SaaStock Founder Membership (SFM)

Won "Bootstrapper of the Year" 🏆 at Tekpon Awards. Scaled Expandi to $9M+ ARR. It has been a roller coaster ride... Here are my top 5 lessons for every founder👇 1️⃣ Choose the Right Cofounders Expandi survived 14 months even without income. All credit to my cofounders Glenn Miseroy & Aad van Vendeloo We combined forces and brought in: ↳ Complementary skills and expertise ↳ Expanded networks ↳ Fresh perspectives ↳ A morale boost They filled in where I fell short. RIGHT CO-FOUNDERS = COMPOUNDING GROWTH. 2️⃣ Join a Community Entrepreneurship is a lonely ride. You won't be related to 99% of the people around you. So how do you keep yourself sane? By being part of supportive communities. Communities mean👇 → Learning from others' mistakes → Sharing valuable insights → Uplifting fellow founders Thanks to Alexander Theuma & SaaStock for giving me a SaaS family to lean on for the last 2 years, where I met some great founders & built some long-lasting relationships 🫶. This includes: - David Neuhaus - Geeta Chandra - Zandra Moore - Alex Delivet - Osman Koc - Anvar T K - Joran Hofman - Yann A. Skaalen Also big kudos to Alexandru Stan for starting Tepkon Awards - an Oscars 🏆 equivalent for the SaaS community. It's not easy to get ~500 SaaS investors, founders, leaders, and visionaries in one single room. It is UNREAL. Big Kudos to the entire team💫 Met great people like 🔥 Bridget Harris Mads 🍎 Wedderkopp Walls.io Thomas Smale Zandra Moore and many more!! 3️⃣ Build a Strong Team A founder is nowhere without a great team. Initially, we focused on hiring university graduates. This strategy lets us nurture talent while keeping hiring costs low. ✅Hire talented people who align with your vision ✅Give them the freedom to do their work ✅Pay them well We're now 50 highly skilled professionals strong 💪 Smart hiring → Talent retention → Growth → REPEAT 4️⃣ Build in Public Here's my Social Growth Snapshot: ↳ LinkedIn: 18K+ followers ↳ X: 34K+ followers Sharing your journey = Growing user trust Building in public: ✅Boosts credibility ✅Humanizes your brand ✅Fosters a strong community Build in public → Foster a community → Expand Network & Customer Trust 5️⃣ Out-of-the-box marketing strategies This one simple practice brought immense growth—experimentation with innovative ideas Our strategies👇 i.) Affiliate programs When others promote your product, you get: → Higher visibility → Boosted conversion rates → Reduced marketing expenses ii.) Micro-influencer partnerships We partnered with niche influencers to target our ideal customers & got: ↳ Heightened user trust ↳ More early paid users ↳ Low ad costs Keep experimenting. Keep trying new ideas. ----------- I'm beyond grateful for this recognition of our hard work. Follow @StefanSmulders for everything SAAS & entrepreneurship 🌟 #startups #SaaS #entreprenuership

Last week, we signed our first Enterprise client at Reditus ✍️ 🎉 What a journey it has been so far. One thing I can tell you already: You can't build a SaaS alone. In December 2022, we decided to rebuild our app fully and re-launched it on Product Hunt on June 2023 (and became the product of the day) 🔥 This decision meant that Ovi Anca and Daniel Nadasan could not build any new things and could only launch a 2.0 app version. As you can calculate the time frame, it took us around six months 😰 Working on such a big/long project when we were in the early stages and bootstrapped was a hard decision and financially challenging. I'm so happy we made this decision and the 2.0 version app they have been able to build 🙌 In short, we now have a stable app that is easy to build on and allows us to develop quickly. In addition to a pool of 11.000+ B2B SaaS affiliates who can see the programs in the Reditus marketplace, we are now also starting to allow SaaS companies to recruit affiliates from our app. This makes our tool more suitable for bigger companies that want to recruit vetted affiliates with an audience matching their ICP. We have built a way to migrate programs to Reditus, and in the following weeks, we will launch our LinkedIn and YouTube connections next to our existing Google Analytics integration. Making it easy for SaaS brands to identify if the affiliate has the traffic they are looking for on the channel they want to be found on 🕵️♂️ With a tool that is now more suitable for bigger companies, you will have different sales cycles, security questionnaires, and other things related to selling to Enterprises. Luckily, I was in Morocco at the SFM retreat at the time this happened, where I could gain knowledge from ±40 founders and receive help on the spot 🙏 Being a part of different communities has been great for me in gaining new knowledge and being able to ask for help or learn by helping others. It is great to see how other SaaS founders are willing to help each other. To summarise, building a company requires a great team and a good 'support system' around it will help you to stay sane & keep going forward 🛣️ The road of a SaaS founder is bumpy and chaotic and will probably never go as expected or planned. Thanks for everyone's support on our journey ✌️ For the other founders reading this 👇 Keep moving forward, stay consistent, and keep driving value for your clients 🚀 ---- 🔔 Follow me (Joran Hofman) or the Grow Your B2B SaaS Podcast for more B2B SaaS content. Or check out Reditus | B2B SaaS Affiliate Marketing Software & Network for setting up an affiliate program for your B2B SaaS.