[SaaS Series] Real Reason Your Best Marketing Content Stays Hidden With Benjamin Ard

Benjamin Ard is the Co-founder and CEO of Masset, a platform that helps B2B teams centralize and track their content for faster access and smarter use. He’s grown the company with notable clients like Awardco, secured early funding, and hosts the Content Amplified Podcast with over 300 episodes. With extensive experience in B2B SaaS and marketing leadership — and as a father of four — Benjamin shares practical insights on growth, content strategy, and building customer-focused companies.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [5:39] Benjamin Ard reveals why so many sales enablement assets go unused
• [6:53] The truth about expensive case studies that disappear
• [8:14] How building for scalability gave Masset a competitive edge
• [11:09] Masset’s lightning-fast onboarding and AI-driven power
• [13:18] Why opposite skill sets made Masset’s co-founders the perfect match
• [16:24] The crucial role of an angel round in getting Masset off the ground
• [19:45] How Masset outperformed billion-dollar competitors to win unicorn clients
• [24:27] The cost of lost productivity when teams can’t find content
• [28:34] Why SaaS pricing must evolve with customer value

In this episode…

Buried in shared drives and forgotten folders, high-value marketing content often disappears before it can create impact. This “content graveyard” drains productivity and leaves teams scrambling to find what they need. How can businesses finally make content easy to find, track, and use across the organization?

Benjamin Ard set out to solve this by creating a unified content library designed for scalability. With AI-powered search and integrations across Slack, Google Drive, and HubSpot, Masset ensures that every department can access, deploy, and measure content’s real value. By eliminating seat-based pricing, Ben prioritized accessibility from day one — helping clients like Awardco boost efficiency and sales.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz talks with Benjamin Ard, Co-founder and CEO of Masset, about transforming B2B content management and scaling a SaaS startup. They discuss co-founder dynamics, raising angel and pre-seed rounds, validating product-market fit, and evolving SaaS pricing. Ben also shares insights on mentorship, community, and podcasting as tools for growth.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Benjamin Ard on LinkedIn
• Content Amplified Podcast
• Masset
• Slack
• Asana
• Riverside
• HubSpot
• LinkedIn
• The Lean Startup Methodology

Special Mentions:

• iBrand Visual
• Y Combinator
• Big Leap
• Tyler Russell on LinkedIn
• John Richards on LinkedIn
• Tyler Richards on LinkedIn
• Startup Ignition Ventures

Related episodes:

• “Automation Solutions with Wade Foster Founder of Zapier” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Pipedrive: Brain Surgery, Married, & Moved Company from Estonia to U.S. All at Once – with Urmas Purde [Inspiration] on” Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Revolutionizing Online Forms and Productivity With Aytekin Tank of Jotform” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[SaaS Series] Tips To Thrive in the SaaS Space With Sujan Patel” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Black Business Leaders Series] Insource: How to Increase Efficiency with Existing Staff and Rapidly Onboard New Staff with Owen McGab Enaohwo of SweetProcess” on Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Can Guerrilla Marketing Still Work Today?” on Content Amplified Podcast
• “The Future of Content: From SEO to GEO” on Content Amplified Podcast
• “Are press releases still alive?” on Content Amplified Podcast
• “Is LinkedIn Still Worth Your Time?” on Content Amplified Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “If I have to go hunting for it, it’s impossible to find exactly what I need.”
• “When you have a co-founder who does something completely different than you, it is a really good match.”
• “There’s no better validation than someone taking out their wallet and paying for your product.”
• “Statistics show it’s like eight grand a year wasted per employee looking for content day in and day out.”
• “For us, it was the right move to raise money — I think if people can bootstrap, that’s great, but ultimately it was what we needed.”

