Dan Martell: 100x SaaS investor/mentor
Dan Martell is an entrepreneur, angel investor, thought leader, and highly sought-after coach in the SaaS, or software as a service, industry. He founded, scaled, and successfully exited three technology companies within a ten-year period. In 2012 he was named Canada’s top angel investor, having invested in more than 50 start-ups, such as Intercom, Udemy, and Unbounce. In 2016, Martell founded the SaaS Academy and grew it to become one of the largest coaching companies in the world with over 1000+ active clients. He’s also an Ironman athlete, philanthropist, husband, and father of two incredible boys.
Entrepreneurs should create from their own need.
How to make the best investments?
Usually, the reason behind a "no" is fear.
How to consult at scale?
Who should go into SAAS Academy?
Is a book really the same as a blog?
This is how most companies operate.
Do you think this is the future of the educational system?
Find the right area to get crazy about when running your business.
All ideas start out being experienced as problems.
Listen to the podcast:
Notes:
- 00:00: Intro
- 01:10: Consulting and coaching at scale. When there’s one of you, and thousands of people that want your advice, how do you manage that?
- 01:35: How Dan scaled SaaS Academy do a full on business consultancy.
- 02:07: I would hate repeating myself over and over, so that’s why I scaled out my consulting.
- 02:37: Hired my first coach, then multiple coaches, then head of coaching….so a one man consulting business became a large operation. It’s the “Dan Philosophy” but Dan is not really needed.
- 03:48: After he sold Clarity.fm he moved to San Diego, he started doing YouTube. It made him VERY anxious to start recording himself on video. It was the fear of going on camera, the fear of teaching, the fear of nobody watching. He decided to do it in case something happened to him, his boys could still get to know him.
- 05:36: A lot of college students don’t need to go to class because everything’s online (and often better), so the importance of teaching on YouTube is going wayyyy up.
- 07:04: His company doesn’t try to teach people to start SaaS businesses, it’s ONLY for people who have one who want to scale larger.
- 07:37: In any recurring business there’s only 4 variables that will tell you what point in the future you’ll hit your growth ceiling. 1.) How many clients you get. 2.) What you charge per month. 3.) How many people leave every month. 4.) The average price. With that info you can track when you’ll cap out on your sales. This is helpful for seeing how big you can exit. Hopefully they get people out of this capped phase.
- 09:16: “Most CEO’s are actually crazy.” You have to be crazy in certain areas (like starting a biz) and that’s good. Being crazy with people is bad.
- 10:04: The highest end program is called “Boardroom” and that’s where highly profitable SaaS companies try to figure out the perfect exit strategy (going public or selling to private equity or growing).
- 10:40: Most of the companies are from Middle America, mostly in non-tech communities.
- 11:10: “My time is as valuable as my economic production per year.” Calculated hourly it would be tens of thousands of dollars for an hour.
- 12:53: Tim Ferriss has a thing with sponsors that if they NEED THIS, he won’t sponsor them. He also did a thing where he makes people wire liquid money, not credit card because he didn’t want people relying on it for success.
- 14:19: Where are people coming up with SaaS ideas? It’s always best from personal experience. Start being a freelancer, do work for people, then make a tool to stamp out inefficiencies. All ideas are first experience content.
- 15:58: Question entrepreneurs should ask: “What problems do I have in life that I’m passionate about that I want to see go away in the world?” …and go work on those.
- 16:05: The people who run a lot of these SaaS companies are not programmers. He calls the avatar “Software Scaling Sam or Samantha.” They are non-technical, non-coastal state, 36 years old, 2 kids, non-tech bro. They are in industries like trucking, notice there’s no tools to do a process, they get a cousin who’s a programmer, they start a SaaS, and they stalled so they come to Dan.
- 18:05: I realize I live in a bubble 😂: People who are browsing ProductHunt or Flippa are techbros. Most people don’t know websites like that.
- 19:04: When I see employees in our Copywriting Course community, sometimes I’m like, “I want to be in a business like that when I’m 50.”
- 19:25: Train Management…I saw some internal numbers and was astounded.
- 20:00: One client is non-technical, doing astoundingly well, and does a boring business like field service management software. These are best types of businesses. Dan doesn’t like marketing tech because it’s too fast paced and frequently changes. Whereas government contracts last 12 years.
- 21:41: When you jump into a hot industry you are competing against the top talent in the world, whereas a lot of people miss these simple “boring” businesses that solve actual problems that people aren’t competing in.
- 22:08: How to find problems: Look at industries that aren’t dying (so don’t go into newspapers), but look into logistics, 3D printing, drones etc…and figure out what THEY will need. A company that does “HubSpot but for X.” Basically a management system but niched down into a specific industry.
