Entering the U.S. SaaS Market from Europe - with Niclas Lilja, Founder and CEO Younium

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Rike, Founder and CEO of BenchMarket, and your host of the Metrics It Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of the top B2B SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, CEOs, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed and benchmark validated decisions. Now, on to today's show.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics It Measure Up podcast. Today, I am joined by Niclas Lilja, the founder and CEO of Younium. We'll be covering four primary topics with Niclas today. First, the evolution of SaaS pricing, yesterday, today and tomorrow. Second, global expansion and the cultural challenges that come with that. Third, how usage-based or hybrid-based pricing impacts SaaS metrics calculations. And fourth, the top three learnings as a European founder and CEO entering the US marketplace. So with that, Niclas, would you please take a moment to give an overview of your journey to becoming a guest here on the Metrics It Measure Up podcast?

**Niclas Lilja** (1:25)
Sure. Thank you, Ray. So my background is in software from the early 2000s.
I gradually learned the trade in the area of providing supplier invoice automation tool, transforming it into a SaaS company. Started up Younium back in 2017 Mass response to what I thought was a necessary need for B2B companies, providing subscription services to their customers, but more on an enterprise level and not so much as a B2C or B2SmallB. Originally out of Stockholm, Sweden. So like one and a half year ago, I brought my family and ate suitcases and moved to outside of Philadelphia. So that's where we are right now.

**Ray Rike** (2:11)
Welcome to the US. Welcome to Pennsylvania. I know when we first met, I told you that my wife and I had recently relocated back from San Francisco and we actually have a place in Pennsylvania also that we go to for the weekend. So we're almost neighbors, Niclas. So, okay, so you've been in the middle of how pricing, I'm going to say SaaS pricing since that's where our audience has evolved over the past seven years. I don't want to go spend too much time in the history because I'm going to put you on the spot right away and ask you about your vision for the future. But what are the primary changes you've seen in pricing? And where do you think we're going as an industry?

**Niclas Lilja** (2:55)
I think, at least when I look at examples on the web and try to figure out what is moving, I think there's been such a big focus on very simplistic, straightforward models. And I get the feeling that a lot of it originates out of the B2CB, the small B space and that be the number one in a really, really big market and where you can have one very simple pricing model and you can get enormous growth, like viral growth. And then I think we've seen a few turns around that because I don't think that's sustainable for all businesses, right? That's for one very particular kind of business. And most recently, with a sort of product-led growth models, and which also requires a lot of standardization, right? Because you typically want the user to be able to sort of self-serve themselves in both how they use, but also how they buy and how they sort of evolve their journey.
And I think a lot of the reasoning is very like black or white or one and zero, like you should either do this or do that. I think it requires much more nuances and looking into the business as such, and what makes sense for that business, and not like this one kind of recipe fits all. So flexibility, I think, and the ability to experiment and, you know, figure it out.

**Ray Rike** (4:25)
You got to go right there because I've been in this recurring revenue subscription software business for over 30 years. And I remember when I was at a division of GE, which was the largest time sharing provider, we had to develop a brand new billing system. As you can imagine, we built it, we deployed it, millions of dollars, couple years, and in two years, we wanted to change our pricing. And it was like, oh my god, our billing system doesn't reflect it. And by the way, that was the same reason that Zora was founded, because the founder of Zora had built the subscription billing system at Salesforce, spent $5 million and quickly realized it wasn't flexible. So I'm going to ask you this question, and it may be a rhetorical question, but we now see at least 50% of SaaS companies are doing some type of consumption-based pricing or hybrid pricing. That's evolved dramatically over the last two to three years. My question to you is, is that often a catalyst of why you see potential customers of Younium looking to change their billing infrastructure? Is it pricing evolution or is it something else?