[SaaS Club] From Fiverr Side Gig to $3M ARR 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

Levanta: From Fiverr Side Gig to $3M ARR SaaS

In 2020, Ian and Rob set out to launch a SaaS company and began talking to investors right away. 

However, as two recent college graduates with no product or engineering team, they were quickly laughed out of the room.

Undeterred, the aspiring founders pivoted to a services company, with the goal of generating enough revenue to self-fund their SaaS dream.

They came up with a clever way to validate their business idea by posting services as gigs on Fiverr. Within days, they'd received over 100 responses and felt confident in launching their affiliate marketing agency.

But for the next two years, transforming their agency into a SaaS company proved incredibly difficult. 

They managed to grow the services business to 7-figures, but it was barely profitable, and they were kept busy running the business.

Eventually, they got a lucky break.

They got an acquisition offer for Grovia for a mid-7-figure valuation. Which finally gave them the money and time to build their SaaS company.

Learning from their past mistakes, they spent months rigorously validating the idea through customer interviews before investing in building an MVP.

After years of trial and error, they finally got traction.

Within 9 months of launch, their SaaS company Levanta hit over $230K in MRR, with over 650 brands and 2,500 affiliates on their platform.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How Ian and Rob used Fiverr to validate their idea and how you can use it to quickly and cheaply test out new business ideas.

• Why having to start an agency first was a blessing in disguise and how it helped them succeed years later with their SaaS.

• Why the founders look back now and are grateful their first attempt at building a SaaS failed and why it would have been a costly mistake.

• What mistakes the founders made validating their SaaS initially, the lessons they learned, and what they did differently the second time.

• How they built partnerships to rapidly acquire customers and reach nearly $3M in ARR within 9 months of launching.

I hope you enjoy it.

Listen to the full podcast episode

 🧰 Attio: Radically Flexible CRM for SaaS Startups

If you’re a SaaS startup tired of wrestling with rigid and outdated CRM software that hinders your growth, then say hello to Attio.

Attio is a radically flexible CRM built for startups just like yours. It adapts to any go-to-market motion - product-led, sales-led, or beyond.

Attio configures seamlessly to your workflows and data structures, no matter how unique. It comes with powerful automations and enriches your customer data within minutes. Build systems that take your go-to-market to the next level.

Say goodbye to one-size-fits-all CRM and outdated user experiences. With Attio, you can scale your SaaS startup to the next level.

Signup for free at attio.com

📗 Book of the Week

This week's books recommendations is:

Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World by Rand Fishkin

 👩‍💻 Hostinger: Cloud/VPS Hosting for SaaS

As a SaaS startup, you need hosting with rock-solid reliability so you can focus on building game-changing products, not debugging servers.

Hostinger's Cloud and VPS hosting solutions deliver optimized speeds and ironclad security running on a global infrastructure with 99.9% uptime.

Built-in auto-scaling dynamically matches capacity to traffic. Caching accelerates load times. Firewalls keep threats at bay.

What's more, daily automated backups give peace of mind if issues ever occur. And you get 24/7 support from experts to guide you.

Hostinger balances robust hosting and affordability. So you can devote your energy to building great products, not managing infrastructure.

Get started with an exclusive 10% discount (Use code: saaspodcast)

🌐 Around the Web

YouTube Channel

Here's a link to the full video episode.

😍 Let's Get Social

Want to get more social? Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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 Launch: Join an awesome mastermind group of early-stage SaaS founders supporting each other to 6-figures in revenue and beyond.

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

3. SaaS Club Accelerate:  Want to work directly 1:1 with Omer? Apply for a free strategy session.