- If you wanna build a billion dollar SaaS company,
then you need to go after a $10 billion market.
Here's how I got to this rationale.
The rule of thumb with SaaS
is that you have to deliver 10x return on investment.
Meaning, if you charge $10 a month for your product,
the user, your customer,
should get at least $100 or more of value.
So it goes to say,
if you wanna build a billion dollar company
you need to be going after a $10 billion problem.
Now, this begs the question
of what are some good SaaS ideas
that could easily become billion dollar companies?
This is not easy to do.
Building billion dollar SaaS franchises
are really hard to do,
but identifying the ideas doesn't have to be.
Now, I've done a lot of videos on this channel
about how to start SaaS businesses and SaaS ideas.
In all those videos,
I gave you frameworks
on exactly how to go about developing your own idea.
You can check it out here, here, here, here, or even here.
I'll link to those below,
you don't have to go anywhere.
I always get nixed on those videos and people say,
"You know what?
Why can't you just give me the idea?"
So, fine, the people have asked,
and I will deliver.
On this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three SaaS ideas
that I believe are going to be billion dollar companies,
sooner or later.
And as I walk you through these three concrete ideas,
I'm gonna walk you through the principles I use
to actually develop them,
and why I think they're billion dollar problems,
and billion dollar ideas.
And when you follow this principle
that I'm gonna teach you and learn about these ideas,
either you'll build one of these,
and I welcome you to,
or you'll actually use that principle
to iterate on your idea
or develop your own billion dollar SaaS idea.
And by the end of this video,
you're gonna know exactly the mental framework I use
to actually evaluate SaaS ideas
on whether they're any good or not,
at least in my opinion.
And when you follow this,
you too will be able to,
hopefully, at some point,
at least one of you,
build a billion dollar company.
Intro! (upbeat theme music)
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to "Unstoppable."
I'm TK, and on this channel,
I help SaaS founders like you
grow your SaaS businesses faster
with an Unstoppable strategy.
Now, if you are new to this channel, welcome.
I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategies and tactics,
from the trenches,
on how to actually build and scale your SaaS business.
So if you're new,
be sure to hit that Subscribe button and that bell icon.
That way, you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode with the TK Energy.
If you are already part of this channel,
if you're part of this community,
if you're part of my SaaS go-to-market coaching programs,
my people, welcome back.
It is really awesome to see you over here.
Now, I remember, when I was building the first version
of ToutApp, that was my last SaaS company,
I had been thinking about that idea forever
because I was experiencing the problem that it solved.
And I kept thinking about it,.
I even sketched it on my notepad
while I was working on a different idea.
And finally, I got so tired of that problem,
I spent the weekend copying the core framework code
from this other idea I was working on,
and actually built ToutApp over the weekend,
and launched it on a Sunday night,
and post it on Hacker News.
That week, it started to generate revenues,
and over time, ToutApp became one of the OG pioneers
of the sales engagement space.
I grew out ToutApp,
I sold it to Marketo,
and then I worked at Marketo,
and helped sell Marketo.
But anyway, that's not the point.
The point here is that that idea
that I encountered on my own,
and then I solved for,
and then I built a product around,
and I built a company around,
turned into a category that today has multiple unicorns,
maybe even a deck of corn at some point.
The sales engagement market today
is valued at over $5 billion,
and by 2032, it's expected to be valued at $32 billion.
Now, who really knows how big that's really gonna be,
but let's just also admit,
in that weekend,
I had no idea that this category
would become such a huge thing.
Even when I sold the company,
I didn't anticipate this category
would actually become such a big thing.
But I knew that that idea was gonna be big.
Fast forward to today,
now I work with over 250 founders
in helping them craft their go-to-market strategy
and grow their SaaS companies,
I've seen ideas that actually went nowhere,
and I've seen companies that went on to raise a seed round,
series A rounds, series B rounds.
And I've started to see patterns
on what kind of ideas really end up being big.
And so on this episode,
I'm gonna walk you through three ideas
that none of my clients are working on,
that I believe are going
to actually be billion dollar companies.
And so when you follow this video,
by the end of it,
you'll know what my three ideas are.
Hopefully you'll build one of them,
or you'll understand the principles that I use
to evaluate an idea,
and you use that to either tweak your idea
or develop your own billion dollar SaaS idea.
