SaaS Scaling Secrets
The SaaS Scaling Secrets podcast reveals the strategies and insights behind scaling B2B SaaS companies to new heights. Dan Balcauski, founder of Product Tranquility, leads conversations with successful SaaS CEOs, exploring their challenges, triumphs, and the secrets that propelled their businesses to the next level.
SaaS Scaling Secrets
Scaling a SaaS Selling to Skeptical Scientists with Mike Klein, CEO of Genomenon
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Dan Balcauski speaks with Mike Klein, CEO of Genomenon, a genomics intelligence company that combines AI, data, and real-world evidence to create a comprehensive knowledge base for precision therapeutics. Mike discusses his journey in scaling Genomenon, the challenges of selling to scientifically-minded customers, and the strategic shift to a freemium model that led to significant adoption. He highlights the complexities of transitioning from a small to a large team, the importance of delegation, and leveraging board relationships for company growth. Mike also shares insights on maintaining company culture, learning continually, and the invaluable lessons from his mentor.
01:19 Meet Mike Klein, CEO of Genomenon
03:48 Navigating the Genomics Market
10:19 Freemium Model Success
18:20 Delegation and Leadership Insights
26:22 Board Relationships and Governance
Guest Links
it's a lot harder to go from zero to one and start with we don't have a product in the market than it is to go from let's say 10 to$50 million. This market is more allergic to traditional marketing and sales outreach. They don't want to talk to salespeople, they don't wanna be marketed to. I remember telling my board, we're gonna jump off this cliff, and we don't know where the lending is, but we decided to go with a freemium model and make the search engine available as a. Free solution for the marketplace. And it, it became a worldwide tool that was being used across about 140 countries. So it did get a lot of traction when we went to the freemium model. A board meeting is not a sales job. I'm not trying to sell my board on how great the company is. They've already invested in the company. I talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We probably spend more time on the bad and the ugly, or I'll say the challenges than we do on the good and the celebration and, Hey look, we're doing great.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast that brings you the inside stories from the leaders of the best scale up, B2B SaaS companies. I'm your host, Dan Bakowski, founder of Product Tranquility. Today I'm excited to speak with Mike Klein, CEO of Genomenon, a company operating at the intersection of AI data and real world evidence. A four time startup, CEO. With three successful exits, Mike brings more than 30 years of experience scaling companies at Genomenon. He's building the industry's most comprehensive genomic and literature derived real world evidence knowledge base to power the next generation of precision therapeutics. Try saying that three times fast. Let's dive in. Mike, welcome to the show.
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Thanks, Dan. It's a pleasure to be here.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043for listeners who are familiar, could you give us a 32nd overview of Genomenon, what you do and who you serve?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Yep. Genomenon is a both a genomics intelligence company. We built the world's leading genomic search engine. So if Google went to school to get a PhD in molecular biology, that's what our mastermind genomic search engine is. And we've expanded the platform to support real world evidence by extracting patient data, biological data, biomedical data from the medical literature, and delivering that to pharma companies.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Very niche business. And Genomenon, as I understand, hit that a little bit in your intro as your fourth company as CEO. Just to give folks a sense of your background. Could you give the audience a little bit more of the sense of the type of companies you've led in the past?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Sure Dan. So, my background's more of an engineer, so I grew up as a computer engineer, electrical engineer. Started my first company about 33, 32, 33 years ago in the factory automation space. Since then, I, I evolved and I did an IT security company. We did a data center, a cloud computing company, and then landed here at Genomenon almost 10 years ago, about nine years ago. Really focused on genomics and making genomic information and biomedical information actionable to help save and improve lives.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043And I understand that you are not the founder of Genomenon, but that you joined when it was pre-revenue. I'm always curious with serial entrepreneurs after three exits of other companies, what made you willing to do it again?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042So I, I was a mentor in residence at the University of Michigan, helping the university and helping like professors and grad students spin out new businesses from technology that was developed at the university, and Genomenon was a spin out from the University of Michigan. Their CEO approached me or the founder, and CEO at the time approached me and said, Hey, I'm looking for. An outside CEOI think I've got a phenomenal opportunity here and I wanna make sure I've got somebody who can really, take the reins and help grow this company. And I was like, eh, going from zero to one is really, really hard. You know, it's a lot harder to go from zero to one and start with we don't have a product in the market than it is to go from let's say 10 to$50 million. At the same time as you really explained the mission and kind of the focus of making, saving, improving, and making saving, improving lives by using genomics and informatics, I really got impressed with the mission and decided to join at a very early stage because it is such a mission focused organization and that mission is more purposeful than anything I've done in any of the other three companies. I've been the CEO of.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043And I'm curious I mean, obviously you've been there nine years, but, was there, like, did the founder stick around? I'm curious what the, relationship was given that I don't know if that had been a situation that you had, been in, in your previous companies. I mean, I, there may be some, you know, potentially creative tensions. Were you at all concerned with that, or how did you guys think about the relationship as you came on board as the outside CEO?