SaaStock Founder Membership (SFM)’s Post

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

New Business Venture Update (Week #10) We got punched in the face this week. After coming off a super productive, celebratory week—officially releasing our new book “Ready, Set, SCALE” at the Riot House in Denver, Not much seemed to work out for us this week, when we tried to launch it (and make it available for purchase). You see, we built the website platform on Woocommerce Services <> HubSpot <> @Lulupress This tech stack was ideal for us to provide a U/X on Woo, host our interactive scaling tools (accessible for readers of the book) on Hubspot, and to issue a print-on-demand for the sales of the book through Lulu. Only thing was it wasn’t working. That is, if you tried to purchase a book, it wasn’t passing through the data. I know, typical integration issue. The thing is, I am NOT a tech guy, in the sense of getting this stuff to connect and talk. Nevertheless, after repeated tickets, calls and troubleshooting, my partner Zach Lewis, got it work! This is why you’ve heard me say COMPLIMENTARY strengths are so very ideal, especially in the startup phase. ** Thankfully, orders for our book (in softcover and hardback) can now be placed and will actually print and ship ** We are working on a digital (Kindle) version, I’ll be doing an audio version (for Audible) and we’ll have the book up on Amazon soon. Other than these events, here’s what else happened this week in our new venture… → Hosted calls for my mentorships (so proud of how well these young entrepreneurs are doing) → Designed the outline for a (potential) forthcoming Scaling Masterclass Sprint—where we plan to take companies through a live cohort learning experience of our scaling principles! → Had an incredibly productive call to discuss our book advertising program (we’ve come up some highly creative ways to reach our desired audience) → Laid out the calendar of content for our Ready-for-Scaling community (this is going to be exciting to roll out) all of this, while keeping our driving force front and center: our BHAG is to put “Ready, Set, SCALE” into the hands of 100k ambitious entrepreneurs, to help guide and empower them to build and scale their businesses. As we close this week, it’s probably safe to say that we all experience setbacks, and get knocked down from time to time. And as the great Rocky Balboa said… “… But it ain't about how hard you hit it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” We can’t always control everything in front of us, or that’s coming at us, but what we can control are our reactions to those things that we are confronted with. This, my friends, is what shapes us and defines us. Here’s to your continued successes. With Gratitude, 🙏 #entrepreneurship #leadership #leanstartup #scalingup #readyforscaling #readySetSCALE #book #launch #cpg #ecommerce #technology #innovation #business #growth

The #1 mistake SaaS founders make is chasing VC money. Be like Patrick Campbell, bootstrapped from $0 to $200M Patrick's journey began in the U.S. Intelligence Community. He then moved to Google as an economist. His experiences in these roles, particularly at Google, Highlighted to him the challenges of bureaucratic environments, Prompting him to seek opportunities where he could have a more direct impact. Before founding ProfitWell by Paddle, Patrick worked at Gemvara, Where he gained insights into Pricing strategies and Importance of data in decision-making. This experience laid the groundwork for his future endeavors in the SaaS industry. In 2012, he founded ProfitWell. It began as a pricing optimization tool. With features like calculating accurate subscription financial metrics But soon evolved into a suite of subscription analytics solutions. Patrick's data-driven approach paid off. ProfitWell grew to serve over 8,000 companies. Including notable clients like Atlassian and Autodesk, Lyft, and Meetup. Patrick focused on real problems, data-driven decisions and a freemium model. This approach helped Profitwell grew to eight figures in ARR within a year of launch. In 2021, Seeing this Paddle presented a deal for Patrick , To acquire ProfitWell for $200 million and the Position of CSO at Paddle . And now Patrick is building ProfitWell and Paddle as it CSO. Now let’s summarise the steals from Patrick Campbell: ➢ Do it for free. ProfitWell's flagship product, ProfitWell Metrics, is offered for free to help subscription companies track their key metrics, which gains users massively without any upfront Investment. ➢ Spread your knowlegde They made popular podcasts like “Pricing Page Teardown" and "Protect the Hustle” which attracted lot of SaaS founders, plus Patrick’s cofferences and speaches help them with credibility ➢ Focus on Niche ProfitWell honed in on serving subscription businesses specifically. This allowed them to develop deep expertise and a reputation as the go-to solution in that niche ➢ Providing Exceptional Customer Service As a bootstrapped company, ProfitWell had to rely on customer service and support to retain customers and drive word-of-mouth referrals, This helped offset the advantages that better-funded competitors may had Patrick's story shows the power of solving genuine problems. It demonstrates the value of continuous improvement. And it proves that sustainable growth is possible without VC funding. What aspect of Patrick's approach will you apply to your business? #StealFromTheBest

