Hey - Marc here.


Happy Saturday morning, motivated B2B SaaS Founders!


Here's at least one tip to keep in mind as you grow your B2B SaaS company:


Today's issue takes about 5 minutes to read.

 

Read this online →

 

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In today's issue, I share some key takeaways from a recent interview between Nathan Latka, the host of Daily Interviews with SaaS Founders, and Eli Rubel, the CEO and founder of Matter Made. They discussed how he did $6.1m in revenue, helping Loom, Dropbox, and G2 break $100m in ARR.


Eli dropped out of art school and felt the need to get his foot in the door in tech, and contract management sounded like his ticket. By Silicon Valley standards, this company was a total failure. He sold it for $3m but walked away with a 7-figure outcome and learned a ton — the relationships and trust he built from that became the platform for everything else.

 

About Matter Made

Matter Made was launched in 2019. Their first year's revenue was around 900k. They had a monthly retainer and 6-month deals and have a very similar model until today — with a paid media side of the business. 

Their process:

They look at what they call "demand efficiency." What differentiates them is they zoom out further and talk about all the different growth surfaces — something as common as:

  • Actual channels and how effective they are on those channels
  • The soft tissue between touchpoints
  • How trials handed off between sales and marketing
  • Upsell motion that is triggered by in-product behavior
  • Customer focus and revenue orchestration
  • Top-of-the-funnel and mid-funnel marketing
  • Messaging alignment, experimentation, and retention

These are the high-level buckets and life-cycle nurtures that go into demand efficiency. Within each of these, several qualifying questions will tell you how well you're doing. Many of these companies ignore these surfaces, especially early on.


P.S. Matter Made currently has 12 employees serving ten customers and earning 300k monthly revenue. Last year, they did a $6.1m top line with 37 employees and, since then, downsized.

 

Challenges

He got burned out from his first SaaS company and needed to take a break from tech. 

After selling his first SaaS, Glider, he acquired an e-commerce company about to shut down. Buying this business allowed him to extend his QSBS (Qualified Small Business Stock) exemption from Glider. He sold it to a PE firm in 2019 and later started Matter Made. 


Most paid media agencies are agency people starting agencies. 

Coming from SaaS, Eli knew how broken that model was, so instead, they do a performance-based model where they set their pricing based on growth milestones that help them ensure their clients win in the process.

 

Advice to Other Founders

Focus on a specific segment of your TAM (Total Addressable Market). 

Many early-stage companies want to get in front of everyone they can. The reality is that if your budget is strapped, you can't just try to boil the ocean. Or you can — but it's going to be way less effective. Whereas if you focus on 10% of your TAM, you might be able to get in front of them 15 more times in a specific period. 


Don't over-invest in tech stacks.

Most people think that tech will solve their fundamental problems, but it won't. Usually, step one is getting clarity on your buyer journey. This needs to be segmented appropriately. From the first touch point through to revenue, clearly define that from marketing influence, sales influence, product influence, and retention. 


No tool's one-size-fits-all.

Don't be a fanboy of anything in particular. Ask yourself what would be the right tool for the job and what's minimally invasive. By then, you would know where your gaps are that technology could fill rather than this being manual.

 

Bonus

  1. Eli's favorite business book is "Never Eat Alone" by Keith Ferrazzi.
  2. The tool he lives and dies for building Matter Made is HubSpot.
  3. Married with a 1-year-old daughter at 34 and gets 9.5 hours of sleep every night (more than the average founder!)

 

TL;DR

Eli had his first SaaS business a couple of years ago, where he raised $1.2m and sold for $3m. As a significant stakeholder, he got away with a 7-figure outcome. He used the money to buy an e-commerce brand but failed miserably, so he flash-sold that. Then he got into Matter Made, where now he works with some of the fastest-growing brands you've heard of, like Loom and G2, helping them decrease CAC or increase revenue and drive more pipelines. On average, they charge $30-40k a month in revenue and are currently working with ten customers. They'll do about $3.6m ARR this year, down from $6.1m last year. Eli is now spinning off his design agency to continue running this.

 

P.S. Here is a link to the full interview if you are interested in listening to the full episode: Imagine doing $6.1m in revenue helping Loom, Dropbox, and G2 break $100m in ARR.

 

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See you again next week.


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