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Yeah, great. Great question. So in my first company I was the founder and the CEO. And then in the last three companies, including Genomenon, I came in as a hired gun, CEO. This particular relationship, we actually had two founders, two co-founders and one of the founders has stayed with the business and he is our chief scientific officer. Kind of the visionary, the product visionary behind the company leads our product team and spends a lot of time in front of customers and working with customers. So we have a great. Working relationship and it's really worked out well. Has our lanes. We know what we do well, and, he's an md, PhD, molecular pathologist. So, very different training and very much tied into the medical field, really understands the fundamentals of the science behind what we're building. And, you know, I'm an engineer by training, so systems, processes, scaling businesses, talking to investors, uh, is really my skillset. And so it's a great fit between the founder and the CEO.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043You mentioned, we each have our lanes. I'm just curious like at brass tacks, if someone finds themself in this situation, did you like sit down, was a set of conversations and actually map out like he here's what we're each sort of gonna be responsible for going forward. Like, was it that explicit or did. just end up having a natural relationship that evolved over time where you realized where each was best suited for?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042I think it probably actually went the other way where it's naturally fit because you, you joined like a five person company. There's a lot to do and it was pretty clear that, I joined to develop the go-to market, the commercial go-to market strategy and work with investors. And he was really, our founder was really working on the science and we had another co-founder that was working on the technology. I think over time as the organization grew, we got more explicit about what those lanes were. And we actually use a model called the Entrepreneur Operating Systems called EOS. And they define very specific roles for for kind of the innovator and the implementer. And mark is very innovative and has a lot of great ideas and really the product visionary, I guess they call it the visionary. And I'm more of the integrator, right? I'm the orchestra leader across the team and making, making sure that every instrument's playing well to make the music, but I'm not. Playing any instrument myself right now.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Glad you guys were able to work that out. And I've heard had other, uh, CEOs on the podcast mention, uh, EOS before, so it seems like it's a pretty tried and true system. So glad you were able to apply it in this circumstance. This wasn't your first rodeo. It was, your fourth rodeo as it might be, say, so. Like you, you come in as an experienced CEO, as an outside hired gun non founder in two of those situations. You have a wealth of experience, like I, I've seen, growing companies before, but there's always surprises, what did you think would be easy at Genomenon that actually turned out to be hard once you were in the business?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Oh, that's a great, that's a great question. I think I.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043I.
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Underestimated the the ramp time that it takes to sell into kind of a scientifically minded. We're selling into healthcare providers. We're selling into clinical diagnostic labs, and we're selling into pharma. Companies with a lot of pharma scientists as researchers. So it's a very scientific kind of target audience that we're selling into. And I think I underestimated how long the adoption curve was for taking on new technologies. When I sold into factory automation, you had to deal with unions and the learning curve there. And so that was a long, sometimes introducing new technologies was a long process when I sold into IT. Companies, or was it solutions? They were really. Rather quick to adopt new technologies. Scientists are rather, scientists and clinicians are rather skeptical by nature, by training, right? That's what they teach with the scientific method. And so, I just, I think I underestimated how long it would take for for people to go from, that's impossible. You can't do that, talk to the hand kind of situation too. Really gaining, a brand name awareness and a recognition that, you know, in getting a market leadership position with our offerings.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043And given that your lane that you stated before was in getting go-to market going I guess were there early starts of things that you tried that you found just that would work at previous companies? That, that, that didn't work given that kind of persona or psychology of that science buyer?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042I think more than any other market that we've, I've sold into this market is more allergic to traditional marketing and sales outreach. They don't want to talk to salespeople, they don't wanna be marketed to. They're much more willing to and wanting to read your scientific papers and see what the evidence is in place. And so that was a little bit different than the approaches that I've taken in the past and the scientific valid validation that you need. For this community is a different approach than what I've seen in other places.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043So how I'm curious like where you're at now do you feel like there's a playbook that you've been able to develop given those market idiosyncrasies? Or is it, do you think it's, you know, still evolving? I'm sure it's always still evolving, but like, do you feel you've kind of crossed that hump and at least have a better way to approach that market?