And my true intent in this
is that more people follow these principles
to actually evaluate their ideas.
And that way,
you don't waste months building a terrible product
that no one wants.
So if you're excited to dig into idea number one,
principle number one,
go ahead and smash that Like button
for the YouTube algorithm.
Let's get right into it.
Idea number one, SaaS idea number one
that I believe is gonna be a billion dollar idea
is marketing attribution.
Now, let me explain this to you.
Marketing attribution is a big problem,
because right now,
there's $602 billion of digital marketing spend
that actually occurs, and that's gonna grow.
On top of that, you've got iOS changes,
Google changes, and you've got privacy in the rise,
which means that it's harder and harder
to actually track that digital marketing spend.
In addition to that,
dark social is a big problem
that marketers talk about.
This means that if you see something cool,
you'll share it in a private WhatsApp group
and people will click on it,
and that marketer on the other end
will have no idea how they generated that demand.
That's called dark social.
So $600 billion worth of spend,
lots of privacy updates,
trackers going away,
and dark social on the rise,
means that marketers spending ad dollars
can't actually figure out what's working and what's not.
It's horrifying.
And so I believe if someone starts a SaaS company
focused on marketing attribution,
and actually starts to tackle this problem,
this new world,
where there is dark social,
where there is privacy requirements,
but still, there's a way to actually track this ad spend,
they're gonna be a billion dollar company.
And again, you'll notice,
with all the other ideas,
the reason I believe this is gonna be a billion dollar idea
is because it's a multi-billion dollar market
and a multi-billion dollar problem.
Meaning, if people are spending $600 billion,
and they can't effectively track the spend
and understand their ROI,
they're gonna wanna spend some extra money to figure out,
hey, what's actually working here and what's not?
So principle number one, idea number one,
is to build the next generation
marketing attribution company,
so that marketers can actually understand
out of that $602 billion,
what's working and what's not.
Idea number two,
SaaS billion dollar idea Number two
is recruitment marketing.
Now, I promise you,
not all of these are gonna be marketing ideas,
the third one is not,
but you know, MarTech is very near and dear to my heart.
I've worked in it.
Sales, marketing, go-to-market tech.
I worked with every single vertical,
every single category out there,
with my go-to-market program.
But these are near and dear to my heart,
and I wanna do ideas
that I like, really, really know intimately.
The second one is recruitment marketing.
So here's the reason
why I think it's gonna be a billion dollar idea.
Right now, there are 11 million job openings right now.
On top of that,
there are 6 million people that are unemployed.
Which means roughly, there's two job openings
for every one unemployed person.
Now, obviously, not every single one
of those unemployed people
are fit and skilled for those job openings.
And a lot of these job openings
are actually gonna get people out of existing jobs.
They're gonna get someone to quit and recruit them,
and that means that there's gonna be
even more job openings,
and still the same unemployed people
if the skilled labor is not quite there.
This is a huge problem.
What this means
is there's just not enough labor out there.
There's not enough talent out there.
There's more jobs than people.
Which means that if you're hiring,
just waiting for someone to apply on your website
or to fill out a form on LinkedIn or Indeed,
it's no longer enough.
You actually have to get out there
and recruit people.
And not just recruit people,
you have to show them why your company,
your values, your culture,
the way your company operates,
your vision, all those things,
actually resonate with who they are.
People have higher standards for where they work.
In a way, their personal values
have to align with where they're working these days,
which wasn't the case before.
So because of this,
recruiters are not equipped
to actually just cold call or cold email
and find people that are willing to quit their jobs
and take a new job.
That's an old antiquated way of doing it.
Enter recruitment marketing.
Recruitment marketing is the idea
that just like how you would market your product
to your future customers,
you could market your job opening to prospective talent,
truly talented people,
the top tier talent that's out there,
so that they actually notice your company,
see your job opening,
understand your culture,
and quit their jobs to actually join yours.
That becomes less of a sales problem,
which is kinda what recruiting is,
and becomes more of a marketing problem.
And the SaaS platform that actually takes all the principles
in marketing today
and applies it to recruiting,
so that recruiters can market to target talent
is gonna win big.
