Getting users to sign up is the easy part. Keeping them is where most product-led companies fail.

Melissa Kwan built eWebinar to $2M ARR without a single full-time employee, but not without learning this lesson the hard way.

In this episode, Wes Bush, with Esben Friis-Jensen joining, sits down with Melissa Kwan, cofounder and CEO of eWebinar, to break down what product-led growth actually looks like behind the scenes. They explore why more signups don't solve churn, why customer success is the real growth engine most founders overlook, and how Melissa structured eWebinar around contractors instead of employees to preserve flexibility and focus.

Melissa also opens up about founder burnout that did not look like exhaustion, but like a slow loss of inspiration, and the internal work that helped her reset and regain confidence. Along the way, she shares her playbook for building a high-trust founder community through credibility, generosity, and thoughtful curation.

Key Highlights:

• 02:09 - Just Under $2M ARR and a Contractor First Team Model
• 05:35 - What Changed in the Last 4 to 6 Months, AI Impact and Trials Cut in Half
• 07:01 - The Biggest Lesson: Customer Success and Onboarding Are the Growth Engine
• 09:22 - Why Product-Led Feels Harder Than Sales-Led, Debugging Without Logs
• 16:13 - Lifestyle Design as Strategy, Building for Travel and Freedom
• 26:43 - Burnout Symptoms Founders Miss and Why It Is Not Just Exhaustion
• 29:30 - The Hoffman Process and Unpacking Self-Doubt
• 34:11 - “Progress Is Quiet. Winning Is Loud.” and the Mindset Shift to Sustain Momentum
• 41:16 - Building a Founder Community by Giving First and Curating Quality
• 48:02 - Closing Advice: Retention First, Do Not Neglect Customer Success

Resources:

• 🎯 eWebinar: Automated webinar platform - https://ewebinar.com
• 💼 Connect with Melissa Kwan on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissakwan/
• 💼 Connect with Wes Bush on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesbush/
• 💼 Connect with Esben Friis-Jensen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/esbenfriisjensen/
• 🧠 Sign up for the ProductLed Newsletter - https://www.productled.com/newsletter

Most SaaS founders obsess over raising capital and building large teams.

Yasser Elsaid took a different approach.

In this episode of the ProductLed 100 series, Wes Bush and Esben Friis-Jensen sit down with Yasser Elsaid, the first-time founder who built Chatbase from zero to $8 million ARR in just 2.5 years with only 18 people (11 of them engineers).

Yasser reveals how he caught the AI wave at exactly the right moment, why he's moving his entire team to New York to be closer to customers (98 of his top 100 target accounts are there), and why product quality is the only moat that matters when features are easy to copy.

They also explore the "minimum viable first strike" philosophy for onboarding, why bootstrapped founders need to stop thinking small, and how Chatbase is now transitioning from pure product-led growth to an enterprise sales motion.

Key Highlights:

• 01:25 – How Yasser Seized the ChatGPT Moment
• 03:04 – Timeline: From DaVinci Model to ChatGPT API Launch
• 05:34 – The Viral Demo Tweet and Initial Launch Reaction
• 07:36 – Solo Founder Pros and Cons
• 12:00 – Hiring Strategy and Team Composition
• 16:08 – Current Bottlenecks: Hiring for Growth
• 21:08 – Success Metrics and the Path to $100M ARR
• 25:00 – Activation Strategy: 60 Seconds to Value
• 30:00 – Two-Stage Onboarding for Complex Products
• 34:00 – Team Breakdown at $8M ARR
• 36:00 – Marketing Strategy: LinkedIn Content and Brand Building
• 38:11 – Advice for Product-Led Founders

Resources:

• 💬 Chatbase: AI-powered customer support - https://chatbase.co
• 💼 Connect with Yasser Elsaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasserelsaid
• 💼 Connect with Wes Bush on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesbush/
• 💼 Connect with Esben Friis-Jensen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/esbenfriisjensen/
• 🧠 Sign up for the ProductLed Newsletter - https://www.productled.com/newsletter

For decades, the biggest barrier to building a SaaS company was technical talent. You needed a team of engineers to ship a world-class product.

David Okuniev, Co-Founder of Typeform, believes that era is over.

In this episode of the ProductLed 100 series, Wes Bush sits down with David Okuniev (Founder of Float) and Esben Friis-Jensen (Co-Founder of Userflow) to discuss why "Taste" is the only defensible moat left in the age of AI.

David reveals how he is building his new venture, Supercut, by literally talking to Claude Code through a microphone - building full iOS apps in days without knowing Swift. He argues that since AI has commoditized the "How" of building software, the "What" and "Why" (Design and Taste) matter more than ever.

They also explore why this shift allows for a "Minimum Viable Team" of just three people, why David regrets scaling Typeform into a large organization, and how to survive as a "Pioneer" founder without getting bogged down by professional management.

Key Highlights:

• 01:21: The "Accidental" Origin: How a client project for a toilet showroom in Barcelona turned into Typeform.
• 03:51: The Viral Launch: Generating 8,000 pre-signups and achieving immediate viral growth without traditional validation.
• 09:53: The Taste Differentiator: Why design is the only way to distinguish yourself
• 13:00: The "Impulsive" Archetype: David’s approach to building products based on intuition rather than validation.
• 21:41: The "Professional CEO" Trap: Why David regrets stepping down and why founders should stay in the driver's seat.
• 37:42: The Float Labs Model: How David runs a product lab to spin out new companies (like Supercut).
• 42:09: The Minimum Viable Team: Why the modern startup only needs a Designer, a Tech Lead, and a Marketer.
• 44:53: The "Tastemaker" Advice: You don't need to be a designer; you just need to be opinionated.

Resources:

• 🎥 Supercut: The AI-powered screen recorder - https://float.build
• 💼 Connect with David Okuniev on Twitter/X - @DavidOkuniev
• 💼 Connect with Wes Bush on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesbush/
• 💼 Connect with Esben Friis-Jensen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/esbenfriisjensen/
• 🧠 Sign up for the ProductLed Newsletter - https://www.productled.com/newsletter