Table of Contents
- Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
- How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
- Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
- What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
- What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
- Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
Andrew Pierno is the founder of XO Capital - We buy and operate SaaS Companies
Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
Building from scratch is hard. Really hard. I was CTO of an AI company that raised $8M and shut down. I've built and sold an AI company from scratch and exited. I co-founded a marketing agency that does $35k MRR. XO now does $26k MRR. Overall I've launched 30 ish products and have had 2 that succeeded from scratch. Starting from scratch is HARD.
When my venture backed company died and went to zero I took a hard look around and thought there had to be a better way to become an entrepreneur. I discovered Andrew Wilkinson and started diving deep into the world of buying businesses.
I'm not saying buying businesses is easy but you totally eliminate the #1 reason startups fail: they built something nobody wants. I'm all too happy to pay to eliminate that risk. It's the part I'm the worst at anyways.
So far we've bought 6, sold 2, and currently operate 4. We've made money on 100% of the businesses we've bought. You can just pay to "skip" the cold start problem and get right to growth and building features paying customers are asking for.
How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
For all of the companies I started from scratch, I primarily used cold email to get the first customers. I don't have much of a following on social.
For our acquisitions, another benefit of buying a company is that you can see what the founders have already tried and double down on that. For 2/4 of our portfolio companies, that's actually google ads.
Of course over time we've gotten a little more sophisticated. We will use ads and cold email to get more eyeballs and then re-engage people with compelling content on our blog. This is currently working for our portfolio. We are also looking to explore some product led growth tools to move people through our acquisition funnel more efficiently.
For context, one of our products gets a few hundred signups per week. It's far too many to reach out individually, so we're starting to need better tools to manage users and communication at scale (while still trying to make it feel personalized).
Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
As much as is possible I prefer to stick to:
- postgres
- nodejs
- react / nextjs (with tailwind UI)
Sometimes the things we buy are in tech stacks other than this and we have to use contractors to help out sometimes, but ideally our entire portfolio would have the same or similar tech stacks.
What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
- Pirsch for analytics
- Super Send for cold email outreach
- Freshdesk for customer support
- Stripe for payments
- Ghost for blogs
What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
- Don't do it alone. I'm kind of obsessed with $1M one-person businesses, but my first businesses to $1M ARR will probably be XO Capital which has 2 co-founders.
- My failure rate is super high. It took me close to 10 years to make my first dollar online. and I really was trying! Product isn't as important as people say it is. Have a tool that does something necessary and it can be remarkably ugly and still make a ton of money
- Don't be fancy. You don't get any bonus points for starting a business on "hard mode". Sometimes a newsletter is an entire business.
- Competition doesn't matter.
- Overall, your journey is your journey. It's slower than some peoples' and faster than others. Mine felt particularly slow. I've never had a rocketship, I've never been through Y-Combinator. The older I get the more I just keep my head down and put one foot in front of the other.
Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
This month's business books I've read:
I didn't want to like the guy but Alex Hormizi's book $100M offer is really good.
Seth Godin's "This Is Marketing"
Pods - I'm taking a break and really getting back into audio booksNewsletters - Can't unsubscribe fast enough from them
I'm really trying to limit the amount of BS information I consume and focus on creating content.
