This episode dives deep into the shifting landscape of SaaS growth, investment philosophy, and leadership with Klee Kleber, former Dell and Rackspace executive and co-founder at Build Group.

Klee Kleber shares why he prefers the "long game" model over traditional VC, explains the math behind durable businesses, talks about the importance of relentless execution, and how empathy, self-awareness, and diversity drive lasting success. From stories of luck at Dell to building customer love at Rackspace and the bold ambition of Topwater, this episode is packed with pragmatic wisdom for SaaS founders, operators, and investors.

00:00 Building for Impact and Permanence

03:12 "Strategic Investing and Growth Playbooks"

06:40 "Efficient Growth Through Discipline"

12:47 "Separate Division for Innovation"

15:14 Apple's Strategy: Innovation & Adaptability

19:21 "Scaling After Market Fit"

20:32 Obsessed Founders: Numbers & Customers

23:57 "Teamwork Drives Effective Leadership"

27:49 "Commit, Focus, Scale Success"

30:08 Exit Strategy Driven by Management

34:24 "Growth Limits and Opportunities"

39:31 "Customer Loyalty Drives Growth"

40:16 Target Audience Traits Matter

46:10 "Defining ICP: Human vs. MBA"

49:45 AI vs Doctor: Diagnosis Revolution

51:44 "Leadership, Innovation, Differentiation Challenges"

54:29 "AI-Driven Growth with Topwater"

"You can't diversify your way to success—you can only retain your wealth through diversification. To build a company, you have to go all in." — Klee Kleber

"Start with customer love—and radiate out from there. Obsess over the customers who love you, and the referrals will follow." — Klee Kleber

"Relentless execution is what differentiates great companies from those that just do okay or even good." — Jeff Mains

"Efficiency isn’t boring—it’s the secret to durable, compounding growth that actually lasts." — Klee Kleber

"Most business to me is treading water, being disciplined, not burning, testing ideas, measuring like crazy, until you find the live wire." — Klee Kleber

"Self-aware founders who build teams that compensate for their weaknesses are the ones who scale and thrive." — Klee Kleber

1. Build for the Long Game – Focus on investments and company-building strategies that aim for durability and lasting impact, not just quick wins.
2. Efficiency is a Competitive Advantage – Discipline in metrics like LTV/CAC and payback periods creates sustainable growth, instead of hoping for a lucky exit.
3. Relentless Execution Beats Strategy Alone – Luck may start the journey, but relentless, focused execution is what converts opportunity into success.
4. Balance Data with Customer Contact – Great founders marry spreadsheet discipline with real human customer feedback and empathy.
5. Embrace Diverse Perspectives – Teams with varied backgrounds, skills, and viewpoints consistently outperform homogenous ones and spark true breakthroughs.
6. Self-Awareness Multiplies Leadership Impact – Know your personal strengths and weaknesses; build teams that complement you and delegate accordingly.

klee@buildgroup.com

https://www.buildgroup.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kleekleber/

The Captain's Keys

Small Fish, Big Pond –

This week, Monica Marquez joins SaaS Fuel to dive deep into the real barriers behind successful AI adoption and organizational transformation. With a career spanning Google, Goldman Sachs, and the launch of Flip Work, Monica shares insights on bridging the gap between technology and human behavior, demystifying AI for non-technical teams, and championing change management that works for people—not just processes.

Discover the critical mindset shifts, the role of psychological safety, and why the future of work is about "survival of the fastest." Plus, get firsthand strategies for leaders to drive transformation and build trust with AI.

00:00 "Embracing Change for Success"

04:03 "Reinventing Work Mindset with AI"

07:33 "Adapting Success in AI Era"

11:08 "Leveraging AI to Enhance Work"

15:34 Building Trust in AI Use

19:05 Embrace Change to Avoid Extinction

21:37 "AI Accelerates Growth, Challenges Adaptability"

27:55 AI Skills: From Prompting to Mastery

30:24 Rapid Innovation and Iteration Challenges

35:38 Leveraging AI to Enhance Strengths

37:17 AI Empowers Founders to Execute

AI Adoption Struggles: "Millions, billions of dollars have been invested in the IT portion or the tools, but less than 2% of the companies are actually seeing ROI on that. And what they're really understanding is that it's because nobody's teaching the tool to the human." — Monica Marquez

Viral Topic: Rethinking Success in the Age of AI: "And so getting them to understand that you have to really unlearn and really destroy, disrupt that, that belief system and really start to create this equation that impact equals success." — Monica Marquez

