#331 From Solo to Success: Ryan Matonis on Building and Scaling a SaaS Startup

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO Show with Mead today. I'm very pleased joining me, Ryan Matonis. Ryan, thank you very much for being with me on the show today. The way I love to do it is I keep it to my guest, themselves. Tell us a little bit about you [00:01:00] and what you do currently and then we start discussion.

Mehmet: Discussion from there. The floor is yours.

Ryan: Yeah. Sounds good Mehmet. Thanks for having me. Um, I'll just kind of give you a really quick background on me. Um, I am very much a technical person, uh, data scientists, computer scientists by trade and education. Um, and I got into entrepreneurship about five or six years ago when I realized that if I wanted to do anything other than just like work for somebody, I needed to learn how to like market and sell and network and put myself out there and do my thing.

Ryan: Um, and that sort of became like my business. I got into the lead gen side of things. I'm the CTO at like a big lead gen company now. Um, and so I, you know, I work with a lot of marketing and salespeople. I still am like the tech person who's responsible for everything at the end of the day, but we're not like a super, like, we're not like a Google.

Ryan: We're not like a tech company. Right. Um, so that's my background. That's where I'm at. Um, if you have any more questions about that specifically, I can go into it.

Mehmet: [00:02:00] Yeah, sure. We're gonna, you know, deep dive a little bit in, in the journey, right. Of course. And, um, you know, the question, the first question that comes to my mind, like You said you thought if you don't want to stay working for someone else, was this the main motive for you to do this, uh, you know, pivot, I would say in your career, or was it like something else that, you know, maybe an event that happened that pushed you into that direction?

Ryan: Um, I think it was just, so I was an intern at like a fortune 500 defense contractor. Um, And they had me basically, they were looking at building in like these outs, bringing in these outside contractors to do like this database application. They were gearing up to spend like hundreds of thousands of dollars on this, getting like all their test machines talking to each other and things like that.

Ryan: Um, and, um. You know, I [00:03:00] ended up doing it for them. I spent, I think it probably cost them like 000 of my time. And it ended up saving like over a million dollars in automation. I was like, Oh, wow, I should get really just, I'm sure they're going to just like shower me with like, thanks and rewards and things like that.

Ryan: And I just got like a really bad, like below market rate, full time offer after they had me like going around from like, You know, I'll bring them on the webinar and like, listen to all that, all the other factories here, but like we've done here and it was like, it was just kind of a realization that like to make the corporations weren't gonna, you know, like, do they were going to like, make it happen for me, you know, like it was something that I was going to have to do for myself.

Ryan: And I was like, wow, if I went in there, like, if I was that, that contractor that was trying to tell those guys, like they needed 300 K for like this database, like they almost did that. Yeah. Like the only reason they didn't do that was because I told them they were just wasting money, right? And that's like, what things, [00:04:00] what things did I get?

Ryan: So that was like my wake up call, you know, that was, I'm not going to like. So I went out, I started like freelancing. I started doing my own software development. I was like, I'm going to make way more money working for myself. And so I was working for myself. But I wasn't making more money at all actually was making less than like what they had offered me because I was just so bad at like, just getting sales opportunities.

Ryan: I didn't realize like how bad I was. I'm going to work this lead for like a month. I'm going to text them to, you know, it was just like, Okay. I didn't even really like, I don't think I even knew what a lead was, you know? Yeah, I didn't have like that vocabulary of like business. It's just like, oh, here's like an opportunity this guy And so my first year after that it was just horrible.

Ryan: It was just horrible. It's like trying to freelance and um, Yeah, it was just horrible. Yeah

Mehmet: Yeah, I like when you said it was like a wake up call and I think that's what happens to a lot of people Like, you know, [00:05:00] I think the world and you know Sitting in a chair inside the office behind, you know, a laptop or desktop, whatever, behind the screen and doing some job and that's it.

