Benedikt Deicke

Co-founder and CTO of Userlist; co-host of the Slow & Steady podcast

@benediktdeicke Darmstadt, Germany1.9K followersSaaS Founders Marketing & SEO Tools

About Benedikt Deicke

Benedikt Deicke is a German software engineer from Darmstadt and the co-founder and CTO of Userlist, an email automation and marketing platform for SaaS companies. He builds and runs the product while his co-founder Jane Portman leads the company as CEO.

Before Userlist he worked as a freelance developer and product builder. One of his own products was Stage CMS, a content management system for band websites used by metal acts such as Nightwish and Epica. He met Jane while helping her take a product called Tiny Reminder from idea to launch, and stayed on to support it in what she called a co-founder-on-retainer arrangement.

Userlist began with a co-founder agreement in October 2017, a third co-founder, Claire Suellentrop, and a long phase of customer interviews and pre-sales. Paying customers came on in a closed beta in October 2018. The product left beta in August 2019 as Product Hunt's #1 product of the day, joined the TinySeed accelerator in 2020, and raised a pre-seed round from more than 20 angel investors in 2021. Since then it has grown from behavioral emails into a broader email marketing platform for SaaS.

Benedikt co-hosts Slow & Steady, a long-running podcast with Benedicte Raae about building products as independent software engineers. It passed 250 episodes in 2026. In 2020 he also planned FemtoConf, a very small conference in Darmstadt for self-funded software companies, which was cancelled because of the pandemic.

Products by Benedikt Deicke

Userlist

userlist.com

Email automation and marketing platform for SaaS companies, covering behavior-based lifecycle emails, broadcasts and in-app messages.

Stage CMS

stagecms.com

shutdown

Content management system for band websites, used by metal bands such as Nightwish, Epica and Sonata Arctica.

Builds indie alternatives to:Mailchimp

Benedikt Deicke's journey, 2017–20266 milestones · self-reported

First product
Funding
Launch / milestone
Started 2017

2017Milestone: Signed the Userlist co-founder agreement with Jane Portman in…
2018First product: Userlist's first paying customers
2019Launch: Userlist launched out of beta in August and was #1 product of…
2020Funding: Userlist joined the TinySeed accelerator in March. FemtoConf
2021Funding: Userlist raised a pre-seed round from more than 20 angel…
2026Launch: Slow & Steady published its 250th episode

Timeline

2017 — Signed the Userlist co-founder agreement with Jane Portman in October.
2018 — Userlist started onboarding its first paying customers in a closed beta in October.
2019 — Userlist launched out of beta in August and was #1 product of the day on Product Hunt.
2020 — Userlist joined the TinySeed accelerator in March. FemtoConf, his small Darmstadt conference, was cancelled because of the pandemic.
2021 — Userlist raised a pre-seed round from more than 20 angel investors and added marketing emails.
2026 — Slow & Steady published its 250th episode.

How Benedikt builds

Validate with interviews and pre-orders before building.
Grow a business slowly and sustainably.
Share the honest highs and lows publicly.
Respect user privacy when building web applications.

Learn from Benedikt Deicke

[podcast]Free

Slow & Steady

Podcast with Benedicte Raae about the realities of building and launching products as independent software engineers.

by Benedikt Deicke

Benedikt Deicke FAQ

What does Benedikt Deicke do?

He is the co-founder and CTO of Userlist, an email automation platform for SaaS, and co-hosts the Slow & Steady podcast.

Who founded Userlist?

Userlist was co-founded in 2017 by Jane Portman (CEO) and Benedikt Deicke (CTO), with marketer Claire Suellentrop as a third co-founder for the first year.