SaaS is Dead. Long Live New SaaS.

Nick Lissette is the founder and CEO of Black Pearl Group, a New Zealand-born SaaS company generating over $12.5M in ARR from the US market and he’s just getting started.

With a relentless drive and a famously no-BS approach to business, Nick has been scaling startups since he was 24, when he bought his first company for $1, walked into an office with a server, a car park, and no clue what he was doing and figured it out the hard way.

Since then, he’s built and sold multiple businesses, survived the brutal cycles of SaaS, and taken Black Pearl public on the NZX, with plans now underway for a dual listing on the ASX. Under his leadership, Black Pearl has launched a suite of products that use real AI, not vaporware, to help SMEs in the US find and close more customers. Nick doesn’t just talk about AI—his team builds it, deploys it, and uses it to scale faster with fewer people. And yes, he thinks Elon might’ve had a point about Twitter headcount.

Nick is as authentic as they come. He tells it like it is, about fundraising, hiring tough operators, managing burnout, building billion-dollar visions, and grinding through hill runs with his teenage son to stay mentally sharp.

Whether he’s cold-calling from a Taco Bell in Arizona or closing deals face-to-face in the US, Nick plays to win, and he’ll either succeed or “die trying.”

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