Action Steps:

1. Centralize your content in a unified library: Organizing all sales, marketing, and support materials in a single, searchable platform eliminates wasted time hunting for files and ensures valuable assets are accessible to everyone. This directly addresses the common challenge of underused and hard-to-find content discussed in the episode.
2. Implement AI-powered search and integrations: Leveraging AI and connecting your content library to platforms like Slack, HubSpot, and Google Drive enables seamless discovery and sharing of materials where your team already works. This helps overcome adoption barriers and makes it easy for employees to find what they need without switching tools.
3. Require searching before creating new content: Setting up a workflow where team members must search the content library before requesting new materials helps prevent duplicate work and reduces unnecessary costs. This approach was highlighted as a way to avoid recreating expensive assets that already exist.
4. Measure usage and gather feedback: Tracking which content is accessed and soliciting feedback from users creates a feedback loop for continuous improvement. This addresses the lack of visibility and engagement that content creators often face, ensuring resources are both used and effective.
5. Align incentives with active usage: Consider pricing models or internal KPIs based on active usage rather than just the number of users to encourage engagement and maximize value from your content investment. As discussed, this aligns your team’s goals with broader business outcomes and increases the impact of your content strategy.

Episode Transcript

Intro 00:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here Founder of InspiredInsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I’ve Benjamin Ard. You can check them out at GetMasset.com and before I formally introduce you, Ben, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out, since this is part of the The Sass series. Some of the other episodes was really interesting talking about the journey, the ups, the downs. The one of the Co-founders of Zapier that was a good one, one of the Co-founders of Pipedrive, Jotform. How they grew to 25 million users plus Mailshake. I think 70,000 users. Just really interesting journey. It wasn’t always so easy as we all know. So it was it was good to hear the challenges as well as the great things and milestones that happen. So check those out on InspiredInsider.com. 

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in two ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, accountability, the full execution and production. Number two. We’re also an easy button for companies gifting. So we make gifting staying top of mind for clients, partners, prospects, even staff. Simple. Easy. Affordable. All you have to do is give us the addresses. We’ll do everything else. And it’s not like a one time gift, but we like to send kind of like campaign of gifts. So like think every 3 to 4 months for 3 to 4 years type of thing. So we kind of call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it stress free for a company to build amazing relationships so you can run your business. 

So, you know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways on how I can give to my best relationships. I found no better way over the past 15 years to one profile that people and companies I admire on my podcast to share with the world what they’re working on. Ben has a podcast too, which we’ll talk about and to send them sweet treats in the mail. So if you have questions, you explore more on Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. Shout out to iBrand Visual as well. They created this cool sign behind me. If you’re watching the video. It was like a long time coming Ben. Probably like a decade. 

And they’re like, yeah, we need to revamp what you have behind you. I’m like, okay, let’s do it. They work with, you know, interior and exterior signs from startups to Fortune 500, Virgin, Ritz and more. So check them out. They don’t pay me anything for saying that. I just love their company. So check them out and I am excited to introduce Ben Ard. He’s the Co-founder of Masset. Masset is a unified content library for B2B companies. He also hosts a podcast, Content Amplified, which I was had the pleasure of going on as well. You should check it out. We’ll pull it up as well. And I don’t know how he does it all with four kids and especially four boys running around. So Ben, thanks for joining me.

Benjamin Ard: 03:25

Thank you. I’m excited to be here. This is fun to be on the other side of the microphone. This is great.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:30

I find this to be easier than answering the question. So I’m glad you’re on the other side now, but I’m going to pull up your site and just tell people about Masset and what you do.

Benjamin Ard: 03:40

Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve spent my entire career in B2B marketing, and I was at a tech company really early on, and then I saw it get all the way to, you know, the IPO had a lot of fun there. And we created this really cool content inside the business that we wanted everyone to use and share, but we would store it in Google Drive, and that’s kind of where the content went to die. And it is so funny. Every single time I tell someone that story, they all, if they’ve been in marketing, they nod their heads.

Yep. Yeah, I’ve been there before. I create all this content. They’re getting inundated with slack messages and emails. Hey, do we have this? Do we have that? And they’re just going across the board saying, yeah, I’ve already shared this with you, why can’t you find it? And so people are underutilizing and not taking advantage of their content. There’s no way to track it. And honestly, they’re only getting a sample of it because they’re only looking at files. 