- 23:33: A recently exited founder for $500,000,000 found his idea by going looking for ideas. He was in Facebook Groups browsing for ideas and stumbled across real estate agent management.
- 24:29: Neville validating a newsletter agency. A lot of the leads came from people who were relying on this being the magic bullet. The agencies that are doing well don’t write the newsletter, they just grow the newsletter larger.
- 26:43: Every business starts like a feature. People always say, “Oh that’s just a feature.” But eventually they expand and go upmarket.
- 27:26: “When you invest in companies how do you do it?” Invest in people. That’s the main thing. You also have to spread out 50 to 100 investments with the same amount of money.
- 28:32: So many times I’ve invested in an idea and the company totally implodes because it wasn’t being run by the right people. Co-Founder fighting is maybe 50% the reason why companies die. Sometimes even 3 or 4 co-founders which gets rough because someone is deadweight. So I ask: “Will this person do everything in their power to make this idea come to life?” Or someone who will pivot fast and make it work.
- 29:58: How Dan angel invests. There was no pattern I could see in the billion dollar outcomes expect the people running them. Most people shouldn’t angel invest unless they do at least 12 deals.
- 30:36: Angel investing advice for regular people from Naval Ravikant: “Write the same size check to 12 different companies over 4 years.” You just have to be in market over a 4 year period otherwise you’re trying to pick timing.
- 31:33: Dan would put $50k on each deal, then moved to $100k, then exercising the pro-rata on the winners (that’s where you make the most). When the company does the next round, but then you go in with the new investors so you don’t get diluted.
- 33:33: Warren Buffet makes his money in concentrated bets, but he studies the market (and has talent) 100% of his time and also gets deals no one else gets. But for regular investors without that access and knowledge he says just put it in index funds.
- 35:39: A few places in the country have the highest concentration of IQ where most of the smart founders go to start companies. San Francisco, New York, Boston, Austin etc. because they have a strong network effect of people creating and selling companies.
- 36:15: Out of a fund of 10 companies 1 will make the fund 3x to 10x, then 3 will make you a triple, and 3 you might get your money back and half will be total wipeouts.
- 36:58: There’s a lot of F-ery in the VC space. Many know they are deceiving their LP’s. They delay their reporting so they can bump up their IRR. They mainly make money from the 2% fee from capital raising. The VC’s can’t lose. They’re not accountable for their work for a decade. If it doesn’t work shut that fund down and start a new one with a new angle.
- 39:01: When people say “I hit $1,000,000 in ARR” it doesn’t mean they have a million dollars. It’s sometimes used as a marketing tool.
- 41:00: The worst is when internet marketers say something like “We did $6 million on the launch!” But a lot of times they don’t tell you they paid out $7 million in affiliates and other costs.
- 42:16: Is content marketing part of your strategy? Yes: YouTube, Twitter, and Blogging. Enough people told him to publish more and that got him to do it.
- 43:16: He was in Las Vegas with Alex Hormozi who sat him down and explained that publishing content got so much inflow deals for them, that paying $100,000+/month for content product was totally worth it. “How much money/time/people do you invest per deal?”
- 45:41: If your relationship with your partner is important to you show me where you spend money and time. So when it came to creating content he was trying to optimize for least amount of time filming, but realized it probably needed to be taken far more seriously. He went “pro” and invested in making A LOT of content. Has an unlimited budget for filming, literally unlimited.
- 47:16: Have unlimited money, how do you start making content? Start with strategy and audience. Who do you want to serve? What's your unique message? What are you doing that’s different? What’s your unique opinion? First talked to all the big social media personalities. Pick and focus. They first went all in on Instagram till they got it rolling, then moved to YouTube.
- 49:36: SEO is not even a thing for them anymore. Getting discovered via a page on Google is not a priority anymore.
- 51:43: A lot content creators might be missing: Do it for the people. Have an opinion.
- 52:28: Dan’s personal search usage is probably 60% ChatGPT over Google.
- 53:04: Why write a book? “I’ve read over 1,800 books.” “I tell kids who ask about my McLaren “I bought this car with books.” A friend wanted him to write a book so took on the project. It took 2.5 years. It was a painfully long process.
- 55:02: When the book came out, people who never watched/listened to anything he put out would read his book.
- 55:45: A book is technically just a long blog post, BUT there’s something about a book that’s immortale.
- 57:40: Book that’s changed your life? Love Is A Killer App by Tim Sanders
- 58:04: Rich people buy things that make them money, poor people buy things they consume, middle class buy stuff that improves their credit score.
- 58:30: What skills are you teaching your kids so they can succeed? Critical thinking and emotional intelligence.
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