Because, again, going back to this,
right now, there are 11 million job openings
and there's only 6 million people unemployed.
And I don't know about you,
but if you're hiring,
like for example,
if you're an early stage founder
and you're trying to hire a VP of marketing
or a great marketer,
it is really hard.
It's not even about the number of unemployed people,
it's just that there's not enough
talented and skilled people.
So you actually have to recruit to them.
You have to market to them.
You have to convince them
that you're gonna be a better role for them,
and a better company for them
than the one they're in right now.
Which means that it becomes that much more important
to actually market to them.
Which is why recruitment marketing
and a platform that facilitates that,
and it enables that,
is gonna be super, super powerful.
Those are the first two ideas.
Let me just pause here for a second.
I started to see a pattern here.
So one of the things
I wanted to highlight here,
is that I'm not just giving you an idea saying,
"Oh, this is a great idea,
you should do it.
It's definitely gonna be a billion dollar company."
I'm trying to highlight exactly why.
And the one core principle that you need to know
when evaluating your idea
is you have to understand what the macro trend is.
For each of these ideas that I've shared so far,
including the third one that I'm gonna share in a moment,
there's a key macro trend.
In this case, there's 600 billion of ad spend,
and there's dark social,
and there's privacy on the rise,
which means that there's a conflict.
There's a problem in that spend.
And if you have a problem in that spend,
it means that there's an opportunity
for a software company, or software platform,
or heck, a solution of any kind to solve the problem,
and there's budget for it.
Same goes over here.
I highlighted a macro trend.
First, there's 11 million job openings
and there's 6 million people unemployed.
And what that means
is that there's just not enough talent out there, right?
And companies need to hire.
That means that's a problem.
It's a massive problem.
Every single company's gonna have trouble hiring.
Which means that they would gladly pay
for a solution to the problem.
Finding the macro trend
that is behind whatever product
you're trying to pitch people
helps you land on an urgent and important problem.
The macro trend gives you a clue
to the urgent important problem
When you talk about the urgent important problem,
and then you craft a differentiated solution,
that's when you have a successful SaaS company.
which is why I have very high conviction,
in my opinion, I could be wrong,
that these are gonna be billion dollar ideas,
because someone's gonna do them,
because I know the macro trend is fact.
It's not going away.
Are you starting to see the power in this?
Can I just get a yes in the comments below?
It really loves it when you do that.
Also, my team loves it,
we put a lot of love into these videos.
Also, if you're in that stage
where you're in the pre-revenue stage,
and you're looking to really validate your SaaS idea,
and you're trying to make sure
you're building the right product,
you don't wanna waste months
building the wrong product,
you actually want to get to initial revenues,
I have a completely free 45-minute training
that I run every single week.
It's Evergreen, you can access it on your own time
and watch it,
that goes in depth into how to actually think
about macro trends, key ideas,
how to flesh it out
without wasting months building the wrong product,
and actually get to initial revenues.
Just go to tkkader.com/webinar.
I'll link to it below.
You don't have to go anywhere right now,
let's go to a third idea,
which is also a billion dollar idea.
The third idea,
now that you kinda know the trick here,
I'm gonna give you the problem first,
and then I'm gonna give you the solution
so that you can kinda play along with me.
So let me explain the problem.
The problem is,
or at least the opportunity,
is that there's cloud spending by end users,
meaning people spending money on cloud software.
SaaS software by 2023.
That's end of 2023.
I'm filming this video end of 2022,
so a year from now, right?
Not that far off,
is going to be $600 billion.
On top of that,
right now, there are 30,000 SaaS companies.
So $600 billion of spend,
30,000 SaaS companies.
What this tells me
is that there's gonna be
a hell of a lot more SaaS companies getting created.
This is why I love enterprise software.
This is why I love B2B SaaS.
This is why I do a channel on it.
This is why I work with over 250 SaaS founders
and their go-to market.
I love this stuff
because I know there's gonna be
so many amazing SaaS companies
being built every single day.
And so that's the opportunity, right?
And there's a problem here
in that there's so many more SaaS companies
that are gonna get built.
The problem is,
I don't know if you've encountered this, I have,
every SaaS software has the same core components.
But when you're building SaaS companies,
you're rebuilding those components from scratch.
