are run, uh, that you actually build the most rather than, um, just protect it.

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah. So where we're positioned today, I mean it's, it's a very, I was, I was kind of shocked when we, when uh, I came in. It's, it's a very fragmented market. So there are, I don't know the exact number to be honest, but there's probably, I want to say 25 to 40 direct competitors. And we are basically positioned as uh, the, one of the largest of the small companies doing what we do. So there are a lot of kind of lifestyle businesses, uh, in the market. When you look at our competitors, there's a lot of companies that are 2, 3, 4, 5 employees. Um, and I actually talked to uh, the owner of one of them a few weeks ago and they were quite struggling, uh, in terms of their growth and just maintaining their size. Um, it's hyper competitive. And um, I think those players are basically in a kind of a race to the bottom situation, which is not ideal. Um, basically, you know, comparing features to features and trying to offer it for the cheapest possible price, which is not where you want to be. Uh, so we're positioned slightly different. We, like I said, we're kind of in the larger of the small players, meaning that we offer a bit more in depth, um, functionalities. The risk with that is that we basically position ourselves at the top edge of the, the ICP that needs a solution like us. Meaning that our, our number one churn reason is people moving to an HRS for consolidation purposes. So it's, it's the people that they don't see the value in what we offer or not enough to maintain an additional tool, an additional cost per month to, to, to keep what we're doing basically. And they, they graduate quote unquote to one of the big hrss and that big hrs, uh, offers retracking and they can't justify to their finance person basically to keep two tools. That's in a nutshell like that's our, that's our number one tier reason right now. But it's, it's a positioning that we chose to not be part of that first cohort that's in kind of like a very commodity race at the bottom. And I still think it's the, it's the right position for us, but it puts us in a position where we need to innovate and prove that value and stay relevant as long as possible in the kind of the lifetime journey of our customers. Um, so it puts a lot of pressure on innovation and that's why I talked about energy management. That's one of the ways that we're tackling that. Um, I think there's almost endless possibilities to build around concepts like that. Um, and it's, it's, it's, we don't really have a choice with the growth ambitions that we have. Um, you, you can't be in that first category. So you have to fight for, you know, kind of the top range of that, that ICP and, and stay relevant for those, for those larger companies. Uh, and, and the data suggests that it, it works. We have clients with multiple, you know, hundreds or even thousands of employees, uh, where we prove our value in an ecosystem or true, uh, mid sized SMBs. Uh, so it's working, but we need to work harder on it.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, isn't it? Uh, you talk about companies, ah, between a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand employees. Uh, I mean I would call it mid market.

Martin Gourdeau: That's mid market.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah. I mean at the end I'm a big believer of the fact that uh, your ICP doesn't hide in a particular size of organization. But it's more about psychographics, how people think, what they tolerate, what they don't tolerate, what they aspire and these type of things, uh, what they care about. Um, uh, what's, yeah, I mean all of those type of things. The unique Dynamics of the business possibly as well. Before we started talking, you already mentioned that one of the things that uh, you really focus on is okay, it's very niche, it's highly verticalized. Yes. What is a component there that is important here?

Martin Gourdeau: Um, so I mean there's, there's two ways. Again, you probably know this more than anyone. There's two ways of talking about a niche product.

Ton Dobbe: Right.

Martin Gourdeau: It's, it's what the functionalities of the product or the market that it's in. When I say it's earnings product, obviously I'm talking about um, the, the functionalities of the product. Um, uh, in terms of like who our clients are. It's actually quite wide. We have um, we have a very, very wild range of uh, customers which is one of the, you know, product management and go to market challenges. Um, but um, the, the niche aspect is, is in a way it's um, it makes it easier in the way that you could go very, very deep into one topic. Um, but there's kind of this um, duality of you can go very, very deep. But to your previous point, the, the people that buy our products work in such a, a wide variety of businesses that it makes for quite an interesting product strategy, product management, uh, challenge. So that's uh, we're kind of very, very wide in terms of go to market and market segments and we're very, very vertical in terms of like the solution that we offer. Um, so it makes it vertical or is it niche?

