From Blogging to Big Bucks Insights (and inspiration) from SaaStock founder and CEO Alex Theuma

Alex Theuma is the founder of SaaStock, the world's leading community and media platform for the global B2B SaaS ecosystem. While SaaStock started out as a blog, it's now a multi-million-dollar company, with it hitting US$4.8 million in revenue last year. In an interview with Entrepreneur United Kingdom, Theuma offered a peek into his entrepreneurial journey, while also sharing actionable strategies for other founders to take inspiration from—here are excerpts from the conversation.

What was your motivation behind starting SaaStock, and how has building a strong community contributed to its success and growth?

Entrepreneurs often share a common trait: a lifelong entrepreneurial spirit. From a young age, I was building lemonade stands, creating perfume, selling various items, and doing newspaper rounds. By 16, I had a job at McDonald's—I was always looking for ways to earn money.

In my early 20s, I had business ideas, but lacked the drive to act on them, feeling limited by a lack of capital. If I had realized earlier that there are ways to bring ideas to fruition without money, I might have started something sooner, and not waited so long to start SaaStock.

As I entered my 30s, with 11 years of experience in sales and three years in cloud computing, I became increasingly intrigued by SaaS. I thought if I don't start a business now, when would I? This spurred me to take action. Around 2014, I noticed a gap in the SaaS blogosphere. Existing blogs were either from vendors like HubSpot, trying to sell products, or from venture capitalists looking to elevate their profiles. A neutral, community-driven blog didn't exist.

I decided to create SaaScribe, a blog for SaaS founders. Despite not being a writer or having run a SaaS business, I reached out to experts for original content. Within three months, the blog had around 30,000 monthly visitors. This success led me to start the SaaS Revolution Show podcast, a Slack channel for founders, SaaS-focused meetups, and a newsletter.

The community's demand for a conference led to the launch of SaaStock in 2016, attracting 700 entrepreneurs from 34 countries. Building an engaged community was key to our success, and it remains vital even today. Through meetups, Slack channels, and our annual conference, we have fostered a thriving community that continues to support SaaStock's growth.

How do you view the rapid growth of the SaaS market, and its attractiveness to entrepreneurs and investors?

The SaaS industry has grown rapidly for most of the time I've been running SaaStock. However, there was a significant market correction last year.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an influx of money from venture capitalists, leading to numerous investments, the creation of thousands of unicorns, and inflated valuations. Companies hired massively, planning for the next 24 months. But in 2023, due to macroeconomic issues, there was a substantial pullback from investors. The market saw a drastic reduction in available funds, especially at the growth stage.

Investors advised their portfolio companies to focus on profitability, leading to numerous redundancies and down rounds, where companies had to raise funds at lower valuations than before. Certainly the period from 2023 to now has been the toughest time in SaaS in the nine years I've been running SaaStock.

However, there is more investment expected in 2024, with significant hype around artificial intelligence (AI) and substantial funding rounds for AI companies. The expectation is that Q3 and Q4 of 2024 will improve, and by 2025, we will be back on track. The SaaS market is still growing, albeit at a slower rate over the last two years. Despite this slowdown, the growth rate is expected to pick up. Currently, the SaaS market is around $350 billion, with projections that by 2030, it could reach $900 billion to $1 trillion.

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What trends do you anticipate shaping the industry in the coming years?

AI is here to stay, and it's evident that every SaaS company will need to integrate AI, and become, in some sense, an AI company. This integration ties in nicely because AI, while it can be a standalone sector, is fundamentally about enhancing software. Therefore, it's likely that nearly all SaaS products will incorporate AI. New companies are building AI capabilities from the ground up, while legacy companies are integrating AI into their existing products. This trend will shape the industry over the next few years and possibly even longer.

Last year was marked by a significant focus on AI as well as the challenges tech companies faced due to budget cuts, leading to slowed growth. Despite these challenges, AI's integration into SaaS is becoming a necessity. Both new and legacy SaaS companies are embedding AI into their products, and this will play a crucial role in shaping the future of the industry.

What are common scaling mistakes SaaS founders make, and how can they avoid them?

First-time founders will inevitably make mistakes; there will be bumps along the road. The biggest mistakes typically revolve around hiring the right people—arguably the number one challenge. People are the driving force behind every business, and getting hiring right is crucial. Whether it's hiring a Vice President of Sales too early, or just choosing the wrong one, people issues will almost always arise as you scale.

You can mitigate these mistakes to some extent, and there are numerous excellent books on the hiring process. It's essential to have a thorough process in place. You need to find the right person for your business's current stage and where you aim to go. Ideally, hire someone who has "been there, done that." If they haven't experienced your specific growth stage, or have only worked for established companies, they might not be the right fit, despite an impressive resume and big-name logos.

When scaling, consider using executive search companies. Although headhunters are expensive, they often provide significant value. Also, don't go it alone. Being part of a support network is invaluable. At SaaStock, we offer the SaaStock Founder Membership and the SaaS Founder Membership Scale for scaling SaaS founders. These memberships provide the right support network and education, bringing peers together to discuss challenges, opportunities, plans, problems, and progress. This network helps keep each other accountable, and makes the journey less lonely.

From your experience, what are the critical factors investors look for when evaluating early-stage startups?

