In this episode of HappyPorch Radio, Yann Toutant, CEO and Co-founder of Black Winch, joins hosts Barry O’Kane and Jo Weston to share insights from Black Winch’s journey and mission.
At the beginning of the conversation Yann explains how Black Winch engage, inspire and empower intrapreneurs to achieve their PaaS ambitions by building and scaling their in-house recurring revenue models.
Drawing on his experience guiding manufacturers through the transition to outcome-based services, Yann offers a deep dive into both the opportunities and the operational realities of implementing PaaS and discusses the importance of a long-term thinking strategy to make PaaS successful in any business.
Yann also highlights key differences between B2B and B2C adoption of as-a-service models and talks about how technology plays a critical role in enabling these models. He outlines the importance of asset tracking, consumption data, billing complexity management, and reverse logistics - all underpinned by flexible tech stacks that evolve as the business scales.
Looking ahead, Yann envisions that manufacturers will want to retain ownership of raw materials and explains how urban mining and material recovery will become strategic advantages.
Tune in to learn about how new generations of data-driven leaders will continue to accelerate the shift towards PaaS and much more!
Top Takeaways:
- PaaS is a mindset shift from selling products to delivering continuous value.
- Start with simple tools (like spreadsheets) to test and learn before scaling tech.
- Customer lifetime value is more important than the initial transaction.
- Reverse logistics and asset tracking are critical for circular models.
- Avoid building complex systems too early, stay lean and iterative.
- Owning the asset enables urban mining and greater control over circularity.
- B2B customers are more open to PaaS than consumers.
- Data is key: track usage to improve service and pricing models.
- Success depends on long-term commitment, not quick wins.
Quotes:
- "One of the challenges is the timescale… It is a minimum of three years before you start to see the value kicking in. And three years is a scale of time that a lot of companies are not ready to address because of their shareholder structure, the investors strategy, or the edge of the top management. That's something we see quite often. Top management CEOs of large organisations should have a concern in terms of legacy, but they won't see the result.”
- “The mistake I see very often are organisations that define the whole technical stack before the first customer. And then they automate something that they don’t know what to automate… Excel is the winner at this stage.”
- “You are not selling a product. You are acquiring a user. That’s the main difference.”
- “As-a-service is about, in fact, exchanging data with your users to make sure that they get the best out of the solution that you provided.”
