E18: The Secret Behind Marpipe’s Growth with Dan Pantelo
In this episode of the SaaS Operators Podcast, we’re joined by Dan Pantelo, founder of Marpipe, for a deep dive into SaaS growth strategy, pricing, and go-to-market plays. We kick off with Judge.me’s $12M ARR business, debating whether it’s a massive success or still untapped potential, and explore why moving upmarket is often easier than defending the bottom. Rishabh shares how a $500/month SMB version of Fermat is scaling quickly through cold calling while email struggles in crowded inboxes. Dan walks us through Marpipe’s new free feed management tool and the upsell strategy behind it, sparking a discussion on “good enough” vs. “better” positioning. We wrap with a breakdown of SaaS pricing myths, the real role of subscriptions, and how events plus consistent social content create the “everywhere” effect.
This week Dan Pantelo, founder of Marpipe joins us for a wide-ranging conversation on SaaS strategy, pricing, and go-to-market plays. We covered a lot, from Judge.me’s market position, to cold calling’s comeback, to whether “basic” SaaS features should be free.
Judge.me is doing $12M ARR. Depending on who you ask, that’s either tiny or wildly successful. If your goal is generational wealth, $12M ARR in a sticky category is a home run.
The company has massive penetration in Shopify reviews, a good product, and room to move upmarket. They could reinvest into new products, disrupt Yotpo from the bottom, and win big. Or they could just keep milking the low-cost play and taking distributions. The chessboard is set for them either way.
The interesting bit is the strategic fork in the road:
- Stay cheap, max out penetration. Defend the bottom and print cash.
- Upsell to higher-value contracts. Use their current base to launch something big.
Moving upmarket is usually easier than going down. Yotpo is not likely to unseat them at the low end. But the reverse? Entirely possible.
The SMB Playbook: Cold Calls > Cold Email
One takeaway from our own experiments: cold calling is crushing right now. Email feels like screaming into the void. You have maybe an hour before you fall to page 2 of the inbox, and no one is scrolling back. Calling puts you in the room immediately.
Rishabh is running a $500 per month SMB version of Fermat. Cold calling plus an outbound AE paid for himself in the first month. Dial-for-dollars works. Email? Not so much, at least in saturated markets.
Owning “Good Enough” vs. Owning “Better”
Dan is building a free feed management tool for e-commerce brands. Not a better tool, parity with the incumbents, but free, with upsells for “enrichment” features. The bet is to hook brands on the free tool, then sell them advanced functionality later.
Here’s the question I pushed him on: if you are competing in “good enough,” you are in the same sandbox as Shopify’s free integrations and other bare-bones tools. Do you want to be there? Or do you want to be in “better,” where brands pay to level up from good enough?
If your current market buys from you because your product is objectively better, dropping into the good-enough tier means a totally different set of competitors and customer expectations. It can work, but the win condition is different.
The SaaS “Ongoing Improvement” Fallacy
"The whole point of SaaS is that subscriptions fund ongoing improvement. Charging extra for new features breaks that trust.”
I think that is backwards. SaaS is a payment model, not a social contract. The subscription is not a promise of endless free upgrades. It is just a way to spread cost over time. If the market is willing to pay more for new features, charge more. If they are not, they will not buy.
The real danger is not charging for new features.
The real danger is not delivering enough value to justify what you already charge.
Events + Social: The “Everywhere” Effect
Rishabh’s growth engine is simple: events plus social content. Show up in someone’s feed and in their city. Do 50 or more events a year, ship content people actually remember (like his whiteboard videos), and you create the illusion that you are everywhere.
It is the same principle as good retargeting. Stay top-of-mind until the timing is right.
The thread through all of this, whether we are talking about Judge.me, cold calls, free tools, or SaaS pricing, is that you have to be clear on which game you are playing. Are you going for penetration or margin? Better or good enough? Free as a hook or free forever?
Pick the game, then play it hard. The middle ground is where momentum dies.