Mehmet: But they miss out that there's a lot of things going out there. Now, in your journey, I mean, you wanted to, of course, and coming from this techie background, solve real world problems. So your journey included building a lead generation SaaS and operating it. To a successful exit. So I like to hear these stories, right?

Mehmet: So what was the initial problem you saw? And you said, Okay, this needs really to be solved with the engines. And how did you approach? Sorry. How was, what was your approach to evolve it over the time?

Ryan: Yeah. [00:06:00] Um, so actually the way that I started lead engines is probably different than most people's experience of starting a SaaS.

Ryan: Like, like, Oh, I have this idea. I'm going to build this thing. And that wasn't really the process that I went through. What I had was an awareness that like, I was just really bad at like marketing and sales, and I knew that I needed to be putting myself out there more. I knew that I needed to be doing lead gen.

Ryan: I had been learning from like other entrepreneurs, the things that I needed to do. Um, and then somebody came to me like a friend's entrepreneur, whatever. Um, and he wanted me to build him a lead list. Building automation platform. So basically he was like, Hey, I have all these tools. I follow this blog article to just combine them in this way.

Ryan: And I was wondering, would you be able to go in and like, just connect them all together and just have it like run automatically. I was like, yeah, I could do that. Um, but he only had about 1500 bucks for me to build this thing. And that just definitely wasn't enough. Maybe like I actually thought about it, like I mentioned, it was just making no money at the time trying to do [00:07:00] this.

Ryan: Um, but I kind of thought about this for a minute. I was like, you know what? This is one. This is like what I need. You know, I need something like this. I need to be able to constantly just be reaching out to people like I just need more leads. I'm not going to learn how to sell without more leads. That was kind of where I was at.

Ryan: I was like, if I have leads, I'll learn how to sell, you know? And so what I told him, I was like, look, I can tell you this thing for 1, 500, but what happens if it breaks? You have to maintain it. You don't know how to maintain it. You have to pay somebody to maintain it. What if you want it to be improved?

Ryan: What if you want upgrades? Right? Um, I was like, what if instead, I built this thing for you. I met this spec that you needed. Right. Um, but I owned it and I sold you a lifetime license for 1, 500. And then he started thinking about it. He's like, well, is there like another SaaS out there that does this? And he goes, he starts doing his research and he ended up not finding anything that just competed that directly with this.

Ryan: Like, you know, obviously there's other data products out there, but there was nothing that did the exact thing. Things that he needed is who came back to me, said, okay, let's do it. Um, and that was my first lead [00:08:00] engines customer. It was actually his idea. Um, he paid me 1, 500 to build it out, but then I owned it.

Ryan: Um, and he just got to use it. He still uses it. It was a great deal for him because the product has been getting better and better and better. He hasn't spent a dollar on upgrades. He hasn't spent a dollar on, you know. Maintenance, getting it fixed, anything like that. Um, he's just been benefiting from the improvements I put out over the years.

Ryan: Um, so that's how lead engines was born, I suppose. Um, it really wasn't, I mean, that was my idea, like doing it that way, but like, just like the actual product idea itself was not actually initially even my idea.

Mehmet: Yeah. But which is fair enough, because not all the time, you know, it's the founders idea, because I heard it from a couple of people.

Mehmet: They say like the best. The best way to get ideas actually is to go talk to people because you know you would be solving Other people's problem not necessarily your problem. Of course, some people they prefer to solve their own problem First the problem with that approach. It's might be your [00:09:00] only problem.

Mehmet: It's not like everyone else's problem So I I think you know and this made for you like because also You know, your customer paid for that. So actually you proved the traction from day one that someone at least is willing to pay for that. So you save maybe, I would say 50 percent of the journey. I mean, between validation and trying to find the idea.

Mehmet: So, so, so that's inspiring actually.

Ryan: Yeah. I had him doing my competitor research and things like that. Cause why was he going to spend 1500 bucks and you go buy something else? Why was he going to waste my time? Absolutely. So I do highly recommend taking that approach to just anybody like being sales driven.

