The SaaS Podcast: Founder Interviews - Page 20

Kevin Lee, We-Care

2,500 Merchant Partnerships Built One Network

Kevin Lee is the founder and CEO of We-Care.com, a platform that allows online shoppers to donate a percentage of their purchases to a nonprofit, school, or association at no cost to the consumer. The platform has partnered with over 2,500 merchants including Travelocity, Sears, 1-800-Flowers, and Apple. To date, We-Care has raised over $7.8 million for nonprofits. Kevin is also the co-founder and CEO of Didit (DIT), a full-service online advertising and marketing agency that has been in business for almost 20 years. Running Didit gave Kevin the financial runway to invest in We-Care as a side venture. The We-Care story starts with a $160,000 failure. Kevin built a proxy server designed to monetize web traffic at the organizational level for universities, hospitals, and corporations. Despite a patent application and working prototype, no IT department would adopt it. The lesson: Kevin had built in secret without talking to potential users first. That failure led to a pivot. Kevin rewrote the technology as a consumer browser plugin that alerts shoppers when a merchant is part of the We-Care network. Instead of trying to sell to enterprise IT teams, he went directly to consumers. Through SaaS partnerships with affiliate networks like LinkShare, Commission Junction, and Pepper Jam, We-Care scaled to 2,500 merchants without a large biz dev team. Kevin's philosophy of architecting win-win SaaS partnerships runs through every part of the business. Merchants get more loyal customers. Nonprofits get ongoing micro-donations. Consumers give to their cause just by shopping. And We-Care operates on a 50/50 revenue split when marketing costs are covered by earned media. The business now has 14 employees and continues to find creative growth channels, including a sweepstakes platform called Sweeps for a Cause that doubles as a conversion enhancer for other marketers.

Josh Ledgard, KickoffLabs

Tested 5 Ideas With Landing Pages Then Built the Winner

Josh Ledgard spent years running a 30-person product team at a Dallas-based company, working 60-hour weeks. When his wife was pregnant, he decided to leave and build something of his own. He teamed up with his co-founder Scott, and together they brainstormed 50 different business ideas. Their SaaS go-to-market approach was unconventional. They narrowed the 50 ideas to five finalists, then built landing pages for each one and drove traffic to measure interest. The idea that got twice as many email signups as anything else was a tool for building landing pages - the very thing they had just done manually. KickoffLabs was born from scratching their own itch. Launch day was underwhelming. They made about $10 in the first month and had maybe three paying customers. But Josh refused to wait for organic discovery. He spent 20 minutes a day on Twitter finding people who mentioned landing pages or competitors, then sent personalized messages referencing their bios, schools, or specific frustrations. He posted detailed answers on Quora. He even targeted users of a competitor called LaunchRock that was restricting access, telling them "real entrepreneurs don't wait in line." That personal SaaS go-to-market hustle defined KickoffLabs' early growth. Josh and Scott personally emailed and gave customized landing page advice to the first 1,000 signups. They built features whenever two or three paying customers asked for the same thing. By the end of year one, they could pay themselves a reasonable wage. The bigger challenge came from retention. Since half their customers were launching new businesses - and most startups fail - churn was built into the business model. Josh had to expand the product beyond launch pages into ongoing campaigns, contests, and integrations with Mailchimp and Salesforce to attract customers with recurring needs. Today KickoffLabs has about 1,000 paying customers, generates $35,000 to $40,000 per month, and has helped customers generate over 3 million leads. The SaaS go-to-market lessons Josh learned in those early days still drive the business. He runs it with a small team, takes five-week family trips to Ireland, and works far fewer hours than his corporate days demanded.

The SaaS Podcast

2,500 Merchant Partnerships Built One Network

From $10 Day One to an 8-Figure Marketplace

How Moz Built a Content Marketing Flywheel

How Blogging 5 Nights a Week Built a $29M SaaS

From 7 Years of Failure to 700 Customers With Content

From Free Marketplace to $1M in Freemium SaaS Revenue

The Bullseye Framework for Startup Traction

Competitive Differentiation That Beat Google at Search

The Freemium SaaS Playbook Behind Trello's Millions

How KISSmetrics Blog Became a SaaS Content Marketing Engine

From Free to Freemium SaaS With Mid 7-Figure Revenue

The SaaS Co-Founder Mistake Most Startups Make

One SaaS Positioning Bet That Beat Microsoft Project

Why This Founder Made a 7-Figure SaaS Exit

From WordPress Plugin to 7-Figure Bootstrap to Profitability

Charging More Doubled Revenue for This SaaS

How Close.io Used Startup Sales Hustle to Hit 7 Figures

From Blog to 6-Figure SaaS with Content Marketing

From Agency to Freemium SaaS with 350K Users

How Olark Grew to Multi-Millions as a Self-Funded SaaS

Spreadsheet to $5M with Content Marketing

How to Build a SaaS Marketplace 4 Times

He Sold a PDF for $300 Then Built a Niche SaaS

Tested 5 Ideas With Landing Pages Then Built the Winner