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Yeah so great. Yeah, great question. Yes, it's always still evolving and there are two kind of key approaches that we took in the market that kind of changed the trajectory of the company. The first was we had done a lot of pre-selling and, in the first six months after we released the product. We had four customers and they all signed up to bought, one seed of the package. And, uh, we thought things were going great and then we just hit a wall and nobody was buying anything. And we found it was really difficult to get out and market. And so we made, um, kind of a critical decision at the time. And I remember telling my board, we're gonna jump off this cliff, and we don't know where the lending is, but we decided to go with a freemium model and make the search engine available as a. Free solution for the marketplace. And that really was a turning point for the company. We started seeing more and more adoption, more and more users coming, you know, using the platform, uh, and then upgrading to the premium platform or the professional version of the product. So that was one, uh, different approach that we took. And the other piece that we've seen is a really important aspect of what we do, especially as we're reaching out into the pharma market. It's out in selling, you know, real world evidence solutions to pharma and biopharma companies is an educational approach. So pub, you know, doing a lot of scientific speaking, uh, scientific papers and really, you know, attending a lot of conferences to get a lot of face-to-face meetings versus the traditional kind of trade show or, uh, Google advertising, which, you know, for those types of opportunities just doesn't work, In the pharma and the biopharma market.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Got it. So I wanna double click on the freemium approach. So I understood in the arc of that story, so you went out the gate with seat based model, you got a few customers and then No, no more. I like. Paint the picture for me. Was that like, okay, we're we sold three, four customers, and then it's then six months of nothing? Or was it was it just was a, a few weeks of nothing like and then what was the sort of in the building like, were there other approaches? Like you said you landed on a freemium approach, but were there other options that you were considering at the time?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Yeah, so very early on we, we did the math and we felt that we had a solution that was worth$25,000 a seat. And and so, and we sold those first four seats at that price. And then it was about a quarter where we were just knocking on doors. We were calling on people, we were doing demos where we just couldn't get. That kind of traction. And so we, you know, we've looked at a lot of different things. Eventually we ended up lowering the price point to be, um, what our users felt was a much more reasonable price point for the solutions that we were delivering to the marketplace. And the, I remember one of our salespeople brought up this book called, I think it was The Magic of Free or something like that. Uh, and we started kind of thinking about that and drilling into freemium models. And and decided after a lot of debate that was gonna be the way that we were gonna go.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043So what do you think was it about that model that made sense for your market? I can't even think of another B2B healthcare company that has a freemium approach. What made you think that it was gonna be a fit for your market?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042So I think so f first off, it's a search engine. So you can use the tool and you can either get in-depth results with the professional version or you could get, kind of service level results with that search that you had to do a lot more work to, to use it. But a lot of our users were doing Google searches for the for the answers they were looking at on genomics. They were doing PubMed searches they were looking at other databases. And a lot of those databases, some of those databases were free academic resources. And so it seemed to fit well with that model of kind of the number of free tools that they were out using. We were supplementing that, giving them another free tool, and then once they saw the advantages and could see the additional benefits they would get. By upgrading to the pro version, it just became more of a seamless adoption curve.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Tying it back to the, perception in that market, did the freemium approach, I think shift the perception of those scientists and customers of you? I like, I'm trying to understand like given the blockers, was freemium sort of the unlock that allowed you to the marketing without the marketing. Was that the I idea?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042It was it became a resource that people started talking about. It was an area that people could sign up. We had a lot of, we had international, we had. I don't think about 2,500 labs around the world that were leveraging that platform for their diagnostic purposes. And, we had 30,000, 40,000 users sign up to use that platform. And it, it became a worldwide, a worldwide tool that was being used across across about 140 countries. So it did get a lot of traction when we went to the freemium model. Because they were used to using free search tools and it just, this was a complimentary tool that allowed us to get in the door.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Every every model has downsides. What's been the hardest part, in your opinion, of running that freemium model?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042So there's always a trade off between how much is free and how much do you give away the free side to, to draw the market and the marketing kind of from a marketing perspective. So marketing wants to give away as much as they can to attract users into the platform, and sales wants to restrict it because they think. Free is two free. And eventually what happened over time is that product line matured over the last seven years. We ended up going to a trial version or a a more restricted version that we call Core that allows you to get full use of the platforms around a limited number of genes so you can get the full experience there. But we removed the freemium model and moved to more of a, we call it a core model because we were seeing a lot of users using it, getting great value from it, but we. Felt that we needed to get more value from the marketplace or get, the remuneration from the value we were delivering.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043So you've moved away from the freemium model these days now And
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042did, we had a freemium model for the first seven years of the product.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043it. And then the new evolution of that is that it's still, it's functionally restricted or it's time restricted, or it's both with this core piece.