Ryan: Like the number one thing that we do as tech people is like build things too early, you know,

Mehmet: absolutely. Like the most

Ryan: useful thing I do with my time on any given day is convince people that I shouldn't do that thing with my time.

Mehmet: And this, you know, and the funny thing about this Ryan is everyone knows this, but no one actually applied.

Mehmet: Every time I sit with someone, yeah, I [00:10:00] know I should only build like MVP, let's say, and then they start to think about everything possible and say, just stop, like just build the minimum. It's called minimal viable product. So you don't have to build all the fancy, even if your interface is not complete, even if you know, you have, uh, some functions which are missing.

Mehmet: But, you know, you need to show the value at the beginning to your potential customers. And then, you know, of course, once you have the traction, you start to add whatever you want. So absolutely. Now operating that as a solo founder to exit is something really, really big. Yeah. But I'm sure that you have accumulated a lot of lessons down the road.

Mehmet: So if you want to say or share with us, you know, your top three lessons that you learned about starting and growing, you know, in a solo mode, especially in, in a very competitive landscape. So what are these three [00:11:00] lessons, right?

Ryan: Yeah, probably the first one would have actually been just the importance of recruiting, but getting good people and just like getting them on my team.

Ryan: And like, Um, the most influential thing that I ever had was, was partnerships, you know, and then something that I learned as I got further along and started doing other things, it was just the importance of like having good team members. So I really wouldn't endorse the solo founder thing too much. Um, it does have its benefits.

Ryan: Um, but I just, I don't actually think like in hindsight, it wasn't the best strategy. Like now I know what my swim lane is. I do think it's really important to. Swim in the other lanes for a little bit and just learn what other people are doing and like learn what the other roles are in the business around you, which was like the main value that I got out of like the solo printer thing.

Ryan: Um, but man, you got to learn how to delegate. Like you got to learn delegating up and down, you know, just like having people that are cheap that can do things for you, just take it off your plate. So you don't have to [00:12:00] worry with it. And then also just being able to hire people that are better than you at things that you don't know how to solve yourself.

Ryan: Um, you know, my, my current business, we have people that, um, you know, they manage a team of like 15 people and it's, I was never going to do that myself. I was just never going to figure out how to do that. I learned so much just from watching them do that. Um, so the solo thing, like it's a good learning experience.

Ryan: I probably would have moved faster, gotten bigger if I didn't do it solo, just being totally honest. Um, but the benefits of it, like I got a ton of customer feedback. I learned from a bunch of customers. Um, I actually used the product for like a lot of customers, like my initial customers, right? It's either like, Hey, I could sell you this 100 sass or I could charge you 1500 a month.

Ryan: For me to use it for you. I didn't explain it to them that way. I kind of just realized it was like, wait a minute. Like if I have to set this all up for them, I should just kind of dress this up like an agency, you know? [00:13:00] Um, so there was sort of like, I had to take a lot of shortcuts or it was like, since I didn't have marketing people and I didn't have sales people at first to go out there and bring in like a hundred customers, that it's like enough that you need for a SAS to pay the bills.

Ryan: But Kind of ran it like an agency model or like a freelancer model where I would use the tool to do things for people, make sure that I would keep getting that validation, get the revenue, get the branding kind of thing. Um, yeah, does that, was that a fair answer? Just don't do the solo thing. That's how you would.

Ryan: I wouldn't do it again. I honestly wouldn't do it again. It was brutal.

Mehmet: I think it's not for everyone, you know, to be fair. I, I, you know, just tested water for two months and, you know, I said no. Like, you know, I mean, from a full, full fledged, I mean, product perspective, trying to get a product and trying to do it by yourself. Yeah. Some people. Have managed to do that and they're making a lot of money, but [00:14:00] I don't think it's for everyone Uh, but i've seen people who crashed because you know, they tried it.

