Nicholas Evans

@trevor_ewen I’m a 10/10 on this one. It works great.

@toddsaunders I do the “spreadsheet” test with our customers. Simply asking “What are you still doing in spreadsheets?” reveals tons of opportunities.

Every time I go into a local retail store, I run what I call the “sticky note” test. When I walk in, regardless of what I’m actually looking to buy, I immediately start looking around for sticky notes. If I can’t find them, I look for unorganized boxes, fax machines, and paper forms. I’m sure the store owners think I’m crazy, but I can’t help myself. All of these are opportunities hiding in plain sight, and what got me really excited about the flooring industry. Every one of these inefficiencies represents a manual process and a store owner asking for help. Think about this: - A fax machine means they have outdated invoicing or scheduling systems. - Sticky notes are likely a sign of missed leads or lost follow-ups. - Filing cabinets definitely means a lost opportunity leveraging customer data and records. Each of these represents lost revenue, margin and ultimately a big opportunity for the right piece of software. If you’e looking to start a company, stop sitting around trying to come up with random ideas. Instead, everywhere you go, just run the sticky note test - you’ll never know what industry you find your next opportunity in 😬😬

@lukesophinos Congrats. Why’d you pick PSG? Anything about them stand out over other options?

Some big news today. After a decade of building, I'm excited to announce a major growth equity deal with PSG. I founded CourseKey in my college dorm room nearly 10 years ago. We made A TON of mistakes, but we were supported by an incredible customer, employee, and investor base that worked with us through the good and the bad. I’ll be forever grateful and indebted to every one of them. The good — >We built one of the largest software companies in our industry supporting hundreds of enterprise customers — folks like Paul Mitchell, Lincoln Tech (Nasdaq: LINC), and Legacy Education (Nasdaq: LGCY) are all powered by CourseKey’s operating system. >We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of students attend a trade school, get an incredible skill set, and attain a high paying job. Many of Americas welders, mechanics, phlebotomists, medical assistants, barbers, cosmetologists, truck drivers, etc were trained with CourseKey’s software. How cool is that? >We started with a wedge product, added a few more products, became a platform, added payments, and much much more. >An absolutely incredible and supportive investor group and board including Steve Altman who saved the company MULTIPLE times, supported me through it all; personal challenges, professional growth, the highs and lows, you name it. The most stand up guy I've ever known both personally and professionally. Someone I look up to in every regard. Mike Stone who I learned so much from in such a short amount of time and the most sophisticated investor I've ever come across. Wayne Hu who was always there for me, his ceiling is so so high. Dennis Yang who was my CEO coach for ~5 years and made me better every day. Mark Blackwell who is a vertical SaaS guru and will do huge things. And Larry Rosenberger, who got his hands dirty and helped us build out our data & BI offering. And many others that wrote checks into a young, hungry, ambitious, kid who really didn't know much :-). THANK YOU. The bad — >Two big headcount reductions (and one very painful one during the Q4 2024 SaaS crash that took us from nearly 100 to 40 employees) >Having our money locked up in Silicon Valley Bank during the 2023 bank run >A lawsuit the same day I got my first investor term sheet (can’t make this sh*t up) >A bunch of challenges with debt (be so so cautious of debt my friends) >Very important customers churning and very important employees and co-founders leaving >Financing term sheets that got pulled at the final hour > Less than 30 days of runway >And a lot of other seriously near death experiences But man, we preserved, and we made it happen. And all this started from a little scribble on a notepad in my college dorm room. Crazy. So damn grateful for the ride. Truly. Some other incredible folks that this would have NEVER HAPPENED without — Fadee Kannah, Marc Barron, Ryan Vanshur, Luan Nguyen, Ming Zhong, S. Craig Anderson, Tina Tran, Peter Trennum, Cathy Pucher, Todd Northup, Jackson Batchelder, MA, my mom and dad, Tim Collins, Mallory & Winston, OUR INCREDIBLE TEAM, and many many more I don't have enough characters here to name :-). Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. But the next ten years may be even more exciting than the last ten. Earlier this year I pitched PSG on rolling up the trade school software space. They eventually bought in and three companies have come together to build the largest player in the trade school software space. I’m excited to support the achievement of this vision in any way I can. Let this be a reminder that you can overcome anything. You just have to give it everything you’ve got over a long period of time. Just. Keep. Going. Thanks for the ride. May the next chapter be as beautiful as the last. Onwards.

@YourCFOGuy Send

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We’re on a roll! Three quarters running as G2’s Momentum Leader in LIMS, plus our first Momentum Leader win in Lab Inventory Management! 🏆🏆🏆 Ready to see why labs trust us as their most mission-critical system? [Link in next post]

@realrookieceo @lpfirstcapital lol at “grew it backwards” Hope you’re doing well, Ayo.

For new followers - I was a searcher b4 it was cool. Bought a biz grew it backwards by a lot then forward by a lot more. Then sold it Thread coming soon. U may choose diff path after reading it😂 Now I work @lpfirstcapital - we build SMB rollups to $30MEBITDA. Bought 61 in last 5 yrs~290M equity invested I’ll share deals that are too small/off thesis for us so smash the follow button

The lab results are in! Customer love? ✅ Category leadership? ✅ Hungriest team in the game? ✅ More innovation on the product roadmap? ✅ qbench.com/blog/qbench-ma…

@girdley Damn Girdley, no PTO? You ruthless!