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042So it's it's, I would say it's a full function solution on a limited number of genes. So you think there's 20, 25,000 genes that you can research in the variance within those genes. We narrowed that down, and you can get the full functionality now of the product around 50 genes. So you get the full user experience, and it's almost like a free trial, but that trial can last forever.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Interesting. Well, you, I wanna pivot back because I mean, we just started, you just told me about, oh, there's 25,000 genes and variance of genes. But, I don't believe you have a background in medicine or biology. I'm curious, as you've, you. Been responsible for go-to-market, selling to skeptical scientists, and you're dealing with an incredibly complex platform that, even just describing it to a lay person, you're like I could sort of imagine what that means, but, not entirely. Has that been an advantage for you? Has it been a disadvantage? Like, how have you thought about bringing your background to such a complex scientific area?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042It's it is really interesting. So there's, you know, hundreds of hours of YouTubes and podcasts and training videos that I spent when I first joined the company just to kinda learn the basics of the biology and the molecular biology and how genomics works in place in place. And, you know, I still say today I can follow 80% of the conversations, but when they go deep dive PhD on me. I've surrounding myself with the PhDs and the MDs that can have those conversations. So it's kind of a two-edged sword. Sometimes you sit there and you say, you know, wow, I really wish that, you know, I had a PhD in molecular biology so that I could, be a more of an expert in this area and be able to talk at that level. It also though, is a, is a really good way of learning how to manage a team and rely on the expertise of others without being an expert. You know, when you found is when I founded my first company, I was the expert. I knew everything that was in there. I developed a product. I just, you know, or I had kinda led the product, kind of product manage. Part of what we wanted to build, and I could sit down with every customer and talk about everything that there was there. This has kind of been an experience of, of, uh, a huge learning curve, which I think was a lot, it's a lot of fun to be always be learning and in the area of biology. You're constantly learning nothing. You know, everything is evolving as, as a, as the field learns. Continuous, continually learning, but also relying on others too, and their areas of expertise and being able to delegate, needing to delegate more, um, of that decision making down into the organization and be able to trust more. Because I know right away that I don't have all the answers.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043You've segued perfectly into my next topic'cause you, you've been a, four time CEO and I think all of us, whether we're CEOs or managers at any level, always struggle with delegation. So I wanna see if you can enlighten us on some of what you've learned over time about delegation. what's your overall framework for deciding what stays with you versus what goes to
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042So Dan, I think you're right. I think delegation is probably the toughest challenge you have as you go from like a four person company to, we're now about 150 people in the company. That the kind of the dial on what you delegate versus what you do is in a four person company is very different than when you're 150, 150 person company. I think the framework that I look at is, um, is a couple. One is is this a, uh, a decision that's gonna kill the company? You know, is it a gonna have. Severe consequences where I really need to be involved in the decision making process. Uh, the other is the person making the decision that, you know, we were asking to make the decision, do they have the experience and the knowledge that they can make good decisions and the accountability behind that. And so, you know, we've actually set up a framework we call quarterly business reviews. And this came from my experience, setting up and getting in front of the board meetings. I actually get a lot, I get a, just as much preparing for my board meetings as I get by going to and having the conversation with the board because it take, makes me take a step back. It makes me look at the business overall. It makes me look at and be able to have to articulate to the board what's going on, where the key trends are. And so we've pushed that down to do quarterly business reviews with our key leaders within the organization so that they're doing the same thing every quarter. Coming back to the executive team and talking about their core area of responsibility and making sure that they take. As they own that part of the business, they can explain and show what's working, what's not working, and what they're gonna do differently.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043So that's super interesting. I, so two things I heard in there was, is this a decision that could kill the company and does the person have the skills or exper expertise or experience to actually do the task? I think those make sense on a surface level, but I think it's all too easy for us to say. As we're scaling a business, oh my God this customer situation or this product decision, or this, whatever, this thing is a, gonna kill the company if we get it wrong. Or this person hasn't done this. Maybe they've done it before, but not at this company. And so we hold onto things probably longer than we should. It's probably a truism, are there ways that you've found over time to break that. I guess inertial bias because anytime, even if you're thinking about oh, I'm handing off some admin tasks. I think most of us have had experience. Have you ever had an executive assistant, virtual assistant, whatever the first time they do something that you used to do? probably gonna do it slower and they're not gonna do it exactly how you would do it. And there's gonna be, it's gonna, so there's gonna be some overhead, right? And so we have this from the easiest task all the way to the most complicated. So I'm just wondering what is it your bag of tricks that keeps you from falling into that trap?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042I don't know that I don't know that, I don't step into that trap every day, Dan.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Honesty.