Mehmet: So, you know, they said

Ryan: It ends up getting so hard to hire people in because all of your roles are so melded together. It's like, Oh, I need to go do this customer service thing. Like, let me write this little database query to go like fix something inside like our customer database. And there's no way you're ever going to hire somebody who's like doing the customer service thing.

Ryan: That's going to reach four swim lanes over, write some JavaScript queries to like, Go purge something out of your, your customer database. Like you're never going to find those people that are like shaped in this really weird way that like your business ends up being shaped because it's based on you and it's like, it's your baby and it's reflection of you.

Ryan: And you're maybe not like a normal person or something. Right. And so it's just like your business isn't made to be operated by. Uh,

Mehmet: and I think because especially, you know, If you are into the b2b space because you know when you deal with businesses their expectation in [00:15:00] support in You know after sales, it's quite high and they are right because you know, they say okay We're paying like to you This amount of money every month or every year and we expect in return also to have first a product that works second If something breaks We need someone to come and fix it.

Mehmet: So maybe i've seen you know The solopreneurs more successfully in kind of a b2c model, I would say You Um, probably because, you know, the, of course, still they need to support their customers, but when they start small, you know, I think, you know, they don't have this feeling that, okay, it's a company that might cause me a headache versus like, okay, customers that I can just talk to them, calm them down and said, okay, wait, I gotta fix to you something and then we will move from there.

Mehmet: So I think this is also plays a role of them for, for them. Um,

Ryan: Right. Yeah.

Mehmet: Yeah. Now you mentioned something a lot about sales and marketing and, you know, of course, as a [00:16:00] founder, especially if you are alone at the beginning, you need to do all these roles. Now, what marketing strategies, whether outbound or inbound, you have found that to be most effective, uh, and, you know, especially in the B2B, again, SaaS, we're talking here mainly B2B SaaS and how they differ maybe from other industries.

Ryan: Yeah. Um, the first one is probably lifetime deal strategies. So like if you have a SAS, especially, um, you, you, you just, you just need to take advantage of like the lifetime deal markets. There's a bunch of them out there. Um, basically you put your product up there, people pay maybe like a year, six months worth of subscription fee.

Ryan: You give probably half of it to like the lifetime deal platform. But if you're selling a SAS, that's just kind of like. You know, like it's eventually it's pure profit once you've kind of built everything, you know, or you have really good margins, right? Like incrementally on each sale. Um, you need to be taking advantage of the lifetime deals because the [00:17:00] biggest problem you deal with is like an early stage SaaS it's cashflow, right?

Ryan: And so you either are selling annual deals, you're getting people to pay upfront, you're selling lifetime deals, you're selling like additional services, like in our case, that was like writing emails. Um, In addition to just, you know, the selling the lead lists kind of thing. Um, so that was the big one was lifetime deals.

Ryan: And then the second one for us outbound. Yeah, we had a ton of outbound outbound work for us. Um, cause we were eating our own dog food, right? It was an outbound product. Um, we never let the outbound stop. It was just years and years of just sending cold emails. Got maybe a hundred, maybe more than a hundred customers that way.

Ryan: Honestly, thousands of leads, thousands of leads. You're getting one or two couple of replies a day, three, four, sometimes, um, on average. Um, and then for inbound strategy, there was just a lot of like partner marketing. So like, since we were cold email, leadless building tool that integrated with cold email tools, I just reached out to all the cold email [00:18:00] companies that sold like, you know, the little sequencers or whatever.

Ryan: And I was like, Hey, you know what? Probably the biggest problem your customers have. Cause they run out of leads, right? They set up their campaign, they run it, they run out of leads. They had a great experience, but they don't have anybody to send email to. So they're going to cancel. Right. And so I got them to put me on their site and feature me in their marketing.

Ryan: And we like almost, we actually seriously thought about like slowing down the outbound when that happened, because we were getting so many leads that were already using tools that we were integrated with. That just wanted to hook us up and turn it on and fire and forget, you know, um, that we're coming just like directly from these companies.