AI vs Human Judgment: "Because what people don't realize is yes, AI is going to replace some of this monotonous administrative like, you know, work that most of us actually should be pretty happy to hand off. But, but the AI doesn't really know client relationships. The AI doesn't know how to read the room." — Monica Marquez

Building Trust with AI: "People don't trust the AI yet. And part of it is you can't build trust without evidence or without an exchange of, like, doing things." — Monica Marquez

"I feel like AI has helped us get further much faster with less people because AI is doing a lot of this that we would have potentially outsourced in the past." — Monica Marquez

Lead With Evidence, Not Assumptions

Encourage teams to collect data by experimenting with AI—overcoming fear and building trust through firsthand experience.

Prioritize Human Enablement

Invest in change management and behavioral shifts, not just technology rollouts.

Create Psychological Safety

Enable leaders and teams to "not know" and to admit uncertainty, fostering open experimentation and growth.

Champion Unlearning and Reinvention

Help employees break free from old success equations and conditioned beliefs.

Treat Digital Tools as Teammates

Coach AI (like an intern), iterating and refining outputs rather than expecting perfection on the first try.

Model Change at Every Level

Executives must embody the transformation—they are responsible for setting cultural signals for rapid adaptation.

monica@fts-ai.com

https://flipwork.ai

https://www.linkedin.com/in/themonicamarquez/

The Captain's...

In this episode of SaaS Fuel, Thanos Diacakis shares battle-tested advice for scaling SaaS teams, streamlining delivery, and maximizing developer happiness. Drawing on his experiences at startups and tech giants like Uber, Thanos reveals counterintuitive strategies for improving software output, optimizing technical debt, rethinking backlogs, and harnessing new mental models.

He breaks down the importance of incremental value, cross-functional collaboration, and avoiding the traps of over-planning. Whether you lead a small startup or an enterprise-scale engineering team, this conversation will challenge the way you think about speed, quality, backlog management, and long-term success.

00:00 "Checklists vs Software Complexity"

03:19 Bug Fixing: Intuition vs Strategy

08:24 Buckets: Features, Bugs, Investments, Risks

09:47 Optimizing Feature vs. Platform Focus

14:39 "Minimize Work in Progress"

19:20 "Bug Backlogs: Input vs Output"

20:39 Kanban Team Structure Guidelines

26:38 "Rapid Progress in Coding Tools"

28:21 "Minimal Planning, Bias for Action"

31:48 "Delivering Incremental Customer Value"

36:23 Collaborative Workflow Over Silos

39:35 "Building Products That Inspire Use"

42:53 "Accelerate: Building Effective Teams"

44:11 Team Workflow Optimization Framework

47:50 "Explore Mental Models Online"

Why Slowing Down Software Releases Might Backfire: One of the things that would happen is if you slow down, how you ship to production is you'll have bigger batches and bigger batches, which means you might ship more bugs all at once and have to find them in a bigger QA cycle. — Thanos Diacakis

"I also think we sometimes convince ourselves that we know more than we actually do and that we can plan a really long way out." — Thanos Diacakis

Viral Product Development Mindset: "If you engage engineers and product in these creative discussions, you might find out, oh, I scoped out these 10 things, but turns out the customer gets 80% of the value from this one thing." — Thanos Diacakis

Bureaucratic Bottlenecks in Big Companies: "They try to optimize locally for one particular function rather than optimize globally for shipping things out the door." — Thanos Diacakis

Viral Topic: "Why Every Team Should Read Accelerate": So I think if I give anyone advices, if you haven't read Accelerate, then go read that book. Because it's basically lays out in terms of, and this is in terms of like core technical and procedural sort of infrastructural things that teams ought to have to be productive. — Thanos Diacakis

Bias Towards Action Over Perfection

Avoid waiting for perfect plans, especially with innovative projects; instead, learn by doing and iterating.

Increase System Visibility

Make work in progress and team capabilities visible; this surfaces bottlenecks and areas for investment.

Balance Short-Term and Long-Term Goals

Strategic investment in tooling, tech debt, and risk mitigation ensures sustainable delivery and value realization.

Prioritize Collaboration Across Functions

Breaking down silos between product, engineering, and design dramatically accelerates delivery and reduces defects.

Ship Small, Ship Often

Frequent, incremental releases drive faster customer learning, boost agility, and reduce risk.

Cultivate a Shared Language for Outcomes

Use terms like investments and risk (not just features and bugs) to align business and technical priorities and drive meaningful...