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042It's still a challenge, right? You, let's face it as an entrepreneur. You're born with a gene that makes you action oriented, right? So you see a problem, you're gonna take it on, and you're like, okay, I know how to solve this problem. And you need to take a step back and say, wait a minute, I don't either have the time to solve the problem. I'm not the best person to solve the problem. How do I make sure that the right people are working on this? And so, you know, one, one governor on me is simply the time management piece that says, you know, you just, I have to focus on the most important things that I can actually move the dial on and push everything else down through the organization. The other thing that we're working on, this is something that's kind of a 2026 initiative for us, is simplify, simplify, simplify. It's easy as you scale a business. To make things a lot more complicated, right? Because you know, there's more things you learn. You've got 150 people, so you got a lot of people you gotta communicate against. Uh, there are legacy processes and things like, we did it this way, and should we keep doing it this way? You know, or people not even asking, should we keep doing it this way? And so I think one of the jobs as a leader is to be able to set simple frameworks in place so that people understand. How and where the trade offs need to be made in the business. And so as our business has evolved over time, you know, we're, I talked about serving di clinical diagnostic labs and healthcare providers, so we call that the clinical market. And we're working with pharma and biopharma companies and the biopharma market. And one of the things we're struggling with right now that we need to reorganize on in the company is. There's too many trade offs. Every person's gotta make a trade off as do I focus on the clinical side? Do I focus on the pharma side? And so pushing down and organizing the team along business lines will make it a lot easier for them to say, wait a minute, I'm focusing on the clinical side. I need to make sure that aligning my resources, I don't need to think about the other part of the business. I need to think about this will enable better decision making deeper into the organization.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043If we could maybe make it a little bit more concrete for folks. As you look back over your management history, maybe it's at Genomenon or maybe it's your other companies, is there a delegation mistake that stands out to you? I am curious, like if you're, maybe it violated one of the principles you already said or maybe it was just, a poor handoff. I'm curious, if there's a situation, that has really stood out to you in around delegation.
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Yeah, I would say that, my direct reports feedback would tell me is to delegate more, delegate more. So I, I don't know that I'm the champion here of explaining how to be a great delegator as much as still a student in delegation.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Is that something that you solicit or they tell you that proactively
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Both actually. But I mean, we do solicit, I, we did a 360 feedback session this year where I went and had, you know, our head of people went and everybody that works for me gave me direct feedback. And, you know, it's always valuable because often as a CEO people tell you what you want to hear. They don't always tell you what you need to hear. And so having a structured format to get. Feedback back to the CEO from the, you know, from the executive team, I find is really helpful in kind of keeping you centered. Because we all have our flaws, we all have things we need to work on, and people aren't as quick to point those out to the CEO. So you've gotta, you gotta be conscious of that kind of bias and the feedback that you're getting.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Yeah, I've I think that's a great answer. And I think it ties back to what I was saying before, which is that sort of emotional inertia of I know how to solve this problem. I can do it right. If I do it, it'll be efficient. But then something else is breaking. I've tried to set up systems like with a, like a executive assistant before to be like. Hey, you should be pro. Please, proactively suggest like things that you should be taking off my plate. That does take a level of trust, right?'cause usually there's a reporting hierarchy there. So it requires some coaching of I'm not gonna be angry with you if you tell me like, Hey, like, why are you. your calendar just as a simple example, like I, I should be scheduling these meetings. You're going back and forth 10 times trying to get a group together. That's, that is not your highest and best use.
