Hey bootstrappers,

If you want to sell a business one day, you won’t find an easier one to sell than SaaS. 

VCs invested more in SaaS last year than any before, and the number of businesses relying on SaaS products is expected to rise to 80 percent this year. 

Buyers also love SaaS companies because they’re easy to compare and recurring revenue projections can lead to a more accurate valuation (and potential return).

Don’t worry if you’re non-technical, either. We’ve interviewed many founders who switched to SaaS from agencies, ecommerce, and more, and most weren’t technical when they started. 

The mice poop in the cereal is that SaaS can require a big sales and marketing budget. Or a long-tail SEO strategy costing you in quality writers if you don’t have time to write yourself. (Or you could white-label your product like our founder, Andrew Gazdecki, did to scale his former SaaS.) 

See what this week’s founders say about how they got their start in SaaS.

Chris Roper

Managing Editor

It’s Time to Free Doctors and Therapists From Admin So They Can Concentrate on Their Patients

Patrik Inzinger and his cofounders chose to help medical practitioners manage their practices with an all-in-one SaaS platform called appointmed (little “a” intentional).

Patrick had been a product designer for most of his career before he and his cofounding team began building startups. At first, they tried to disrupt the finance industry but lacked the industry connections to make it work. They turned to healthcare as another sector in need of upgrading.

In Patrick’s native Austria, healthcare has been slow to adopt technology. Most doctors still use notepads, pens, and a paper filing system. If Patrick and his team built a cloud-based practice management system, they’d help healthcare professionals save costs and provide better care.

“Products like ours have made the industry more aware of how SaaS can provide real benefits to a traditional market. Now, there are no more data security concerns for them, no backups to worry about, no hardware infrastructure to maintain, and so on. No downside to modernizing.”

Turning Points

1. Sharing an early prototype with doctors. The first iteration was just a booking system, but professionals wanted software that covered every aspect of practice management.

2. Asking for referrals when customers are happiest. After three months, customers realized all the benefits so that’s when Patrick approached them for referrals.

3. Automating to stay bootstrapped. Patrick runs a small remote team and has automated as much internal admin as possible to stay lean as the business grows.

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After Helping Her Family Connect During Covid, This Founder’s Chatbot Now Brings Remote Teams Together

Kaylee McHugh brought her family together over their love of the NBA with a simple chatbot – now it’s helping remote teams bond with conversation prompts and profiles.

Kaylee was recovering from the failure of her first startup when Covid struck. Bored of watching TV for hours, she decided to help her husband and mom connect while separated in lockdown. The result was a simple chatbot that sent her loved ones SMS conversation starters.

After seeing how much the prompts helped, Kaylee wondered whether something similar would work for remote teams. Together with her cofounder, Ericka Schubert, Kaylee built a prototype that would get people who don’t know each other or even live in the same state bonding.

“Many companies struggle to motivate and engage remote employees because it’s incredibly hard to get to know people. Some find the answer to that in surveys and performance reviews. But our research shows that the best way to engage a team is to get to know one another and make sure that everyone feels like they belong.”

Turning points

1. Asking remote-working friends to test the product. Kaylee reworked her prototype after beta testers told her what worked and what was missing.

2. Choosing to hire part-time employees. As female cofounders, Kaylee and Erica wanted to offer opportunities that would balance the needs of family life.

3. Investing in email marketing. Kaylee’s had the most success with cold emails, and even when she gets a “no”, she uses that to improve her next campaign.

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This Founder Turned Down a Million-Dollar Client to Build a Review Platform People Can Trust

When Landon Taylor saw the big review sites give an unfair advantage to companies paying to list, he switched from creative agency to SaaS to put things right.

Landon’s clients often complained that review sites were holding them to ransom. Pay for their advertising packages, and you’d appear higher on their search pages. Otherwise, you’d languish at or near the bottom. Far from objective, these business models hurt competition.

Armed with this insight, Landon decided to build a reviews platform that would forever ban pay-to-play participation. He enlisted the help of his former clients to help collect reviews from their customers, and slowly, and with his agency’s profits to help, Best Company grew.

“Consumers should have confidence in the reviews that they’re reading from these companies. The little guys doing the good work were pushed to the sidelines. Our competition is garbage.”

Turning points

1. Borrowing from the SBA to launch the business. As loans go, the SBA offers attractive rates and terms, and it significantly cut Landon’s time to market.

2. Investing his agency’s profits into Best Company. Landon might’ve spent the money on a lavish lifestyle, but instead helped Best Company reach $20 million in ARR.

3. Asking for reviews immediately after customers buy. With SMS and email marketing, Landon can catch customers when they’re enjoying the product or service.

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