Johnathan,
John,
or Johnny
Bell.
A decade in B2B SaaS across a few startups — one I co-founded, the rest I worked at. Now putting my energy into the local startup ecosystem with Technopole Atlas and French Tech Poitou-Charentes, plus the occasional side project and freelance contribution.
§ Selected work
01
Technopole Atlas↗ Startup manager — and well beyond the brief.
2025 —
02
French Tech Poitou-Charentes↗ Board member — backing the regional ecosystem.
2024 —
03
LicenceOne↗ The serious one — SaaS that cuts wasted software spend.
2020 – 25
04
SaaS Advent↗ One of the unserious ones — a B2B SaaS advent calendar.
2020 – 23
05
Sellsy↗ Head of International — built the UK channel, quadrupled the demo rate.
2018 – 19
§ Writing · from the archive
Every “top-10% founder” trait has a counter-example
06.24
How to size TAM, SAM & SOM (and why it barely matters)
06.24
No such thing as a good idea, only good implementation
05.23
Selected work.
§ Experience
§ Speaking, teaching & community
§ Projects
§ Education
§ Featured · 06.24 · 2 min
"Every “top-10% founder” trait has a counter-example"
On strong opinions weakly held, the startup hedonistic treadmill, and why for every trait of a “top” founder you can point to one who proved the opposite.
§ Index
06.24
Every “top-10% founder” trait has a counter-example
2 min
On strong opinions weakly held, the startup hedonistic treadmill, and why for every trait of a “top” founder you can point to one who proved the opposite.
Read essay ↗
06.24
How to size TAM, SAM & SOM (and why it barely matters)
2 min
Before product-market fit, market-sizing is mostly Excel engineering for VCs. Still — here’s the exact process I used, and the graph it produced.
Read essay ↗
05.23
There’s no such thing as a good idea, only good implementation
3 min
There’s no such thing as a good idea — only good implementation. On copying your users’ language, ignoring saturation, and testing before you build.
Read essay ↗
04.23
How much equity to give your first investor
2 min
A €50k cheque and no idea what to offer. On love-money rounds, never valuing too low, and why SAFEs (and the French BSA AIR) exist.
Read essay ↗
01.23
What an AppSumo launch actually looks like
4 min
An AppSumo Select launch with the numbers left in: commission splits, an 89% activation and 34% refund rate, and what I’d tell the next founder.
Read essay ↗