Interview with Sean Tepper, CEO of Tykr
Scaling a SaaS business to over 50 countries requires a deep understanding of product-market fit, customer retention, and strategic acquisition channels. In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Sean Tepper, CEO of Tykr, to discuss how he built and scaled a B2C SaaS platform that helps people confidently invest in the stock market.
From reducing churn and optimizing pricing models to leveraging affiliates, YouTube, and SEO as core acquisition channels, Sean shares key lessons from his journey. Whether you are a SaaS founder looking to scale or an investor interested in financial technology, this interview is filled with actionable insights.
Let’s dive in.
Interview with Sean Tepper, CEO of Tykr
Who are you? Please tell us a bit about your personal journey.
I have been working in tech for 20 years and I have been investing for 15 years. I built my first company (an agency with five employees) between 2006 and 2010. In 2010 that agency merged with a much larger agency and that’s when I branched away to do corporate IT contracting. At the same time, I started investing.
Over the duration of five years, I made some money and lost some money and decided to pause in 2015. I knew that Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were able to beat the market consistently. I also knew they were not gambling men, using emotions and feelings to pick stocks. This told me they were probably starting with some sort of logic when investing in the stock market.
That’s when I decided to read as many investing books as possible. Some of the books provided value while others were filled with fluff. In 2015/2016 I created an Excel sheet to calculate the real value of stocks and help separate good stocks from bad stocks.
Between 2016 and 2019, I made returns in the market ranging between 15 percent and 50 percent. In 2019, I started sharing the Excel sheet with other investors and at that time, most investors told me I should turn this Excel sheet into a software platform to share with others.
At that point, I started building the Tykr platform and we went live in 2020. Thereafter it took six months to get the first paying customer, and fast forward to 2025, we have over 12,000 customers in over 50 countries.
What is your SaaS and its mission?
Tykr is a B2C SaaS and our mission is to help people confidently invest in the stock market.
Are you able to share some success metrics? (non-confidential ones)
Churn is a big deal in SaaS. Based on the book T2D3, you can achieve product-market fit when your monthly churn is 5.75 percent or less.
- In 2022, our monthly churn was around 11 percent.
- In 2023, our monthly churn was around 6 percent.
- By the end of 2024, we were averaging a monthly churn of 3.87 percent over the previous 12 months.
Engagement time is also another big metric. The average engagement time for a B2C SaaS is about 1:30.
- Tykr’s web app average engagement time is over 8:00.
- Tykr’s mobile app average engagement time is over 20:00.
How big is your team? What are your hiring and management recommendations? Do you have specific challenges?
We have about eight people on the Tykr team, primarily composed of marketing, media production, and software engineering.
I used to have an issue where I would “hire fast, fire slow,” which led to the wrong people joining the team. Since then, those people have left Tykr. Now, I’m all about “hire slow, fire fast.”
How was the process of finding product-market fit? Did you need pivots?
The best way to achieve product-market fit is to listen to your customer.
We have a churn sequence that emails customers when they leave Tykr. We do two things in those emails:
- We thank the past customer for giving Tykr a try.
- We ask what we can do better and what features we are missing.
When multiple people mention the same feature is missing, it makes it pretty easy for product development. In other words, we know exactly what to do to keep people on the platform.
What was the main challenge you experienced along the way?
Hiring the wrong people. Seriously, if you don’t hire the right people, you can cause problems in your business and, in many cases, cause the business to fail.
This relates to my past issue of “hiring fast, firing slow.” We had people in Tykr who didn’t listen to the customer and, more importantly, didn’t have empathy for the customer’s needs.
I can’t stress this enough: If you are building a business, you need to listen to the customer and have empathy for the customer’s needs. If you can’t do those two things, you should not be in business in the first place.
What was the aha moment that made you unlock growth?
There was an “aha” moment around pricing. We originally had one pricing tier, which was a mistake. SaaS businesses should have three or more tiers.
This allows you to add third-party features to a higher tier without having to increase prices. (Increasing pricing is important, but in the first few years, it’s wise to lock in prices.)
We discovered that the lowest tier for a B2C SaaS should be about $15 per month and $99 per year (three-month discount). As we researched, a lot of B2C subscription platforms such as Netflix and Spotify have a tier that is around $15 per month.
If Netflix has over 250 million subscribers, this means they know a thing or two about pricing. Moving our Premium price to $99 per year and $15 per month helped reduce churn and increase retention.
Our Premium Plus tier is considerably higher but includes a lot of value-add features. For transparency, Premium Plus is $399 per year and $49 per month.
What were the key parameters to align to achieve growth?
The key parameters to align include churn and conversion rates. We pay close attention to two conversion rates:
- Visitor-to-trial conversion: A good rate for SaaS is over 8 percent. Tykr is averaging over 18 percent.
- Trial-to-paid conversion: A good rate for SaaS is over 10 percent. Tykr broke 11 percent in late 2024. We still have work to do with the trial-to-paid conversion but we know what needs to be done to drive that percentage north of 20 percent.
What are your main acquisition channels and why those?
Our main lead generation sources are Affiliates, YouTube, SEO, and Podcast Appearances.
- Affiliates will always be #1 as that’s how public companies scale so quickly. When you align with another brand that already has an audience, you can grow exponentially overnight.
- YouTube made sense because a lot of people search for stocks and investing topics on YouTube.
- SEO is a long game. If done right, it can pay dividends three to four years later.
- Podcast Appearances are something entrepreneurs should always do. Try to be featured on podcasts because they are both a networking opportunity and an exposure opportunity.
What are your current challenges? What keeps you awake at night?
I know we can grow faster as our churn is low and conversion rates are high. My biggest challenge right now is acquiring affiliates faster.
For example, I would love to bring on a salesperson who loves networking and speaking with affiliates. If I can onboard several new affiliates every week, we will grow extremely fast. The top affiliates I’m trying to partner with include Brokers, Robot traders, YouTube influencers, Bloggers, and other FinTech platforms.
What do you do to remain ahead of or different from the competition?
We have separated ourselves from the competition in four ways:
- Easier-to-use platform.
- Strong emphasis on education.
- Transparency (The calculations that power Tykr are open-source).
- Practical use of AI (We reduced hours of research down to seconds).
To remain ahead of the competition, we learn about the first two the most.
What advice do you have for other SaaS leaders to grow their platforms?
Talk to your customer and more importantly, listen to your customer. If you have the humility to turn good ideas and harsh feedback into features that actually solve problems, you will be on your way to creating a business that people use and pay for!
Final Thoughts: Key Lessons from Tykr’s Growth
Sean Tepper’s journey with Tykr highlights how data-driven decision-making, strategic pricing, and customer-centric product development fuel SaaS growth.
Key takeaways for SaaS founders:
- Reduce churn by improving customer experience.
- Optimize pricing with multiple tiers.
- Use SEO, YouTube, and affiliates for sustainable growth.
- Hire slow, fire fast—team quality is everything.
As Tykr continues to expand globally, Sean’s insights offer a valuable roadmap for SaaS leaders looking to achieve product-market fit and scale successfully.
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