[SaaS Club] Unconventional Path to Building a 7-Figure SaaS

Hey Reader

I hope you're doing well.

Here's a quick round up of what's been going on at SaaS Club:

🎧 Podcast

pganalyze: Unconventional Path to Building a 7-Figure SaaS

In 2012, after years of painstakingly manual database tuning, Lukas decided to scratch his own itch and build a tool to make database optimization easier for developers everywhere.

But this isn't one of those overnight success stories where a founder quits their job, raises money, and is off to the races with a high-growth startup.

Instead, for the first two years, this was just a side project that Lukas tinkered with on evenings and weekends while he continued working a full-time job to pay the bills.

In 2014, he added a way to accept payments, which was the first step in transitioning to a real business. But traction was slow, and it took another year for Lukas to get the first 10 customers.

Lukas continued working part-time on his business for several more years until 2019 when he finally quit his job and went full-time on his business.

Today, pganalyze is a multiple 7-figure ARR SaaS company, entirely bootstrapped with over 500 customers, including industry leaders like Atlassian and DoorDash.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Lukas's unconventional path to building a multiple seven-figure SaaS business proving there's a multitude of ways to build a company on your own terms.

• How Lukas developed his Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) which enabled him to build a better product, differentiate his offering, and create a winning content marketing strategy.

• What Lukas did when a well-funded and much bigger company launched a competing product and there was no way he could possibly compete in a features arms race.

• How Lukas took on enterprise sales without any prior experience, and the valuable lessons he's learned about sales and negotiation.

I hope you enjoy it.

Listen to the full podcast episode

📗 Book of the Week

This week's book recommendation comes from Lukas:

Don't Just Roll the Dice – A Usefully Short Guide to Software Pricing by Neil Davidson Ph.

🌐 Around the Web

YouTube Channel

Here's a link to the full video episode.

😍 Let's Get Social

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Have a great week!

- Omer

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P.S. whenever you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

1. SaaS Club Plus: We're re-launching a brand new paid community for SaaS founders with an exciting new offering. Join the waitlist!

2. SaaS Club Launch: This 3-month coaching program that gives you the tools, knowledge, and support to fast track your journey to $10K+ MRR.

3. SaaS Club Clarity:  Book a 1-hour consulting session with Omer to get unstuck and gain clarity about your SaaS business.