Ton Dobbe: Because the vertical part is typically you're for government or you're for.

Martin Gourdeau: That's what I say. And I, and I, and I mix up both terms. It's my mistake. It's a niche, uh, it's horizontal in terms of go to market. It's niche in terms of a product functionality.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So you've never considered verticalizing, um, it. Because I mean I can understand for example that part of your mode could be that in particular vertical markets regulations are a crazy thing. Um, or it's maybe international type companies that don't want to go for five different solutions but want to go for one. And those type of things can still be very niche but could also be a segment of the market that is unique from a structural perspective.

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah, uh, it is in terms of how we define our icp, meaning uh, that the ideal company that buys our product has more complex lead M management needs. For sure. Um, where it's hard to manage is we do have a lot of companies that buy our products. And like, like any company with you know, that, that tries to optimize for their icp. We're not going to refuse a client that like just, you know, we're product led. Right. So people can just onboard sign up and onboard. Uh, uh, on the web, um, we have companies that are definitely outside of our SAP that sign up and use our product just because they have simple lead management needs. So to get back to your question, we do have a very good idea who the ideal customer is. And it's not by industry though. It's like you said, reports. It's more the profile of the person or how they think M. They want things very structured, very clean. They either have reporting to do, they have people in multiple locations, uh, they have time approval, they have all these needs that they need uh, to cater to. And we offer that solution. Um, whether it's you know, a church or you know, a garage or a library. Like that's, that's kind of irrelevant. Um, but, um, but yeah, we, we, we also happen to sell to very small businesses with very basic needs that are kind of tired of managing their leaves in a spreadsheet. You know, so they get, they kind of graduate to a system like ours. Um, and for that profile of company were in competition with that first quarter that I was talking about where um, we don't necessarily intentionally go after that market, but we do grab part of it, uh, because of what we do.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, because you made a point about being product led. I saw that. Um, and also what I realized is that not sure how long ago it is but uh, the product has always been available through buying through the website.

Martin Gourdeau: Self serve.

Ton Dobbe: Self serve, exactly. Um, but now it's also available as a freemium. Um, but one of the things that I picked up, I think it was from LinkedIn somewhere. It's that freemium isn't the pricing strategy. It's a community strategy.

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah. Um, so because of, we talked a lot about m. Our icp, um, the companies as I just mentioned, that kind ah, of graduate from a, you know, using a spreadsheet to keep to track, uh, leaves, um, they start looking for a system like us. A lot of the companies are very, very small and that can be intimidated or can't justify, you know, actually paying for a product that's kind of between a professional product like ours or a spreadsheet. So their needs are kind of in between and ah, naturally companies grow organically. Right. That's the objective of a company. Uh, and they will reach a point in a, in a, in a certain time frame, uh, where they will actually be our icp. So the, the, the point of when we launched the premium was really to kind of grow this again. This cohort of companies that are going to fall in love with the product, uh, and talk about it. And um, surprisingly I think uh, enough I, I was actually surprised when I, when I walked in, uh, to this business is uh, almost 20% of um, our inbound comes from referrals. So which is a great, a great sign for the product. Like people love the product. It's a simple product. It addresses a simple need. Uh, but it's simple and it does it well. And people refer us a lot. Um, so building that community, it has multiple benefits, uh from referrals to building up that cohort of future clients, uh, to getting the brand out there, people talking about the products. Um, that's that community aspect that I was uh, that I was uh, referring to.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah. Is that community under the name of uh, vacation tracker or is it more a general community about. Yeah. The profession of, or the art of lead management?

