This is Andy with NachoNacho, a platform where you can manage, discover, and save on great SaaS products. Today, we're hosting our second NachoTuesday, a special moment where we interview founders of new startups and SaaS companies featured in our Marketplace. This week, we have Greg, the founder of planthes.io, joining us. Greg will present a one-minute elevator pitch about his company and share some tips as a seasoned entrepreneur. Thank you for being here, Greg. The floor is yours. Thank you, Andy. It's a pleasure to be here. Let me quickly explain what planthes.io is all about. Having managed projects and teams for almost 20 years, I've consistently faced challenges when it comes to planning projects and optimizing resources. To address this, we created planthes.io, the first real-time planning and resource optimization tool. It empowers teams to unleash their planning superpowers by automatically building the perfect work plan that adapts to changes instantly. We're solving two key problems. First, on average, only 40% of projects are delivered on time and within budget. Second, people spend more than half their time on administrative work rather than focusing on meaningful tasks. The issue lies in the numerous constraints and variables involved in planning work. It's difficult to determine the optimal plan and understand the impact of constant changes. While there are excellent tools for project management and collaboration, planning and resource management remain manual and ineffective processes. We aim to change that by leveraging the power of algorithms. Our solution considers all constraints and variables, calculating planning scenarios and possibilities to create the perfect work plan. It automatically allocates resources, optimizes team schedules, and ensures a balanced workload for everyone. To summarize, planthes.io provides a data-driven approach to planning and resource management, enabling companies to overcome manual work, reduce errors, and achieve optimal organization based on their specific needs and constraints." Andy: "That's an impressive elevator pitch, Greg. Do you believe the biggest problem companies face in resource planning and optimization is the manual work involved, leading to time-consuming processes and human errors?" Greg: "Absolutely. Many companies either neglect planning altogether or rely on manual processes, even with great tools at their disposal. Due to the numerous variables and constant changes, they often end up guessing their way forward without a data-driven approach. With planthes.io, we offer a solution that takes into account all the constraints and variables, providing a more accurate and efficient planning process that humans alone cannot achieve." Andy: "Can you share more about the founding of your company? When did you get the idea to work on this project?" Greg: "As I mentioned earlier, having experienced these frustrations throughout my 20 years of managing projects, I had always hoped for a project management or planning tool that leveraged AI capabilities to address these challenges. However, existing solutions fell short. Eventually, I decided to tackle the problem myself. Initially, I developed a small algorithm for my team to better organize our work and schedules. Soon, I realized many others were also facing similar issues. That's how it all began." Andy: "That's fascinating. What were the results of your initial project to test your hypothesis?" Greg: "Our first step was to assess the market opportunity before diving in. I reached out to various companies, particularly those in the marketing agency industry, which I was closely associated with at the time. Through these interactions, I gauged interest and confirmed the need for a solution like planthes.io. The positive responses and feedback encouraged us to pursue this venture further." Andy: "That's a great start, Greg. It's inspiring to see how you identified a problem, developed a solution, and validated its market potential. Thank you for sharing your insights and experience with us." We were able to sign 10 lifetime deals within 48 hours, each worth around 1,000 Euros at the time. This proved that there was indeed a market for our product. As entrepreneurs, we have learned some valuable tips along the way. One of the key lessons is the importance of validating the market before building anything. If we were to start over, we would even try selling the idea before developing the product. Building in public is another crucial aspect. Collaborating with customers and involving them in the tool's development is the way to go. When it comes to launching a company and starting a SAS product, there are several obstacles to watch out for. One common challenge is understanding the complexity of achieving product-market fit. It's not just about creating a product that solves a problem; it's also about finding effective ways to market and sell it. Many startups struggle with this aspect and fail to scale up due to a lack of a solid process or channel for marketing and sales. Resilience is crucial because failure is part of the journey towards finding the right product-market fit. Aspiring entrepreneurs should focus on forming partnerships and leveraging referrals for early growth. Building a network of partners who can help expand into different niches and industries is invaluable. Additionally, delighting customers and making them successful with your solution will lead to word-of-mouth referrals. It's essential to start with a small customer base and ensure their satisfaction, even if it requires manual efforts. These early engagements provide valuable insights for scaling and setting up a sustainable growth strategy. Cold emailing is an underrated growth tactic that can be highly effective in the early stages. It allows you to test your pitch, messages, and target audience. If you can achieve a high open rate and engagement with your emails, it signifies that your messaging and targeting are on point. Cold emailing requires energy and effort, but it can yield great results in understanding your audience and refining your approach. Overall, the key is to be objective, listen to customer feedback, and continuously improve your product and marketing strategies based on the insights gained. too for generating leads which is you know really effective and cheap to actually get them um what what email marketing tools do you prefer to use for cold outbound well do we do actually use Apollo uh a lot uh and then we we have created our own systems because we wanted really to be in control of everything and not necessarily spend thousands of dollars every month in the beginning for uh the great tools so we've built a lot by ourselves uh but we we're mainly using a HubSpot uh and then purely emailing we're using send grid for for the the sending parts uh but yeah this the the combo of these four elements between Apollo have spots and grid and our own little magic behind this is what we're using today awesome great tools there um where do you see organizational planning evolving over the next few years uh what new Transit technology do you think will be important and why that's a very difficult one and uh I don't have a magic ball but from talking with about this subject every day with people I I kind of see some Trends going on uh one is one is the shift that we see in agile uh in the last 10 to 20 years a lot a lot of companies went towards agile but now we're seeing a lot understanding that agile also comes with a lot of problematics uh and so I I see a child taking a big turn in terms of organization inside of our teams uh but I think that the future will really rely on two things the first one is assisted decision making uh having AI and and tools helping people in making better decisions uh but also I think that machine learning allows to learn from behaviors and adapt and and evolve and be more and more consistent with what is happening in the company and in a team and this is for example something we're working on on planless where we have our algorithms that are capable of doing all of this magic but now we're also starting to learn from the team's behaviors to start making that more and more precise over time and adapting to the reality of things so I think this is kind of what what I'm seeing as the trends in the future is to really leverage technology to make better decisions and to adapt to reality that's a great point I think context really matters too especially for artificial intelligence just so the more you can pair that that uh that great technology you with behavioral learning and actually actually understanding how people think and operate it's a it's a really powerful combination exactly um what are some favorite books that you're reading right now or have read over the last year that you would recommend for other entrepreneurs so unfortunately in the last two three months I have been too busy and and I haven't opened the book but I used to read a lot I would say directed to to what we were saying before we're talking about advices to entrepreneurs Etc I think two are like kind of my go-to the first one is really about how startups grow it's crossing the chasm one of my things it's it's really an amazing book and I think that every SAS entrepreneur should read it because you need to understand this if if not you will never be able to scale a SAS company the second one is more on the the sales Parts is the Challenger sale uh a great book that's one of my sales coach recommended to me uh when I started working with him and that changed Once again, thank you all for joining us today for Nacho Nacho Tuesday, where you can learn about great new products like Planless. Be sure to check out Nacho Nacho today to manage, discover, and save on amazing SaaS tools, just like Planless. Greg, I want to express my sincere appreciation for your time today. Thank you for accepting the invitation, and it was a pleasure to have this conversation. Likewise, we look forward to promoting your product and hoping for the growth of both our companies in the coming years. That's our goal. Thank you so much. Goodbye!