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Yeah.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043I think yeah, the more you could set up those systems where external people feel comfortable. Coming to you and be and pulling stuff off your plate. That could maybe be a counterweight to that, inertial bias that we all have of I need to do it myself. I, the company's gonna die, right? But no I look it, it's all a skill we're all getting better at or hopefully getting better at over time. And as you scale, right, you can't do everything yourself. This is why we have a team. So I think it's something that we all struggle with. I, one other thing that you mentioned is your story was. The, just the benefits of preparing QBR for a board meeting and all the benefits there. I'm curious now in your fourth go round as a CEO, how your perspective on dealing with boards has changed. Is there like how do you view. Obviously you just had a, made a very positive remark around Hey, like for the board meeting itself is actually sometimes even more valuable than the actual board meeting. I think a lot of CEOs who I've talked to on this show at privately. A lot of them are like, Hey, we, I got through it, is the best they could ever say about, a board. Right. And obviously I don't think any board member w wants to impose that. They folks want to be helpful. Are there ways that you've thought about your relationship with boards over time given your multiple rounds as CEO of companies?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Yeah, I think it's evolved quite a bit. Say the first, your first company you you think your board knows everything and and also kind of they're your boss. And I think ultimately, I mean, that is the board's. Opportunity or their decision on keeping the CEO in place or not in place. And that's something they probably constantly evaluate, but I think the way I think the better, the best way to look at that over time for me is these are my partners, right? The boards consist of some investors who have invested in the company. They, they need to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. They are there to help with the problems and I've really shifted over time, shifted the way that I structure my board conversations from. I'm gonna get up, show up and throw up and show you all the charts and show you all the great things that we're gonna do. To, okay, I'm sending all that to you. You've got the background information in a background package. You can look through the whole deck and you can see all the information you need, all the key, the key operating metrics to really see what's going on. But what I really wanna focus the board meeting on. We got four solid hours together. We'll spend, an hour on governance and updates. But I wanna dig into two or three key issues that the business is facing and really leverage the experience that my board has. So we've got a venture backed and a growth equity backed set of investors on the board and observers and, so what I've seen kind of four times in a row, serially they've seen a hundred times in a a hundred times in parallel. And so being able to leverage that experience, be able to get a different viewpoint. And sometimes they'll just, like in a board meeting I had six months ago, one of my board members just kinda reframed the entire business. And, with three sentences got me thinking about the business in a completely different way. Huge value, right? And just that outside perspective. Somebody who knows what we're doing but isn't looking and working every day to day, being able to have a conversation. Around the three or four major challenges that we're facing in the business or the opportunities or the growth areas that we're investing in and getting that kind of like, that feedback, that's the aha moment that you wouldn't get maybe any other way is extremely valuable. From my seat, for where I sit as a CEO.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043You mentioned, over time. Show up and throw up, through my charts and graphs of my deck as, as fast as possible to viewing them as partners. I'm curious just to double click a little bit on what is treating them as partners look like in practice. Maybe you already hinted at it in your answer, is that. Obviously the board meeting is a very structured quarterly, meeting. But, should we have relationships outside with, or contacts outside of the direct board meeting? Like, what does it look like for you to really look at them as partners in the business?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042So it's both contexts outside the board meeting, checking in, if I'm facing a problem, I have different board meetings members with different skills. And so leveraging those skills and knowing, well if I go to, I can get this kind of answer or this experience base from one particular board member versus, versus another board member. But I think the other piece is not just going in and painting a rosy picture and trying to this is not a sales job. A board meeting is not a sales job. I'm not trying to sell my board on how great the company is. They've already invested in the company. I'm not trying to show them, Hey, we're doing all these great things. Of course we wanna celebrate the successes, but what we really want to do is leverage them to look at the challenges the company is facing and bring them inside the tent to talk about those challenges, those opportunities, those decisions. That can change the trajectory of the company and get them involved in that. And so it's, I talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. We probably spend more time on the bad and the ugly, or I'll say the challenges than we do on the good and the celebration and, Hey look, we're doing great.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Is just to give the entrepreneurs who are listening, maybe a little bit of tactical advice on that. Is that something where are you. you've got the board meeting, right? It's gonna be all day on Tuesday or whatever the week before. Are you one-on-one talking to each of those board members? Basically being like, here are the, here's the deck I'm gonna present. Here are the problems I we're gonna, we're gonna talk about, or is that something that, you know, you're working only internally on, and then the first time the board, like, how are you actually running that in practice to make sure that conversation is as useful as possible?