More or less, every single SaaS company has a database,
it has a data grid on top,
it has a bunch of filters,
it has authentication,
it has data sync.
That's like 99% of what you end up building
in a SaaS business.
And then you orient it around specific problems
on organizing that data,
and syncing that data,
and slicing and dicing it,
and doing a CRUD interface.
But a lot of it is so repetitive.
And anytime someone's actually building a SaaS company,
they are rebuilding these components.
They're rebuilding the authentication layer,
they're rebuilding the data grid,
they're rebuilding the filters,
they're rebuilding the search,
they're rebuilding the data sync engine,
all these things.
It's a giant pain in the wrong place.
And it should just shouldn't have to be that way.
So my third idea,
given this huge explosion that's expected
in demand for SaaS software,
and that there's just only really 30,000 SaaS companies,
is to actually build a SaaS development framework.
A SaaS development framework
or a platform, if you will.
think of it as an AWS, but just for SaaS.
So you have the AWS layer on the bottom,
and on top of that,
you actually have the components
that make up for the shell of any SaaS application.
Has authentication, has the data grid, has the filtering,
has the CRUD interface, has the database,
has the sync engine.
And then you get to go in and style it,
and you get to go in and say,
"Cool, here's the actual business logic
that drives my business SaaS application."
I think that there are mini versions of this.
There's like no code tools,
there's maybe like Visual Basic
or the modern versions of it,
but there isn't a true enterprise grade framework like this.
An AWS grade framework like this,
where it's like,
"Hey, this is what we use
for our enterprise grade SaaS applications
and you can now use it too."
Which is what AWS did.
They used it to build Amazon,
and they're like,
"Do you wanna use all the stuff we use
to run this multi-billion dollar company?
Here you go."
Just pay us on a permanent basis or something.
And I think that's gonna be a billion dollar idea.
So to recap,
here are my $3 billion SaaS ideas.
Number one, a marketing attribution software platform.
Number two, a recruitment marketing platform.
And number three, a SaaS development platform
or an AWS for SaaS with the right components.
Any one of these ideas,
I know are have a very high probability
and likelihood of being a billion dollar company,
if not a $10 billion company.
Why, because the macro trends are clearly there.
Now, you may start this idea today,
but you may not be able to execute on it
to actually be successful,
but I know someone will.
And it's my true intent
that someone's watching this video
is either already working on one of these three,
and it's like,
"Oh my God, let's go get it."
Or they get this inspiration and like,
"Let's go build that.
We're uniquely equipped with our domain knowledge
and our expertise to go build it."
Or you're working on an idea,
and by looking at these three,
you're able to tweak your idea
so that you don't waste months building the wrong product,
and you actually get to a really successful SaaS company.
That's why I do videos like this.
I just want all of us
to be building incredible SaaS businesses.
And now you know what my $3 billion ideas are.
What you may not know is,
hey, how do I figure out the macro trend?
How do I actually figure out
what my SaaS idea should be?
How do I validate it?
How do I make sure I drive to initial revenues?
This is why I run a weekly webinar
where I go in depth into these principles
that I've highlighted in this video.
In this webinar,
I'll walk you through how to flesh out
your core SaaS idea
and how to drive to initial revenues.
To watch it, just go to tkkader.com/webinar,
tkkader.com/webinar.
You can access it right away.
You can watch it.
It's 45 minutes in depth and it's completely free.
And when you watch it,
you'll actually be able to figure out
how to establish the strategy for your SaaS business
and validate your idea,
so that you don't waste months building the wrong product.
If you got value from this video,
please smash out Like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that.
Also, I drop an episode every single Sunday
with actionable strategies and tactics
on how to grow your SaaS business,
how to start a SaaS business,
how to be successful with it.
So be sure to hit the Subscribe button and that bell icon.
That way, you'll get notified
every single time I drop an episode.
If you have a fellow founder,
if you have a fellow team member,
if you're a part of a WhatsApp group,
or a Slack community,
dark social, if you will,
where it's a group of people
that would get value from this video,
please share this with them.
It just would mean the world to me and my team.
We put a lot of love into these videos.
And lastly, remember,
everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business.
When you are with us,
yours, it's gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK, and I'll see you the next episode.
(uplifting music)