Ryan: And we had like that credibility, like, Oh, you were on, you know, you got mentioned by Mailshake or you got mentioned by reply, or I found you like this, this email or something. Right. Um, those are the best leads we got. We converted like probably half or more of those people would come in and we would like sign up for free trials.

Ryan: That was the first time we [00:19:00] ever had somebody sign up, put in a credit card, do a free trial. Come back an hour later and then upgrade to a paid account without ever being contacted like by a salesperson.

Mehmet: Wow.

Ryan: And it was like, it was like over the moon, it was like 200, but I was like over the moon. I was like, I can't believe that just happened.

Ryan: Like, um, but that came from inbound, right? That's never going to come from outbound, like outbound, they're going to agree to talk to you, you know, um, and I think the lifetime deal thing kind of fits into the partnership channel marketing concept a little bit. It's like, you're just leveraging people that already have these networks and people's big fears.

Ryan: You're going to cannibalize your revenue or whatever. But I don't think there was a single instance where it was like somebody that already knew who we were heard about us through like a lifetime deal promo or something. Um, at least they never told me about it. You know, I'm sure like eventually when people were looking for us and they could find it, you know, um, but [00:20:00] I would do it like.

Ryan: A lot of people, they get all bent out of shape about like the pricing or the margins on the lifetime deals. Just do it. Just do it.

Mehmet: Yeah, I think at the beginning to your point, Ryan, they are important because also you can ask later, uh, for some testimonials also from these customers if they are happy. So it's a win win situation.

Mehmet: So you have also the social proof as well later when if you need to stop these lifetime deals, maybe after six months of the launch. Um, so at least you have, you've built like some trustworthiness, I would say, um, for, for, for the product. And of course, for, for the company, uh, which is very smart move. And there are a lot of platform that allows you to do the one that comes to my mind.

Mehmet: I'm not affiliated by the way. I, I know that AppSumo, they, they have this platform where you can put these lifetime deals. There's plenty. You can just Google them also. So now before, you know, I asked you like something a little bit different from this lead generation thing. [00:21:00] Where do you see lead generation in general heading in the future?

Mehmet: And now, you know, with the AI thing coming in and people are saying, okay, everyone's going to be using AI. And, you know, there'll be like Kind of a tons of emails and, you know, even calls done by maybe voice generated, how do you see the future for, you know, lead generation in the age of AI Ryan?

Ryan: Um, I think that's going to come down a lot to what regulations end up getting passed or like what laws get changed.

Ryan: Like if they decided that you would be allowed to cold call with AI. It would probably blow up and then completely go away, like just very, very quickly. Just imagine you're getting a hundred cold calls a day that from AI, like you just don't even answer your phone anymore. Um, like, or, you know, the email, you know, the, it's maybe not regulation, but like Google and Yahoo are constantly shutting down their spam [00:22:00] filters, you know, and they're just tightening things down more and more.

Ryan: Um, and sort of kind of the thing with legion historically, it seems that like. It always gets beat up by either the government. Saying that something, you know, we're going to change some law or one of like the, you know, I think people were doing a bunch of text message marketing until they shut down that, like, you know, the text message carriers shut that down.

Ryan: They're always making more restrictions on like outbound dialing. Um, and then I'm, you know, Facebook, Google, um, that's sort of different because not to get political, but you know, they more or less, they might as well be the government, I guess. And they, you know, Helping pass laws. And like some of it, I wonder it's like, like Google and Facebook, they don't want you to be able to send cold email.

Ryan: They don't want you cold calling, right? They just want the only way for you to possibly get customers is to purchase ads from them, you know? Um, so they're going to have their hands in this, um, even like, Even SEO is going to [00:23:00] be impacted, just all this algorithmically generated content. Um, so I think I wouldn't be surprised if we saw just like a lot of lead gen tactics kind of blow up and then crap out really quickly, a shift back to more like referral marketing or just like, like network, like, Hey, I know a guy who's like a real human who like does this thing.

