Does your product have a hook? I mean, a value hook.  The hook is when someone can see exactly who your product is for and why it’s valuable. These product hooks get stuck in your customer’s minds like a jingle to a catchy song.  It’s what makes them say “Oh, I get it”.  But the way you make (or sharpen) your hook is called positioning.

At 17 years old, I learned to code. It was the skill that helped me out of a pretty dark place, and I actually got pretty good at it.  But after 10 years of writing code for my own companies, I had to confront a difficult truth:  I was the bottleneck in my own company. I realised that writing code wasn’t enough. I had to be a leader. I had to learn how to hire, train, retain and manage different

If everything in your business fell apart, and you had to rebuild from scratch… what would you do differently? This is usually a hypothetical question. But not necessarily nowadays… and definitely not for Ben Jabbawy a few years back. Ben is the founder and CEO of Privy, marketing automation software for e-commerce stores. In 2013, they raised a seed round $2 MIL from investors. 2 years later, in 2015… all they had left was $1000 in the bank. They had

Today, the tables have turned and the microphone is being flipped. Instead of interviewing a SaaS founder… …a SaaS founder is interviewing me! I’m pleased to share with you a special interview hosted by Liam Martin, co-founder of Time Doctor and co-organizer of Running Remote.  Liam is a successful entrepreneur that helps remote businesses manage their teams efficiently. A service that couldn't come at a better time with remote work taking precedence in today's world of economic uncertainty. He’s also

Today, I’m going to give you the 5 most profitable business ideas that you can start in 2020. Yes, THIS YEAR. Profitable meaning:  Low risk High reward Great return on investment Quick to take to market Capable of growing and scaling Not all business ideas are equal. An idea is only valuable if it’s actionable and profitable.  These ideas I’m about to show you? They’re the good ones.

When I built my company Clarity.fm, I remember staying up until 3AM designing how this software would work. But I’m not a designer. So I used an awesome wireframing tool called Balsamiq. It was a dream to use. In no time at all, I had a working prototype for my SaaS, the same one that was later successfully acquired by Fundable. I love Balsamiq. And I recommend it to all “graphically challenged” software founders.

“How do I find a problem that would be perfect to solve with a SaaS?” YES! Now that’s a good question. I come in contact with a lot of SaaS founders and business owners (or the wannabes) that ask the wrong questions. You can tell when their mindset isn’t in the right place. Fixating on bad questions means pouring your mental energy down the drain and wondering why your business is flushing itself out to sea. So when I hear

Bzzzt. Bzzzt. “Hello?” “Hi Dan, I’m calling from Google. We’re interested in potentially buying your company…” Ok, it didn’t go quite like that, but it’s true - my first call with a potential acquirer was with Google. I was super excited! I mean… Google?! They’ve got money to burn, and I was ready to take it! ...then I proceeded to make some big mistakes. 

Investors WANT to spend their money. Yes, they actually want to write big, big cheques. For years, I believed that the stories of successful SaaS businesses that attracted massive investments were just myths. Unicorns. Until 3 things happened:

I’ve never been one to watch wrestling.  Rarely ever step in the ring for a boxing match.  But despite not being much of a sports guy... I sure know how it feels to get slammed to the ground by life, kept in it’s chokehold, and kicked in the gut while I’m there. Failure after failure, problem after problem, it was mentors and business coaches that helped me through everything that went wrong.