Martin Gourdeau: I think it's, it's a bit broader than. I mean it doesn't have an official name. When I talk about the community, it's kind of building up the, the importance of people and businesses and again, uh, making sure that people take the right time off to perform their best. It always comes down to that basically. So if there was a name for, for that community, it'd be, you know, the community that associate the importance of good management and treating people correctly so they perform their best.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly. Yeah, that's true. At the end it starts with that stuff and that's also possibly a good north stuff for your product because that is always like something to uh, aim for and where you are today with what the product does is here. But next year or two years later it can be completely different with the other technology that's currently coming up. One of the things going back to the whole scaling part, you know, the company, when you joined you said it was around 2 million. Everybody wants to start growing. What do you, what do you see as the, the, the biggest opportunity or maybe even the biggest challenge, uh, when it comes to predictable growth. Because I mean I also realized that for example on um, on self serve, yeah, you're bound by people finding you, people referring you and so on, which is everything but predictable.

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah. So our strategy, um, the strategy we put in place has basically kind of two, two aspects. The first one is growing the core business. So um, it's, it's having those, you know, those referrals That I talked about generating more inbound uh, from the existing market. I think that usually leads to a somewhat linear uh, type of growth. It's a bit more predictable. Um, you know you, you have these initiatives, you measure the outcomes and you optimize. It's kind of a closed loop uh, between marketing, sales, product, uh, you optimize for the growth that you know where you're already winning basically. Uh, and that's, that's our number one objective. Um, and, and doing that you know we, we in, in about nine months we've added about ML in, in, in ar. So it's um, it's, it's, it's pretty decent growth for, for a bootstrap company. And then the second objective is um, really the innovation kind of exploratory innovation. So trying to find almost like a new product market fit through innovation. Um, and that's how I like to think about the whole energy thing is for an example of the vision where this could materialize is if we become um, the source of reference via uh, technology like NCP for agents to start planning work in companies around optimal energy levels and who's in, who's out, um, and then it goes to fetch through other MCP connections who has the expertise and comes up with a project plan. Being, being part of that ah, dynamic can catapult the business to a whole new level. Right. Um, and that's, that's the super exciting part but it's also the very, very hard part.

Ton Dobbe: Creating a new category.

Martin Gourdeau: Exactly, exactly. Um, so it's kind of this two tier strategy of um, the more linear growth and the more predictable growth and keep on winning where we're winning. Um, and it doesn't mean that there's no innovation there. There definitely is but it's building on what's already been built. And then the explore for innovation where you basically it's the moonshot. It's things that if you do correctly um, it could transform the entire business. Very unpredictable. Very uh, high risk reward.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly. How do you balance the way, how you invest your, the resources of the company? Because I mean the company is not a huge one. I think it's about 20 people or something like that. So talking about short term is of course always like the thing that is on your desk right now. The call that you have to answer today. But of course there's also long term, um, how do you balance that?

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah.

Ton Dobbe: In a sustainable way.

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah, it's a great question. I think uh, when we talked about this kind of two level strategy, uh between export Innovation and growing the business. Uh, it was one of the first questions that the team asked. Um, and my answer was we're going to start with something around 70, 30, uh, but it's a fluid thing. So we do monthly touch points, quarterly touch points and we adjust the weight depending on how we're performing on, on our core business. We adjust the weight of how much we uh, allow ourselves to invest in this oratory innovation. Um, like you said, it's not a big business. We're 22 employees. Um, we're fully distributed. So uh, in seven countries. So the, the only time that everyone's online at the same time is, is my morning basically. Uh, so the synchronous communication is quite uh, important and cherished. Uh, but we do have, for a bootstrap business we have the luxury of not being cash bound in our growth. Uh, since we're profitable, we, we can invest. We, we look for kind of these growth levers to invest in. Um, but, but yeah, to get back to your question, the percentage of, of resources and energy between building the core business and exploratory innovation really depends on if we're on track on our growth plan for the core business. Uh, which we do just quite often. So if we're on track or above track, we allow ourselves to invest a bit more. Also what kind of traction we get with this exploratory innovation stuff. Right. If we hit some kind of product bullseye and things take off. Yes, we will allow ourselves to go maybe 50, 50 or even 60, 60, 50. On the innovation side, uh, I think you have to stay very flexible with those things and uh, kind of see, read the signals kind of in real time than just in real time.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly. Yeah. The challenge at the end is always that uh, my boss used to say it in the beginning, past, on the long term is about a lot of short terms and we have to kind of survive the short term in the first place. And you're right on that. So it's good that you keep that flexible, but it's also that you protect it in one way.