Just two days. That's all it took for Nityesh to transform his SaaS platform, CuratedConnections.io, from struggling to keep up to attracting 100 new prospects. How did he do it? It wasn't through a massive marketing budget or a viral campaign.... Like many of us, Nityesh faced the daunting challenge of scaling his business after an initial burst of success. Growth had stalled, and despite his efforts, acquiring new customers was becoming increasingly difficult. He felt stuck. But instead of continuing on the same path, he decided to seek out new perspectives. Joining a mastermind group was a game-changer. Collaborating with peers who faced similar challenges, Nityesh gained insights that led to a breakthrough. He realized that his platform wasn't just about connecting members—it was about empowering communities to thrive. By refining his marketing to focus on 'ideal community profiles' and addressing their specific pain points, Nityesh was able to speak directly to the needs of his audience. He implemented these changes and within 48 hours and saw 100 new prospects come in! But.. this story isn't just about a quick win. It's about the power of community, understanding your customers, and the transformative impact of shared knowledge. Nityesh's journey is a testament to the strength of strategic collaboration and targeted problem-solving. Are you ready to uncover the untapped potential of your SaaS? Join our mastermind group and connect with like-minded entrepreneurs who are ready to take their businesses to the next level. Learn from each other's experiences and discover the strategies that will drive your growth. 👉 Apply now and find out more: https://lnkd.in/dfJGN9DB 👥 And if you're a community manager looking to enhance member engagement, check out Nityesh's platform at https://lnkd.in/dWndTWgP – it might just be the solution you've been searching for.

Things Olivier Pomel heard when he started fundraising for Datadog 14 years ago (which my Index Ventures partner Shardul Shah ended up co-leading): 🚕 He was told that NYC isn’t the place to build a software company. (Hard to believe today but at the time it was mostly seen as a place for ecom or adtech businesses) 🏖️ He was asked if French people only think about taking vacations. 🎓 Many questioned how the nine years he spent at an edtech startup were relevant to the data infrastructure space Datadog plays in. 🗣️ He even joked that some US investors would seemingly speak to him a bit more loudly and slowly, to make sure he fully understood. But Olivier and his co-founder Alexis L. thrived as the underdogs. They became one of the most efficient software companies of all time. Last week, Olivier shared his story with a room full of established and aspiring European founders in New York City – a place that so many software companies call home today. In less than 15 years, Olivier and Alexis built a one-of-a kind business: >$2bn in revenue with 28% free cash flow margin in 2023 $40bn+ valuation While only burning $25m to get there… It was a case of the right place, the right time to catch the cloud wave, and the right product. But there’s more to it than that: 🐶 Datadog built their sales team from the bottom-up — and the company has that same level of efficiency to this day In the early days they only added a management layer after enough individual sales reps were at full capacity, and made that focus on sales efficiency a defining feature of the company. They kept it as the company scaled… an approach that has allowed them to keep reinvesting in R&D. 🐶 They developed a three-bucket approach to adding products to their platform (customer requests, executive team analysis, product and engineering team experimentations).  Today, Datadog has built a full platform with a wide range of products. And they have a clear process for launching and testing new ones in a low-cost way before deciding when and how hard to push them. (I’ll share more about this in a future post) 🐶 As the company scaled, Oli stayed in the flow of first-hand data – without it being overbearing He started tapping into samples of customer feedback, team surveys, sales contracts, etc. to keep a pulse on what’s happening on the ground. But he resisted the urge to jump in and solve things himself. And many more unique takeaways I’d need more than one post to share. Thank you to Olivier for sharing your story with us, and thank you to the 50 European founders who joined us. If you are a European founder in NYC and are not part of the group yet (or know someone who should), please reach out in the comments 👇

