Rick Knudtson (Workshop): The email signal his SaaS ignored for 9 months
From The SaaS Podcast - Real Lessons on Growing Profitable SaaS by Omer Khan
September 3, 2026 · 48 min · Episode 493
About this episode
Rick Knudtson shares his journey of pivoting Workshop from an intranet to addressing email communication pain points based on customer feedback.
Nine months in. Close to zero customers. He was ready to hand the money back to investors. Rick Knudtson had already sold one company, so Workshop started with the idea he found interesting: an intranet. Customers kept telling him to fix email instead. The rebuild took 30 days and brought in 10 customers. Rick explains why big enterprises cannot run internal comms on a cheap marketing tool, how a year of newsletters and ungated resources filled the pipeline before Workshop had anything to sell, and what changed when the founding team stopped defending its own idea and started listening to customers. Plus: why Workshop dropped per-user fees for audience-based pricing, and how that changed the way customers expand into new departments. Workshop is an internal communications software platform based in Omaha with around 140 employees and just under 1,000 customers, including Capgemini. It is five years old and past $10M ARR. Rick previously co-founded Flywheel, a WordPress hosting platform sold to WP Engine in 2019. This episode is brought to you by: 🤖 Hobbes → Don't book a demo. Take one. 🔑 Key Lessons 👂 The signal was in the sales calls all along: Prospects named email as their…
People in this episode
Host: Omer Khan
Guest: Rick Knudtson
Topics covered
- internal communications
- customer feedback
- product-market fit
- SaaS growth
- pricing strategy
Keywords
- SaaS
- email communication
- customer feedback
- product-market fit
- internal comms
- pricing strategy
- Workshop
- Rick Knudtson
Sponsors
Hobbes
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Workshop, Capgemini, Flywheel, WP Engine
Places: Omaha
More episodes of The SaaS Podcast - Real Lessons on Growing Profitable SaaS
- Founder-Led Sales: A SaaS to $1 Million ARR With Just 10 Customers · September 10, 2026 · 46 min
- Selling a SaaS Before Building It: $1M ARR in Six Months · August 27, 2026 · 47 min
- Enterprise SaaS Sales With No Product: Landing a Big Four Customer · August 20, 2026 · 44 min
- Featherless AI: When a Weekend Experiment Makes More Than Your AI Startup · August 13, 2026 · 45 min
- SaaS Stuck at $50K ARR for 5 Years. Now $1.5M With AI Agents. · July 23, 2026 · 47 min
- 50 Cents a Pool: The Pricing Model Behind a SaaS Exit · July 16, 2026 · 54 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The SaaS Podcast - Real Lessons on Growing Profitable SaaS podcast page.