S1E7 - Bootstrapping To A 200M Acquisition With Patrick Campbell

Mar 21, 2023

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How to bootstrap your B2B SaaS to a 200M acquisition? Our guest expert Patrick Campbell did it, and he will share his learnings and knowledge on this show.

Why you need to listen to Patrick - Thanks to his company's analytics product, Profitwell Metrics, he has access to the payments data from around 3600 SaaS companies. This brings even a more unique context to his story as he has this rich data library at his disposal.

How did you manage bootstrap acquisition for your business? The successful bootstrapping of his own B2B SaaS startup to a $200 million acquisition resulted from the willingness to optimize for the long term. They published lots of content from understanding the system they were working with, engaged with the target audience, and utilized the feedback accordingly. There were also effective cost-management strategies and intentional culture. Generally, they built a great product with high NPS.

Would you ever charge for your free Metrics product - The Profitwell Metrics product does not lend itself to moving it to be paid because the nature of the market is not conducive. Thus, Patrick reckons it does not make business sense to start charging for it. He finds the alternative more appealing - instead of skimming a couple of millions at the minimum, they would instead work for a potential hundred billion dollars of lifetime revenue from the free Profitwell Metrics. Instead, the business can add other features to the paid-for effect.

Challenges in converting a free trial to paid subscriptions - The hardest thing with bootstrapping with freemium was financial challenges. It would have helped Profitwell Metrics if they initially raised money for the free multi-product that required accuracy. Also, because of the first-timer effect, most of the actions were reactionary, given that it was his company.

What does the data say? - The most successful SaaS companies utilize metric-based pricing. In B2B SaaS, a successful pricing model considers what the target customer values.

Tactical churn, which often contributes to 20%-40% of credit card failures, can be addressed through revamping optimization and getting your monthly customers to annual arrangements.

Advice to B2B SaaS companies growing towards 10k monthly revenue - focus on some measure of activation or engagement with your user before concentrating on making money. It helps to create a small number of customers pleased about using your product.

Biggest advice: Cuttle with the Chaos.

Key Timecodes

(0:32) Introduction of today's topic and guest
(1:36) Why you need to listen to Patrick
(3:05) Types of premium
(6:32) Free trial to paid conversion rate
(8:36) Challenges in converting a free trial to paid subscriptions
(10:20) Would you ever charge for your free Metrics product
(12:47) How did you manage bootstrap acquisition for your business
(20:21) What SaaS companies need to do for growth
(25:05) Secrets of successful SaaS companies
(27:45) Role of customers when raising your prices
(32:00) How to decrease churn for your business
(35:55) Advice to companies with 10k monthly revenue
(38:39) Patrick's contact information

The show is hosted by Joran Hofman, founder of Reditus.

Learn more about the podcast: https://www.getreditus.com/grow-your-b2b-saas-podcast/