Martin Gourdeau: Exactly. And that's why we hold ourselves accountable with these kind of objectives. Right. We have growth objectives and that's kind of our. If you don't have that, it's too easy to have these, what I call like a sequence, an eternal sequence of knee jerk reactions which can be very, very bad for a business. Um, like the shiny object syndrome, which is I think now more than ever, uh, hard to not do with all these uh, fancy new toys that uh, the technology is bringing our way. Um, so yeah, it keeps us honest to have these uh, very specific and precise objectives.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah. One question that comes to mind also because of your background in M and A, um, what is your perspective on build by partner for this company?

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah, for this company. Um, I think where we are at and with the people we have and with our culture, we're definitely more in a build and I think that's, that's been pretty clear uh, since the beginning of our discussion. I think we're, we're very much in a build mindset and an innovation mindset. Um, I do think the broader market, all the small players that I was referring to before that are I think struggling a bit more. I, there's definitely a consolidation opportunity there. I uh, think one of the bigger players could probably do some kind of PE backed consolidation, uh, play. We, to be honest, we've talked about it internally, uh, but it's a different ballgame. As you know, it's a different business. Uh, it's a post MNA integration business at that point. Uh, and um, it becomes very financial driven and uh, it's just not what the business is right now. So we're focusing. We think we can build something that creates tremendous value and that the ROI of doing that is going to be higher than uh, raising money uh, or borrowing capital and doing some kind of uh, consolidation, uh, play. But I do think it will happen in the industry and it's something we're keeping an eye on.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. Also with the pace of the technology that's changing, um, all these decisions, why are you allocate the resources in the company in terms of expanding the boat and working on the future? That's an ongoing thing. Um, are you changing the way the company is operating with the arrival, the last six, seven months of uh, the potential of the agent?

Martin Gourdeau: Uh, yes, definitely. Um, I think it's. It was actually one of the large reasons that I wanted to after work Leap, I wanted to go for a smaller company. I took almost a year off after work Leap to see what was going on. Things were changing so fast. I really, I, I took a really hard look at the industry and what was going on. Um, and I remember I, I was approached, you know, for, for opportunities that are similar size as Workleap. And I found out through those discussions that um, I was actually quite certain that I wanted my next move to be something small and super nimble and agile. Because of that, um, the amount of change in running a business that has been and is still currently necessary, uh, I Think it's actually good for companies our size. We can turn around very, very quickly. Um, these, the adoption of these tools has been, I mean it's never fast enough, but I mean we turned it around pretty, pretty quickly. Um, and the amount of delivery that we're able to achieve now, uh, is just incredible. If I think back of like the larger teams that I used to run, uh, three, four or five years ago, um, so it's a moving target. Uh, we've definitely, definitely changed the way we work. Uh, I think one of the big questions, this is a broader kind of, uh, tech actually, uh, not just tech into any industry. Questions how all this will affect or charts. Because I do think it will affect or charts. I think that's one of the big, big questions that's kind of, uh, no one has answered yet. Um, and again, we're small enough to, we almost don't have an OR chart. There's like one level of management basically. Uh, so we can adapt and, and, and, and turn around super, super quickly. Uh, but, um, yeah, I, I, I can't imagine, you know, these business that are, you know, a couple thousand employees asking them themselves the same questions and, and having this inertia to turn the ship around, uh, that's, it must be quite a challenge. But uh, yeah, to get back to your question definitely has changed the way we work. Everything is much faster. Um, I think it stresses quite a bit the ability to delegate. We now have. A lot of people are saying everyone's an IC now and I kind of agree. Everyone can produce things and artifacts and deliverables and the tools are incredible to do that. But you have to be able to delegate to those agents and those tools. And delegation is not, uh, I don't think it's given to everyone and we're seeing that right now. It's a skill that you need to build on. Um, so yeah, again it's like just that curiosity kicking in again of like, where is all this going and what are the possibilities and what are the limits? Um, uh, it's quite a time to run a business.