So we created this really cool unified content library where everyone has access. You can use AI, it links to all of your website pages and blog posts and all of your case studies, PDFs, all of that stuff in one place. So honestly, as soon as you need content, you can find it in just an instance and people can progress the journey. It doesn’t matter if you’re working with customers, prospects, people that need training, support, onboarding. 

You can find the content in the moment that you need it. So that’s really our bread and butter is we’re trying to make content so easy for everyone in the business to access, use and ultimately track to make sure that they’re making the best decisions with it. And ultimately, like anyone, they’re trying to make their customers experience the best thing possible.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:23

Then what kind of content do you see die in your career? I’m just because I know there’s a lot of different use cases for this, and I know there’s sales teams, there’s customer support teams. What did you see? It was just on a Google Drive somewhere and just was collecting dust.

Benjamin Ard: 05:39

The number one thing you’re going to see is mostly your sales enablement material. So your case studies, your white papers, things of that nature. Those are the kinds of things that get stuck in the Google Drive. They’re hyper specific, usually came from an inside request, and ultimately people just don’t know they’re there no matter how many times you email them, for some reason, there’s this block. If I have to go hunting for it, it’s impossible to find exactly what I need. And that’s really the material that people want to consume. 

On the consumer side, they want to hear all of these great stories and information about how their product is changing the lives of other customers, and they’re having a really hard time finding, using, or taking advantage of that content. So that’s probably the primary use case. I would say when we roll out to a new business, you have marketing, putting the content in the system. Sales is usually one of the first teams to adopt it, but shortly thereafter is support CS. Anyone that interacts with the customer honestly is in there trying to use that to to find the right content.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:40

So an example would be like maybe three years ago, a sale. You know, someone had a great experience. So someone said, hey, we need to collect this, this case story from them. They get on, they record it and put it on Google Drive, and then no one’s able to find it.

Benjamin Ard: 06:53

Nobody uses it. They spent months and months and months design work, video editing, all sorts of resources. How’s a beautiful story? And then they put it there. And first of all, they have no idea if people are using it. They have no idea if it’s actually working. I mean, for the content creators as well, there is no feedback loop. 

Traditionally, I get requests, I create content, and then I just cross my fingers. Someone actually uses it and then it actually moves the needle. And that whole system needed to be revamped entirely. But yeah, like these, these resources sometimes, like a case study, can cost you 5 to 10, $15,000. A video can cost you 50,000. And not knowing if anyone’s using that or if it’s actually doing any good, gets really expensive really quickly.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:45

I’m wondering, you know, from a software product like you have, there’s so many things you can do, so many things you can create. I’m curious. Talk about the the features, the evolution of the features. And I do want to talk about integrations because integrations is just one person. Seems like simple, but like you have to decide what you integrate with and when. So talk about the evolution of the of the features a little bit that you’ve built out.

Benjamin Ard: 08:14

Yeah, 100%. So early on it really came from my primary experience. That’s one thing that I’m really passionate about when it comes to founders that actually start a business is people that have felt the pain that you’re trying to solve. So I feel like we had a leg up from day one where we were able to go into the system and create something that we have always wanted for our own careers and the businesses we’ve been a part of. But really, we started number one with the idea of we have to build a platform in an enterprise ready way, and this is like the least sexy feature you can possibly imagine.

And it’s not even like a feature. But from day one, we knew if people are going to trust us with their content, we have to be able to build a platform that can last as much as we possibly can handle. They’re going to have to put terabytes of data into the system. We also had this philosophy that unlimited users, if you’re going to share content, people have to be able to access it and you shouldn’t have to pay for licenses. So even though that’s more of a benefit of the company, the whole platform was built from day one to handle that scalability. 

So as soon as a new client comes on and they launch it to a thousand people in their organization, that doesn’t do anything to the system. It doesn’t cause any issues. We can handle that. So those were kind of the first things. Can we put the content in the system? Is it a safe foundation? Things like that. But one story that I experienced that created a really early feature that people still love to this day is when you’re in a business on a marketing team, 60 to 80% of the time when someone requests a new piece of content, it’s already been made. 

