Why Traditional Playbooks Are Failing & What Really Works In SAAS? | WizCommerce, Pienomial & Merlin

Vertical SaaS customers don’t buy software for 10 months, they buy it for 10 years. That’s the opportunity and the challenge. Switching costs are high, which makes it hard to get in but once you’re in, you’re in.

But regular SaaS playbooks don't work here. Forget PLG. Forget design partners. These industries have been burned too many times by bad software. Here, Trust defines GTM. Think warm introductions and on-site meetings, not cold emails and Zoom calls.

But for founders building in vertical SaaS, there’s little to learn from. So in this episode of The Neon Show, we bring together three founders who are building in the trenches of Vertical SaaS.

• Omkar Patil, Co-founder of Pienomial, helping biopharma companies run faster clinical research and unlock insights from complex drug data.
• Kumar Siddhartha, Co-founder of Merlin, rebuilding ERP from the ground up for the US construction industry.
• Divyaanshu Makkar, Co-founder of WizCommerce, modernising sales and commerce tools for wholesale distributors.

If you’re building SaaS for niche markets or wondering why traditional playbooks are failing, this episode is for you.

0:00- Pienomial X WizCommerce X Merlin

0:51 – What are we building in Vertical SaaS?

4:29 – Vertical SaaS buyers are sticky by nature

6:57 – How to build for industries used to Below-Par Tech?

10:46 – Fix what your customer hated about the last vendor

12:17 – Why these industries pay billions for implementation?

13:38 – How we got our First customers?

20:03 – Warm intros and word-of-mouth still win

23:56 – Why Design Partners don’t work in Vertical SaaS?

27:17 – Why you should never sell your first product for free?

30:29 – Can you Co-build products with early customers?

34:33 – Building Your Own Platform Vs Building on Top of one

39:33 – Building alongside Legacy players or innovating around them?

44:31 – SaaS isn’t going anywhere, AI will amplify it

46:49 – Can AI agents really be reliable?

48:42 – Which roles shouldn't be automated?

52:16 – How to approach GTM where users guide you?

54:43 – Why trust is everything here?

58:54 – How to sell softwares used for 10 years?

1:01:02 – How to win when the product demo comes last?

1:03:16 – Why NOW for traditional industries with unsolved problems

1:09:17 – Thoughts on agentic workflows

1:13:02 – Why be Bearish on the “AI Employee Concept”?

1:16:57 – Rapid Fire : Google or Perplexity?

1:17:37 – LLMs: Open-source or Closed?

1:18:19 – Favorite work software + We're hiring!

1:19:42 – One business buzzword that should disappear

1:20:55 – A Vertical SaaS company we admire (and why)

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Website: https://neon.fund/

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Connect with Siddhartha on:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/

Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7

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This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are thos

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