Podcasts Business Starting from Nothing - The Foundation Podcast | Building your business ENTIRELY from scratch. SFN226: The SaaS Cheat Code - with Dan Schwartz

SFN226: The SaaS Cheat Code - with Dan Schwartz

Published: Aug. 8, 2017, 11 a.m.

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If you are a non-technical person, you can still start (and grow) a successful software company.

Dan Schwartz is the Founder & CEO of InvestorFuse, a bootstrapped SaaS company that just hit $1M in annual revenue. However, Dan isn\\u2019t a developer and he hasn\\u2019t written any code.

Dan also wrote one of The Foundation\\u2019s most successful guest blog posts, \\u201cThe SaaS Cheat Code," and today he\\u2019s going to share the cheat code with you.


In This Interview I Ask:

  • 1:40 - How did Dan get started, and how did he wind up building a software company?
  • 5:30 - What was the community you shared your solution with, and how did you reach them?
  • 11:20 - It\\u2019s expensive to build the software from scratch so, instead of doing that, Dan built it on top of Podio. How much did that save you?
  • 12:30 - Did the customer base care at all that it was built on Podio?
  • 16:50 - What were Dan\\u2019s biggest lessons from all of this?
  • 19:40 - Where is Dan going next?


People Don\\u2019t Care How Their Problems are Solved

\\u201cWe could have built InvestorFuse on Microsoft Word, as long as it did what we said it would do.\\u201d

When starting InvestorFuse, Dan saved a lot of money by building the product on top of Podio. They were able to go from idea to beta launch in just three months!

Dan wrote in his guest post, \\u201cHere\\u2019s the big realization: Cloud based software services, APIs, and integrations that connect all these tools together have made it easier than ever for non-techy people to quickly prototype the building blocks of a SaaS \\u2026 A ton of investors were using Podio at the time because of its flexibility, but with flexibility came some challenges.\\u201d

Dan solved those problems by systematizing and automating parts of Podio.

By productizing the automation service, he was able to sell customers a solution. The customers didn\\u2019t care that it was built on Podio because they were still able to stay on top of their leads and close more deals.


Resources

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