And what’s really sad is sometimes even the content team, because of their file systems, doesn’t know it exists. So they may go recreate something they already spent $10,000 creating, and they’ll make a second or a third version because they don’t know where to find it. So what we built into the system from day one is you have to search for content before you can request new content. And that workflow, every single time we talk to someone about that and show them that workflow, they’re like, oh, yep, yep, 100%. You’ve been in my seat. You get me? Because I can see 100% how people ask before they look. And you flip the script. And that’s exactly what we need.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:37

It’s almost like a fail safe built.

Benjamin Ard: 10:39

Yeah, yeah. That’s that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:42

And from the integration side. Right. I know you integrate with Google Drive, YouTube, Wistia and external URL, Slack. So when someone wants to implement and onboard with Masset, do they then go in and just connect the different pieces and then it makes it searchable? Just explain kind of how it works from the the onboarding perspective.

Benjamin Ard: 11:09

Yeah. So we have made the onboarding process as easy as we possibly can. You know ever you’re looking at something like a digital asset management system or sales enablement. One of the biggest hesitancies for people is just that fear of taking the time to get all their content in one place. So for us, we wanted to make sure that we connected with the systems that matter the most. And then also using AI, those integrations are essential for understanding the data and making it really searchable. 

But for us, we really just tried to build in as many ways as possible to put content in the system as quickly as possible. So you have, you know, from day one you were able to do single files and multiple files. Then you could do the single URLs. Then we added the CSV uploads, where you can do your entire sitemap and put your whole website on. That’s when the YouTube and the Wistia came. I would honestly say a lot of the integration priorities have come from our own actual needs, where we say, oh, we have a lot of content on this platform. We need to integrate. 

And then obviously as customer requests come in, and one of the biggest ones that we integrated with, because there’s the consumption side, the YouTubes and the Google drives, that’s to pull content in. But then we want to take the content to where people are doing work. That’s where the HubSpot integration came in. That’s where the slack integration came in. So I’m in one of those two tools. I can look for content, share it, track it, and understand it without ever leaving the platforms. I’m already spending all of my time in day in and day out. So that’s kind of where it came. Once we knew that we could get the majority of their content. 

We started integrating into the places where we knew that they wanted to consume and track and use that content. So that’s where the priorities come from. We’re also a very customer centric company. We love listening to customer feedback. And we tend to find a lot of themes where people say, hey, it would be great if this. Integration could happen. That’s where our notion integration came from. Like once you hear it so many times, you say, okay, well let’s go and build that notion integration and then intercom and all those kinds of things.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:11

I know that you have a co-founder. Talk about how your roles differ and how did you meet your co-founder?

Benjamin Ard: 13:18

Yeah. So what’s really cool is we have completely different skill sets. So I am a huge believer that when you have a co-founder who does something completely different than you, it is a really good match. And having a technical co-founder for a long time, when I first left the company I was previously at before I started Masset, I thought I was just going to go out on my own and maybe I could pay like a dev shop or something like that to build the first version. I was planning on being that solo founder.

And then I started finding out how expensive things were. And then if you’re looking at offshore talent, just I had other founders who had had issues with that in certain ways, others that had success. It was hit or miss, but there was all sorts of stuff. And then eventually I just got introduced through my brother in law to Tyler, my Co-founder, and I was talking to Tyler, and his skill set was just incredible. He’s a technical co-founder. He knows how to develop, and I’ve been on the marketing side. I felt the pain. I do the sales and, you know, the business side. And honestly, we just had a great conversation. But he was in a great position at a great company and he wasn’t ready for being a co-founder. 

So for him, it turned into great. Instead of letting me offshore just nights and weekends, let me, you know, contract out with you. And that went really well. And honestly, you know, it was just contract work for a while until eventually the time made sense where he said, you know what? You know, maybe, maybe we make this official and I can transition into this company. And that’s where everything kind of started. I waited, and really it was the best solution for us. We could have probably launched a lot quicker if I had found someone, you know, over shores or something like that, but it was just really the right fit for us.

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