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042It. It depends. It depends on the issue. So if it's a new issue or a new challenge, a lot of times I will have one-on-one calls with some of my board members and just explain some background, show them, talk about what we're looking at, see what they wanna talk about within in the board meeting as well, what's on their mind. What questions do they have about the business? Other times it may be a, like an FYI or an education session on here's some of the new things we're doing with ai, where the AI roadmap is going, that doesn't require a lot of input or kind of preview on there. It's more of a, bringing our CTO and our CSO in to present and talk about here's where we're going and here's some examples of how customers are using it. So it depends on the topic. And I I don't have a fixed format. It's just kind of. Figuring out what we're gonna talk about and and what the best way is to interact or preview the information before the board meeting.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Mike this has been fantastic. I could talk to you all day, but we are running up on time. So I want to it close us out with a couple of rapid fire closeout questions. Are you up for it?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Sure. Let's try it.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Awesome. What is the book or podcast you find yourself most recommending to others?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Book or podcast. For young entrepreneurs. The E-Myth is a great book. I haven't read it in a while, but I think it's a great book on really understanding the difference between working in the business and working on the business.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043I have read it myself. It's been a while, but yes I remember it was very well done. Talked about your partnership with the board. Are there ways that you try to learn from your peers at other companies?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042I do. I spend a lot of time you know, listening to, probably should spend more time on podcasts, but I spend a lot of time listening to books. So how do you get an extra hour a day of education in, right? You can listen to books while you're working out every day. So I try to learn from experiences. I try to learn from historical pieces as well. So I'm actually listening to a book right now called 1929 about the Great Depression.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Sorkin, right? Or Andrew Ross Sorkin.
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Yeah. Yeah. Very good. It's very interesting to kind of look back a hundred years and, um, while some people say there's a lot of parallels, I'm not sure I see completely the parallels with what's going on in the market today, but very interesting to kinda learn from other people's experiences that way.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043I, it is on my reading list. It's actually queued up on my Spotify audio books. I haven't cracked into it yet, but given you're in ai, the one I am listening to right now, it's a Reread is a Life 3.0 by max Tegmark who's the head of AI at MITA very very good book for anyone who's interested. Look, being a CEO could be taxing physically, emotionally, spiritually. Are there any habits you've cal cultivated to help you stay on the top of your game?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Probably the best stress reducer and the best thing for the people I'm working with is when I work out in the morning before, so I'll get up at five 30. I get my workout in before I start my day. It is a great way to reduce stress and try to stay healthy and that way, a lot of the energy's taken out before I hit the, before I get in my morning meetings.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043I concur. I follow the same practice. Look, when you think about all the spectacular people you've worked with across your careers, anyone who's had a disproportionate effect on the way you think about either building or leading companies now,
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042One of the the early mentors that I had, Dick Wick was a CEO here in Ann Arbor. That when I started my first company, he really took me under his wing. He, uh, gave me a lot of coaching, a lot of feedback, joined my board. Uh, and was a kind of a great mentor when I was just first learning how to be a CEO. It's not easy learning how to do that and being a CEO is tough. So having good mentors is really helpful.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043was there one thing that he said to you that stuck with you all these years?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042It's gonna take you four times as long and twice as much money.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Oh I think we've, we can all empathize with that. Look, if Mike, if I gave you a billboard, you put any advice on there for other B2B SaaS CEOs try to scale their companies, what would it say?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042He would say, pay attention to your mission and pay attention to your culture. Okay, that's the true north.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Pay attention to your mission and your culture. Culture is an off broached topic on this podcast'cause it's definitely something that. Everyone knows it's important that the details get fuzzy when you actually try to do something about it. But if folks are interested, we have very indepth conversations about that on previous episodes. So I won't spend any more of your time on that here. Mike, this has been great. If our listeners want to connect with you, learn more about your noon, how can they do that?
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042So Genomenon is Genomenon.com and you can spell that out if you'd like. And you can find me on LinkedIn and Mike at Mike Klein. The Genomenon.
dan-balcauski_1_12-17-2025_101043Will put links to both the Genomenon website, add to Mike's LinkedIn profile in the show notes for listeners. Mike, thank you so much. That wraps up this episode of Sask Gay League Secrets. Thank you to Mike Klein for sharing his journey and insights. For our listeners who found Mike's insights valuable, please review and share this episode with your network. Really helps the podcast grow.
mike-klein_1_12-17-2025_111042Thanks, Dan.