When you're in the pre-seed and seed stages, you won't have the metrics that investors at later stages want to see, like revenue and net retention. Without these key performance indicators (KPIs), investors are essentially making an educated bet on the team. They look at whether the team is the best group of individuals to execute the vision and build the platform or solution. If you're building something in a space where you have experience—say, after working for 10 years in the sector, or studying relevant topics in university—this will certainly be advantageous. However, investors back the team first and foremost.

For example, my fund, BackFuture Ventures, invests at the pre-seed and seed stages, and our primary focus is the team, particularly the founder and CEO. Are they impressive, smart, and well-suited to execute their vision? We also look for grit and resilience—traits often demonstrated through overcoming hardships.

In addition to team strength, the vision must be compelling. The SaaS market is saturated, especially in areas like marketing and sales tech. A new startup needs to offer something innovative, something that does things differently, and can potentially become a market leader. If a startup is merely replicating what already exists, it won't generate excitement.

For me, the hierarchy of importance is team, vision, product, and then market size. As someone who runs a SaaS events community business, I understand the critical role of building a strong and capable team to achieve success.

What are the most valuable lessons you've learned about building and leading a successful conference in the tech industry?

Community is crucial, and it's the core of what we're about. Without an engaged audience and super fans, the conference wouldn't be successful. Our community will help us prevail, and they will lead us to become the best SaaS conference on the planet. Understanding this—and staying focused on it—is essential.

People and hiring are equally important. Over the last nine years, different stages of the business required different types of hires. Getting the right people for each stage has been crucial. In the early days, we had more generalists in the business, but we always looked for people with startup DNA, who were missionaries, not mercenaries. Initially, we had a very young team, mostly smart graduates with little experience, but immense drive and hunger. These individuals were missionaries, eager to learn, put in the hours, and make a difference.

As we grew and scaled, we needed to balance our team composition. While I prefer missionaries, having some mercenaries became necessary. We now look ahead to the next three years, hiring people who have specialized experience, and can help us reach our goals. For the first time, we have a much more senior team with a lot of experience, which is crucial for where we want to go.

Looking ahead, our focus is on hiring individuals with experience in specific roles to guide us to our future goals. For the first time, we have a senior team with extensive experience, which is essential for our next phase of growth. These key lessons—focusing on community, adapting our hiring practices, and understanding the changing needs of the business—are what have driven our success so far and will continue to do so in the future.

What advice do you have for founders looking to foster similar communities in their respective industries?

There's nothing better than just getting out there and doing it. Don't overthink things, and don't just sit on ideas without taking action. Start somewhere—take action, do the groundwork, the grassroots stuff, and build your community. While some people may plan a large conference right away, it's much harder to do without an engaged community.

Begin small, and start building your community in any way you can. This could be hosting quarterly dinners for founders, creating a WhatsApp group, a Slack channel, or organizing regular meetups. Building an audience takes time and effort, and you have to love what you're doing. If you lack excitement, passion, and interest, it will become a chore. Remember, it's a long-term commitment.

Do you have any advice on how to transition from being a hands-on entrepreneur, to a CEO who delegates responsibilities?

Running a SaaS business for nine years has been a transformative journey for me. In the first half, I was a hands-on micromanager. I constantly checked the website, monitored the social media, and sent numerous Slack messages to my team. I traveled extensively, and I was always involved in group discussions. While this level of involvement might be necessary in the first year or two, it's crucial to evolve beyond it.

It took me about four years to realize this. During that time, the business likely lost some talented people who didn't feel as empowered as they should have. Empowerment is essential—you need to hire people for roles, because they are better at those roles than you are.

As the CEO, you are a generalist. My personal growth in this area correlated with starting executive coaching. With an executive coach, I learned to be a better manager, and how to delegate effectively. I built a structure within the business, establishing a hierarchy of reporting. Now, as the CEO, I focus on strategy, envisioning the future, and providing advice regularly. We have a Managing Director who handles day-to-day operations, and we've hired capable managers and teams in sales, finance, and other functions. These individuals create the plans to deliver on our vision, which we then sign off on, trusting in their expertise.

It doesn't always go perfectly, and sometimes more involvement is necessary. Scaling requires time, reflection, and the willingness to delegate and reinvent your role continuously. You can't scale if you're trying to own everything. It's not easy, but reflection on past management behaviors, engaging with an executive coach, and extensive reading in the field have been invaluable for me.

What's next for you and SaaStock?

I'm very optimistic about the future of SaaStock, and we have a 10-year vision to scale the company 10x. Currently, we host SaaStock in Europe, and our goal is to continue innovating to ensure it remains the number one SaaS event there. The next event is scheduled for October of this year.

Last year, we launched SaaStock in the US, and we aim to scale it up, potentially making it even bigger than our European event, given the vast market there. Looking ahead, we envision expanding to other international markets, including South America and Asia.

In addition to our events, we're building the SaaS Founder Membership, which aims to be the world's leading support organization for B2B SaaS founders. Although we're early in this journey, our goal is to help thousands of SaaS founders scale faster through this membership.

Furthermore, I've launched the fund BackFuture, which adds another layer of support for SaaS companies. This initiative allows us to invest in early-stage companies that excite us, providing them with the capital needed to grow. This ability to offer not only networking and learning opportunities through SaaStock, but also financial support through BackFuture is incredibly exciting for me.

We have a robust 10-year plan for SaaStock that includes scaling our events, expanding internationally, supporting SaaS founders through our membership program, and investing in promising early-stage companies. It's very exciting!

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