This SaaS founder bootstrapped his first company and did pretty well when he sold it, but he didn’t want to go back to stressful 80-hour weeks again. So when he started his second SaaS company he decided to work reasonable hours to spend time with his young family. He deliberately didn’t raise venture capital or try to create a fast-growing company that would consume him. That’s one of the ways to succeed as a practical founder. But this didn’t happen last year. Raj Khera started his second company, MailerMailer, way back in 2001. That’s 10 years before SaaS and web apps and recurring revenue were common. He ran MailerMailer for 16 years as a steady business that gave him and his family a great life. He sold the business in 2017. He was a practical SaaS founder 20 years with a lifestyle business, long before it was cool in the software industry to do either of those things. On the Practical Founders Podcast this week, Raj talked about the decisions he made, the lessons he learned, and how it worked out for him over his long career. He had a very good business and a great life, but it wasn’t by chance: “To me, after my first exit, time with my kids was more important. I knew that I would need to pay for that time in some way. And that way was to not build a $100 million a year company. “Think about what you really want. There’s no right or wrong answer. It was a choice. If you don’t want a $100 million company, it’s not like there’s something wrong with you. “Enjoy the journey, because if you’re just waiting for the destination you might just drop dead on your way.” He helped turn around another software company for his third exit. This time it was a VC-funded company. Now Raj coaches software founders who want to grow efficiently with advanced search engine marketing tactics. Practical SaaS founders like Raj aren’t new. But they are far more common now than they were 20 years ago. Listen to the interview with Raj to hear more about his choices and his results. https://lnkd.in/gYmKxFbm #practicalfounders

I'm back 🥳🥳 After 2 months off LinkedIn, I am back!! I've been building my new SaaS, which is a toolbox (this toolbox will be a combination of tools that will help business owners, startup founders, and solopreneurs in their journey of starting a business) called 'Stitchtly'. I'm currently working on the first tool, called 'NameTub'. What is NameTub? NameTub is a unique business name generator. By just selecting your industry and writing a major feature of your products or business, you've gotten yourself a business name. Best part? It's a free tool. Yes, you heard me right, NameTub is a free tool. In the example below, after selecting an industry (education) and writing a major feature of your products or business, you've gotten yourself a business name. Once I receive feedback from some solopreneurs and business owners on the viability of NameTub, I will proceed with the launch. Can't wait I'm so glad to be back!

Story time for all my bootstrapped SaaS founders out there! 📖 You are not alone. As a leader and founder, you often find yourself in the trenches, especially when bootstrapping. You end up doing tasks you'd rather not, or ones you're not particularly skilled at, simply because that's the job you signed up for. At some point you will have to delegate effectively so you're not shouldering every responsibility alone. Still, navigating this terrain can be tricky because you don't always know what you don't know. That's where having a supportive tribe around you becomes invaluable. Imagine surviving on just two and a half, maybe three hours of sleep each night for two whole years—that was my reality. Whew! It was all part of the journey I willingly embarked upon and I want to share it with you so can learn from my experience. I didn't sleep so that you could! LOL If I could offer one piece of advice to fellow SaaS founders, it would be this: 📍 Ensure you have the financial backing to construct the foundation your venture. 📍Make sure you build your MVP so that the MVP is all that you need, and you don't need any more than that, and ----- don't get feature creep. [Comment if you are a tech founder and don’t know what that is.] 📍Launch as soon as your product is functional, deployable, and something you'd willingly pay for yourself. If you can check those boxes, chances are you've got a product worth selling. I learned so much in the past few years, not only about tech but also about my business, the industry, and myself. I wanted to share my experience so you can learn from it and to remind you that your hard work will pay off and your breakthrough is just around the corner. Let's make it happen! #Womenintech #SkylarApp #CaseStudy #WordsOfWisdom