Ton Dobbe: I mean, you just mentioned that you took a year off to look at what the industry, uh, was really all about. What do you believe where you are right now is? What is the industry underestimating here?

Martin Gourdeau: Um, I think that there's definitely some kind of hype cycle going on. And I think it's kind of shaped like a barbell. And I think at one end you have the overhyping of the capabilities of everything that's AI and LLMs. And on the other end you have these traditional businesses that are not moving fast enough that have not embraced the capabilities, not even close. So you have these. I find myself in conversations. Sometimes I talk to clients, sometimes I talk to people I used to work with. And it's very polarized. It's, they're at one of the, one of the ends of the spectrums. Either they've hit the limit of what an agent can do when they're working with like seven different models. Um, and they're, they're rethinking the way they work and they're hitting the limits of um, what AI as it stands today can do. Or they're just starting to play with like ChatGPT and they're, they're, they're six to 12 months behind, but it feels like they're five years behind. So I think the market is kind of in a very weird situation right now.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's true. And I mean not every business, of course it's going to be as important as any other. I mean the novice workers these days have uh, a different place than for example if you run a bakery. Um, but again, yeah, that's right. Um, from the metrics. I mean you're a metric man, you're an operator. Um, scaling the business. How has your perspective over the last year changed in terms of what's possible with a smaller team? I mean for example, you know, 20 people, you said 22 people. How would that be in comparison to where you were with a company that was much larger in size? Um, yeah. And I mean do you put bars on that or do you, I mean do you raise the bar for that? For example? ARR. Per employee?

Martin Gourdeau: Yes. That's funny that you mentioned that. Um, so historically the business, it's something I find quite odd when I walked in. So instead of doing regular ah, like let's say yearly performance reviews attached to you know, salary increases and this is something that the two founders put in place before I was here. What they did was they set revenue like it was basically an AR objective and at a certain AR objective everyone would get a race, which I found quite interesting. You're basically aligning interests of like the, the number one objective was growth, so let's go after growth. And that was the metric. And, and it's a small business. So performance management was done like on a, like very organic, on a day to day basis. I'm not talking about performance management, I'm just talking about like actual raises. So incentivizing everyone to Grow the business and everyone, whether it's like CS to minimize churn or even developers building great product to get more people, everyone found kind of a way to contribute to that metric. Um, and it's funny that you just mentioned AR per head because, because of all these new tools, we just changed that metric to AR per head. So the next raises are on a AR per head metric. We incentivize everyone to find new ways to do more, and it aligns ourselves around a common goal. And it's still growth. We still want to grow the business and, and, and grab more market and, and, and please more customers. Um, but we want to do it efficiently. We're bootstrapped. It's part of our values. We have strong fundamentals. They want to stay that way. Um, and you need to incentivize that behavior. So that's what we found with arbrid. It is now our kind of financial North Star metric to give raises. Loyalty.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. And the word efficient here or effective is the word to use because a lot of companies have been growing crazy when it comes to ARR numbers.

Martin Gourdeau: Yes.

Ton Dobbe: But also in the number of people that they use for that. And as a consequence that we're not profitable at all.

Martin Gourdeau: Exactly, exactly.

Ton Dobbe: And they were, they were growing churn, uh, every month because of that behavior. And I think ARR employee has always, I've always liked it as a metric because it tells a lot about how efficient the business really is. And of course, now it has really exploded in terms of what's possible with it. Because, I mean, if I look back two, three years and I look at my LinkedIn post and my daily reflection, uh, emails, I was talking about 200, 350k. Uh, yeah, that was like, really, really good.

Martin Gourdeau: That was best in class. Yeah, exactly. That was best in class.

Ton Dobbe: And now I've heard I've had people last, last week on my podcast that said the bar is 10 million, which is. Yeah. Um, but even if it's a million, it's, it's a lot.

Martin Gourdeau: I think it's, I don't think it's landed yet because again, I don't think people have, um, mastered everything possible yet. And it's, it's a, it's a moving target. But, but yes, you're like, I was, I was 100% aligned three, four years ago. Like, the gold standard was basically Karen K us, uh, ar per head. Um, that was like kind of best in class. And it's definitely not that anymore. If it's 10 million or 1 million, who knows? But it's definitely higher than that.