Ryan: And like, I actually worked with him. Like if, if people's trust is like decreasing in Online ads and you know, spam like that. Um, so I really don't know, actually, this is something that we worry about all the time. We don't have a good answer about what Legion is going to look like in five years, because I don't know what changes the government and Google and the powers that be are going to make, which is really what ties our hands, you know?

Ryan: And it's the thing that we're kind of always working around, right? It's like, I've seen so many businesses come and go because they built it on cold email and then they just ramped up the spam filters. And yeah, you know, whatever marketing [00:24:00] agency that was selling whatever Instagram marketing services or something, they can't send cold email anymore.

Ryan: And so it just poof, it's like gone. They just didn't figure out how to do it another way. Um,

Mehmet: yeah, I would

Ryan: say corporations purchasing advertisements, which is completely unattainable to Small medium sized businesses, you know

Mehmet: Yeah, it's it's making Already it's hard. So, you know, uh, just for the sake of audience So I know majority of my audience actually they are in in the u.

Mehmet: s and canada and in Some of them europe and I have of course my local audience over here. So now cold Outreach here is not something which people are very You know, I mean from customers perspective. They don't like the cold outreach usually the problem is and i'm sure it's global problem so you get the real estate brokers you get the You know the credit card guys Sales guys [00:25:00] you got everyone and out of the blue someone's trying to sell something which is Of course has value so already, you know cold outreach here is is not like that Everyone does it of course the results usually we see here are much less than this global standard And i'm not against it But I am more I would be happy if we are pushed of course not to the paid ads Of course paid ads are important, but i'm more happy to go back to what?

Mehmet: Everyone was doing before which is that to your point more networking like more like Smaller events. It doesn't have to be these fancy big events that you need to pay thousands of dollars to go to Something much smaller, you know where you meet people who are looking for solutions and I think even from sales perspective from my experience this makes everyone's lives easier because People there are there for Solutions you're there to promote your solution actually and [00:26:00] then you do the matching right?

Mehmet: So and you build this relationship because Right, like you are like me We we both like came from from a technical background that we know like in sales. It's all about the relation I'm big i'm big fan of the relationship selling because even when you do that interaction The way you interact with your customer, even if he, if he or she likes your solution, they would look at how you're building the rapport with them, how you'll give, how you will give the support after the sales happen.

Mehmet: So all these things, you know, matters here. And I'm saying this to fellow founders, because you need to think about this aspect, acquiring customers is, is the easy part. Keeping these customers after sales is the, is the hard part. So you need to build this relationship from the beginning so you can, you know, make sure that you don't have churn because you know, if we talk about SaaS here, so you don't want your customers leaves you after a couple of months because they're not happy with the service or they cannot like find the right person to talk to.

Mehmet: So all these, I [00:27:00] think they are relatable, just my opinion over here. Right now, One thing when I was preparing, because again, uh, and I'm curious to know how you do it, if you can give me examples. So, coming from a technology background, and you need to go talk to non technology people, right? So, how or what are the strategies to use, you know, to explain complex tech concepts to someone who's non tech savvy?

Ryan: Oh, analogies, just analogies.

Mehmet: Can you give the example?

Ryan: Um, like, I think the other day I was explaining the concept of throughput, like how much, just how much can you get a system to produce, you know? Um, and so I just talked about McDonald's. And then how, like, if you throw in like random things, like, you know, if you start trying to throw a sushi roll in at McDonald's, but they don't [00:28:00] have like the infrastructure for it, you know, like they have this whole machine that's just cranking out burgers and then it's got to stop, put out a sushi roll and then go back to cranking out burgers.

Ryan: Like, how many more burgers could you have cranked out people? It analogies work for people because technology is all around us and technological concepts are all around us and they're built into every single thing that we do. And the way every single business operates, even if it's not technological, you have to point it out somewhere else.

Ryan: Like, that's how it works over there. Right? And then once they see it, they already understand it. And then, um, sometimes I feel like I just say things that like, don't even make sense because I'll say like this analogy and then like this analogy and this one and then like, I'll combine them and I'll say something where it's like, if you didn't hear me mention these three analogies right before I just said this, like, nonsense sentence, you would have thought I was just like taking crazy pills or something.