Here’s the most frustrating thing about being both (a) patriotic and (b) an entrepreneur: US regulations encourage companies to push work offshore. Here’s how: Add that all up, and the average US worker is behind $10k-$15k in costs due to governmental overhead. — In the 70s, a bunch of industries offshored and we ended up with a mess across Ohio/PA/IL/Michigan/etc. We’re on the cusp of a new Rust Belt. COVID and this downturn have accelerated it. We're headed towards a lot of new "Clevelands" across the USA. Companies are hiring three people in Argentina/India/etc, instead of 1 American. (I see it every day via my investment in @hirewithnear.) And college grads are struggling to find jobs because the regulations — even for junior roles — are too expensive for many businesses. One of my friends has a single remote employee in West Virginia. He has to spend $1,000s / year in compliance and paperwork and crap. It's crazy. — OK, so what do we do? So the answer is NOT to stop offshoring or globalization of jobs. That's stupid. In fact, I think it has a place. Instead, we need to fix US regulations so companies are not incentivized to move jobs overseas. We need to make it a level playing field. American workers (and my kids) deserve better.

@codywagee Pizza is the Achilles’ heel of all diets.

Personally guaranteeing a SBA loan, ensuring customers are satisfied, and collecting overdue A/R are some of the well-known challenges of buying and running a small business. I was not prepared for today’s challenge: buying pizza for our team while on a keto diet 😖

@ABBlitzer @businessbarista Saw this post and thought of you @ABBlitzer. And then here you are in the comments!

@businessbarista Going chef direct when your operation is on an Island is certainly.. unique. You either: have your own reefer truck, ferry to mainland and then drive to nyc or ship a perishable, voluminous product via UPS. Most oysters farms use distributors to facilitate last mile.

A 35-year-old guy moved from houston to new england to become a full-time oyster farmer. He broke down his weird, awesome biz for me... He owns a 2-acre oyster farm in Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard. He pays MV $25/acre per year. He buys 300,000 baby oysters per year at $0.01 from a hatchery. The hatchery sends him the oysters when they're 3-4 months old & he starts growing them on his farm. 50% of the oysters die during farming. There are tons of factors that go into increasing your survival rate. Wind protection. Water temperature. Etc. He thinks he can get it up to 75%. Once oysters turn 3-years-old, he sells the 150,000 remaining to restaurants (mostly in NYC) for $1/oyster. Those restaurants sell them for $3.50-4/oyster to customers. (holy f*cking margin) On top of farming, the owner & his brother operate tours of his oyster farm. You learn the history of oysters, the purpose they serve in the ecosystem, how to shuck, and his process for farming. They do 5 tours per week (May-September). Tickets run $150/per person. 10 people per tour. He's now thinking about what product to farm after oysters. He's tried scallops. No dice. He's tried clams. No dice. Next up, mussels. Here's my estimate on the financials of this fun, nerdy biz: Revenue: $300,000 - Oyster sales: $150,000 (150k oysters @ $1) - Tour sales: $150,000 (100 tours, 10 people, $150, assuming at capacity) Costs: $153,050 - Farm: $50 - Oysters: $3,000 - Employees: $100,000 (2 employees at $50k) - Equipment/Maintenance: $50,000 (no idea) Yearly profit: $146,950

@SaaSletter Holy sales/marketing expense ratio, Batman!

👀 just laying out the *actual $* math is a powerful question Via $CXM earnings

@LukeW Which AI?

Enterprise app UI vs. AI-generated Enterprise app UI -the bar is low.

@J_M_Vogt Wow, some ringers. Not far off of Scottie, who’s a +7: golfwrx.com/745630/scottie…

Got invited to play golf with a new group of guys tomorrow morning so I looked up their handicaps...

@OnlyCFO Running out of money

What are the biggest startup finance mistakes people have experienced or seen? Where founders end up kicking themselves later

@codywagee 🤦‍♂️ plz tell me the stat is not true.

Friday meme currently in circulation across the dairy industry 🙌

@pslohmann Baller move.

It’s really expensive to book a sponsorship in my newsletter. Normally, vendors and companies in the property management space take all of those slots. But something really interesting happened recently. A sales rep at a company who themselves have purchased sponsorship slots, asked if he could book a slot. Huh? I was confused as to what he was asking and explained how the company he works for already sponsors the newsletter. He said no I understand that, I’m saying I want to book a spot with my own money, and the CTA (call to action) will be my “book a demo” calendly link. !! He’s making a bet that the commissions generated will exceed his cost of the sponsorship. Fascinating! I provided performance metrics & helped him run the math, and it actually seems quite likely to work out great for him. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this, but it’s a really interesting concept and I’m going to watch the results with great interest.

👀 We've been working on something pretty big! We're thrilled to share our inaugural industry event for Vertical SaaS CEOs: VSaaS Collective Live!

@TheManMikeTan @SaaSletter @tidemark_vskp Update: I hadn’t considered that the $90K/$255K ARPA graph could be multi-location accounts. So one account w/ 5 locations @ $51K each = $255K. That’s my best guess to explain the huge gap between single product ARPA of $7-21K vs. platform ARPA of $90/255K.

@TheManMikeTan @SaaSletter @tidemark_vskp Thanks for clarifying! So then I think the data set must be from mostly mid-market and enterprise vSaaS if median ARPA is $90K–$255K. SMB ARPA would be under $20K, maybe even under $10K, wouldn’t it? That would be consistent with the median GRR of 88%–94% in the data set.

🆕 my 1st takes from @tidemarkcap's 1st Vertical SaaS Benchmark report 1st, the granularity here is great (i.e. product attach rates, payment take rates, etc) Links + my own meta takes end of 🧵 Notes: Smart classification system

@TheManMikeTan @SaaSletter @tidemark_vskp I saw a breakdown of the data set by funding amount. Will you release a breakdown by ARR? Also, some of the metrics broken down by SMB/Mid/Ent focus and also by ARR would be interesting.