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 Jakob Wikström, the founder of Mobal. They discussed how he increased their revenue from $30k per month to $120k per month TTM (trailing twelve months).

Jakob has extensive experience in the hospitality industry—he worked as a hotel manager and consultant prior to starting Mobal. He recognized the challenges that businesses faced in managing their online presence across various platforms and decided to develop a solution to help them streamline the process. 

 

About Mobal

Mobal is a listing metadata management SaaS that helps businesses manage and optimize their online presence on various platforms, including Google, Yelp, and Facebook. This helps improve their visibility, reputation, and credibility online, leading to increased traffic, engagement, and sales.

Their software allows businesses to: 

  • Manage their listings
  • Monitor customer reviews
  • Optimize keywords
  • Track analytics from a single dashboard

Jakob started the company in 2015, initially focusing on providing a solution for optimizing and managing online listings for vacation rental properties. However, he soon realized that the solution could be expanded to help other types of businesses, including restaurants, hotels, and retail stores.

 

Challenges

Building a strong team.

Hiring and retaining talented employees was one of the challenges Jakob faced. He emphasized the importance of building a strong team with a shared vision and culture and investing in employee development and training.

 

Advice to Other Founders

Target specific niches within a larger market.

Instead of competing with larger, established players in the market, focus on specific niches where you can provide unique value. Develop targeted marketing campaigns and tailored solutions for these niche markets to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Invest in marketing.

Marketing is critical for SaaS businesses, as it helps attract new customers and build brand awareness. Invest in targeted advertising campaigns, content marketing, and SEO to get the word out about your product.

Focus on customer retention.

It's cheaper to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones, so make sure you focus on customer retention. Offer exceptional customer service, provide regular updates and new features, and make it easy for customers to renew their subscriptions.

 

Bonus

  1. His favorite book is Ray Dalio's "Principles."
  2. Currently, Jakob’s following a new CEO, Stephen Barley, who has a podcast.
  3. His favorite online tool for building Mobal is SalesLoft.
  4. He wishes he knew to make more mistakes when he was 20.

 

TL;DR

He has grown his company's revenue by 200% every year, with a current run rate of $1.5 million, up from just $35k a month one year ago. Recently, the company closed its first round of funding for $2 million at a post-money valuation of $10 million. Prior to that, they had two early angel investors who put in a total of $10k to $30k each. Jakob Wikström and his co-founder split the equity 50/50 for their tool, Mobal.io, which helps businesses keep their metadata updated across multiple listing sites, including Google Places and other app exchanges. 


PS Here is a link to the full interview if you are interested in listening to the full episode: How he grew from $30k/mo to $120k/mo TTM for his business listing metadata management SaaS

 

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See you again next week.


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