I had 4,000 signups before launching my last start-up. This is the playbook we used: ⤷ Raise a big pre-seed round based on a pitch deck and some huge promises ⤷ Build an MVP with a tiny team ⤷ Run Ads to landing pages to promote the product while building it ⤷ Accelerate cold outbound before the launch ⤷ Launch with a massive PR push ⤷ Scramble to manage the volume that followed 🎊 It was a blast. 📺 We launched with a segment on the evening news and a double page in the country’s largest business daily. After about 6 months, we found PMF and started scaling while moving into adjacent markets. The company was acquired two years later. 💡 Here’s why the same playbook doesn’t work today: 💵 It’s much harder to raise a pre-seed round under the current market conditions. Possible, but harder. 🤖 The expectations set by the AI bros are nuts. Most are struggling to deliver on the inflated promises of 2023, but VC expectations are still dialed up to 11. ⤷ I’m not willing to operate under wildly unrealistic expectations and will bootstrap for longer to avoid it. 🐷 An MVP is essentially the most crappy version of a product you aren’t too ashamed to launch. ⤷ Times have changed: “Viable” isn’t good enough anymore. The days when start-ups would promote a non-existing product as if it were built are long gone, too. ⤷ The time it takes to build a simple but polished prototype has gotten much shorter over the last five years due to way better tooling and shorter build times for prototypes. 🤩 Products have to delight from the get-go to cut through the noise. (Don’t mistake a functional prototype for a production-quality, scalable solution, though.) Running ads hasn’t crossed my mind. Meta and Google offer way less value at higher prices and really can’t compare to founder-led on LinkedIn. 🧐 Am I wrong? Should we be running ads to promote our Early Access List or just for demand gen? ☎️ I hear and read only bad experiences from teams running cold outbound at scale. I’m no stranger to the hustle, but still feel very hesitant to cold email. ⤷ Prices are up every year. ⤷ Even if you write amazing, personalized copy, email as a channel is so saturated that volume has to go way up, supported by a bunch of other touchpoints. 🧑🚀 Our approach instead is «Inbound-led-Outbound». Based on founder-led marketing primarily on social, supported by high-quality, helpful content. PR? Not this time. It takes a lot of time to get right. I love press, but the only news the tech beat currently covers is AI funding rounds. That’ll have to wait. What do you think? Am I dead wrong on any of this? Are we missing something critical? 🧡 Like if you agree. 🔔 Enjoyed reading this?  ⤷ Follow David Baum for more content like this.

There is nothing more rewarding than seeing your team dig deep and develop themselves, and that is exactly what happened this weekend right into today at Boston New Technology. Shweta Agrawal, Jason Kraus and I held our morning standup and let everyone know what was expected, and then I started paying careful attention to the way things played out. Mohit Ravindra Kamble and Harshita Nimbal have taken to the new reporting process in such a dedicated and dynamic way, not only following it but setting an example for the others. Marketing at BNT, like any venture, is a fierce beast to conquer -- but the combination of creativity and willingness to learn continuously from these two is a force to be reckoned with. I should also note that after a simple mistake last week, Mohit not only corrected it immediately -- he has since used it as fuel to guide him into the lanes of progress. The same must be said for Aravindhkrishna Thirumurugan, who is always ready at hand with good advice and will continue to combine those ideations with implementations. Nikethana N. has been doing an excellent job working with Panth Shah and the BNT Development Team to put the finishing touches on our new website. There is such a massive concentration of talent among them, and I can't wait to show off their work to the world. For those of you who loved Nikethana's Techstars Startup Weekend Boston -- buckle up because this is going to rock your world. Sayee Ambekar has revealed the new logo concept for BNT as well, and when you see this you will be floored. It is a consummate combo of the classic and complementary, the elegant and approachable. Engagement is where relationships that can last the longest time are being put together, slowly carefully and intentionally. Here Anishma Metray, MSPM is digging deep to figure out how best to connect the dots. Her entrepreneurial mindset will serve her in good stead, and in the days to come all those seeds she's planting will start to blossom and grow. Lastly but certainly not in the least... the ultimately reliable ROHITH KRISHNAMURTHY and Pranjali Dange --- the wings of BNT, keeping us all aloft operationally and now piecing together data-driven strategies. Never backing down from a challenge, and always the first to leap into the affray. To end the day I reported to the BNT Advisory Board, full of enthusiasm and confidence for the progress that's to come. Once again -- There is nothing more rewarding than seeing your team dig deep and develop themselves. #startups #BostonNewTechnology #startupstories