Michael is the founder of Podcast Score.
To read the full interview with Michael, check out page 218 of Kicking SaaS: 101 Founders on What it Takes to Launch a Software as a Service.
Why did you leave your previous company?
I left because the CEO wanted to go with his gut instead of the customer research. That ended up killing the company. I was leading product, and I knew what the customers were saying and I knew what we needed to build to get people to buy it. I knew it was nothing that was going to be sexy.
The game of building a SaaS business is totally separate from the game of building a venture-backed business. I was interested in game #1, not game #2.
Is it always a bad idea to raise capital?
If you want to attract good venture capital, don’t raise money till your Series A. Because if your business can’t be profitable from the start, what are you doing? There are too many micro-SaaS options to say you can’t build your product without a million dollars – or even a quarter million – in capital. Now, the vast majority of SaaS ideas are cheap to build, especially if you have a working knowledge of no- code tools.
What are investors looking for?
Once you hit $10k MRR, people will throw money at your business. If you look around on Twitter, you’ll find venture capitalists who put out tweets that say “DM me if you hit this,” because that’s their sole requirement. They want to see that you can become a million dollar business. And if they’re making an angel investment, a $1M/year SaaS will pay itself off. If they’re looking for an exit, then they need the 100X scale. They might be looking for 20k or 30k or 50k before they throw money in. Once there’s one or two going in your space, then they’re just backing that space of assets. As soon as your team shows that you can develop traction, they don’t care about anything else.
What’s the #1 mistake that you see SaaS founders making?
Building a SaaS company. The vast majority of founders are not qualified to start their company. They need time in the industry, whatever they’re trying to build for.
I’m from the Midwest. My brother went to a very, very good school on the East Coast. I dropped out of school, went to a coding boot camp, and moved to the Bay Area. My general opinion of SaaS founders from the coasts is that they are younger, less qualified, and more entitled. The SaaS founders from the Midwest are beasts and you never hear about them until they sell their company for $200-$300 million.
The flashy stuff comes from the coasts. That’s where you get en- tertainment, marketing, adtech, and social. But I see way more mon- ey in industrial companies that are coming out of the Midwest and the inner corridors.
A lot of SaaS companies should be selling services alongside the product. You do a ton of work in the early days of SaaS to brand your company as reliable. In doing so, you open yourself up to the opportunity to take on some very lucrative consulting engagements, or custom enterprise work. While doing that might seem counterintuitive, it can give you a massive head start in market research and provide much needed revenue.
What’s a practical way to start a SaaS company?
Building a $5k/month SaaS company – or a micro-SaaS company – is a lot easier. It’s not too hard. It’s highly salable. It’s got everything you want in an asset. People build micro-SaaS companies, and somebody else buys them and grows them after. You’re making maybe 50, 60, maybe 100k on the actual revenue, but then you’re selling the asset and picking up $100k or $200k.
At the end of the day, you’ve got to know the market gaps, and how to validate your idea.
To read the full interview with Michael, check out page 218 of Kicking SaaS: 101 Founders on What it Takes to Launch a Software as a Service.