Ryan: And I can't even think of one like off the top of my head. Yeah, fine. I just combine several analogies and people are like, Oh, okay. I get it. Um, [00:29:00] even if like the way that you represent them, it's like not English. It doesn't make sense. It's like just connecting the ideas and then people kind of get it because they already have the ideas in them.

Ryan: They see it everywhere. They see it every day.

Mehmet: Back in previous lives when I had to, you know, explain very techy concepts or, you know, any, any even products or services to non tech people, I used to try analogies indeed. And I needed to explain to them to something that they can immediately visualize and imagine.

Mehmet: So for example, for me, and I learned this from my father, actually, you know, anything that I can relate to water and the water flow. So I would use this. So I've tried, if I can. Get this because people, you know, they know how the water flows. You need pipes. You need like Tanks to store the water for example And you need to do some filtering for to the water to make sure that you're drinking a healthy water so anything that I can relate to water when it comes to Explaining like technical terms to non tech people.

Mehmet: It was a [00:30:00] good strategy for me, of course like I'm mentioning water. You can just if something you're more familiar with, uh, that people can visualize, it's a very good tactic actually, uh, because at least they can start, even if they don't understand a hundred percent and to be frank with you, no one would be able from the first time to understand you a hundred percent, but they can start to relate things and they can start to get the idea.

Mehmet: And this is very handy, especially if you are in sales, you are technical and you're trying to sell something to someone who, you is too much business driven, little bit tech savvy. So you need to make sure that they get this concept. Now, Ryan, tell me, how's life after, you know, doing the exit? How, how does it look on the other side?

Ryan: Yeah. Um, I mean, so it was more of like an acqui hire. So it just joined a much larger organization that had already been like reselling, um, our software and things like that. [00:31:00] Um, and so the first thing was just like. Taking off my, you know, 17 hats that I was wearing over here and thinking about like, now that I'm part of this larger thing, like what are my priorities, you know?

Ryan: And like, this can't be my priority just because it was like my baby, right? Or just like having to just understand that like, There's all these other things that are happening in the organization that I am not already emotionally attached to that are just equally or probably more important than whatever I was doing yesterday, you know, um, I, I think I did that better than most people would honestly, um,

Mehmet: in which sense,

Ryan: um, that I just, I didn't like feel the need to shoehorn it into everything or like, it was like, if there was decisions where it was like, we need to either put resources towards this or that it's like, yeah, I was able to just be objective about like, which is better for [00:32:00] us, which is better for the way that.

Ryan: You know, I'm going to be able to go point and say that I did that thing, you know, it's like, okay, well, let's do the one that's better for us. And we'll like, worry about the,

Mehmet: yeah, I can, I can get your point because I, uh, I've read stories where if something, especially if kind of acquisition, um, you know, the founder would be like still attached to that, to your point, like it's my baby.

Mehmet: I don't want people to change, but if you lose a little bit on that and you, you know, you say, okay, if you think this is the way that we should do, let's do it. What happens usually if founders they don't accept they end up by leaving the business and they go either they start something new or They, they, they go for a while, they take some time without doing anything and then maybe they come back.

Mehmet: So, but you know, like it, it seems like the relation with the, um, you know, with the, with that was like healthy one, I would say when you did the acquisition and you prepared maybe yourself psychologically for this, which is, you know, I [00:33:00] would say it's a good, it's a healthy thing to happen. Um, Ryan, like we discussed quite a lot of things today.

Mehmet: So, and as we're coming to an end, it's a little bit kind of a cliche question, I know, but if you want to leave the audience mainly to be founders or currently founders in the B2B SaaS space with final wisdom What you would tell them and also Tell us where we can find more about you and how people can reach out to

Ryan: you Yes, you can find more about me on linkedin.