Ton Dobbe: Yeah, exactly. But it's raised, ah, incredibly, um, by a large measure, um, I have to look at the time here. One more question to go from, uh, your experience being an entrepreneur and having worked in the software industry for quite a while here, uh, what would be a do and what would be a don't that you'd like to share with other entrepreneurs?

Martin Gourdeau: Um, but don't. If we're talking specifically about entrepreneurs, um, I think the don't would be what I mentioned previously, which is especially today, it's don't fall into the shiny object syndrome. The amount of hype, and I almost want to say rift that's going on right now. Uh, it's not honest, uh, and it's people acting towards their own interests. And, um, you have to filter out the noise. And there's so much noise. And it's easy to fall into these. Like you just mentioned, right? We're balancing these metrics out of like 10 million AR per head. I mean, it's easy to get caught up in those things and say, okay, this is the thing now, and we're bad because we're not there. Or how you use agents or automation or all these metrics are kind of up in the air. Um, so, yeah, the don't would be definitely, uh, yeah, don't fall for the shiny objects in Rome. The do. I'm hesitating between the flip side of the dump I just mentioned, which is, you know, try to keep a level head and eye on your strategy and the market and where it's going. I'm kind of torn between. I don't know if I could answer with two, but that and, and focus on also your people, um, and helping them grow in this kind of chaos. Because it is chaos right now. We have to, we have to acknowledge it. Um, and what I mentioned before about people being. Not everyone is a great delegator. These new technologies are really testing how you can structure your thoughts and communicate and delegate and ask for very specific things with very clear deliverables, um, which is all part of delegation. But not everyone has been exposed to. And now they are, um, so help people grow through that. And it's something that I've been trying internally, uh, and I think it's been having, it's been having an impact. But hearing myself talk, I think I'd actually go with that. I think that's the biggest, uh. Yeah, the one with the biggest impact.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly. That's funny that you make that, that you bring that topic, because it's indeed as simple as that. You know, it's, uh. Yeah, yeah. Last week I had someone on the podcast who actually said everybody's been talking about co pilots, but we become the co pilots of the agents because we give them feedback and we ask them, we have to give them the guardrails and we have to be super clear about these things. And you gave it the name, which is about delegation. So it's.

Martin Gourdeau: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to keep the ownership in the agency and it's easy to talk to these systems where they kind of take control and start suggesting things that are maybe not aligned with your objectives. You have to really kind of hold the line and keep, you know, the business interests, uh, in mind, uh, while you're interacting with these things.

Ton Dobbe: Exactly. Thanks. Thanks for sharing this fun story. And um, um, yeah, definitely keep following what you're doing there. Where can people go to find out more about Vacation Tracker or to say hi to you?

Martin Gourdeau: Uh, so say hi to me. I think LinkedIn is probably the easiest. Uh, I'm also on X, but LinkedIn is probably easiest. And vacation, uh, vacationtracker IO. Uh, so pretty easy to remember. Um, and uh, yeah, that's it.

Ton Dobbe: Thank you very much.

Martin Gourdeau: Thanks Van.

Ton Dobbe: Pleasure to speak to you. And um, good luck in uh, the next year from now. Because it goes by year, right?

Martin Gourdeau: Pretty much, yeah. Thanks. It was super fun.

Ton Dobbe: And this wraps up my conversation with Martin Goudot, CEO of Vacation Tracker. If you got value from this episode, please share it with other SaaS founders who need to hear this as well. And if you got 10 seconds, a quick rating or review on Apple, uh, podcasts will help more people to find these conversations. Thank you for listening to the remarkable SaaS podcast. If you want more insights like this, subscribe to my daily email. Espresso with torn it's a two minute shot of clarity for SaaS founders who want to create pull, not push. You can sign up along with getting my book@valueinspiration.com. see you in the next episode.

Martin Gourdeau: It.