Ryan: Just search ryan matonis reach out Um, I get a lot of linkedin spam. So maybe mention that you saw me on the podcast or something Let me know you're a human That helps. Um, because I don't reply to everybody that messages me. I just don't, uh, and then I think the thing that I would leave people with is, um, my personal rule that I try to follow whenever I, whenever possible, [00:34:00] big plays only.

Ryan: So like don't get caught up in the little stuff, like swing the bat, try to go get that big channel partner, try to go pull off that big lifetime deal thing. Just try to do like the big things, because as it gets bigger, like the 10 percent that you keep adding is going to start turning into 9, 8, 10. 7, 6, 1%, 1%, 1%, right?

Ryan: And it's not going to do anything for you. And then the other thing is if you're really, truly just getting started, start with a sale, start by selling something to somebody that actually needs it, let them go figure out whether or not it's a waste of money for them to pay this much money for this thing, because they're going to do their research on that better than you, like new product developing entrepreneurs, like full blinders on I'm pretending the competition doesn't exist.

Ryan: I'm pretending they're not out there because they scare me. Like you can't get into that mentality. Or like, I'm going to build this thing. Cause my mom said, it's great. My mom still doesn't understand the point of lead engines. Um, and that's fine. She's not in B2B, you know, it's not what she does. Um, but my customers do right.

Ryan: They get it. [00:35:00] Um, and that was because like, it came from just like, I think so many people that like ask their friends or their network, would this be a cool thing for this, for people that do that? I don't know. Go ask them, go ask the people that you think are going to buy it. Um, so if you, if you want to start a business, start talking to your customers, like you don't have to be buying anything from you yet.

Ryan: You don't have to have a business yet, but you could still see them as like your customers or your market or your audience or whatever. And you can start caring about what their needs are and how to solve them and like learn what they're doing because I guess final bit of wisdom before I drop off, um, nobody purchases anything.

Ryan: All the cart, like you can sell things, all the cart, everybody's shopping for the package, like they buy a CRM because of what it integrates with, they buy a data product because of what it integrates with, they buy a cold email sequencer because their cold email is part of their marketing strategy, like everything's all part of like this bigger thing.

Ryan: So think about where you fit in that. Don't get caught up in the minutia. Don't get caught into trying to pull all of the partners in your ecosystem into you to compete with them or something like that. Just kind of stay in your [00:36:00] lane, figure out what your customer cares about, find the lanes that are next to you, the people that are creating the problem that you solve.

Ryan: And get in front of their customers. That's

Mehmet: really very, very insightful. I would say, and especially the part of, you know, don't ignore the, it's all about ego, I would say, Ryan, like, accept that your idea, the thing in general might not be the best idea. So you need to go to talk to the customer. Your competition might have the same thing and you think they don't have it.

Mehmet: No, go and do your research to your point. So it's all about, you know, And I know it's hard. I know from myself. I'm not saying like I never did it before So we need to drop a little bit the ego and really go. Um, go out of the building as steve lang says And go see what the customers want and then solve their problems.

Mehmet: I think this is the formula It's not it looks easy. Of course. It's not we know this and I think ryan has done it the hard way But [00:37:00] yes, you need to go and start to talk to your customers. So ryan, thank you very much for your time today with us I really appreciate it Yeah, thanks for your time.

Ryan: It was a pleasure.

Mehmet: Yeah. And this is usually how I end my episodes. So, uh, you, you, uh, as I said, uh, you know, Ryan, you can reach him on LinkedIn, but you need to write that you'll find him through the CTO show with Mehmet. And if you just found this podcast for the first time, if you like it, please subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Mehmet: And if you are one of the followers and fans, thank you very much. Keep also sending me your feedback and suggestion. I really appreciate this And if you want to be on the podcast also reach out We can discuss what you want to discuss if we find a fit and match we can do this Thank you very much for tuning in and we'll meet again very soon.

Mehmet: Thank

Ryan: you. Bye. Bye. Thanks. Bye